The system is of the world but not part of the world. Forcing adventurers to make decisions based on what they’ve faced but not on what they will face. This makes for fighters, mages, and priests that are good for fighting in the past but may not be best to fight what they will fight in the future. It becomes a question that has needed an answer since the beginning of time. Do you become a generalist? Good in most situations but master of none. Or do you specialize? Leaving yourself unable to adapt to new things. That’s a question that every adventurer needs to answer for themselves and their companions.
#Levyna’s Perspective
She had come to hate saying that a journey started with a single step. They left the city of Elviathius in the afternoon. And they followed the inland road towards the northeast. Elviathius was next to a lake that could be called a great lake if it had been on Earth. The capital city of the Elviath Elves sat on the eastern shore, along the bottom third of the lake.
“It did sit there.” She corrected herself, she doubted that the city would remain viable, the demons were doing a good job of razing the city. They didn’t seem to care about the treasures. They hardly stopped to enslave the elves they found. They wanted the city gone, and they were doing a good job at it.
There were two roads on the northern side of the city, the first one wrapped around the lake, and headed towards the northwest eventually. There was another elven nation in that direction, somewhere. The road was barely serviceable and usually used only by messengers, trade was done by boat, and almost exclusively by boat.
The food for the city came from the farms and ranches to the south of the city, luxuries came into the city from the northwest by boat.
“The demons attacked from the south.”
The second road on the northern side was even worse than the first. It led to the northeast and was slowly going uphill.
“How long is this road?” Levyna asked the open air.
“I’m not sure Levyna.” The elven princess answered. At least she was more than a sheltered princess. “It’ll lead to the pass eventually. The pass is about six hundred miles from the city.”
“Your nation wasn’t very big, was it? More of a city-state? Were there any villages in this direction? Towns? Some sort of civilization. Walking six-hundred miles will probably take us at least a month.”
The princess looked a bit annoyed at the question and then sighed softly as she seemed to realize something. Levyna was right about the size, though it went against her pride. “We had a city. And a couple of villages. The farthest away was only a half-day wagon trip away. So that farmers could start in the morning drop off their goods and return home in a single day.”
Levyna took a few moments to think on the numbers, “So about ten miles or so from the farthest village to the city. That’s not very much. Depending on the roads, and the quality of the horses I think they can cover around twenty miles. About as many as four healthy women can.”
“Yes.” Lauq looked over at their tallest companion, the elf Mariya. “Though with them…” she sighed softly.
“With them?”
“It’s not really something…” She paused after a moment, and blushed looking down.
“What she means is that with some of the magic they used to enslave us Mountain Elves could move twice that distance, or even more.” Mariya put in. “High elves were arrogant.”
Levyna quickly got in a question before a fight could get started. “Could you cover fifty miles in a day, Mariya?”
“Yes, with the right equipment, I could pull a wagon with all of you and even more that far. The high elves couldn’t do it themselves.”
“You Mountain Elves were bred specifically for it!” The princess put in quickly before Levyna could stop her. They had only been traveling for a few hours and there was already trouble in the group. Mariya was resentful about her enslavement. Lauq was, mostly, unapologetic about what her people had done.
Levyna's eyes flashed, as she put a stop to the fight. The elemental symbols that highlighted her armor started to flow as she gave them both a look. The elves had seen her power.
“Look I don’t want a fight in the group. I want to know what is going on. I freed Levyna of her collar when I found her in the city.” She said. “And I promise to free you and Irina of yours when I can figure out how to destroy that steel. But until then, think of how much you hate it Lauq.” She didn’t have the words to calm down the fight right now, and she could not dare to leave them alone.
Their party was small, only four people. They each had some sort of role to play in it, at least for the moment. She still thought in terms of the games she played back on Earth. Mariya was big and she was the tank. Lauq was a priest, so she was obviously the healer. Irina was quiet and held a bow, which put her into the role of ranged-DPS. While she was close in DPS, which is what she preferred. They didn’t have a controller, at least she didn’t see anyone who could fit that role.
She looked at the road ahead and then remembered that she had to look at her status and figure out what to do with her new levels. It was a good way to pass the time at least.
Name:
Levyna Hawthorne
Class:
Novice of the Elements
Level:
Novice of Elements (27)
Foreign Class:
Elemental Raider (ER)
Attributes:
(65 available)
Strength
17 (+40 From ER)
Carry Limit:
260
Agility
24 (+100 From ER)
Grace Level:
3 (+2.5 Stanima/s)
Endurance
24 (+110 From ER)
Stamina Points:
268 /268 (+3.4/s)
Durability
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
27 (+60 From ER)
Hit Points:
174/174
Intelligence
32 (+140 From ER)
Max Spell Level:
1 (special) (+1.7 Mana/s)
Wisdom
35 (+140 From ER)
Mana Points:
350/350 (+1.8/s)
Charisma
8 (+90 From ER)
Persuasion
+9
Appearance
8 (+120 From ER)
+12 situation bonus to persuasion
Class Skill
Level:
Class Skill:
Level
Fire Resistance
12 / Second Tier
Water Resistance
10 / First Tier
Earth Resistance
10 / First Tier
Air Resistance
10 / First Tier
Fire Affinity
20 / Second Tier (+)
Water Affinity
15 / First Tier
Earth Affinity
12 / First Tier
Air Affinity
20 / First Tier
Class Perks:
Elemental Performace
Special Feat:
General Skill
Level:
General Skill
Level:
Linguist
5 / Second (Final) Tier
Persuasion
1 / First Tier (base)
10 / First Tier (Charisma)
22 / Second Tier (Situational)
Pocket Space
3 / First Tier
Titles: Hero of the Eighteenth Rise of Demons, Ecological Hazard, Naturalized Immigrant, Exhibitionist, Spoilsport, Hero’s Hero
Special Equipment: Wildborn (Advanced Class Staff of Elements), Immoliator (Advanced Class Dagger of Elements (Fire)), Aerator (Advanced Class Dagger of the Elements (Air)), 8 invisible gossamer bags, Elementalist Gauntlets (Apprentice Class), Female Apprentice Cloth Armor (Apprentice Class), Swashbuckler’s Boots (Apprentice Class).
Looks through her available status and then saw that (+) next to Fire Affinity skill.
“Hey, what does it mean when you have a plus next to one of your skills in your status?”
“It means that the skill is ready to go to the next tier.” The elven princess explained. “But you need a class skill point or a general skill point to push it up.”
“How do you get those?”
“Completing quests, those are rare those. Or based on how many skills you have in your class. It could be every thirty levels, some have them every twenty levels.”
“Oh. I guess I’ll get one soon then.” Levyna went back to her status as they walked trying to figure out what to do with her attribute points. She had sixty-five to allocate. She had eight attributes she could allocate things too. And strangely enough, the charisma attribute did help with the demon. And the check was one of those situational checks. So maybe she should put some points into both Charisma and Appearance.
She looked through her class perks, the elemental performance tree looked like it could be interesting since it looked like it could attract elementals. And that demon… what was his name… Baraq Rai… said he was an elemental summoned into a demon form. So they were more than just rock monsters or water monsters. She already met the appearance requirements for the next perk and was close to meeting the requirements for the perk after.
She decided that she was going to push five points into each of her attributes which left her with twenty-five left. As she allocated those points she received a system message.
For reaching level 30 in your primary class you have been awarded one class skill point
She couldn’t help but to cheer as she saw that, and quickly pushed the class skill point into her fire affinity, it changed to the third tier. She wasn’t sure what each of the tiers did, so she tried to identify the skill.
Fire Affinity: You are aligned with the element of fire.
- Tier 1: You have a primitive understanding of fire. Each skill level awards 0.5% (0.75% title) bonus to the effectiveness of your fire-based actions Total: 10% (15% title) bonus to effectiveness
- Tier 2: You have gained an unskilled understanding of fire. You like to watch things burn. Each skill level awards 0.75% (1% title) bonus to the effectiveness of your fire-based actions, a 0.1% decrease to the mana cost. Total 15% (20% title) bonus to effectiveness, 2% decrease to mana cost.
- Tier 3: You have chosen the path of the pyromancer. Your fire-based skill are much more effective. Bonus: 15% effectiveness bonus, 5% decrease to mana cost. Each skill level awards 1.25 % (1.5% title) bonus to the effectiveness of your fire-based actions, a 0.1% decrease to the mana cost.
- Summary: 40% bonus to effectiveness (55% title), 7% decrease to mana cost
She read through her other affinities. Her fire affinity was the only one that got a bonus based on a title. Air, earth, and water saw a slight decrease, though not as much as the increase she got to fire. She scanned through her titles, Ecological Hazard, was the culprit. Since she used fire to destroy those fields it applied it’s a bonus to her fire skills and the penalty to the other three elements. She would have to figure out a way to use the other skills to cause ecological damage.
She would have to work on her other elements as well, use them more in combat. It was just that fire was so effective in causing damage. She did use the air element since it also contained electrical attacks and allowed her to fly. Water didn’t give her many damaging skills, but it did give her healing for both herself and her allies. The earth element, on the other hand, gave her the best damage output after fire.
She still had twenty-five attribute points to allocate. Agility and Intelligence helped recover the amount of stamina and mana respectively. While Endurance and Wisdom increased the size of those two pools. It was a toss-up on how she wanted to fight. So far all of her fights had been nova fights, burn bright, burn fast. The problem with that was the third stage of a nova: burn out.
A larger pool helped both, but if she ran her pool down then she didn’t have anything to help sustain herself. Intelligence also seemed to help with her damage, agility with her grace which worked well with the Elemental Performance tree. Her hit points were also on the low side. If it wasn’t for her imported attributes she was sure she’d have died by now.
Of her attributes, Strength and durability were both lagging behind the others. That made her decision for her, ten into durability, and fifteen into strength. The durability gave her a bigger hit point pool, and the strength made her pack feel lighter and seemed to make the long walk ahead of her just that bit easier. She hoped that with strength she could still dish our damage if she ran low on mana.
She still had a class, and a special perk to pick, and those she was on the fence about.
#Demitri’s Perspective
They had already beaten the Earth level and now the Fire level was behind them. The next level was dedicated to the element of Air. They decided to loot the level, unlike the ones before to see if they could find Warnik a new set of footwear.
His trip through the lava left him almost barefoot. He still had his crampons, but those didn’t give much protection, and the tall barbarian found walking barefoot easier.
Dimitri pulled out the journal and had a look at the notes for the level. For the most part, it had been accurate, they had learned not to trust it completely, not after the fight in the boss room for the fire level.
“We’re mostly going to deal with flying creatures here I think. A lot of the rooms are wide and tall. Let me see here.” He looked up at his companion, “My man, we need to get you some sort of ranged weapon. What do you think you could handle?”
“Maybe Javelins, Dimitri. I don’t remember reading anything about forsakers or Mountain Men shooting bows. Though I did get an almost bullseye when shooting a boy in scouts when I was younger…”
“I hear a but coming.”
“Well, I got in the 9 point circle. It was the only time I hit the target with ten arrows. And then a few years later when we shot bows during a camp, I missed with every single arrow.”
“So not bows?”
“Not unless we have years to for me to practice. A crossbow is supposed to take less training to learn to use. The biggest problem with them is that they take longer to cock.”
“Maybe not for you. At least not for a Mountain Man.” Dimitri commented as he picked the first target for their exploration.
“You’re probably right. But I doubt I could finger cock a heavy crossbow.”
“The first room has flying creatures, but they don’t use ranged attacks. The journal says they’re giant bats.”
“Well let’s do it then, Dimitri.”
They opened the door to the room he had selected. It was about fifty feet along all dimensions with a horde of giant bats hanging from the ceiling. The monsters shrieked and dropped towards the floor, spreading their wings and moving in to attack the adventurers.
They stayed near the door, using the wall to keep the monsters from surrounding them. His companion used the poleax again like a baseball bat. Though the fight was mainly his.
“
The fight was short and they went to claim the chest that was in the corner. The chest itself didn’t look menacing, but they were still paranoid. The mimics they had encountered weren’t a problem, at least so far. Their main advantage was the element of surprise, and they didn’t have that as Warnik smashed every chest with his poleax before they opened them.
This chest wasn’t a mimic. It also only contained coins and gems. While interesting, the money wasn’t what they needed right now.
“On to the next room. Extra-large boots here we come.”