Ch.16
I’d finally killed most of the Skraven in the village, but now it had turned into a big game of hide and seek. A solid half of the Skraven were rogues, and very good at hiding. I was just thankful that there were no shamans or priests of the Horned King, their god of Pestilence and Chaos.
I was steadily getting better at both hiding AND seeking, too! Of course, when the penalty for being found was getting your face murdered off, it really encouraged you to try harder!
I had died twice in the last few days, basically the same as the last time, one of the Death Skitterer Assassins got in a free sneak attack, poisoned me, and then I got buried under an avalanche of Skraven bodies.
A moment of distraction here, a loss of focus there, and BOOM! I got a poisoned Assassin’s knife in my back.
It had sucked, but I was learning from those kinds of hard lessons... and it was undoubtedly better to learn those lessons HERE than on Earth where it would be permanent!
Unfortunately for the Skraven, most of them were nowhere near as good as I was. My Perception skill was now a +22, and my Stealth was a very respectable +16, right now... both of which were utterly absurd for a 3rd level character.
I was on the roof of a cottage, trying to get a decent view of what was left of the village, using the shadow from a chimney to conceal myself and ready to use Ki Cloak with a moment’s notice.
The Death Skitterer Assassins, though, were the only ones who were a real threat to me, and there were only three of them in the village as far as I could tell. I’d already killed one of them, they were only, really a match for me if they got the chance to open the fight with a sneak attack.
Oh, right. Sneak attacks do bonus damage versus unaware opponents, opponents who are denied their Dex bonus to AC, or when they’re able to flank an enemy with an ally.
In older versions of L&L, it was called a backstab attack.
They must realize that they can’t possibly take me down before I get them. Maybe they’re setting a trap for me? That makes sense.
I moved again, still confident that my Perception and Stealth skills were far past the Skraven’s that they had little chance of really sneaking up on me.
Sure, they had other advantages from being rogue-type characters, things like Fast Sneak, which let them move at their full move speed instead of half speed like I had to when Stealthing... but my move was already more than twice theirs to begin with! They were Small-sized creatures, with a base move of twenty feet, my base move was now sixty feet as long as I had a point of Qi in my reserve, so even halved I moved faster than they did!
They also had an ability called Danger Sense, but even with that my Perception was likely higher than theirs because of Acute Senses, Alertness, and Efreet Vision. I had gone in hard on making sure my Perception was through the roof for my level ever since the first time one of these jerks had cut my throat and gotten me killed.
Making a mistake was one thing, it happens to everyone... but one of the best things about this crazy Black Spirits-like Underworld is the fact that I can afford to make a big mistake, and I’ll just wake back up at the Hearthflame.
When I was a Dreamer, I could screw up relatively consequence free. The real world is not so kind!
Sure, I have enough Hero Points to Cheat Death one more time in the real world, but after that, I’m done! Dead! Pushing up daisies!
Well fuck that!
Sure, I’d be working on getting more Hero Points... but covering weaknesses is just as important. Also, other than leveling up my primary class, I had to do something heroic to get them... and that required an opportunity to be heroic first. Something I had no real control over.
There you are! I saw one of the Skraven Death Skitterer Assassins, his hooked twin daggers glowing with an inner, neon-green light, and venom dripping from them!
Wait, what? After all of this sneaking around, it's just sitting there, out in the open? Nope, nope, nope. This screams ‘TRAP!’
I looked for the best vantage point to watch the area where the Assassin was, found nothing, then looked for the best place to ambush me, where I currently was... and still saw nothing. Then, I consciously used Sense Supernatural to look a third time, my something’s wrong here bump warning me about something squirrely in my surroundings.
The second Assassin was sneaking up on me... and it was Invisible.
Clever girl. I thought, in my best Aussie Dinosaur Wrangler accent. I wonder if it's using an innate ability? A spell? Maybe a Potion or magical item?
Normally, things like Invisibility spells hide their effect from Detect Magic and such... A basic Invisibility spell is 2nd level in L&L, and Detect Magic is a Cantrip, which are what’s considered below 1st Circle. Sense Supernatural was a MUCH stronger effect than Detect Magic, though... so it DID work.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Of course, I could only see the magic itself, as Sense Supernatural didn’t break the effect of the spell, but knowing where it was told me everything I needed to know!
I spent a Qi point into Qi Cloak and vanished in front of the invisible Skraven Assassin’s eyes. It froze in place, and before it could even understand what was happening, my fist was smashing into its body!
When you can’t make out the details of your target, go for center mass!
The audible electrical discharge combined with the splorching noise of my fist smashing its face in was all the second Assassin needed to realize that the jig was up! It spun and dashed towards me, as fast as it could...
Which wasn’t anywhere close to fast enough to save its buddy. The invisibility had dropped the moment my first attack hit him, and I’ll admit that I was a bit surprised it had survived.
I looked at it, and I smiled. We both knew its friend wasn’t going to make it here in time to help – they’d taken a gamble, that I’d be distracted enough that it could get close enough to me to Sap me and stun me, or something like that... giving its friend just long enough to reach us and make it a two on one that they would probably have won.
It had gambled, and it had lost its bet. It stabbed out with its daggers, missing and provoking an AoO from Defensive Throw, and I gladly took the chance to put it down! I swept its leg out from under it, using Great Throw to inflict my unarmed damage on it on its way down by sweeping its legs up over its head, so that it smashed face first into the roof at speed!
I didn’t even need to Vicious Stomp on it. The damage from Great Throw was more than enough to finish it off.
I turned and tried a new ability I was excited about – Energy Spark! I had ranged attacks now, and that made me VERY happy! I expended 2 Pneuma to boost it, which let me fire a second lightning ray, a ranged touch attack, at the second Assassin.
Each ray did 3d6, +1d6 for Embrace Elements, +2 for Discipline Focus (Fo4E), +6 because it was lightning damage while I was using Djinni Style!
That was an average of just under 45 points of damage if both rays hit!
What I can only describe as 2 electron particle beams fired themselves one after the other from the finger I pointed at the Assassin, with my hand shaped like a finger gun! They looked just like bluish-white blaster bolts, about a yard long, from your favorite sci-fi movie!
The first one hit, scorching the Assassin badly in a burst of released electrical charges.
The second ray hit and burned a hole clean through its torso, leaving it dead and me with an empty Skraven village!
I couldn’t help myself – I screamed out in celebration, pumping my fist into the air as I leapt to the ground!
Finally, I can LOOT these fuckers!
It felt like it was a pretty big deal.
--------------------
It took me almost three times longer to loot the place than it did to kill them all. It was pretty obvious this was a video game evil village by the lack of anything that would count as a next generation. In other words, there were no little Skraven anywhere to be found.
There were maybe thirty houses, well, houses might be going a bit far... there were thirty well-made huts. There was a stable of some kind, where I’d had to kill some nearly six-foot-long mutated rats, that's not including their tails, of course. Their legs were much longer than even a rat their size’s legs should be, meaning they were obviously mounts of some kind... or at least that was my assumption.
There was a very primitive smithy, a tannery, and one of the houses even had a primitive alchemical set up for me!
Not only that, but once I’d cleared the village out, I found another Hearthflame burning in a firepit in what was the largest hut, one that I would even venture to call a house!
Huh. Decisions, decisions. If I bond to this Hearthflame, the village probably won’t respawn... but then again, it might. It depends on if this is meant to be a hub or not. The Craft facilities suggests that it is supposed to be a hub, but I probably won’t know until I do it. The question is, do I want to lose all the experience this place represents or not? Screw it! Worst comes to worst, I use the Hearthflame to go back to the one in the cave I started in!
I touched the Hilt of the Blade within the Hearthflame.
Do you wish to attune yourself to this Hearthflame? (Yes/No)
I said yes, then released the Hilt as soon as I felt the exchange of energy. I crept near the door and peeked outside.
The village was still empty!
I went back to the Hearthflame and bought my Feat for the day, Highly Skilled. It grants you plus five skill points. It can only ever be purchased once.
Three points went into Disable Device. One point went into Computer Programming. One point went into Disguise.
Welp, that gonna be a ton more grinding. I’ll need to buy the Talent Jack of all Trades for my Profession skill – it does the same thing as Scholar and Craftsman, but for Professions... plus I’ll need to get Skill Focuses for them all... Dammit. I thought I was done with the mindless grinding!
Nope! Uggh! I have two more weeks at level 3? Maybe three more weeks, now? It’ll all be worth it later, though!
I also bought the Mantis Fist Monk Mastery, Pressure Point Strikes, which gave +1d6 Sneak Attack Damage at 2nd level, and every four levels afterwards... but there was a Feat you could purchase that would increase your Sneak Attack by +1d6, named Accomplished Sneak Attacker, as long as your number of Sneak Attack dice did not exceed your highest Primary Class level/2.
Which meant that at 6th level, Pressure Point Strikes would raise my sneak attack damage to +2d6, then at 10th the Mastery would give me +3d6, and so on.
Sneak attack damage was precision damage and required specific conditions to work... your opponent had to be denied their Dex bonus to AC, or you needed to be flanking your enemy, in other words, fighting the same opponent with an ally. As far as the precision part, it meant that some kinds of enemies weren’t damaged by it, generally, it would only work on enemies with a discernable anatomy. This meant that things like slimes and oozes, elementals, and other, similar things didn’t take damage from being hit with a sneak attack, because there were no weak points or vulnerabilities to aim for.
I sighed and groaned at the thought of all the new Feats I’d need to buy to support being able to use my Sneak Attack damage most of the time, then perked up a bit. At least I wouldn’t have to keep grinding the same spiders and Skraven!
It was all just too useful not to have. Even if it only worked situationally, there were ways I could force those situations to happen, and I’d already started working on some of them.
I started working on improving the different profession stations and tools. It should be easy to get all of this stuff up to mastercrafted levels, plus a bit.
I guess we haven’t gotten into Crafting yet, have we? Ok, so let's do this.
Like most skills, crafting has a base 10 for all of its Difficulty Checks, or DCs. Difficulty Checks being the number a crafter has to roll on their skill check to make whatever they’re trying to craft. Only a few things can increase this check. First is how complex the item you’re creating is. It's much easier for a smith to make a crowbar, for example, than it is to make a suit of high-quality chain mail.
A Very Simple craft was +0. A Simple craft was +2 to the base 10 difficulty. Average was +4. Complex was +6. Very Complex was +8. Really, these numbers only matter at the lower end of crafting, though. Once you can Mastercraft items reliably, these numbers essentially become moot.
The material you were working with also made a difference. They added between +1 and +6 to the check necessary to succeed, and for the very most difficult materials, it could be even higher. Plus, those sometimes also had other requirements to work with them.
Next was Masterworking, only Masterworked/Mastercrafted items could be enchanted or empowered, except for single shot devices, something the magical equivalent of an amateur, home-made pipe bomb. Almost as likely to blow up in your hands as it was to blow up when and where you wanted it to.
A DC of 20 is a Masterwork item, no matter how you get there.
Finally, most magical items could only be enchanted up to a +10, which was an INSANELY POWERFUL Artifact. Any magic item with +6 worth of enchantments on them or higher was considered an Artifact, the type of item that could change wars. We’re talking Gae Bolg, Excalibur, Stormbringer, Gram, the One Ring, the Helm of Domination, Frostmourne, etc. Legendary weapons and items of power!
Each plus you want to put onto it after a +1 enchantment raised the difficulty to make the item by +2.