The Pinnacle Warrior

Maybe it was all in her head, but Astrid felt like the Wandering Trials were different from the Dungeon branches she had been in before. As she’d never entered the Dungeon proper, she couldn’t say if this was a feeling that also existed there, but she couldn’t place her finger on what this difference was. Maybe it was all in her head, but she looked around, seeing the cave system they were in. Fortunately, the tops of the tunnels were tall enough for her and Muti to both stand, and once the party was all confirmed to be ready, they looked back and saw the ascending staircase, the single out that remained to them, and leaving escape behind, they all strode into the Trials.

“There’s no need to do anything but hurry along once we’ve all hit 21. That’ll probably happen incidentally as we get towards the end of the floor, but just say the word when you get the level.” Astrid said. “If we run into free wargs, be ready, and pay attention to their manes. The thicker the scruff on the neck and front of their shoulders, the stronger. If we have any to have full manes that cover their chest as well, those will be in the final watershed of Bronze. We shouldn’t have to be worried about any of the goblins or kobolds, just kill them fast, and the wargs shouldn’t be much trouble either. Questions?”

They’d all already agreed on this, so every answer was wordless and immediate as the party jogged out of the cave they’d appeared in. Their steps took them out of the small cave and into a jungle, where the light from above was choked by thick greenery. Paths filled the jungle, but there was plenty of movement and sound from the opposite sides of near impenetrable walls of vines and deadfall.

Muti stepped into the front, her nostrils flaring as she looked for any signs of the monsters that inhabited this first floor of the Trials. Even as she remained aware of the world around them, Muti didn’t slow, jogging forward at a ground–eating lope. The party followed behind, Benedict’s Quickened Step giving them an additional edge to move even faster. These first floors, where the majority of the enemies were going to be half their level or even lower, could be moved through with impunity, but the party did slow down a little bit to ensure that they internalized the different delving method in a place that had such stark level variations. Astrid focused on learning the ways to see the differences in level before they engaged. That lesson was much better learned here than on the thirtieth floor, where the difference would take the fight from a simple one to dancing on a knife’s edge.

Before long, Muti held up a hand and pointed in two directions, forward and to the left. The party continued forward, following their Rogue, and it wasn’t long before Astrid could hear what Muti had picked up on. There were reptilian hisses and shrill screams from somewhere up ahead, and as the party jogged forward, staying slightly cautious but continuing to move quickly, they could see two squads of their enemies. The group to the left was the goblins, and they wielded sticks sharpened into spears as well as slings against the kobolds on the right, who fought with clawed fingers and sharp jaws.

The green goblins stood maybe 1 meter tall, and fought desperately to keep the brown and red kobolds at bay. Where the goblins hoped to keep some distance from the more ferocious kobolds, the lizard people depended on the might of their bodies to rip their enemies to shreds, so they turned strikes away to get close enough to kill the weaker goblins. Both races of people were small, less than half of Astrid’s height, and she rushed forward and killed three with a single swing of her hammer.

Goblin Hunter slain. 68 Experience gained, split among party.

Goblin Hunter slain. 68 Experience gained, split among party.

Kobold Savage slain. 60 Experience gained, split among party.

“That’s as much as the orcs were giving us!” Benedict groaned from behind, seeming willing to just let the rest of the party destroy the weak, level 6 and 7 group of monsters.

The party didn’t say anything as the rest of the 11 monsters turned with terror to witness the giants come to wreak havoc, but Muti and Felix began cutting through the rest with similar ease. When 11 corpses laid on the ground, Benedict stopped holding back laughter.

“That took me to 21. Or, the end of 20. I guess I get the level once I pass the Quest? A bunch of level 6’s and 7’s brought me to Iron.” He took a brief moment to gather himself before saying, “I’ll look through my options as we keep moving?”

“Good. That’s what we’ll do as we all continue to get to 21. The rest of us are what, a bit over 300 experience away from 21 as well? So two more of these groups?”

“Even faster than that,” Skandr shook his head as he shuffled his feet, “if we happen across any that’re level 11. Those’ll start at what, 120 each? Duchess above, this is unbelievable!”

“We’ll all have our new Class options available to us by the time we get to the end of this floor.” Astrid grinned as she prepared to keep moving. “Benedict, I don’t want to hear what options you have, not at least until I’ve got the opportunity to see my own, got it? Don’t want to get too excited.”

He grunted in agreement, his attention obviously consumed by looking at his options. Astrid smiled, but gestured for Muti to continue to lead the way, her own stomach twisting a little in nervous anticipation. When the Rogue ran ahead, just as eager as Astrid, the rest fell in line, thrilled to have the opportunity to make the choice of what Class and paths they would follow from here on. The jungle faded to a green blur as Astrid focused on the small clump of golden hair trailing out the back of Muti’s helmet in front of her. Before long, the Rogue laughed under her breath, and Astrid knew what that meant.

“Lead the way,” Astrid urged.

Muti didn’t give a verbal answer, but sped up. Astrid followed in line, Felix right behind them, though she did notice that Skandr and Benedict both struggled to keep up. With a groan, she forced herself to remain responsible, and commanded, “Slow down, Muti. We need to stay together, and getting there fifteen seconds earlier won’t change anything.”

The barbarian snarled, but she immediately slowed from a near sprint to a light jog. That remained quite quick for the two magically inclined members of their party, but Skandr shook his head as he cast Lightning Reflexes on himself and Benedict.

“Just stay within 15 meters of me and I’ll be fine,” he said, the wide smile on his face betrayed by a faint twitch at the corner of his eye.

“You’ll get a great Class, I know it,” Astrid said as she slapped Muti on the back and pushed her forward. The Rogue didn’t hesitate to burst through the bushes into the middle of a clearing where three wargs were locked in battle, two kobolds and a goblin mounted on them. The rest of the rival races’ squads were nearby, and Muti whooped loudly as she jumped and decapitated two wargs with a single blow.

Warg slain. 156 Experience gained, split among party.

Warg slain. 120 Experience gained, split among party.

With brief flashes of mana, Muti carved through both kobolds atop the collapsing corpses, then throwing herself at the goblins that started to flee in terror. These two groups were both in the third tier of Bronze, with the weakest as level 11s that gave 120 experience per kill. In a few short seconds, Skandr arrived, and threw out a slightly wasteful, if glorious, lightning curtain that smote every one of the 15 or so monster combatants. When he was done, kill notifications filled everyone’s minds, and there wasn’t one of the party members who didn’t know what they had to check on now. There was no need for them to continue right this second, because who knew if their Class evolution quests would have some aspect simple enough to be addressed while still on this floor?

Leaving the corpses behind, just like how they hadn’t bothered to harvest the materials of the other goblins and kobolds they killed either, the party retreated from the bloody clearing. They didn’t go far, maybe a dozen meters away to instead start to look at their Class evolution options. With her heart in her throat, Astrid pulled up her Status.

Status

Name: Astrid 

Class: Warrior (Bronze)

Total Level: 20 (34,000/34,000)

Attributes

Current

Per level growth

Power

108 (+1)

+5

Alacrity

67 [+20]

+3

Fortitude

109 (+3)

+5

Magical Potency

25

+1

Self-Mastery

26

+1

Acumen

26

+1

Skill List

Blunt Weapon’s Mastery (Bronze)

Shield Wielding (Bronze)

Quick Recovery (Bronze)

Boon of Potentiation

Steady Load (Bronze)

Locked

Nothing had changed, except for a small prompt that appeared at the bottom now that she had opened the Status.

You have reached the threshold for evolution to the Iron tier. Would you like to be presented with your evolution options now?

Astrid nodded, even knowing that it was unnecessary, and relished in the moment in which her mind opened to the possibilities available to her. As with the Skill selections when she’d been bestowed with her Class, three options were presented to her.

Hammermaster (Rare [with Potentiation to Very Rare]):

Astrid felt her hands shake as she lost focus. Her first option presented was rare! She shook off the thought and refocused on the blessings from the Great One. 

Hammermaster (Rare [with Potentiation to Very Rare]): You have thrown yourself wholeheartedly into the development of your abilities to wield your hammer and other blunt weapons. Hammermaster is typically an uncommon rarity Class, but you have proven that you are far beyond the mere uncommon, having killed Bosses above your watershed, monsters above your tier, and faced enemies two tiers above your own. You will be rewarded with the merging of the Blunt Weapons Mastery (Bronze), Shield Wielding (Bronze), and Steady Load (Bronze) Skills into the Skill: Hammermaster’s Equipment (Iron). You will be granted the Skill: Iron Skin (Iron). Attribute growth per level (Racial traits), [Boon of Potentiation]: Power +11 (+1) [+1], Alacrity +6 (+1) [+2], Fortitude +8 (+1) [+1], Magical Potency +1 (+1), Self-Mastery +1 (+1) [+1], Acumen +1 (+1) [+1].

Would you like to select Hammermaster (Very Rare) as your Iron tier Class?

Astrid didn’t select anything as she grinned. The results from this first option presented were already impressive. Glancing at Hammermaster’s Equipment, she could see that it was an amalgamation of the Skills that went into it, in the sense that it gave a solid bonus to her proficiency with blunt weapons, focusing on shields, hammers, mauls, and things like that. The specialization of Hammermaster’s Equipment was in damage dealing. Every Skill, as Astrid had already found, could develop in different ways, and Hammermaster’s Equipment focused on power. She was sure that having Hammermaster’s Equipment would also give rise to better Skill selections related to hammer attacks, like Meteor Strike. The time was coming that, as a finisher, Astrid would need active Skills to deal with increasingly hardy enemies. Beyond being tooled for providing new hammer–related Skills, Hammermaster’s Equipment also retained the benefits from Steady Load, which Astrid realized would grow to Iron. Astrid looked at the Steady Load section of the Skill to see the change.

Steady Load (Iron): Increases the Skill holder’s Alacrity while wearing armor by 30%. While wearing armor, the Skill’s holder will be passively assisted by ambient mana to reduce the strain of wearing heavy armor. While carrying any load of at least 50% of the Skill holder’s weight, the Skill holder’s Alacrity is increased by 15%.

It was upgraded from 20 and 10% bonus respectively to 30 and 15%, which was a little disappointing, but not too much. It also was an Equipment Skill, which meant that Astrid would no longer have to do anything other than spend a minute amount of mana to immediately equip herself, something she’d long desired to have. Iron Skin was the Iron version of Tough Skin, which she’d been offered at level 6.

Iron Skin (Iron): Increases the passive effects of Fortitude on the durability and impermeability of the Skill’s holder by 200% and can double the Skill’s holder’s mass at will for a minor mana cost. Once per hour, the Skill’s holder can activate the Skill at a Moderate mana cost and a Moderate stamina cost to double that bonus to the effects of Fortitude to 400% for 10 minutes.

With how much her Fortitude would be growing with this Class, it was a good Skill, especially since it would come capped out at Iron while also giving her an additional way to keep from being swung around by her hammer. Since it was two Moderate costs, the Skill would demand about a third of her mana and stamina to activate, which was certainly doable and more efficient than flaring her mana would be. With two Iron Skills granted at the time of her evolution, this would give her an opportunity for another boon farther down the line in Iron, but only if she managed to get an Iron tier Skill at 21, 29, and 37. Then she would gain a boon at 44, but getting an Iron Skill at 21 was nearly impossible, and Astrid doubted she’d get one. After all, all her good Skills were getting rolled into other things, except for Quick Recovery. Maybe that’d be upgraded at 21? But she doubted it. She shook her head and focused instead on what was more in her grasp. As she finally got some good equipment, a part of her wondered what the benefits from Armor Mastery at Iron would have been, but the Class didn’t offer it.

Astrid couldn’t help but note that her Boon of Potentiation had distributed attributes quite differently than she would have chosen herself. Self-Mastery and Acumen? They weren’t bad, but her initial reaction always would have been to put those points into other attributes that would have made her more deadly instead. Now that she had even a little bit of distance from that moment, though, especially after having trained with Jakub, she knew that she needed those two attributes to make sure that she wouldn’t be taken out by every magical Skill that existed. An example to that was how easily she had caved to Anders’s Skill while Benedict had remained in much better control of himself. She refused to have to spend all of her mana just to keep herself conscious in fights later down the road, and this was just another reason for her to trust in the Great One.

She rolled her shoulders and moved her attention to the next option, idly noting all of her party members mumbling to themselves as they looked at different options.

Heavy Knight (Rare [with Potentiation to Very Rare]): For as long as you have had a Class, you have worn heavy armor and wielded heavy weapons. You have taken a Skill to allow yourself to carry great loads and not be slowed as much as others, solidifying your potential path. The Heavy Knight is one who witnesses the struggles of the difficulties of delving and realizes that strengthening themselves is the way to find victory. Heavy Knight is typically an uncommon rarity Class, but you have proven that you are far beyond the mere uncommon, having killed Bosses above your watershed, monsters above your tier, and faced enemies two tiers above your own. You will be rewarded with the merging of the Blunt Weapons Mastery (Bronze), Shield Wielding (Bronze), and Steady Load (Bronze) Skills into the Skill: Heavy Knight’s Equipment (Iron). You will be granted the Skill: Armor Mastery (Iron). Attribute growth per level (Racial traits), [Boon of Potentiation]: Power +8 (+1) [+1], Alacrity +5 (+1) [+1], Fortitude +12 (+1) [+2], Magical Potency +1 (+1), Self-Mastery +1 (+1) [+1], Acumen +1 (+1) [+1].

Would you like to select Heavy Knight (Very Rare) as your Iron tier Class?

Much like Hammermaster, Heavy Knight was a good Class, but, having looked at Hammermaster, Astrid was rather uninspired. This was the frontliner evolution, and Astrid already knew that she could be a good frontliner. She was strong, and while she didn’t have attention–drawing skills, she would have two Skill slots to fill that could easily be used to fill that need. That said, she didn’t want to be a frontliner, and could see that this Class was one that wasn’t for her. Regardless, she checked the description of Armor Mastery, just to see what it might be, if it was offered to her again in the future.

Armor Mastery (Iron): Increases the effect and attributes granted by all armor worn by 40%. While wearing armor, the Skill’s holder will be passively assisted by ambient mana to reduce the strain of wearing heavy armor, which can be used in any active use of mana as tied to the Fortitude attribute.

So a Skill that would let her be an even better frontliner, really. If she had equipment that was giving notable attribute bonuses, then she would have been more drawn to this, but in reality, Astrid knew that, if there wasn’t a third option, the Hammermaster would absolutely be her choice between the two. Even if she wanted to lean more into the position as a finisher and a frontliner, Heavy Knight’s Equipment was tooled more towards using her weapons to turn away hits and shift with the strikes that came her way. That was emphasized by how Armor Mastery was the Skill provided by the Class. For a moment, Astrid felt like Armor Mastery and Iron Skin were effectively the same, but the last part of the Skill showed that the Skill would be even better at protecting herself with mana.

Despite herself, she’d allowed her hopes to get high, seeing that the first option was rare, but Greely had said that they should hope for rare, so Astrid kept her expectations low for the third option.

Immortal Warrior (Very Rare [with Potentiation to Extraordinary]): One of your first Skills was Quick Recovery, and you have used this Skill to thrive in situations that you should not have been capable of surviving. You endured the attacks of a Boss much stronger than you when only beginning your journey. You received and survived through the might of a drake more than twice your level and a tier higher than you. You survived the attacks of assassins and abductors two tiers higher than your own. Through your tenacity and reliance on your Skills, you have survived countless situations where you should have fallen. As such, you have progressed faster and further while pushing deeper and harder than your peers. The Immortal Warrior is one who wades into battle, unafraid of meeting their end. Selecting this Class will bless you with the merging of the Blunt Weapons Mastery (Bronze), Shield Wielding (Bronze), and Steady Load (Bronze) Skills into the Skill: Immortal Warrior’s Equipment (Iron). The Skill: Quick Recovery will be upgraded to: Immortal Warrior’s Body (Iron). You will be granted the Skill: Immortal Warrior’s Aura (Iron). Attribute growth per level (Racial traits), [Boon of Potentiation]: Power +9 (+1) [+2], Alacrity +6 (+1) [+2], Fortitude +10 (+1) [+1], Magical Potency +3 (+1), Self-Mastery +3 (+1) [+1], Acumen +3 (+1).

Would you like to select Immortal Warrior (Extraordinary) as your Iron tier Class?

It was a blessing that every Class offered had also granted an Equipment Skill, but even if Immortal Warrior hadn’t granted one, Astrid would have been drawn to it. On top of granting the same bonuses to Blunt Weapons Mastery, Shield Wielding, and Steady Load, the focus of Immortal Warrior’s Equipment was on surviving, and turning damage taken into more damage dealt. There wasn’t anything about that in the Skill’s description, but Astrid could feel how the Immortal Warrior as a whole was focused on turning what they suffered into opportunities. Beyond that, the other Skills provided were particularly interesting. 

Instead of being a more ordinary Class strengthened by her achievements, this was a Class that she’d qualified for that was special in and of itself. Plus it was Very Rare? The Class offered, with Potentiation and her racial bonuses, 46 points per level! It wasn’t as specialized as Hammermaster and Heavy Knight both were, with the highest growth in an attribute being Power and Fortitude at 12 each, compared to Hammermaster’s 13 in Power and Heavy Knight’s 15 in Fortitude. The Immortal Warrior’s Class was a more well–rounded one than the others, giving at least 4 per level in each of the mental attributes. A +4 in Magical Potency? That absolutely meant that the Class was meant to be using some magical Skills, and would help give her much greater flexibility with using her mana in the long run as it broadened her mana reserves.

Even so, Astrid didn’t want to take the Class based off of its rarity alone, and looked at the two Skills it offered, especially with how Quick Recovery changed as it was “upgraded.” As she read, her mouth fell open, and she pulled herself out of her mind to speak with her party. Before she could speak, she met Benedict’s eyes, which were wet. He smiled broadly as he struggled to speak.

“I have two great options, one very rare but really specialized, the other rare but closer to what I’m doing now. I’m not sure which to choose.”

Astrid laughed as she replied, “Maybe I can help you out. After all, I have something that might matter to you.” As soon as she said it, Astrid chose the Immortal Warrior Class.