Chapter 11 - The Perfect Sword for Tower Offense
“I wonder what they found?” Palinus speculated as he, Bruchts and Marcus jogged through the forest to the other lane. “I need an actual calculii to use my shard on.”
“I need a proper weapon,” Bruchts waved his iron poker, emphasising the need for an actual weapon. “But I really hope for a sword.
“Hmph,” Marcus made a strange noise of frustration as they speculated. “Rift drops are random, it’s never quite what you want and you just have to make do with what you get. I was the best swordsman in the Southern Tremona Gymnasium. But we’ve run more than a dozen rifts and I haven’t yet got a sword…”
Marcus’s voice trailed off as they came to the lane. A grinning Rufian and a sheepish Minucia stood behind a glittering sword sitting in the middle of the lane in a perfect circle that was empty of essentia beads. The metallic sheen of the blade somehow managed to glint in the soft light of the tree cover and it had a pearlescent lustre with a blue undertone to the most pristine iron Palinus had ever seen. The blade looked heavy with a straight, double edged blade. It’s pommel looked like it was made of stone and was etched with a glowing blue runic font.
“Before you…” Minucia started
“I don’t care..” As Marcus spoke at the same time.
He glared at her, and she met his gaze with a calm expression.
“I can reattune it, you know how long I have been waiting for a rift blade.” Marcus insisted. There was a tension in his whole body, ready to pounce on it.
“That might take years...” Minucia countered. “ I know how much you want this… You just need to stay patient, this isn’t the one, but you will get it.”
As she gently tried to calm the man she moved slowly towards him, getting between Marcus and the sword and gently reaching for him as if trying to calm an injured animal.
Breathing heavily with wild eyes he whirled in a burst of movement, punching Bruchts as he stormed past and ran into the forest.
“He has had a bad run of luck with swords in rifts.” Minucia explained to the boys, “In one of our first rifts a sword dropped that was perfect for him. A supposed friend of ours took it, and he hasn’t found anything to match it since.”
“Why doesn’t he take this one?” Bruchts asked.
“That’s sweet of you to offer,” Minucia replied with a smile. “But if you inspect it you can see that it is totally the wrong attunement for him and it is a thrusting sword for use with a shield. He wouldn’t be able to use it properly and it would hinder any ars he used with it. Anyway, his mace is better than fine, he is just clinging to a dream still.”
As she explained, Palinus checked the sword.
Raider’s One Handed Sword
“Oh, it’s a blue attunement.” Palinus commented.
“Well it’s a sort of cornflower blue so it's got quite a bit of green in it, and Marcus is a red leaning dark grey.”
“So, it would be better suited to…” Palinus remembered that Bruchts was a blue attunement and Minucia was a blueish green.
Bruchts 740/740 | Level 2
Warden - Defender
Minutia Gavros 650/650 | Level 3
Foam Witch - Support Mage
“It’s sort of between both of your attunements.” Palinus scratched his head.
“Yes, it can be hard to judge but it’s definitely pretty close to Bruchts attunement… and a sword doesn’t fit with any of my class and ars combinations. So congratulations Bruchts!” Minucia said cheerily before shooting a glance to the forest where her upset husband had retreated to.
With reverence Bruchts picked up the sword on the ground. As he lifted the blade he stared at it with an intent and awe like a father with a newborn child. His moment paused as he snuck a look towards the bushes Marcus had retreated through, a guilty look crossing his broad smile for a vanishing moment before showing the blade off.
“I guess you boys can push down the towers until we get to the nexus towers if you're up for it! I’ll go spend some time with Marcus.” Minucia said, “Leave as much essentia as you can on the ground so we can get out of here faster.”
As she jogged off into the forest Rufian immediately charged an ars and leapt into the mob of minions. He began methodically swinging his punches into the minions with a steady rhythm and a gleam in his eye. Palinus and Bruchts joined in with wand and new sword knocking over the minions as quickly as they could, with liberal use of fire, fists and iron.
Quickly they dismantled the accumulated waves of Silvanian minions and the wave of Erulean minions pushed under the tall wooden Silvanian tower. As they started to hit the tower they quickly realised they needed to watch where the tower was shooting, it did splash damage, which paled in comparison to the power of a direct hit, but would still whittle away at their health points if they were careless and stood close to the minion being attacked.
With the wave of minions taking the damage of the tower they were able to knock it down about a quarter of its health before the tower had destroyed the last minion in range.
Silvanian Kingdoms Outer Tower | 12,012/15,500
With the minion wave destroyed the tower began to target Bruchts. Remembering the damage done to Reeve he quickly ran out of range. Rufian wasn't as fast on the uptake and stayed to keep hitting the tower. He was deeply focused on trying to dismantle it piece by piece with his fists.
“Run out you idiot!” Palinus shouted at him.
Rufian paused and looked up to watch the tower blast him squarely in the face.
“Eeeee” Rufian squealed with a high pitched squeak, which to his chagrin was hilarious to his teenage friends. As he tried to run, holding his blasted face, he sprinted as quickly as he could only to get hit by another bolt to the ass making the boys double over in laughter.
Rufian Ramuro 408/720 | Level 3
Enhancer - Bruiser
“That stings.” Rufian said, rubbing his ass.
“It blasted off your eyebrows!” Palinus laughed even harder at his friend's misfortune, getting a scowl in return.
As they bantered another wave of minions had arrived. They took moments to destroy the wave with Palinus’s fire combo and a few quick strikes to clean up. They tried to leave the essentia on the ground, but Rufian and Bruchts getting into melee range couldn’t help accidentally attracting some of the orbs.
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With the individual wave of minions they were able to get under the tower to do a few hits of damage, but had to retreat quickly.
“Well this is going to take forever.” Brunchts commented with the agreement of the other boys.
“Maybe we need to let the wave build up a bit. I’ll kill just the ranged minions and try to build up at least two waves of melee minions.” Palinus suggested with a flourish of his wand. He got a nod from Bruchts and a scowl from Rufian, but Palinus knew that was just that the boy didn’t like waiting and doing nothing. “Maybe you can take a couple of the tower hits before and after the wave to give us more time to destroy it?”
“You volunteering?” Rufian said with a chuckle, but waved him on to do his part as the minions waves settled into battle.
The strategy worked effectively with Rufian and Bruchts taking a bit of damage but extending the time they could attack the tower. They fell into a rhythm and within the next dozen sets of waves they were able to finally finish off the tower’s hit points. As Rufian’s punch took the last of the health points the crystal at the top of the tower combusted in a wave of essentia beads which the boys ran away from to avoid collecting as they cheered. The tower itself looked like it slowly deflated, sinking onto itself like a collapsing sand castle until it rested in a pile of wooden debris.
-An Enemy Tower has been Destroyed-
The announcement rang through the forest as the boys clasped wrists and cheered.
“One down, two to go!” Rufian yelled as he followed the remaining minions down the enemy lane.
“I wonder what the others are doing?” Palinus speculated.
There was a long walk down the lane towards the Silvanian nexus. Their wave of minions was caught up twice against Silvanian minion waves before they made it to a set of stairs that led up to another Silvanian tower. The steps up to the tower made the attack on the tower much harder, but their practice at the outer tower paid dividends.
With the essentia they had collected from dealing damage directly to minions and towers, Palinus and Bruchts had managed to reach level 3. With the sole focus on doing as much damage to the tower as possible Palinus had chosen to take a secondary class as a Wandslinger with Multistrike. Though he was tempted by the Red Mage ars Conflagration which created an explosion when damaging [Burning] targets, it was Bruchts who pointed out that they didn’t need to do much damage to the minions and the most damage he could do to the tower was through applying a bigger combo with his wand.
For his Third level Bruchts had discussed his options and chosen to take a second class too, with the ars Bulwark which was from the Defender class. It had a short cooldown and allowed him to reduce incoming damage so he could take the hits from the minions to build a wave, then from the tower to let them destroy it as quickly as they could.
They found out what the others were doing when an announcement came as they took their second pass at the second Silvanian tower.
-An Enemy Tower has been Destroyed-
“They’re catching up!” Rufian yelled, the confirmation that the couple were working on the towers in the other lane spurred the boys' competitiveness and they started to push their pace to race down their tower. Palinus started trying to take a few tower shots and complained bitterly about the pain as they pushed the second tower down quickly.
A few short minutes after they heard the announcement they could see across the terraced plateau of the Silvanian nexus area to the point where the other lane’s tower stood. They saw a wave of minions reach the tower with Marcus quick on their heels and the splashes of seafoam green bolts against the tower as Minucia added her damage.
The boys laughed as they worked together and dismantled the tower quickly.
-An Enemy Tower has been Destroyed-
With their enthusiasm, teamwork and a numerical advantage. It was a shock when they hadn’t yet finished off their tower and the announcement rang through the forest.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Marcus pretending to clean his nails, as he laughed with Minucia. It seemed like he was in a better mood with some wanton destruction to distract him.
It was mere moments later that a wand blast from Palinus managed to finish off the tower’s hit points, triggering the announcement they had been working towards.
-An Enemy Tower has been Destroyed-
“Good job boys,” Minucia sauntered across to them now that the threat of the towers left the outer nexus plateau undefended. “Looks like you have left us some nice essentia to pick up.”
“Did anything coalesce?” Marcus questioned with an ugly look at Bruchts sword, that he hid quickly.
“We haven’t checked back down the lane, we’ve been focused on the towers.” Palinus replied.
“Do you want to come look with me?” Minucia asked as she started gathering the nearby essentia beads.
Getting a bit bored of the tower destruction, Palinus agreed to the walk leaving Bruchts and Rufian to work with Marcus on the trio of towers around the Nexus.
“We’re nearly done!” She said with a smile, she hit level 4 as they gathered patches of essentia beads in clumps along the lane. “I’m sorry for Marcus, he was never so abrasive before. He’s just frustrated with the Rifts and feeling left behind. He dreams of joining the Legion, but can never quite make the cut… ”
As they came back to the ruin of the Silvanian outer tower they spotted a tell tale circle in the essentia beads.
“Well, it looks like something has dropped!” Minucia said.
“That’s a bit odd, it wasn’t there when we left” Palinus commented.
“The rift rarely coalesces anything when you are watching, it’s like they are shy.”
Minucia gave a little chuckle and a wink, but she stiffened as they came close enough to see what they had found.
+Channelled Leap+
Allows ars that involve a leaping component to be channelled for up to [2.5] seconds increasing the range of connected ars by [1-250]% and damage by [1-250]%
They both stared for a moment at the calculii deep in thought.
“It’s a connector… a secondary calculii that you link to an ars. This would make ars that involved jumping or leaping…. MUCH more effective.” Minucia explained what they were looking at, then with a small voice continued, “Rufian should take it. Marcus would want it, and it would work for both of them. But if Rufian picked up a basic leap strike calculii-”
Palinus shook his head.
“I think Rufian would agree with you,” he replied with a laugh, “but it looks like it is better attuned to Marcus. After this it'll be hard to keep Rufian out of rifts, so he’ll wind up with something eventually.”
Finished picking up the essentia around the calculii Minucia gave Palinus a long look.
“I had you picked as a citizen brat from the capital with your accent and attunement,” she said with a serious expression. “I’m glad you aren’t a power hungry mini tyrant. You could have used the attunement shard to give yourself part of a powerful skill set.”
“Maybe… let’s not tell Rufian about this though…” Palinus joked to deflect the tension. He hadn’t considered the idea of keeping the calculii, but now that it was in his head he couldn’t help but briefly fantasise about a powerful fire leap. He had heard stories about Podius the Fire Fist and how he blasted through the air and rained fire on the Silvanmen.
He was starting to get excited with ideas for how he could find calculii to make devastating ars combinations. If he enhanced even simple ars with connectors like empowered leap they could do amazing things. As they walked he talked through his thoughts with Minucia who fueled his speculation with stories of ars she had seen or heard of.
“Red mages are common through the Empire, but you probably aren’t a red mage.” Minucia said casually, devastating the images Palinus was forming of himself flying through the sky and raining fire on his enemies.
“What? But I am a red mage right now!”
“You have a dark red attunement. I don’t want to speculate too much, you need to speak to a censor to know exactly what your attunement means. But you are probably some variant of a dark red aspect. You are a red mage now because it is a generic class, when you get some calculii they will shift to your aspect and your core class will change.”
Minucia read his expression as disappointment.
“Don’t worry! Your class will be better than a generic fiery dick flinger, all power and no finesse. You are lucky.”
“I don’t want to be powerf-... I don’t know what I want…. I just want to be left alone,” he was trying to express his conflicting emotions. Palinus felt like he could share his thoughts with Minucia and it felt good to verbalise them. “I want to leave the capital.”
“Ah,” she said with a searching look. “It sounds like you want freedom. To get that you will need power.”
As they walked towards the Silvanian Nexus they began to hear Rufian and Marcus yelling.
“… It is mine now and I deserve it. We held your hand through this rift! If it weren’t for us you would be nothing but essentia to fuel those Silvanmen’s levels!” Marcus screamed at Rufian holding a vibrant coral coloured calculii out of reach of Rufian.