The fight with the disembodied wisp was over, but Michael was far from being at a point where he could revel in the victory. His entire world spun, and he felt like throwing up. Michael immediately checked his status. His vision made the translucent number fuzzy, but he found that he could still understand them intrinsically. Most alarming was that his remaining health was in the teens, and during the seconds that he stared at the screen dumbly, it dropped by another point. The wound on his side must have an active bleeding status.
Michael immediately summoned one of the weaker potions to his hand. It took him a couple seconds to locate his mouth, but once he did he easily pushed aside the stopper with his thumb and downed the brew. He immediately felt the wound in his side start to reknit and his HP slowly climbed back up to maximum. Which was…which was only at 50 HP. Now how the heck had his maximum gotten that low. Three health offerings should have only brought him down to 80 total HP.
There was another seemingly inconsistent thing on his status page. His SP had dropped down far more than it should have, but Michael’s head was stuck on the first problem. He pulled us to his special abilities page.
Special Ability
Shaping (ability): LVL 4
Quickened step (skill): LVL 2 duration 1-3 Seconds; Potency: +35% agility, +14% Dexterity; Cost: 6-10 SP per use
Health Offering (skill): LVL 2 duration 5 minutes; Potency: +10% increase to 3 different attributes; Cost: 35% of Health pool for 1hr
Michael readily identified the culprit. He was happy that he had managed to extend the boost from one attribute to three, but it had also increased the cost. Something he should have anticipated. The third time he had performed the health offering it had cost him 35% of his normal HP instead of the 20% it had been for the first two rounds. He had dropped himself to a quarter of his normal health. Perhaps that was the cause for the unnatural feeling that he had immediately felt. After thinking about it for a moment, he came up with three theories. One was that it was because he had reduced his HP by so much all at once, before he had at most paid the cost of two health offerings.
The second theory was that it was due to him having gone below 100 HP, which was the normal contender start point. This was supported by the fact that the wound in his side had caused such extreme bleeding status. He would have continued to lose 1 HP every 2 seconds until he died. A bit extreme considering it was just a cut along the side of his ribs and no major artery or organ had been severed. Perhaps the survival battle had vitality act like some kind of health stacking, where anything over 100 HP was potential HP that would come into existence, perhaps magically forming blood, when any of the original 100 HP was affected.
This theory was based on the fact that the body remained the same, which also meant that the amount of blood did not really increase when vitality went up. His toughness level dealt with how much damage a strike would deal to him, and somewhat with how severe of a bleeding status that he received.
The vertigo was easing, now that he was just lying there, but the uneasiness persisted even after the attribute boosts from the soldier pill and health offering wore off. That meant that his last theory that some sort of attribute balance did not completely cause the issue. Although he felt it might explain how he had burnt through a lot more SP than he should have. With all the boosts his strength would have been in the low 40’s, and his agility a bit higher. Perhaps moving faster and putting more strength behind his swings meant burning more SP, or perhaps he had identified another attribute imbalance issue like the one he had noticed between agility and dexterity.
Michael dismissed the thoughts. The vertigo was nearly settled and to his side there were a handful of glowing orbs that called to him. Already he had noticed that his crowns had increased by about 400. It was already a good start for a reward, however far more enticing was the red, blue, and 3 green and yellow drops.
Michael could not believe the haul. Perhaps it was due to a battle like this normally requiring a team of contenders to win. It had been a short fight with just him, but it had also been extremely intense. The wisp likely had all of its stats fairly high in the 30’s if not in the 40’s. More alarming was the fact that less than a week had passed since the point when enemies could hit level 2, and there were still two more weeks before the region quest timer hit 0 and 6 commander types hit level 3. It likely meant the wisp that he had just faced was at or less than a third of the way through the second tier. That was not even mentioning the fact that the wisp was only a portion of the disembodied spirit and the physical body. How many more wisps were there even…?
Michael shrugged as he turned his attention back to his drops. Some of the vertigo came back from the little movement it took to acquire them, but if he was going to be laying here for the next hour or so anyways he might as well look through his goods. The 3 yellows would be just the right amount to bring him up to the tier 1 attribute point threshold, but he wanted to see what else he would get first.
He started with the green drops. The first was another basic equipment upgrade. He now had two. Michael’s mind immediately moved to the second drop, a metal bat. It appeared in his hand. Michael could not have missed that it was exceedingly heavy. It was solid metal of average quality, unless it was made of a very heavy alloy there was no way it could be hollow inside.
It would have been far too heavy for him to swing around at the beginning of the survival battle. Even now it would probably only cut through the air at half the speed of that from his sword. It would cause some damage if it hit. However, if he wanted to use it effectively, he would need to increase his strength further. It was not a bad idea to have a good backup weapon. Who knew when he would find himself in a battle where a blunt weapon might actually be more effective. He threw it in his inventory.
The third drop gave him a second average quality stamina potion. It would be useful, but not enough to scratch the greedy itch he had felt upon seeing all of the drops given by the undead boss. The blue drop finally gave him exactly what he had been looking for. He immediately used the random secondary attribute unlock.
[Secondary Attribute unlocked: KI: Energy internal to a contenders body, can be used to enact certain abilities or enhance certain skills. (Warning: It will cost 3 primary attribute points to add 1 point to a secondary attribute.]
Not only did it unlock a secondary attribute, it had unlocked the one he had wanted most. Michael pulled up his special abilities page once again. He had another ability, circulate, level 1. A flash of his status showed that he now had a ki of 1 and 10/10 for Ki energy. Michael could not hold back a goofy grin from appearing on his face. After all he was sitting on enough attribute points to bring his Ki attribute up to 4. Once again he held off. He might as well see what was in the last of his presents. After all, it was the first time he had gotten a red drop, and red drops were currently at the top of the hierarchy as far as he knew.
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Once again, Michael got exactly what he had been hoping for, a tier up method.
[Super charged (tier 2 method): This method gives a contender 1 point in each unlocked secondary attribute and allows the contender to gather up to 30 attribute points to be used in conjunction with this tier up method. The more points that can be gathered, the more points the contender will have to add to any attribute. In addition, this method grants the contender the electric aspect, which will also give contender resistance against electricity and electric based attacks. Resistance can be increased further.]
The amount of attribute points this method could grant was nearly double that of either of the two methods he had obtained or the basic method. All three of which gave a total of 20 attribute points. The difference here was that he would have to collect 30 of the points himself. He immediately remembered that white drops could only be held for up to seven days if the contender did not have the ability to use them. It meant that he would have to collect the 30 points all in one week. Should not be too much of a challenge, even assuming he did not have a day like today. However, he would also need to unlock his spirit attribute within that same week.
It would delay his entry into the second tier, but getting more attribute points than everyone else was not something he could pass up. Sure instead, he could use a different method and use drops to progress further into tier 2 and be just as strong, but Michael was still shooting to gain as much power as he could at every level. He had a feeling that it would be the right move, long term.
All of this was not even considering the secondary benefits of the tier up method. Michael did not really need to consult the encyclopedia for the electric aspect. A handful of skills had mentioned aspects at the upgrade shop, and he had already looked up what they were. The elemental aspects were something that energy could be converted into with the right ability or skill. Of course abilities were intrinsic to a contender, meaning less of an energy cost. A skill that included an aspect conversion not covered by an ability would cost more energy to use. The resistance was also a nice touch, although Michael had yet to encounter an electric based attack. Thank the heavens. He had half expected the disembodied spirit wisp to use an electric attack. Thankfully, it hadn’t.
There had never really been any question in Michael’s mind about the tier up method. As soon as he read it, he knew he would use it. Still he had plenty of time to think through it while waiting for his health offering’s to elapse.
Eventually Michael’s mind wandered even from that, and he remembered something else. He still had the basic skill upgrade, from that morning. To get the best use of the upgrade he should theoretically wait till one of his skills got to level 3. Currently they were both at level 2. However, his health offering skill was currently nearly broken, and not in a good way. Paying 70 HP to increase 3 different attributes by 10% was actually in some ways a little worse than the skill had been at level 1. At least at level one he could pay 40% and increase one skill by double, when he really needed more strength or speed. Now he would not be able to use the skill more than once given the repercussions.
It sunk home the idea that it was possible to level up his skills into something that could become near unusable. There were pluses and minuses to everything. Even his quick step, had its cost increase in conjunction with an increase of its benefits. Michael only paused a second before he selected yes, on using the skill upgrade on health offering.
Fortunately, Michael found that he could indeed decide on how to use the upgrade. He could affect any aspect of the skill. He could double the duration of the boost, or he could add up to 10% to the potency. He could make it where boosted 10% was split between all 3 of the increased attributes, or set one attribute as the primary attribute that would be boosted by 20% instead of the 10% of the others. Finally, he could reduce the hour cooldown time down to 40 minutes, or decrease the HP cost down to 25%.
None of his options were as good as he had hoped for. He only spent a minute contemplating on which way to go with the skill. In the end, Michael decided to decrease the HP cost. At last that would allow the option of doubling down on the health offering. A 20% increase to three skills would be pretty helpful. It also gave a bit more versatility in reusing the skill when he was already under a cool down from a prior usage. Still Michael knew it would take 2 or 3 more levels to really get the skill to where he wanted it. However, Michael knew like spending the extra time for his new tier up method, it would be worth it in the long run.
With that Michael only had one more thing. He dwelt on it for a couple minutes, but eventually decided to go ahead and use all three yellow drops to boost his Ki attribute to 4. Perhaps in the future he might specialize more in a certain fighting style, but for now he wanted to be able to do a bit of it all. Both of his skills could increase attributes, and Michael already knew that one use of Ki was to strengthen the body, or various parts of the body. He could effectively double down the boosts on his skills. Theoretically both of his skills were Ki compatible, whatever that meant. A further reason to double down on increasing his Ki.
Checking his battle log, Michael saw that he still had over 5 minutes until his HP was restored. He decided to practice circulating his Ki. There was not much to it. It was extremely simple, but also promised depths of complexity that he could work to uncover. After all, his circulation was only at level 1. Like shaping, he could level it, and there would be benefits in doing so. He could feel pathways throughout his body. He practiced moving energy throughout his body. He could move his Ki freely throughout the pathways.
As his total Ki decreased, he could see the change in his pathways. He could increase his muscles or reinforce his skin in an area slightly for a minimal burn. It would probably only amount to a few percentage points worth of increase to the affected attribute or he could burn through most of his Ki all at once to strengthen something by a lot more. Like forming a dart with pulse energy, circulating Ki to one area took time. It would take a good 10 seconds or more to drain his pathways bringing it all to one area. Then it would take burning off Ki slowly to keep it all there, and that was even considering the fact that it was not being used to enhance muscle or reinforce skin. Like water settling to the lowest point possible, the Ki wanted to settle evenly throughout his pathways.
Like pulse, his Ki replenished at the rate of 1 point every 30 seconds. However instead of vitality, the attribute he would need to increase to boost his recovery rate would be toughness. Right now both vitality and toughness were his lowest attributes at 20. Like everything else, he needed to increase them. Michael sighed. It felt like any one of his attributes needed his focus. One of the downsides of spreading himself thin, by many varied capabilities.
The frustration did not last long. His health offerings expired one by one in quick succession. The unease he had felt for the last hour instantly vanished, and he hopped to his feet. It took only a couple minutes for him to locate the two energy shot’s he had dropped on his first encounter. They were only poor quality, but he was still not near strong enough to look down on a 25 energy point increase. Theoretically using too many shots or potions in a short period of time would have adverse effects, but he had not hit that point yet. He could shoot all three of the poor quality energy shots in his possession at once if he really needed to.
Michael then proceeded back to the stairwell. There was nothing left for him here.