The arena had a sand room for Will to do his business in, and the wombat didn’t waste any time before going.
However, instead of the now familiar sensation of moving very fast while at the same time staying in the same place, Will got a message window.
Congratulations, player, on surviving until the 10th turn!
The Creator of your realm has chosen to institute the following changes:
1. Merchant type spaces are now available on your map, even if you haven’t reached them yet.
2. The Innate Abilities “Jump” and “Dice Roll” have been improved. From now, when your move action takes you past a merchant type space, you have the choice of ending your movement on the merchant space instead of performing your full movement.
3. Skill shards that take no skill slots have been renamed into “Boost Shards”, and have their own section in your character sheet. No changes to function have been instituted.
4. All currently active timed quests have the duration changed to be marked in cycles.
5. Other minor changes that will not immediately impact the players.
The Creator would like to thank you for your cooperation. Your movement action will continue as normal when you close this message.
Well, that’s not at all concerning. I really don’t like the thought of some sort of creator who can just change the way the world works around me. And I’m not at all sure I like the sound of “other minor changes that will not immediately impact the players”. Easier access to merchants, on the other hand, will probably be useful. Kili said that if I wanted aspects I need to go to an enchanter, which sort of implies that there’s one available, I think?
Either way, not like I can do anything about it. Let’s close this and move on.
image [https://i.imgur.com/70T6uyY.png]
Cloud Kingdom
On the highest reaches of the Cloudlands lies the Cloud Kingdom, home to the xenophobic Cloudborn race.
Will was standing on a cloud. Which is not a thing he’d ever expected to do. The cloud felt weirdly flexible and bouncy under his feet, but was otherwise surprisingly solid. It was also completely flat, which Will was sure wasn’t something a cloud should be.
On the other hand, there was barely a meter to Will’s sides before the cloud just… stopped. Will very carefully looked over the edge, and he could actually see the ground, several kilometers below him. Suddenly, the fact that the cloud’s top was flat was very very welcome.
OK, note to self: don’t go over the edge!
Main quest
Slay 10 Cloudborn.
Reward:
Space rank-up
100 XP
1 skill shard
The cloud Will was on stretched out ahead of him. Two meters wide and straight as a ruler. Looking behind, Will saw that the cloud stretched behind him too, with nothing to differentiate between sides.
Is this an actual road made of clouds? How does that even work?
No reply was forthcoming. Will sat down in the middle of the cloud road.
Do I want to try this space? A misstep here can easily send me off the road and into freefall. But I should be close to the end of the cycle here, and I only killed three crankscouts. I need at least one more, otherwise I’m starting the next cycle worse off than the previous one. OK. Let’s at least look at the map and see where I am.
The very last space before the next cycle? Damn. So it’s kill at least one more crankscout now, or they start the next one stronger. Guess I’ll at least give it a try.
Before moving deeper into the space, Will also took a look at his character sheet, to see what the changes to skill display were all about.
Name: William Jackson
Race: Wombat
XP: 300
Health: 115/115
Mana 132/132
Stamina 130/130
Innate abilities
Dice Roll (2)
Skills 8/10
Name
Type
Tier
Level
Unstoppable Force
Cavalry
Basic
2
Hunter-Gatherer
Harvest
Advanced
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1
Syphon
Harvest
Basic
1
Least Cure Wounds
Healer
Basic
1
Heavy Armor Proficiency
Defender
Basic
1
Mana Pool II
Resource
Basic
1
Stamina Pool I
Resource
Basic
1
Shock Bolt
Mage
Basic
2
Boosts
Dungeoneer
Special
Unique
1
Arena
Special
Unique
0/1/0/0
Attacks
Claws – lesser (least) piercing damage
Bite – lesser piercing damage
Charge – minor (slight) bashing damage (Slow aspect)
Equipment
Bronze claws (front claws)
Wombat Breastplate of Lesser Life
Wombat Sallet Helmet
Wand of Vinegar Stream
Inventory
5 minor healing potion
1 Backstab skill shard
70 copper bits
8 slime cores (poor)
10 Bronze Arena Tokens
Status effects
Wounds
So Dungeoneer and Arena are now Boosts, and have their own section, and the rest are ordered by type. Nice, and definitely easier to see what I have and how many slots I have. Which isn’t much. I really need to figure out why Syphon didn't merge with Hunter-Gatherer. And probably start actually planning what I want to get.
Satisfied with the changes, Will set off, making very sure to stay in the middle of the road as he walked. The wind was constantly blowing, and Will briefly considered thanking whoever it was who’d turned him into a wombat. He was short and heavy, making it far less likely that the wind would blow him off the road.
It was still slow going, and nerve wracking. But ten minutes after Will started walking, the road led to a much bigger piece of cloud real estate.
It was one of the strangest things Will had seen. And the previous couple of days have set a really high bar for strangeness.
Between one step and the other, the narrow cloud road spread out into a large, flat area. Will wasn’t an expert or anything, but he estimated the size as at least a hectare. And he had no idea how such a large area could just appear out of nowhere. He should have seen it from fairly far away. It was like he was walking inside a forest, and reached a large clearing, which had been hidden until he’d stepped into it.
Except that he was on a cloud, and there was nothing obstructing his vision.
But strange as it was, Will was at the point of just shrugging and going with the flow. Walking into the cloud… the best word Will could find was “clearing”, so he went with that. Walking into the cloud clearing, Will saw that the entire thing was set up as a field of what would have looked very much like corn, if it wasn’t dark grey in color and looked like it was made out of clouds.
On one side of the field, what had to be the farmer. He was shaped like a human man, with light grey skin and white hair. The hair looked like cirrus clouds, wispy and silky. He was wearing dark grey overalls, made of a canvas-like material. When Will entered the cloud clearing, the farmer was busy breaking ripe ears of cloud corn, and placing them in a wagon pulled by something Will could only call a “cloud ox”.
Will had only managed to take a few steps into the clearing before the farmer saw him. And as soon as the farmer saw him, the bucolic scene came to an end. The farmer’s face twisted in anger, and he started to yell.
Unfortunately, the cloudkin’s voice sounded like rolling thunder, and his words were impossible for Will to understand. Still yelling, the farmer unhitched the cloud ox from the wagon, and turned it to face Will. The beast was immediately as enraged as its master, and before Will could even speak, it started to charge at him. As the ox moved, Will could see sparks of lightning form whenever its hooves struck the ground. Before long, those sparks climbed up the ox’s body, covering it completely.
Will, however, was at least starting to get used to the constant combat of the Board, and was moving to the side before the beast had even started its charge, and the ox wasn’t even close to hitting him.
Somehow, I don’t think my Shock Bolt is going to help me here, Will thought. Though facing that thing in melee doesn’t make me a happy wombat.
With the ox struggling to stop before it reached the edge of the clearing, Will charged at the farmer. The cloudkin had taken a short knife from his belt, and was moving to attack Will. He was not, however, prepared for the wombat’s charge.
Will slammed into the farmer. The cloudkin felt a lot less solid, and a lot lighter, than Will was expecting him to be. The charge knocked the farmer down, without slowing Will’s speed at all, and instead of stopping to continue his attack, Will ran over his fallen enemy and continued into the field. It took him an extra ten meters before he could stop, by which time the Ox was charging at him again, once more building its lightning charge up as it ran.
It wasn’t any harder to evade the second charge than it was the first, but the delay gave the farmer enough time to stand back up. And the cloud corn was thick enough that Will couldn’t charge from inside the field. The farmer approached Will, still yelling in his thunderous voice, and brandishing his knife.
Will didn’t waste any air on trying to speak. Between the “xenophobic” description and the cloudkin’s behavior, he didn’t think it would do any good. Instead, he focused on trying to get into claw range without getting stabbed.
The farmer had better reach than Will, but he didn’t seem to know how to fight with a knife. And he was far too angry to back away and keep out of Will’s range. All of which meant That Will could approach fairly easily. He still got stabbed twice, but the knife just skittered over his armor. He still should have received a least wound, since the armor couldn’t negate the damage completely, but he didn’t feel anything from the attack.
Will’s claws had a much more visible impact on the farmer. Once again, Will felt that the farmer was less solid than he should have been, and that his claws were having an easier time cutting him than they should have had. Unfortunately for Will, he became so caught up in attacking the farmer that he missed the fact that the ox was headed back towards him.
Being hit by a charging ox was painful. Being hit by a lightning charged charging ox was even more painful. The only bright side to the whole ordeal was that Will, being a wombat, was too short to be gored by the ox’s horns. Instead, he took a savage kick to his side, and went flying.
He had just enough time to get terrified about being thrown off the clearing before he crashed back into the clouds, rolling a few more meters and stopping far too close to the edge than he liked to consider.
The farmer fared even worse. The ox was mad enough that it didn’t care about goring its owner, and the already wounded cloudkin was stabbed by the horns and then trampled by the hooves.
He did not get up again after that.
Will groaned in pain, but he really didn’t want to just lie there until the ox came after him again. Least Cure Wounds helped reduce the pain a little, but it only worked on the burns from the lightning, and not on the wound from the kick itself.
Which meant that the kick, even reduced by a whopping four damage categories, still did at least minor damage.
Can’t let that thing catch me again. But at least it’s predictable.
By the time Will was up, the Ox was on its way back. Will managed to dodge the charge, and the ox just kept running past the edge of the clearing, seeming as at home on the air as it was on the cloud.
Now that’s just not fair!
It took another half a minute for the ox to turn around and return, but this time Will was ready. He dodged the charge, then turned around to run after the ox.
He’d noticed on the previous charge that the beast lost its lightning charge as soon as it stopped running, and this time wasn’t any different. The ox realized it missed its target and stopped, and Will immediately took advantage of it and charged it himself. His charge attack, boosted by Unstoppable Force, was actually enough to knock the ox down, and Will went to town on the fallen beast, savaging it with his claws.
As dangerous as the ox’s charge was, once it was knocked down it seemed to have great trouble getting up again, and had no way to defend itself while fallen. And just like the farmer, it was less solid than a normal animal, letting Will’s claws deal far more damage than they would otherwise.
Before long, the ox went still, and Will got the message screen telling him he’d won.
2 Cloudkin slain!
Gained 20 XP
No distinction between them? The ox was a lot more dangerous than the farmer!