My eyes snapped open. I could feel my heart leap into action as my body tensed, the memory of that deadly kick from the demon pushing me to my feet. A slight sound of movement to my right made me whirl, my hand reaching for my swords hilt, closing on air instead. Liu looked at me with weary eyes, leaning against the wall of the small cave I found myself in casually. A faint smile pricked her face, no doubt about to make fun of me for almost throwing myself off balance trying to draw a non-existant sword.
"How long was I out?"
I ask gingerly, suddenly self-concious. I suddenly became aware of a swarm of notifications waiting for my attention, but Liu's answer is more important, and I once again push the messages to the side. A dull ache in my chest twinges as I breathe out.
"Two days. Your natural regeneration is scary. Your name is scarier."
Her voice is tinted with bitterness. Probably upset that I almost died, and that I never told her I was the unknown child of the Sorceress. A rueful smile creeping onto my lips, I lightly shrugged my shoulders at her. Reclaiming my sword from where she had leaned it against the cave wall, I decided to apologise first.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have fought that demon so recklessly, and I probably should have mentioned that my name is Felix Brightstar, and that I am Illeanes son. I... I guess I don't want to have people expect greatness from me the way they do from her."
Liu laughs softly at that. I tilt my head at her, noticing suddenly how battleworn she looks. Her pristine robes are dirty and tattered, her hair out of place and the weariness showing on her face. The demon might have retreated, but the past two days had not been peaceful. Her voice breaks my chain of thought and I quickly avert my eyes, hoping she hadn't noticed me staring at her.
"You want to not have expectations heaped on you and you chose to become an adventurer? Why not a farmer or something peaceful in that case?" Seeing me scowl at that, she smiles before she continues. "I'm not upset that you hide your family name. I didn't tell you mine either, but then again mine is nothing special. I'm more upset that you didn't tell me you can regenerate your health so quickly, even while unconcious.
The way her eyebrows furrow is almost cute, if it wasn't for the eyes glaring daggers at me below them. I gulped nervously, before deciding that being honest is the best idea in the situation. Besides, if I told her I didn't know I had enhanced regeneration, she might leave me alone long enough for me to check my notifications.
"I didn't have a skill that increased my recovery speed before I fought that thing. I'm not trying to keep you in the dark, I have a class that I've never heard of before, and I don't think either of us know all of it's intricacies to make any type of educated guess. Why don't you rest, and I'll take the watch while I check all the notifications I have."
She gives me a nod, before pulling her cloak around her and crumpling into a little ball, snoring lightly moments later. To be honest, that made me jealous. Sure she must be exhausted, but I never was able to just pass out in a moments notice like that. Taking position near the cave entrance, I make sure my sword is ready to be drawn, and settle in to go through all my various notifications.
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Health has fallen below 50% All stats have been reduced
Health has fallen below 25% All stats have been reduced
Level Up!
Flurry Chain: 100
Flurry Chain Broken
Skill Evolution Conditions Met
Counter Activated, 200% Increase in power
Skill Evolution Conditions Met
Stamina Depleted
Stamina Depleted
Stamina Depleted
Skill Evolution Conditions Met
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I shook my head as I finished reading the swarm of notifications. Ok, at least one question had been answered. The level up had saved my life, and tricked Liu into thinking I had enhanced regeneration factors. Smiling to myself, I decided to pull my status page up, and see what these Skill Evolutions meant. I could see that two of them appeared directly after using my skills, but the other had just appeared without an obvious trigger.
Felix BrightStar Title: None Class: Paragon Level: 3 Health: 200/200 Stamina: 100% Strength: 27
Active: Flurry (Evolution Available)
Counter (Evolution Available)
Bulwark
Agility: 16 Endurance: 27 Intelligence: 13
Passive: True Strike
Weapon Bond
Indomitable (Evolution Available)
Lethality
Will: 50 Unallocated: 10
I frowned at the fact that I had only gotten three skills on this level up, instead of four like previously. Then I frowned at the fact that three of my skills were able to be evolved, even though I didn't know what that meant, but also because I didn't even know what one of them did. And then I frowned at the fact that I now had 10 unallocated stat points, and couldn't help but wonder if the five I had had previously might have let me win the fight with the demon. Regardless, I needed to know what my new skills did, so I brought them up one at a time, keenly aware that I also needed to do something about the Evolution notices blaring at me. On the plus side my stats had risen slightly across the board.
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Bulwark: Enter a defensive stance for the next [2] seconds. All hostile actions made against you in this period of time are deflected instantly. Breaks your Flurry chain.
Lethality: When fighting to kill, your attacks carry slightly more of your killing intent, leading to a [1]% increase in damage.
Indomitable: You can be described as an unstoppable force when attacking and an immovable object when defending. You gain natural health regeneration, regenerating [5%] total health every hour.
Indomitable Evolution Available Invigorating: Skills are no longer unable to be used if your stamina is low, instead allowing you to use some of your life force to power them if stamina is unavailable. Enhanced: Your natural health regeneration and stamina regeneration is increased slightly.
I smiled. It was a tough choice in technicality, as I'm sure that using flurry when my stamina had depleted is what allowed me to meet the requirements to evolve the skill. However, I wasn't sure that I was willing to trade life force for skill usage, especially when I had already come close to death twice since becoming an adventure four days ago. Confirming my choice as Enhanced Indomitability, I pulled up my other two skills that had evolutions waiting for them.
Flurry Evolution Available Relentless: Flurry chain milestones have double effect, allows flurry strikes to inflict critical damage. Enhanced: Increases the time between flurry attacks required to keep the chain alive by [1] second. Increases the enhancement effects of the flurry chain by [0.1]%
Counter Evolution Available Perfect: A perfectly timed counter attack's damage is increased from [200]% to [500]% Enhanced: The minimum damage increase for counter attacks is increased from [15]% to [20]%
This was interesting. Clearly the conditions I had met had to do with the first evolution options available for both skills. Perfect Counter and Relentless flurry namely. However, the fact that all my skills that had evolutions had an enhanced version made me wonder how many possible evolutions there were for a skill in total. I had seen nothing to suggest that my skills couldn't be evolved more than once, but I also had never had heard of skills being evolved like this. I knew that Berric had evolved his class, and I presume that meant some of his skills had evolved as well. Well, I knew the choices I needed to make here at least. Both the evolutions I had unlocked were traps in my opinion. Doubling milestone rewards, and allowing critical damage on flurry was nice, but I would prefer the more consistent power increase, and more importantly, the time increase between attacks before the chain is broken. In combat a second is a long time, and having that extra second could have been useful in the fight with Lex during training.
Additionally, Perfect Counter was too situational. I would need to time counter attacks perfectly for any benefit to happen, and even if the damage increase was huge, the boost to the minimum damage counters could deal would be applicable in far more situations to my mind. Smiling to myself, content with my logic and decisions, I select the options for my skill evolutions, and then almost as an after thought, assign my unattached skill points. I wanted to level up more, and I needed to be strong enough to survive the dungeon and help Liu escape to do so. It was nice that I would effectively slowly heal to my full strength over the course of 20 hours, which was something most classes could only dream to have. Taking one last look at my Status page, I run my hand lightly across the hilt of my Jian, its weight at my side comforting to my mind.
Felix BrightStar Title: None Class: Paragon Level: 3 Health: 200/200 Stamina: 100% Strength: 30
Active: Enhanced Flurry
Enhanced Counter
Bulwark
Agility: 20 Endurance: 30 Intelligence: 13
Passive: True Strike
Weapon Bond
Enhanced Indomitablity
Lethality
Will: 50 Unallocated: 0
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Illeane frowned at the floor where Felix's trace vanished. She could smell the teleportation magic on the air, and see the marks it had sliced into the floor of the Wolfspine dungeon when it had activated. But the fact of the matter was that she couldn't sense Felix at all currently. This slowly fading trace of him was all that existed of Felix in the distance she could sense. And unless someone far more powerful than her was around, she knew that her marker on Felix would be detectable from anywhere on the world. She turned to Berrick, who was similarly sporting a frown, but his was at the mural on the dungeon wall. Following his gaze out of habit, her eyes widened as she noticed what he was looking at.
The mural depicted a high dragon locked in battle with elven warriors, nothing exception to write home to at first. However, a second glance at the way the elves were portrayed around the dragon seemed out of place to Illeane, and as she stepped towards the mural to take a closer look, Berrick grunted. Looking back at him, Illeane opened her mouth to question his interruption, only for the Shadow Knight to speak first.
"The elves are arranged in patterns around the dragon. It's meaningless at a glance, except if you use the dragon as a center point of a word not a mural."
His voice rumbles in the quiet room, as Illeane turns her eyes back to the figures, allowing her mind to toy with the hidden letters that her and Berrick had seen in the mural. Suddenly letting out a curse, she steps to stand aside Berrick, her eyes flaring with magical power.
"It's old draconic. Rather, it's ancient draconic. You see the patterns of the word but not its meaning because it was written by someone who had never seen the draconic language we learnt."
Berrick turns to face Illeane, the tears slowly running down her face as she rereads the mural. Gently reaching out, he puts his hand on her shoulder, too respectful to ask what it says. She looks back at him, the magical power fading from her eyes.
"It's a spell. Words of power engraved here a long time ago. It is dormant now, the spell cast, but unfortunately for us, its mission completed."
"Where did it send him?"
"Not just where. When. It cast him into the future. Far, far into the future."