Chapter 10 - The Attunement Shard
“What is this thing?” Palinus’s question hung as they stared at the prize. It's name came to him as he stared at the piece of gem that looked like a fragment of a larger stone that was broken to pieces. He could see a deep red attunement that matched it's colour. “An… attunement shard?”
Attunement shard
The gemstone fragment called to Palinus with a sense of warmth and belonging like a treasured childhood possession returned to him. He hesitated to take it as something about the intensity of Marcus’s focus on the deep red facets made Palinus wary. In the man’s eyes there was an edge of anger over barely disguised greed and as his gaze turned to Palinus, a momentary glimpse of madness.
“You attach it to a calculii to modify it’s attunement.” Marcus replied, “I have heard they sometimes add a secondary effect. Some have the skill to read more through the facets of the gem, though I don’t. All I can tell is to my eye it looks like it is a pure dark red which is perfect for your attunement, and useless to my muddy essentia…”
As the man finished answering his question with a frustrated kick at the wall. Palinus picked up the shard, pushing down an unsettled feeling to claim the object before Marcus could change his mind. He didn't quite understand what it was for but decided to trust Marcus’s obvious avarice for it.
“So it’s valuable?” Palinus asked.
Marcus laughed hollowly as he responded. “Almost worthless, but priceless for you. They are a bound item and once you pick it up it is yours for good. The only way you can take a bound rift item is from a corpse in the overworld. Just… don’t waste this on a random calculii, take it to a Censor, they’ll be able to tell you how to use it best.”
“I can’t sell it…” Palinus was only minorly put out by the revelation, he already felt like the shard was meant to keep. They both stared at it sitting in his hand as Bruchts came over to the pair.
“The Silvanmen are coming back!” He updated in an urgent whisper.
“Palinus found an attunement shard!” Marcus reported to the team unworried by the news, “... and the Silvanmen circled back, are you ready?”
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Rufian was bored. Once the Silvanmen had run away from the lane the rift had gotten really repetitive, they just watched the minions and picked up the essentia. Every now and then Minucia would let him unleash on a minion to manage the balance of their battle, but that was it for action.
The only good thing about the situation was the levels. He was now well into level three and itching to actually use his ars: Heavy Fists, Multistrike and Leap Strike. Minucia had walked him through the choices and explained how choosing an ars from a secondary class meant that he would be getting reduced bonuses to his power gains each level but she strongly encouraged him to do so for the combination effects. He could feel the essentia within him ready to be used. It tickled his leg telling him to launch into a leap strike at any moment and his fists itched, ready to enact violence.
If only he had the chance, punching the occasional minion just wasn’t cutting it.
“Is it time to go help the others yet?” He asked Minucia impatiently.
“We need to wait for the signal,” She replied. “But… maybe it's time for a change. Let’s push the wave under the tower.”
Finally he got the chance to unleash a bit. Smashing down the Silvanian ranged minions one by one he was enjoying the power in his hands as his fist splintered their wooden frames like bundles of twigs. He fell into a rhythm that reminded him of working in his father’s carpentry workshop, smooth rhythmic strokes of his fist that he guided into the right spots to split the grain. Just like the feeling of a chisel against a soft wood.
In a few minutes the dynamic of the lane had shifted and with no ranged minions left to destroy them, the Erulean melee minions were growing in numbers as they quickly dispatched their Silvanian opposition.
As they watched their cultivated wave of minions crash against the tower the signal finally came.
“Palinus found an attunement shard! The Silvanmen circled back, are you ready?” Marcus’s voice reported to the team.
“Alright, let’s go Rufian!” Minucia said cheerily as she marched into the forest, her staff at the ready. “We’d better hurry.”
“Congratulations Palinus! We are on the way.” Minucia responded to Marcus as she picked up the pace to a steady jog.
Surprised at the woman’s speed, Rufian ran to follow. He was again surprised at his own pace as he was able to catch up to her quickly.
“It feels good to let loose with a rift empowered body, right?” Minucia chatted as they ducked through the outer tall grass and into the forest proper. “You need to watch out for your strength in this fight as you’ll be overleveled! If they surrender you should try to let them escape, but don’t hesitate if they threaten any of us. Our first priority is our own lives.”
With that thought they rounded a stand of trees and through a thick patch of tall grass they could hear the sounds of fighting. They rushed ahead to see the Silvanmen Avatars attacking his friends outside a creepy looking mausoleum.
As they made their way into range they witnessed a flashy combination of fire ars as Palinus launched an explosive fireball hitting all four Silvanmen and immediately followed it up with a wave of fire that did massive damage.
With a surge of jealousy at how powerful his new friend's combination looked Rufian charged, he didn’t want to miss his chance to fight. He rushed into the fray targeting a big man with an axe who looked like he was trying to organise the Silvanmen. The man had a look that reminded him of his father, and it made the Silvanman’s face all the more punchable.
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Raoulet Umfridus 342/712 [Burning] | Level 1
Forest Warrior - Warrior
As he leapt in the air the man was yelling and waving his arms, the incomprehensible language sounded alien to Rufian’s ear but he could almost hear his father’s baritone in the Silvanman’s voice.
Landing with his fist ready to strike he quickly landed a series of blows sending the man reeling. Throwing blow after blow Rufian lost track of the rest of the fight, solely focused on the feeling of his fists as they flowed. The essentia pumping out of his chest through his shoulder and down his arm, multiplying as it coursed through his Multistrike ars and into his Heavy Fists as they smashed into the Silvanman’s hide and rough leather covered body.
He felt the rhythm of his combo attack change as his target was dazed for the third time. It seemed like the minor stunning effect was having diminishing returns so Rufian stepped up the effort of trying to dismantle the bigger man. As the big Silvanman met his eyes Rufian could see fear and frustration.
“...Rufian! …. Rufian!!… RUFIAN!!!” Bruchts insistent yelling finally pierced the haze of Rufian’s focus too late. His fist was already thrown and it connected solidly against Raoulet’s jaw depleting the last of the man’s health.
A flood of essentia filled Rufian as he caught his breath. The essentia felt warm and triumphant as he for a moment struggled to understand why Bruchts was upset with him.
“... he was trying to surrender.” Bruchts said quietly.
“Oh, whoops.” The revelation surprised Rufian who had felt much the same punching the Silvanman as he had the Silvanian minions. He was puzzled at the sympathetic expression from his big friend, he was fine. Why wouldn’t he be?
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The two surviving Silvanian avatars stood with their hands in the air. One of the other Silvanmen had fallen to Marcus’s mace moments before Rufian brutally killed Raoulet, but Palinus couldn’t remember his name and there was no corpses to inspect, just two piles of essence beads. Reinvar, the youngest of the Silvanmen, still lived. He had spent the fight stunned and he still had a look of complete rage on his face that he made no effort to hide as the Erulean’s considered their captives.
“Engaging again after surrendering is against the shepherd's code.” Minucia explained to the Erulean boys, “We should be executing them so they can’t continue to endanger others, but we will let you decide their fate.”
Before Rufian could say something with his usual bravado, Palinus voiced his opinion. “They were frustrated we stole their kills and they tried to surrender, my vote is to let them live.”
“It might be a mistake leaving the young one, it seems like he’s learning some bad habits.” Marcus commented in reply.
“They knew the risks and they chose to attack.” Rufian said and gave a thumbs down gesture to indicate he voted for execution but wasn’t callous enough to voice his sentiment.
“Let them go.” Bruchts said with barely a moment of hesitation. He waved the Silvanians away as he gave Rufian a sharp look.
The older Silvanman seemed grateful for the mercy as he tugged Reinvar back to their nexus. As they walked away the young man turned and in his language chanted what sounded like an angry poem as he gestured at Palinus, Rufian and Marcus
“Lunari alor, velar enai.
Tyira luma,
tyira luma,
tyira luma."
“Haha, looks like you’ve got your first Silvanian curse.” Marcus laughed as they departed before asking Minucia, “Anything creative?”
“‘You’ll die alone and afraid. I curse you, I curse you, I curse you.’” Minucia replied. “ 3/10, good commitment but missing any creative dismemberment or injury.”
The Silvanian had a deep look as he cast the curse and despite the flippant attitude of the couple Rufian felt a chill at the young man’s intensity.
“Show us the shard!” Minucia said to Palinus, changing the subject to celebrating the loot as he showed her the stone.
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Once the Erulean team had taken a few minutes to recover after the battle, and the adrenaline had faded, Marcus and Minucia pulled the team together to chat.
“Good job boys, we’re pretty certain that we won’t be seeing the Silvanian team again” Minucia said.
“Yeah!” Rufian cheered triumphantly. “That was too easy!”
Marcus cuffed him over the head with a light blow and a smile.
“It is bad manners to celebrate before the rift is won,” he scolded the teenager. “Now we just wait for some loot and farm up to our essence cap.”
The group waited until the silence became uncomfortable expecting Marcus to explain. Until with a soft cough and with a chuckle Minucia filled in what her husband meant for the teenagers. “Your overworld body has a limit to the amount of essentia it can naturally hold, if you take more out with you you’ll find that it just drains off and goes to waste. The nexus will get mad if you take out too much too, it will want it’s cut. So as tier 0s coming into the rift you definitely won’t benefit from taking more essentia than around level 3 or so. We just hit tier 5 last month so we’ll be aiming to hit around level 6.”
“That seems really low.” Rufian commented.
Minucia and Marcus laughed.
“The difference between tiers is enormous, you’ll feel like new men when you leave and your bodies hit tier 1.” Marcus laughed before admitting with a nostalgic sigh, “Then the grind starts… it takes so much more essentia to progress from there it’s ridiculous.”
“You may not have noticed yet, the essentia amount needed for each level increases by quite a bit. In a low essentia rift like this it will take over an hour in the lane alone to get to level 6 and that isn’t even enough to tier us up, it’s just all the nexus will let us take.” Minucia added with a sigh.
As the team chatted they walked together to check the progress of the lanes they were hopeful for something to have coalesced while they were gone. On the walk to the right lane the couple told the teenage boys stories of items they had seen.
“Can we just let the rift coalesce items forever?” Palinus asked hopefully.
“No,” Minucia said. “There is a limit to what the rift will spawn, generally with a low essentia rift like this one you would expect a lower quantity of items. But the rifts seem to respect delvers who take the risk on hardcore rifts, so they tend to offer higher quality items.”
As the group came out of the forest they returned to a lane that was filled with minions locked in battle over a carpet of gently hovering essentia beads. In the lane Bruchts and Palinus had vacated they didn’t find anything amongst the carpet of beads..
Deciding to stick with the original groupings, Palinus and Bruchts stayed with Marcus as they worked together to push down the tower while Minucia and Rufian went back to their lane. It was fun to finally let loose on the minions and Palinus made the most of it, blasting wand and fire spells as fast as he could.
As they started working on dismantling the Silvanian tower they got a report from the other lane.
“It appears that we have found something.” Minucia commented with a strangely flat tone.
“It’s a big f-” Rufian’s excited voice was cut off.
“Come up and we’ll calmly discuss who gets it.”