Cass jerked awake and slammed her head against the low ceiling above her. That jogged her memory real good. Right. She had passed out after a fight again. She really would like to stop doing that.
Everything hurt, but it was the general soreness she was beginning to associate more with healing than with immediate injuries.
Stamina: 28/39
Focus: 62/126
Health: 4/30
She groaned. How had Health dropped so low?
She didn’t think she’d been that badly injured. The centipedes hadn’t been tearing flesh off her body or anything after all. But they had poisoned her.
She shuddered at the memory of the pain.
She flexed her leg experimentally. In the tight crevasse she’d hidden in there wasn’t much space, but she didn’t find a problem with the muscle or nerves.
Notifications pinged at the back of her mind. She brought them up with a thought.
Poison Resistance has increased to level 2.
Poison Resistance has increased to level 3.
Poison Resistance has increased to level 4.
Status Effect (Cressarian Venom) Removed.
Cass grimaced. How bad was the poison that surviving it got her three levels of Poison Resistance? She looked back at her four pitiful points of Health and shuddered again. That was how close she’d gotten to dying, and she’d barely realized the danger she’d been in.
Would she have survived if she hadn’t shoved a mouthful of sorrel down her throat before passing out? Had she gotten the buffs to healing from Set Camp? She did not know and had no desire to run the experiments needed to find out.
Herald of the Deep has lost your trail.
[You have defeated the Herald of the Deep in a game of Cat and Mouse. You played with your life on the line. Herald of the Deep played with treasure on the line. Unequal stakes have awarded you 1/8th experience of Slaying the Herald of the Deep.]
Level Up!
Level Up!
+ 2 Dex
+ 2 End
+ 2 Ala
+ 8 Free Points
Defeated Herald of the Deep. Touch Orb of Shadows to Manifest Treasure.
She didn’t know how to feel about all that. She’d defeated that centipede in a game? Cat and Mouse? It was a twisted kind of game. She didn’t like it much at all. The only silver lining was she’d won. She probably wouldn’t have if killing it was the only way out.
And now she got this treasure?
She decided she’d wait until she was standing up before trying that. The last thing she needed was the treasure manifesting as something big and getting jammed in her crevasse.
Waiting Choice:
Tutorial Sub-quest: Defeat the Lords’ Heralds Checkpoint (1/3) Completed
[Reward Remaining: 1 Choice of 3 options.
1. Skill, Dex based, Empowered by Focus
2. Trait, Minor Resistance
3. Bonus, Range]
Right, Cass had forgotten all about this in her wild escape from the centipedes. If she’d had the time to more than glance at it, she probably would have picked the first option. She had a respectable amount of Dexterity and a lot of Focus, and, cornered like she was, she would have gambled on a combat skill to turn the tide.
Now though, Cass was disinclined to pick it. Although she had a decent amount of Dexterity, it wasn’t actually one of her highest stats, despite getting a point with every level up. Additionally, although she had a lot of Focus, Elemental Manipulation and Wind Step gobbled it up.
Neither of these were deal breakers, but this was no longer the obvious answer. That being said, she didn’t know what to make of the other two options, either.
Option 2, for example, had unknown value. Traits seemed to be permanent bonuses--which were never unwelcome--but so far she hadn’t been able to figure out what any of them actually did.
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She pulled up her existing list.
Contrary Will (Inborn)
[You have a contrary nature. It's fine, we won’t hold it against you. But may the gods help any who try to make you do something you do not want to do.
Your Will counts for 10 times its listed value when resisting any Social, Coercive, or Manipulation related actions.
Your Will is highly resistant to Hierarchical Debuffs.]
Bloated Soul
[You managed to hold onto all the Mana making up your original body and incorporated it into your Slyphid core.
Triple mana core storage and growth.]
Extradimensional Damage
[You don’t want to be here and now, neither do they.
Bonus damage to all entities not from your home realm.
Bonus damage to all entities not from your current realm.]
She shook her head. It still wasn’t any clearer. What were “Social, Coercive, or Manipulation related actions”? What was a “Hierarchical Debuff”? What did tripling “mana core storage and growth” do? How was bonus damage practically applied?
Was she actually stronger for any of this? Was she any more likely to survive?
What would adding another one of these to her list do? It claimed it would be “Resistance”, but resistance to what? Pain? Damage? Poison? The cold? Emotional manipulation? The options were endless and open and she couldn’t begin to predict what the result would be.
She moved on to the third option instead: “Bonus, Range”. That was structured the same way her skill growth bonuses had been, so it was probably also a status effect.
Status Effects:
- Beginner Reward: Bonus Staff Skill Growth
- Beginner Reward: Bonus Wll Skill Growth
Her diseases had also been listed there, so these probably weren’t permanent the way Traits were. But there was no timer on them either, so who knew when or how they would expire.
Once again, Cass wished there was someone she could ask. But she was still completely alone.
Regardless, she’d just been wishing for a longer range on Elemental Manipulation. It was difficult to control material the further from her body it got. To create gusts this was fine, but if she wanted slicing blades like those cockroaches had, she needed finer control a lot further from her body.
Cass hummed to herself in thought.
Resistance or Range? Probably permanent or probably temporary? Something explicitly “Minor” or something that might be more substantive?
That last point cinched it for Cass. She was worried about surviving now, in the short term. She needed to live long enough to get home before she worried about long-term growth.
She picked option 3.
Reward Selected: Increased Range on all skills. Effects outside of standard range subject to potency, accuracy, cost, and/or control penalties.
That should improve Elemental Manipulation. She’d have to see how much of a difference it made and how bad the penalties were, but she was optimistic.
Notifications handled, Cass Wind Step/Elemental Manipulated her way out of her crevasse and back to the cavern floor below.
She had a treasure to claim.
She double-checked that there were no monsters in either direction with her heightened senses, Atmospheric Sense, and Mana Sense. The coast seemed clear. She could only hope the Centipede had returned to its lair, but she had no idea which direction it had gone after she’d passed out.
She needed to stop passing out. It couldn’t be good for her.
Either way, time to see what all the fuss about this treasure was about. She pulled the Shadow Orb from her pocket.
It looked no less creepy now that she’d claimed it. Shadows continued to hang heavy around it. It vibrated ominously in her hand.
Beginning Treasure Manifestation
[Calculating Need…
Calculating Trial Difficulty…
Modifying based on last Claim…
Modifying based on Participant Level…
Achievement Calculated.
Applying Achievement and Need Modifiers to Reward Pool…
Error: No Treasure matches parameters in Standard Reward Pool.
Achievement eligible to access Restricted Reward Pool.
Treasure found matching parameters in Restricted Reward Pool.
Treasure Available: 1 Choice of 3
1. Gain Treasure from Restricted Reward Pool
2. Gain Lesser Treasure matching Need from Standard Reward Pool
3. Gain Lesser Treasure matching Achievement from Standard Reward Pool]
Well, that didn’t sound good. She didn’t understand most of that, but at this point that was hardly surprising. What she could extrapolate from the notice was the sub-quest had been harder than average, especially for someone at her level, so she was eligible for a really big prize. Moreover, the System was trying to give her something she actually needed, which seemed more considerate than she thought it was capable of.
With that in mind, option 1 seemed the obvious choice. However, the “Restricted” description made her hesitate. Why exactly was it restricted? In what way was it restricted? Was it an illegal object? Was it evil? Or was it just really powerful so it wasn’t meant for just any schmuck off the street to have?
Should she risk it being dangerous or pick the (probably) safer option 2? Something less valuable or powerful but which she could still use?
She ignored option 3 entirely, something powerful or prestigious that she couldn’t use was pointless. Maybe if she was some sort of treasure hunter and planned on selling it, option 3 might have been worth thinking about, but right now she wasn’t even entirely sure there were other people.
1 or 2? Risk and reward or slow and steady?
In truth, neither option was “safe”. 1 might be dangerous in and of itself, but if it matched her need well enough it might be the answer to getting home all on its own. On the other hand, 2 might be safe on its own, but might not help her enough to have been worth losing most of her health escaping the centipedes.
The off chance 1 could send her home was the final weight on the scales.
Reward Selected: Gain Treasure from Restricted Reward Pool
Manifesting Azorth Necklace
The orb shattered in Cass’s hand, exploding outward in an explosion of glass and smoke. She flinched, shielding her eyes, but no glass hit her. Instead, the casing shards vaporized before colliding, mixing with the smoke swirling unnaturally around her.
A pair of eyes watched from the thickening smoke. They glinted gold, their pupils black slits.
Cass tried to take a step back, but her body didn’t move.
In her chest, her heart sped with each beat. Faster and faster. Her gut screamed for her to run.
She couldn’t move.
YIELD a voice commanded. It rang in her head. It buzzed. It grated.
Cass’s core shuddered at the single word.
Yield and I shall ensure you pass on without pain.
Cass wanted to shout back at the voice. At the eyes. Who was this? Yield to what? Why should she? She couldn’t move.
Fine. The hard way it is. The eyes blinked closed and Cass was falling.