Chris
With both my affinity and my new Wind Law, it was time to upgrade a skill that was in desperate need of it.
I had held off on upgrading [Hail(C)] precisely because I didn't have all the pieces yet. If I hadn't waited, I would have had to upgrade it along its current path and tread deeper along either its ice creation or have it affect a bigger area.
While both were decent upgrades, that wasn't the direction I wanted to go with it. The skill had fallen off as I leveled and got more powerful ones and it was now only used for ice generation mostly.
When I first read the description and bought the skill, I imagined an area denial skill or an area of effect around me that made fighting me up close difficult. While it started that way, the skill hadn't really lived up to my expectations of it as I grew.
I didn't have enough in intelligence or the mana capacity to spend on the skill to make it effective against the enemies I was fighting. My mana was better spent elsewhere and [Hail(C)] got left behind.
There was no need to get rid of it though, there were always ways to push it into what I wanted, I just needed patience.
And that patience was about to pay off.
There were two main things I wanted to push for during the skill's upgrade and I had both of those pieces in hand now.
The first thing I wanted was to add Wind to the skill. So not only would it hail, but it would blow the ice around as well, turning it into a Blizzard.
I could have done that when I got my Wind Law but I wanted a touch more before I went ahead. I waited until my affinity upgraded to add an Arctic touch to it.
I didn't only want Wind and Ice. I wanted the debilitating cold Northern Winds and the Arctic touch of bone chilling Cold to go along with the Ice. A small difference but a distinct one.
Most of my choices for Laws and my Body Refining had this in mind and would help to upgrade the skill along the path I wanted.
I didn't do it all just for one skill, that would be short-sighted, no, I wanted to push my overall fighting style in that direction. I had already begun leaning on the environmental effects during the tutorial, now I wanted to solidify that.
It was the main reason I chose Hammer of the Jotnar over Captain of the Boreads. I already had skills like [Hail(C)], [Permafrost(Un)], [Icy Bastion(R)], and now [Sweeping Snow(Un)].
Pushing those skills to upgrade into the pieces I wanted was already more magic than I could currently handle. My mana was not infinite and I couldn't focus on too many different skills that required it. [Sweeping Snow(Un)] new draining cost was already too high for sustained fighting.
Building what I already had so all of them synergized was better than replacing them with whatever Captain of the Boreads could give.
Plus, it would allow me to gain weapon and armor skills which were something I was deficient in. Getting those in E-rank would allow me greater freedom of class choice further ahead. Covering all of my bases now, so I could branch out later.
My end goal was to be a walking calamity. To fight on any scale, big or small, and be dominant. Dominant in a way it didn't need to be explained.
It was a lofty goal but a person should aim high when dreaming or what was the point.
Pushing my Wind Law into the skill was trivial at this point as I had ample experience doing so with my Ice Law and the Arctic touch came from my new affinity. My affinity colored everything I touched anyway, all it needed was a push and it would influence it a bit more.
I used my Ice Law sparingly during the upgrade as I wanted more of a Wind effect but I did touch on the pervading cold aspect of it to boost the cold as much as possible.
Both my Arctic affinity and Pervading cold aspect could add to some truly desolate temperatures and I loved it.
As I pushed everything into the skill, it began to change. I was in an out of the way spot for the upgrade and the forest did not like what I was doing to it. [Hail(C)] morphed as I pushed against its bounds as the Wind began to pick up at my prompting. The Cold came next and the two integrated seamlessly with the Ice already falling from the sky. Trees groaned and popped at the sudden temperature drop and their leaves whistled in the Wind. The skill chimed in upgrade as soon as I activated the modified version, but it wasn't yet what I wanted. It took the Wind effect but it didn't really get the Cold I was going for.
You have upgraded a skill:
Hail(Common) -> Blizzard(Uncommon)
It took [Hail] and added Wind to it with only a marginal upgrade to its temperature. While that was good, it wasn't at the level I wanted. It was only a bit nippy right now and I wanted more. I assumed that the upgrade to Uncommon could only do so much and continued pushing on the skill toward Rare.
This time, I pushed hard on the cold aspect. Both my Law and affinity flooded the skill and I drew on what I knew from [Permafrost(Un)] to help. This time, [Glacial Presence] kicked in and I felt my stats rise as the area plunged colder. When planning, I thought of the idea of merging the two together, [Permafrost(Un)] and [Hail(C)], now [Blizzard(Un)], but held off for now. I wanted to save that option for later when I had more pieces to put together. That way, it would be an all encompassing domain, rather than the patch job it would be with only the two skills.
Another chime sounded and I looked to see if it worked.
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You have upgraded a skill:
Blizzard(Uncommon) -> Desolate Blizzard(Rare)
It took everything I wanted it to. The skill expanded from only conjuring Ice and now conjured something closer in line with my [Sweeping Snow(Un)]. It wasn't the same, and it was majority chunks of Ice rather than sharpened snowflakes, but it wasn't the lumps they used to be. It became streamlined and flew around from the conjured Wind at higher speeds.
Plus, even though Wind took a secondary focus in this upgrade, the Winds whipped inside the skill. Branches bent and snapped inside the radius and if I didn't have a resistance to it, the Windchill alone would make everything difficult.
It was perfect.
With that upgrade, there were only two class skills left in the Common rarity, [Identify] and [Identify Block].
Both skills required a perception aspect to upgrade that I didn't have and wouldn't be getting any time soon. It was most likely easier to buy the upgraded skill from someone once Earth's economy got up and running.
Both skills were common drops from dungeons and while the upgraded ones were rarer, not overly so.
While the store from the tutorial would be gone, pylons all around the world could buy and sell things on a connected platform.
The System took a hefty fee to facilitate such a trade, but for certain goods, it was worth it. Buying food or materials in such a way would quickly see a city bankrupt, though, if not done in moderation.
The markup to use such services was steep and raised by an order of magnitude if the product was on a different planet, let alone a different sector of the galaxy.
When Abigail was telling me about it in one of the info missives I nearly choked. Plus, it required something we didn't yet have anyway.
We were still a long way off from being able to do anything like that but the knowledge that it would eventually become a possibility was nice, even if I needed to sell my firstborn child to take advantage of it.
With my skill upgraded, there wasn't much else for me to do. My affinity was already done and I wasn't ready to push anything else yet.
I had taken an initial perusal of the Mana Cultivation technique I got from the tutorial but it required an insanely high Ice Mana density and purity that I wouldn't be seeing for a while yet.
Seeing that I couldn't do anything with it, I shelved that until I could work on it later.
Without anything else to do, I forged what was needed. Nails and bolts for carts mostly, but anything that was required. It was mundane work but it needed doing.
Hal was still out searching for the lead we had on a Beastmaster and we wouldn't get any more information until he found the man.
Without any tracking skills, searching myself would be pointless. I would have just as good a chance to find him by searching as I would by picking a direction and walking.
Sensing the waste of time that would be, and the frustration it would involve, I delegated that task to our lead tracker. AKA Hal.
Ahhh, delegation. The true power of leadership.
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Sarah
Her bow twanged as another arrow leapt from it and into the deer she was stalking, piercing through both lungs instead of the heart she had been aiming for.
Sarah tsked in annoyance before striding in the direction the deer ran off in. It wouldn't make it far, but the fact it didn't go down immediately caused her displeasure.
Her shot was an inch too high and it missed the heart completely something she was trying to fix.
Returning to Earth alone had come with unexpected complications, complications she was only beginning to feel. Food was her main concern and why she was out hunting.
There wasn't a pylon to buy food from or a Merchant that sold it like in the tutorial. Plus, there wasn't anyone else around to get it from which made it fall to hunting for it.
Once again, she cursed her luck.
The deer didn't even give her a level either, making level 10 seem ever further out of her reach. Finding something she could hunt was becoming harder as well as everything was higher level than her except for a few isolated finds.
More things in the forest would sooner hunt her rather than the other way around.
If only things worked out differently. Sarah wished her Dad was still here so she wouldn't have to do this alone. That thought persisted after she found the deer and started the gross, but necessary process.
Tears welled up in the corner of her eye as she field-dressed the deer and she fought to keep them from falling.
"Strong warriors don't cry," She knew what her father would say if he were still here and saw her with tears streaming down her face.
The thought reassured her but did little else. It wouldn't bring him back and it wouldn't get food on the table. He was gone and it fell to her to take care of Zach.
Once the organs were pulled out and the deer was dressed like her father showed her, she tied it to the stick she had brought to transport it back home. The blood would draw predators and she needed to be far away before they caught the scent.
The massive deer dwarfed her small form and she struggled to haul the beast back home. It was easily twice her size and weighed more than her, making it a grueling trip.
The only positive was it didn't smell this time. Or, it didn't smell as bad this time.
Her hand had slipped and the knife sliced through the intestines the last time making the whole thing that much more miserable. She cried the entire time and the scent stung her eyes the whole way home.
Still, she persevered.
To not do so was to starve.
Tasks like this, ones her father had taken care of before, made her curse him. Everything wouldn't be so hard if he had taken her hunting while in the tutorial. If she had more levels or more skills, things wouldn't be the way they were. Or even a few more stat points in strength and she wouldn't be struggling so much to pull the deer home.
Or, if she made it far enough, she reached level 10, she could evolve out of her useless class. She had picked it because it was what her Dad would pick and she wanted to be just like him at the time.
When she was younger, he taught her how to shoot a bow, how to stalk prey, how to skin and dress what she hunted.
Then, when she appeared in a magic room being asked to pick a class, there was only one thing she knew how to do. She knew how to shoot a bow, so she picked Ranger.
All the good that it did her now. She was barely level 5 and could barely take down a deer anymore.
While in the tutorial, her father kept her safe but he didn't let her fight. Always going out alone and making her promise to stay put. He would go find food while she hid in the shelter they had made.
It worked like that for months and no matter how hard she pressed, he wouldn't let her go with him.
"It's too dangerous," He'd say, or, "You're too young."
She thought he was exaggerating the danger at first. They were given superpowers! Like from the games she played! What could be dangerous to them?
Even as time went on and her father came back with more injuries, with more blood covering him, she begged to come with him.
She begged him all the way up until he didn't come back.
She waited for days until the pain in her stomach forced her to leave. She didn't know where to go and wasn't familiar with the area she was in. Picking a direction at random, she walked in search of food.
From her father's lessons, she managed to survive but did little more than that. By the time the tutorial ended, she was half the weight she went in with and was severely malnourished. Not that she knew that, but everything was harder to do than before and required more effort. Some things she couldn't do at all anymore. She was lucky she could still pull her bow back.
Now, when she was returned to her house, she searched all over for where her Dad could be. She searched the entire house and the area around it but still couldn't find him. He was right next to her when it happened yet he didn't come back with her. The only other thing in the house besides her, was her little brother.
He went on about the special play room he was in and all the other kids he got to play with. Hearing that made her want to cry even more. He got to spend three months playing while she had to fight just to live.
But now there was something even worse to survive through. They were all alone in their house and there was no one else to help them. Their father was gone and Sarah didn't think he was coming back. If they wanted to live, they would have to do it by themselves.
In a house that was far out in the woods, miles away from any city.
"For peace and quiet," her father had said when they moved. Even though she wanted to stay in their old house where all her friends were, the packed up and left for the cabin in the woods.
Struggling to pull the deer back with her, she tightened her jaw and set her face. The last sniffles quieted and she tried to stand up straighter.
Strong warriors don't cry.