Chapter 8
Forgoing Comfort
Extended Arms--Asher picked it after a brief deliberation. Nimble Footing seemed to appear relatively frequently so he hoped it'd re-appear once again, while an extra yard of range on his attack was effectively a 33% increase, a rather massive one.
He felt it, immediately. Keeping distance became much easier and he felt a whole lot safer as he began to mow down spiders once more. Their spawn rate accelerated just as every other time, though far less aggressively than yesterday. By now, he’d begun suspecting that the current stages were effectively a rather long and brutal ‘Tutorial’, just without pop-ups that suggest what to do and how to do it. Every stage seemed to have a theme.
The first stage taught the importance of mobility.
The second stage taught the importance of raw firepower and AoE.
And the third? He wasn't certain just yet, though he suspected it tried to teach the value of versatility, meaning that they shouldn't get hung up on the same weapon every single time. Or, perhaps, the lesson was yet to come as far as he knew.
Soon enough, he reached Level 3, and the world paused once again. He got Common-rank Muscle Training and Strike Prowess as the passives and the first upgrade to the Wooden Spear as the third choice.
Wooden Spear [UPG +1]
Level: 2
Effect: Stab forward in the direction you are facing, dealing damage to all monsters within reach. Deals 3.2x damage if there is only one target.
Damage: 5
Attack Speed: 1 attack per second
Reach: 4 yards
It was a simple damage upgrade on the same level as Strike Prowess but as it unlocked further level-ups, he elected to go with it anyway. Furthermore, as spiders had a base health of 5, he started one-shotting them, speeding up the clean-up considerably. It wasn't long before he reached Level 4, though there was a bit of a difference--he only got offered two choices, both of which were [Rare], surprising him somewhat.
Hands of Wind [Rare]
Level: 1
+0.2 Attack Speed
Wooden Spear [UPG +2 -- Rare!]
Level: 3
Effect: Stab forward in the direction you are facing, dealing damage to all monsters within reach. Deals 3.5x damage if there is only one target.
[Rare Effect] -- has a 30% chance to strike twice if there are multiple targets. Each of the additional strikes has a 10% chance to strike twice as well. If only striking one target, every 10th stab becomes Sonic Thrust
[Sonic Thrust] -- Charge for 3 seconds, slowing down by 50% for the duration. After 3 seconds, unleash a fully-charged thurst at the target. The thurst gains a 200% bonus range to your current Spear Range, is guaranteed to Critically Strike, ignores 80% of the target's defense, cannot be dodged or parried, and has a 100% chance to inflict 'Bleed' on the target. Has an internal 8s cooldown (regular attacks do not charge up to Sonic Thrust until 8s have passed)
[Bleed] -- Target takes 0.5% of its Max HP as damage every 1s for 30s. Can be Cleansed. Does not work on Bleed-immune targets.
Damage: 6
Attack Speed: 0.7 attacks per second
Reach: 4 yards
He got a bit dizzy reading the Wooden Spear upgrade, but it was a no-brainer in terms of which to select. In fact, he felt peeved; it was as though the ‘game’ was trying to show him that Wooden Spear was just as good as the Wooden Staff, perhaps even better in certain circumstances. That likely was the case for every weapon, just that there were differences in terms of their usage.
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Sighing, he continued to attack.
Though his overall Attack Speed was lowered, the 30% chance of double-strike more than made up for it. He even began to stab forward of his own will rather than letting something 'higher' guide him. Every time he'd double strike, the spear would shake and arrays of wind would slice open in a pure barrage of carnage. It even occasionally trickled down on the already-doubled strikes which struck again. It was akin to a monsoon of strikes, though at the same time was a huge overkill as everything would die within the first strike anyway.
Around a minute or so into the stage, though, the first mini-boss appeared. Luckily, it wasn’t a thunder spider as he didn’t have a Dash available. Instead, it was a strange horse. It was around eight feet long and half that in height, sporting a black mane and a pair of crimson eyes. Furthermore, it had two, long tails that lashed out backward like whips, and it moved directly toward him at a speed far exceeding the spiders.
"Shit," he mumbled, circling to the side as the horse shot past him. The mere after-effect of the charge that kicked up the debris was enough to hurt.
-1 appeared above Asher's head for the first time. It hurt. It hurt a lot. So much so that the 'higher' power had to overtake his manipulation of the spear once again as he was distracted. Sweat building up, he focused on killing a nearby two spiders as he needed to Level-Up and get some mobility immediately. His prayers were answered soon after.
Muscle Training [Common]
+10 HP
Level: 1/99
Nimble Footing [Uncommon]
+0.4 Movement Speed
Level: 2/50
Dash [Converted to Spear Dash due to your Weapon!]
--Spear Dash [Uncommon]--
Effect: Dash in the target direction with your spear extended forward. Deals Spear's current damage to all targets in the path, knocking them sideways (only works on Ordinary Monsters). Gain a 300% bonus Movement Speed for 3s after the Dash. Dash's cooldown is lowered by 1s for each monster killed by it (capped at 10s).
Range: 8 yards (Spear’s Range x2)
Cooldown: 14
He chose Spear Dash without much thought, continuing the onslaught. Though he only had one 'ability' so to say, the frequency with which it double struck was rather shocking, and his clear speed was much faster than in the early stages with the Wooden Staff. In fact, he was almost outpacing the spawn rate of the normal mobs.
Having no luxury to fiddle around with them, however, he focused all his efforts on the horse. It had one attack--it would gallop in place for three seconds, whereupon it would lock in a direction and then charge for roughly fifteen yards. If he maintained at least 8 yards of distance, he could dodge it by simply side-stepping. However, that also meant that he couldn’t actually attack it. As such, he had to dance--stepping in for a quick jab before retreating.
Otherwise, he focused on cleaning up the normal monsters, one by one. It wasn't nearly as 'fun' as yesterday, however--watching dozens and even hundreds at some point monsters combusting into flames over and over again was truly a spectacle to behold. In comparison, simply thrusting forward a spear roughly once a second certainly failed to live up to it, even if it, mathematically, was equal.
Luckily, the horse didn't have a lot of HP--Asher estimated that it only had a hundred. Just as he was about to move on toward the newly spawned patch of spiders in the distance that numbered roughly 50, he paused as a shining object caught his eye where the horse was slain. It floated ever so slightly above the ground, covered in a faint, cyan sheen. He walked up to it and, as soon as he got within 5 yards of range, saw it pull toward him and 'disappear into him. The world froze once again as the window appeared in front of him. At the top was the depiction of the item--a pair of boots wrapped up in thick, black leather.
Erdar’s Boots [Rare Artifact]
Description: worn by a legendary Elven Tracker, Erdar, the once-ordinary boots awakened to their prowess by being exposed to the Elf's Mana over countless ages. They were lost to the tracks of time alongside the Elven legend many millennia ago. Said to govern the squall itself, anyone who wears them will find themselves afoot with the Spirits of the Wind.
Effect: Gain 0,01 Movement Speed for every second that you keep moving without stopping, up to 10. The effect refreshes as soon as you stop or fall under any manner of Crowd Control other than Slow. Makes you Immune to Slow if you have at least 10 stacks.
It was an unexpected windfall--and a rather beautiful one. Another 'mechanic' was introduced, prompting him to sigh inwardly. There were a few too many already, and he was beyond certain there'd be more. After all, of so many buildings at the plaza, he only got access to three. Who knew how difficult it would become to keep track of everything in the future? Alas, it was not for him to ponder just yet.
Simply confirming the artifact, he watched his wooden, weathered sandals be replaced by a pair of rather comfortable boots. They were a sight for sore eyes and a pleasant experience for sore feet, and he experienced their effect as soon as he started moving.
It took him some ten seconds to reach the nearest bundle of spiders, by which point he'd already gained an extra 0,1 Movement Speed, a full 33% of his base. The baseline movement was a bit slower than the average speed of a slightly-in-shape jogger--neither fast nor slow. That was the baseline of '1', anyway, and Asher had already imagined what it would feel like at 20 or 30 or even 50. He'd likely be flying all over the place.
However, in fairness, it might become necessary as the stages were to likely expand much, much further in the future, possibly to the sizes of entire cities, if not larger.
After killing two spiders with a single stab of the spear, he leveled up once again to Level 5 where, in addition to Muscle Training and Strike Prowess, he ‘discovered’ a new passive option:
Gigantism [Rare]
Level: 1/1
+50 Health, -0.8 Movement Speed
Naturally, he didn’t select it, opting into Muscle Training to increase his Health by 10, up to 24/25 just for safety. It would perhaps work for some melee-tank builds, but the trade-off didn’t actually seem worth it at ‘just’ 50 Health.
He didn’t stay on the topic for too long, continuing to mow down the spiders as his movement speed continued to increase. At a roughly 1:45 minute mark since he started, a new foe appeared--a familiar one, the thunder spider.
Asher frowned; 14 seconds of Spear Dash cooldown put it just out of the range of having it up for every single one of those AoE bombs that the spider does. That meant that he’d have to utilize the CDR component of the spell perfectly, making sure to keep at least a few of the smaller spiders alive and nearby for when he had to use Spear Dash to get out of the thunder bomb’s radius.
The rather ‘boring’ map suddenly got a lot more interesting... and far more dangerous.