“Say,” said Cuby. “You think those are for us?”
“I think it could be a trick,” I said. I examined the sword with my mage sense and found a plethora of sensations—a warm, fuzzy blanket that you don’t want to leave in the morning; a cool drink of much-needed water on a hot, dusty day; agonizing fire. “Okay,” I said. “Definitely magical.”
“The cards, Alatar.”
“I’ve got more Hit Points,” I said. “I’ll look and touch first, okay?”
“Sounds good to me,” said Cuby.
And I stepped forward and tagged the sword:
Rare Equipment – Steadfast Crusader’s Celestial Sword
This sword was forged from celestial steel in the Heavens at the mouth Karevok’s Horn. It was given to Cuby by the angel Myraxiel to assist her in assaulting Mount Mirrak.
This sword provides succor to those who fight monsters.
Weapon Class: Light
Attack Speed: 1.0 Second
Weapon Level: 5
+ 1 Divine Affinity
+ 1 Fire Affinity
+ 7 Precision
Adaptable: you may suppress or renew either of this sword’s Affinities (but not both) by focusing for 5 seconds.
Steadfast Crusader: when you kill an infernal creature, an undead creature, or a creature that grants virtue points, this sword heals the member of your group within 25 meters that has the lowest Hit Point percentage for 10% of the slain creature’s Hit Point total.
“Holy shit,” I said. “I mean, uh, sword. Holy sword. I think you’ve got a friend in Myraxiel, Cuby.”
“Oh,” she said, staring at the blade. “And look, Alatar—they got you one, too!”
I blinked, then saw what she meant—it was the strange blue flame that was now hovering above the sword.
Rare Equipment – Steadfast Crusader’s Candle-Flame
This divine light is a mote of purest essence taken from Erina, the brightest star in Karevok’s Horn. It was given to Alatar by the angel Kysadriel to assist him in assaulting Mount Mirrak.
This flame provides succor to those who fight monsters.
+ 2 Divine Affinity.
Grants Spell: Healing Light
Grants Spell: Empyreal Aegis
Grants Spell: Purging Radiance
Adaptable: you may reduce or restore 1 point of this item’s Divine Affinity with 5 seconds of focus.
Steadfast Crusader: when you kill an infernal creature, an undead creature, or a creature that grants virtue points, this flame heals the member of your group within 25 meters that has the lowest Hit Point percentage for 10% of the slain creature’s Hit Point total.
My eyes widened. No precision, no weapon level—this wasn’t a weapon, it was an off-hand.
And it granted spells.
“I didn’t even know off-hands existed,” I said. I looked up at the sky, in the general direction the beam had come from. “Thanks, Kysadriel!”
“We haven’t seen any,” Cuby said. “I guess casters don’t get them for a while?” She reached forward and grabbed the sword, giving it a test swing through the air. “Longswords aren’t light weapons—their attack speed is normally 1.4. This weapon has stats like a shortsword.”
Then she reached forward and removed the ribbon that held the two cards to the hilt. As she raised the cards to read them, I could tell she was filled with nervous hope—and from the grin that broke out on her face a moment later, I could tell they were exactly what she’d been expecting.
“So do you want to read mine first, or yours?” she asked.
“Give me yours first,” I said. “Since I’ll be using mine.”
Cuby handed me a card, looking for all the world like a kid on christmas.
And I read it, opening the extended view to see everything:
Uncommon Class Card – Sword Saint
Requires 10 levels in a class that grants + 3 Prowess per level.
Requires an Innate Physical or Divine Affinity
Consume this class card to gain the Sword Saint class when you reach level 11.
Class – Sword Saint
Each level grants:
3 Prowess
60 Hit Points
20 Stamina
20 Mana
3 Sword Saint Skill Points. These points can be spent on [Martial] or [Religion] skills.
You will gain the following two abilities:
Fixed Iconic Passive – Sword Saint Class
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
You gain 1 Innate Divine Affinity.
If you are wearing cloth armor and not wielding a shield, you benefit from the following:
Your Strength grants Defense Rating as if it were Agility and your Agility grants Physical Resistance as if it were Strength.
When you use a [Strike] ability, you can choose which bonus to gain from this passive: Saint’s Purity or Sainth’s Wrath. Saint’s Purity reduces all incoming damage by an amount equal to your resistance to that damage. Saint’s Wrath grants extra damage throughput equal the resistance that matches your active affinity.
Iconic Technique – Bearer of Auspices Style
Gain 1 Grace.
When this style is active, beneficial abilities that affect your character are 20% stronger for each ability you know with the [Style] subtype.
“Oh,” I said, reading the class. Pretty much everything about it seemed strong. “So between your extra defense, your stronger resistances, your stronger buffs, your sword, and my candle-flame… you’re our tank, now.”
“Looks that way!” said Cuby. “We needed some way to deal with monsters and dungeons anyway. This should help us conquer Mirrakatetz, just like you need to.”
“Yeah,” I said, giving the card back. “This is a lot of stuff all of a sudden.”
“It’s my new class!” said Cuby. “Anyway, here:”
And she handed me the other card.
I don’t know what I was expecting. I’d already heard how powerful the wizard class was, but it was apparently a well-known outlier—this class wouldn’t be as strong. As such, I didn’t really expect anything extraordinary when I read the card, but on the other hand… Cuby’s class had looked fairly strong.
What I found certainly surprised me:
Uncommon Class Card – Hierarch
Requires 10 levels in a class that grants + 3 Spellcraft per level.
Requires an Innate Psychic or Divine Affinity
Consume this class card to gain the Hierarch Class once you reach level 11.
Class – Hierarch
Each level grants:
3 Spellcraft
45 Hit Points
50 Mana
3 Herald Skill Points. These points can be spent on [Magic] or [Religion] skills.
Gain the following two abilities at level 11:
Fixed Iconic Passive – Hierarch Class
You gain 1 Innate Psychic or Divine Affinity.
You can invest yourself and your allies with your spells. You do this by casting a spell as normal, only you target the ally through use of the ability at the spell’s completion.
Thereafter, the invested ally can cast that spell instantaneously, at which point the investiture is lost. Your ally acts as the origin point for the spell, but you count as its caster. A character can only be invested with spells from one Hierarch at a time.
Your can invest 6.0 total seconds of spellcasting into yourself or your allies [2.0 + 0.2*Level]. Temporary increases to power and casting speed are lost when a spell is invested.
Iconic Spell – Moment of Solace
Requires 25 Spellcraft
Oral: Verse
Movement: Full
Mental: Focus
Cost: 5 Mana + 5 Mana / Hour
Cast Time: 3.4 Seconds
Cooldown: 1 Minute
Effect: 2.7 Seconds of Moment of Solace
You may only have this spell cast on one target at a time.
You may only have this spell cast on one target at a time, and its cooldown only begins when its effect is expended.
The target of this spell can expend the effect it grants them at any time to become immune to damage for 2.7 seconds.
I read this all twice. More instant-cast spells to throw out and… literal invincibility. Actually… quite a bit of literal invincibility. The base duration of the spell was 1.5 seconds, brought up to 2.7 by my Power… and then I’d supercharge it to 5.4.
True, it didn’t stop crowd control effects… but it was 5.4 seconds of invincibility.
“I guess killing the devils brought some power-gaming angels over to our side,” I said. “6 seconds of spells is a lot. It can’t hold a Supercharged Implosive Missile yet, but my Celerity is knocking off exactly a third of my spellcasts right now—it’s 33.7%. I could give you a Supercharged Haste and a Telekinetic Hammer.”
“And you got a big damage negation!” said Cuby. “Big, big damage negation!”
I looked over, then did a double take. Cuby had changed out of her leather armor—which had been the starting armor—when I was reading my card. Now she wore the black, tattered robes of the cultist we had killed on the side of the mountain.
“Recast your Elemental Aegis, will you?” she asked. “Its main element is still lightning—if you set it to fire it’ll give me extra damage, and the demons use fire anyway.”
“Right,” I said, doing as asked. I didn’t get any of the class goodies until next level—but Cuby got her stuff now.
“I get to re-pick my level 12 ability,” she said, staring at a menu I couldn’t see. “Say: what are the spells you got on that flame? It might be important.”
“Right,” I said. I reached out and picked up the Steadfast Crusader’s Candle-Flame. I didn’t actually end up grabbing it with my hand—instead, the flame seemed to attach itself to my hand, hovering just over my palm and moving when I moved. As with so many things in the system, it felt instinctive—I knew how to make the flame flare up, emanating a bright light, and I knew how to make it vanish completely when I closed my hand.
Then I opened my abilities pane and found the three new spells that taking the flame had granted:
Spell – Healing Light
Requires 4 Spellcraft
Oral: Verse
Movement: Full
Mental: Hope
Cost: 15 Mana
Cast Time: 2.7 Seconds
Range: 20 Meters
Effect: 214 Healing
You restore 214 Hit Points to your target.
Spell – Empyreal Aegis
Requires 12 Spellcraft
Oral: Verse
Movement: Full
Mental: Focus
Cost: 16 Mana + 16 Mana / Hour
Cast Time: 6.6 Seconds
Range: 5 Meters
Effect: 12 Divine Resistance; 1.2 Effect reduction
This spell imbues your target with protective angelic magic, increasing their Divine Resistance and reducing the duration of any curse, blind, silence, deafen, or bind effect that they are subjected to.
Spell – Purging Radiance
Requires 6 Spellcraft
Oral: Command
Movement: 1 Hand
Mental: Anger
Cost: 11 Mana
Cast Time: 2.7 Seconds
Range: 20 Meters.
Effect: 437 Damage
This spell deals half damage to targets that are not infernal or undead.
Purely Divine: You cannot cast this spell unless your dominant affinity is purely Divine.
“Are they good?” Cuby asked. Perhaps seeing my incredulous expression and smile, she added: “good like the class cards?”
Even after the class card, I somehow still managed to have some amount of giddy excitement left inside me. I turned to her and tried to compose myself, but still wound up grinning.
“Cuby,” I began. “I never thought I’d say this… but I can’t wait to get back to demon mountain.”