The Pinnacle Warrior

Class evolution quest:

Defeat 20 monsters of at least level 95 in single combat. Each kill must be completed with a strike empowered by Spectral Graviton and Smite at the same time. Successfully use a combination of jumping at least 25 meters into the air under the influence of Body Surge and falling with the strength of Spectral Graviton to kill 200 creatures of at least level 85. Use Unconquerable Aura to reduce the damage taken by yourself and one ally in twenty-five fights against a group of at least five enemies of at least level 85 while drawing enemies towards you with Spectral Graviton. During these fights, neither yourself nor your ally can dodge.For a second, Astrid thought about what the requirements had been for the evolution to Steel tier. There were, she knew, only two parts to the previous quest. The numbers of what she’d had to fight then, to her recollection, were smaller. More than that, this quest required her to, in single combat, fight Mithril tier monsters. That was something that people didn’t do, crossing tiers. Yes, the Wanderers had been doing it, but that was largely because of the quality of their Classes until now.

Finally, Astrid could truly understand the value of the Boon of Perfection. This was a requirement that she herself could complete. It would be dangerous, but not overwhelmingly so, since, with all of her Skills and attribute growth until now, she was no slouch. However, if somebody somehow managed to reach level 200 with mediocre Classes, but still qualified for a boon, the Boon of Perfection would enable them to select a Class that they had no place being able to complete the required quest for.

Pushing aside her less focused thoughts, Astrid looked at the quest itself. As she’d expected, there were three parts to the quest now, not just two, and the requirements had continued changing to force her to stretch her abilities. To evolve to Steel, she had simply had to kill Bosses using her Skills and with the damage boost from recovering with Body Surge. Other than that, it was just practice in using Gravity Surge and Spectral Burst at the same time. Now that she thought about it, her evolutionary requirements this time were perhaps deceptively simple, forcing her to use her Skills in accordance with the expectations of this new Class.

A part of her wanted to think about what kind of requirements the other Classes would have had, but that didn’t matter now. Instead, she smiled. Honestly, so long as she got Felix’s agreement, which she knew he’d give without a problem, the other two requirements wouldn’t be too bad. In fact, maybe she could complete this evolutionary quest even faster than the one to become Steel. Since that had required her to fight and kill Bosses, the party had been slowed by having to delve through multiple branches and then wait for the Bosses to respawn. Now, though, they were in the Dungeon proper, and every one of her potential targets wouldn’t be too hard to find.

“Well, that’s not too bad,” she said to herself, smiling as she looked at the rest of her party. “I’m happy to start with the explanations. For me—”

“Wait just a second,” Benedict said, raising a hand as he interrupted her with a smile.

When she narrowed her eyes at him, he chuckled and blazed on. “I think it would be pretty fun to not tell each other what we need to do. See who can evolve first, take the others by surprise. I mean, we are all aware generally of what the others will have to do, but, I don’t know, being secretive about it seems like it might be a little fun.”

Astrid wasn’t sure how she felt about it, but by the way that Muti’s eyes lit up, she knew she would be fighting an uphill battle to gain a majority. To her surprise, Felix seemed to think it sounded fun as well, a little quirk to his lips betraying a thought that Astrid wasn’t sure if she had any good guess about. Skandr seemed dispirited, but still nodded along.

“Looks like, even if I had a different opinion from you,” Astrid sighed, looking at the rest of her party, “I wouldn’t have much sway in this vote, would I? So, instead, just answer this: about how long do you think it will take you to complete your requirements? In my case, I think just a couple of days. I’ll need to practice some more with Spectral Graviton to make sure that I am able to use it just the way that my quest is requiring, but I’ve already done most of the work already.”

“About a week for me,” Benedict jumped in first. “Kind of depends on the rest of you, if I’m being honest. There isn’t very much in the way of research that I need to do, but I do need to push my Skills further.”

“It’ll be at least four or five days for me,” Felix gave his response. He didn’t expand any further on that, looking at the other two who hadn’t answered the question yet.

“I will beat you,” Muti said by way of answer, staring into Astrid’s eyes. The Human woman smiled and laughed at that, but didn’t question it.

“A few days for you as well, then,” Astrid nodded as she turned to Skandr. “You?”

He let out a long, slow breath before shrugging helplessly. “I’d be more than surprised if I managed to finish this up within even two weeks. And, need I remind you, that’s still very fast compared to most people.”

“If only you had focused on the strength of your body, perhaps you would be able to keep up with us,” Muti turned towards him, baring her teeth in a smile.

Skandr didn’t answer verbally, though he glared at her, drew both hands in a sweeping gesture in front of him, and created a pair of glittering lightning swords in his hands. Muti’s eyes widened in excitement, seeing what he was able to do, and she approached him.

“No, you can’t see,” he said before she could even say anything. “After all, I’m just a weakling. It would be an insult to your strength and impressive bearing to rely on measly magical weapons. I need to rely on these to be able to catch up to you.”

“I apologize,” Muti immediately responded. “Teach me.”

Skandr laughed at that, beginning to explain how it worked and how he supposed it might be possible to do something similar with her Boon. After about a minute, he shrugged as he finished, “I think you could make something that functions as an enchantment, but to make something physical like this, I don’t think it’s possible without an actual spellcasting Skill.”

Muti growled at that declaration but didn’t seem to disagree with the sentiment as she instead turned towards Astrid.

“We are racing.”

It wasn’t an invitation, but a reminder, and she started to turn to bolt away before Gabriel appeared next to her, his hand a firm grip on her wrist.

“Wait a moment, all of you,” he said. “Before you start making progress, you need to remember what permissions you have from the Verdant Walkers regarding your levels.”

Astrid almost argued with him, but quickly realized what he was saying. The Verdant Walkers, very deliberately, had given the Wanderers permission to be in the Verdant Sanctuary until they reached level 90. Now, they were there, and if they overstayed their welcome, at the very least, they wouldn’t be making any friends. More likely, they could be permanently damaging relationships, and that absolutely was not something she wanted to be doing when the time was nigh at hand that she’d be looking for new party members.

“You’d know better than us, Gabriel,” Astrid pursed her lips as she looked at him. “Is it going to be a problem if we stick around until we are almost ready to evolve?”

“It should be fine,” he answered, cautioning her with a raised eyebrow, “but you should know that the Verdant Walkers are a very literal people. So, if, for whatever reason, you cross the boundary and evolve without having spoken with them, then you may find yourselves in trouble.”

Astrid sighed, but couldn’t bring herself to disagree. Generally, the Verdant Walkers were amazingly permissive, accommodating hosts. There were things, however, that they refused to bend on, and she had no doubt that any excuse along the lines of, “Sorry, I thought I could get away with it,” wouldn’t be accepted.

Instead, she glanced back over her quest requirements before nodding once.

“I can pretty easily make sure to not complete one of my requirements and reserve it for later. How about the rest of you? Are there any of you who don’t have at least one requirement you can guarantee you wouldn’t finish if you were trying not to?”

Muti nodded, as did Felix, but Benedict and Skandr both grimaced before making noises of noncommittal.

“If that’s the case,” Astrid continued, “then once the last of the three of us is at the point where there’s just one more thing to do, we’ll retreat from wherever we’re accomplishing our goals. After all, you two are the ones who seem to think that your quests will take the longest out of us five.”

Nobody seemed to disagree with that idea, so Astrid rolled her shoulders before saying, “I’m the one who didn’t mind sharing what I needed, so I’ll tell you right now—I’m looking to fight some Mithril tiers on my own. Then, in other fights, I’m looking to have some assistance from you, Felix. Sound good?”

Muti’s eyes narrowed at the very obvious challenge that Astrid had made, and she immediately started making complaints. Her grin was far too wide for Astrid to believe that the Barbarian was actually at all upset about the choices that had led them here, and the party all started preparing to move to the next battlefield.

***

The smashing sound of her hammer through a thick beak should have been reassuring. It should have been the sound of progress. Instead, it felt hollow. There was no reason to pay attention to the kill notification as the level 96 monster’s corpse fell to the ground. Astrid frowned as she glanced over her quest requirements. For now, she wasn’t doing anything with the third, but the first two weren’t cooperating with her expectations.

Defeat 20 monsters of at least level 95 in single combat. Each kill must be completed with a strike empowered by Spectral Graviton and Smite at the same time. Progress: 2/20  Successfully use a combination of jumping at least 25 meters into the air under the influence of Body Surge and falling with the strength of Spectral Graviton to kill 200 creatures of at least level 85. Progress: 0/200According to the specific description of the first requirement, she should have already seen a good amount of progress. Just now, she used the two Skills the quest required for the killing blow, but it wasn’t enough. She’d already realized the specifics it was requesting beyond just what was written, but she still couldn’t exactly achieve what it was requiring. The quest required her to use only the gravitational aspect of Spectral Graviton when killing her target. Going off of how the “Spectral” aspect of the Skill was stripped away in the new Skill, that hadn’t taken long to figure out. However, there was a quality to using Smite and Graviton, she supposed she’d call it, that had only triggered those two times.

Whatever qualitative difference that was, she wasn’t sure, but, in retrospect, she could feel it. The only issue was making it continue to happen.

On the other hand, the Body Surge plunge from the air wasn’t working at all. She could feel that she was moving in the right direction, as she was using Spectral Graviton to pull herself more heavily into the ground, but it still wasn’t showing progress, despite the fact that she was pretty sure it needed to. Her next experiment was planned, though. The plan was to, as best as she could, activate two Gravitons at the same time, one to pull her towards the ground and the other within her weapon as she crashed down.

For now, though, the party was fighting scattered Mithril tier griffins, and since they could fly, Astrid wasn’t going to have any luck in crashing down on them from above.

“Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s seeing how much more demanding the quest is this time around,” Benedict grunted as he pointed his flute and somehow shaped the sound to only encompass Felix.

“No, it is not only you,” Muti growled as she looked down at her arms. Astrid couldn’t see the tattoos below the other woman’s armor, but the constant shadow literally dripping from between the segmented plates of Muti’s gauntlets was more than testament enough as to the color of her tattoos and the effort she was putting herself through to try to figure out this new path.

“More than before,” Skandr wondered aloud, “these quests seem to be requiring that we shape our Skills ourselves. A lot of what will take me longer is directly due to spell research, and these requirements seem to be steps that will be necessary to take in order to bridge the gap between my current abilities and what they will need to be for my new Class.”

“Well, I don’t think any of us missed that,” Astrid frowned down at the corpse in front of her. With a frown, she reached into her spatial pouch and pulled out her harvesting knife, plucking the eyes and pinion feathers from her latest opponent. Apparently both were some of the most valuable parts of the griffins, and the party wasn’t taking the time to harvest them completely. “Skandr, do you have anything else that will be particularly valuable for us right now?”

He shrugged. “I think the thing to keep in mind is that we are supposed to be changing the fundamental functions of these Skills. It’s not that we need to use multiple Skills, but to change them into something different.”

Astrid nodded once. That was just putting into words the things she already thought, but she wasn’t going to be upset with him over answering the question she asked. Instead, she nodded once and started thinking a little bit about what kind of changes she was going to need to make in her Skills to be able to do what she and her party felt they needed to do.

“It isn’t the gravitational pull of the hammer that matters for the killing blow,” she muttered to herself, speaking aloud as she thought about what to change. “It’s the ground, or coming from above that matters. The meteor comes from above, strikes overwhelmingly. I need to not have my hammer pull the monster towards it, but to have the hammer and the monster both get pulled down.”

The thought shifted around in her head, and the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to make sense. She wasn’t looking to just have a stronger hit, but to become the meteor.

Instead of just continuing to ideate, she looked up, her vision searching for another of the griffins. They stood beside a massive mountain, craggy cliffs climbing nearly straight up at least half a dozen kilometers. She almost could forget the fact that she and her party were treating these monsters that, for most of her life, she had considered to be legendary as training. In truth, in Steel tier, they would be considered to be at least noteworthy. Now, though, these were unremarkable specimens among griffins, and only a step or two above the lowest rungs of Mithril tier. The leader of a griffin flock would be about on par with a more remarkable wyvern, or even a weaker dragon, but since these were just pariahs, not accepted by a flock, they were the weakest kind of griffin to find. At least, that was what Gabriel said.

With a grunt, she saw the closest nest, where a griffin peered over the edge to stare down at her. She smirked as she unwrapped her sling from around her wrist and palmed an explosive lighting rune stone into the pouch. Then, giving the weapon two twirls, she launched the projectile towards the monster. The stone screamed through the air, and the griffin tried to jump out of its next, but was too slow. Instead, the stone smashed into its chest and burst with a crackle of lightning and flames. The beast screeched in pain and rage as it threw itself out of the next. In a tumble of feathers, fur, and ash, it flew towards Astrid. 

She smiled and stepped back, making sure to give the monster plenty of space to charge in. With a whoop, she stepped back and, as the monster flew towards her with its claws and beak gaping, she swung her hammer downward. The weapon whistled down as she activated Graviton directly below the monster, allowing the Skill to affect her as well. It wasn’t a delay before Astrid could feel the shift in her Skill. The weapon smashed into the monster’s back, right between its wings, and its spine snapped as it created a massive furrow in the ground. 

Astrid didn’t need to check her quest progress at that, knowing what it would show. The monster was dead, and she was beginning to understand what path she’d decided to tread from here on out. Now, she just needed to go ahead and do that a whole lot more.