It was time to take the next step and get more powerful.
Tom almost shivered in anticipation.
All of his accumulated experience was going to be exclusively spent on levels. Whimsically, he wondered what that impact would be. Thirty, forty, fifty percent stronger. He was not sure about the exact numbers, but it was bound to be something like that.
Their preparations were done and life flooded into Toni once more. She was far stronger than before and her mana had soared to be close to a thousand. She almost had enough mana to cast the original form of Harnessed Meteorite. It was impressive and an indication of how far they had all come. If they ever went back to their starting group, if Legen had managed to keep them alive, then the others would be shocked. They would have progressed and hopefully significantly, but Tom would be stunned if any of them, even the elites, had reached rank twenty. To have successfully gained ten ranks in less than half a year, without a ridiculous risk like this trial or being stuck in the Underground would be super impressive. Tom remembered the tank and his drive. If any of the others could reach that high, it would be him and his team. Legen would have pushed himself and those around him hard.
In some ways, they had been fortunate. The opportunities this trial had gifted them were immense but at the same time they had come at a hidden cost. Vidja had already lost a third of her team. Jingyi had died as well, and that Tom feared was the least of it. The main challenge was still ahead. No matter what preparations they did it was folly to think they would get through that unscathed. “Tom, you upgrading?” Michael asked. “Toni is already out.”
He sighed, smiled and shut his eyes and when he opened them, he was staring at the metal wall with writing spread across it. He read it.
Congratulation for successfully escaping the zone.
Your contribution to the group effort is 8%
Experience awarded 2,740,000
Tom assessed those numbers and a slight frown formed in response. They weren’t bad as such just not as favourable as he had been hoping. The experience was less than he had hoped for and his personal contribution was higher than he had expected.
That was a bad portent for the rest of his group.
An eight percent contribution meant the time he had spent using the domain to mine for precious ores, metals and gems had clearly been valued more than the straight killing of monsters because all the others had done far more of that than he had. Based on the number of people in his party and his award everyone else would get one point seven million experience instead of a little more than two million average they had been hoping for.
They would adapt and adjust. He scratched his cheek absently his hand going through the light stubble that his hair cutting ability was sustaining for him.
“How much experience do I have?”
Current Accumulated Experience is 4,145,000
He had known the number was around there, but it was nice to get it confirmed. He wasn’t sure of how many levels it would grant him, but it was a lot and he wondered if there were better things that he could use it on rather than blindly investing it in his classes like he had agreed with Michael.
Were their spells or skills that he should target?
His mind went over his existing battle kit. The first hole was obvious, but it was not one he could address. Sure, if he didn’t have True Dreaming, he would leap at the chance to purchase a decent combat precognition skill maybe even an extravagant tier six one for a million or so. But with that restriction in place and his inability to fill it he could look at what else he possessed, and that answer was more clear cut. His current abilities covered all of his needs especially while he was the designated tank of the party, a role that was not going to change. A solid dodge ability, numerous defensive traits, a couple of life saving skills, Living Rock for close in defence. There were no slots that had weak capabilities that needed refreshing.
He considered his offensive options and winced slightly at the lack of potency. What did he actually have. Well, there were basic starting level spear skills, a scattering of lightning options with none stronger than tier three and then in the earth space he had his Domain and Harnessed Meteorite and neither of them were traditional attacking options. If he wasn’t a tank, he would spend a million to get something more potent.
Once more, he examined his core tanking skills. They were good, but should he be making them better? Should a chunk of his experience be directed toward evolution potions. Should he allocate a couple of million to boost black dodge or one of his traits?
Tom considered that option more carefully. In those debates with the others, had he rejected the possibility of them too quickly?
Was upgrading a trait worthwhile? The four that he purchased from the contribution store were not worth advancing right now. Extra soul storage wouldn’t help in a fight, and Fates Agility and Free Class Slots were not capable of being boosted. As for the trait Child of Elements, unfortunately his build meant that he did not do as much elemental magic as he had been expecting making upgrading it a moot point. The dream of being the all-powerful mage standing at the back of the battlefield where that trait would come into its own had not originated like he had hoped. But he was not bitter. The simple truth was that he was more useful in filling his current niche than he would ever had been as a straight mage.
He thought about the coming confrontation and there were really only two traits that might give him an edge and even those would not help against the dragon, but in the melee that was probably going to occur after it. Dodge Expertise and Intangible Avoidance were both life saving abilities and tiering them up would help. He considered it.
How would an extra burst of mana and twenty percent additional speed measure up against improvements in either of those abilities? It was close enough that Tom was torn between the two and for the coming social interactions visible strength would be better than hidden.
Damn it, he thought. There was no choice. “Use all experience, excluding a two hundred thousand reserve to buy levels.” He ordered out loud while his mind directed the purchases more accurately. For this upgrade, he wanted the two main classes to go in lock step with elemental summoner naturally only going up by four levels at a time.
The wall flickered and changed to highlight his new status.
Classes Level – One Hundred and Sixteen
Lightning Tank: 55 (+26) - Expert
Elemental Summoner: 61 (+24) – Expert
Breadth of Serendipity: 0 – Legendary
Attributes
Strength: 323 (+78 Class, +25 Title: Strength Spring, +23 Title: Tripled Class)—Rank 39 (+13)
Vitality: 343 (+78 Class, +50 Title: Vitality fount)—Rank 42 (+16)
Agility: 323 (+100 Trait: Fates Agility, +27 Title: Tripled Class)—Rank 39 (+14)
Magic: 383 (+144 Class, -12 Trait: Fates Agility) —Rank 47 (+17)
Fate: 453 (+100 Trait: Fates Agility, +50 Title: Competition Shaker (I))
Mana Pool: Magic * 2 = 766 (+ 218 from rechargeable mana crystal if fully charged)Tom stared at the numbers blankly for a moment. When he returned to the real world, it was going to be a rush of power as he acclimatised to all those increases. Fifty levels at once was a massive change. Every single attribute had increased by at least fifty percent. Overall, he had leapt from rank twenty-six to forty-two in a single step. He was now comparable to the chosen and from what he understood the wador as well. As a show of force, it would be a good one even if he knew he would be the only individual in his team at that stage.
His experience was spent, but he had also got a flood of class skill points that he had to assign. To allow him to appoint them more proactively, he suppressed the automatic allocation of both types of class skill points. They had previously been assigned to passive skills, the summoner class to increase the levels of all relevant spells and the other the effectiveness of the Lightning Steps skill.
With a thought, the spells to summon a Greater Elemental were purchased and then he switched his remaining points into his new dump passive. Technically, he should have started assigning points to this when he last upgraded the class. That was when the new passive had first become available, but he had forgotten.
Class Passive: Extended Contract Durations
Efficiency of energy transfer is improved to extend the period an elemental is summoned for. Every point invested increases the duration by 0.4%. This is not compounding.
Over fifty points were dumped into it. The addition would only improve the contract length by twenty percent, but he figured with the amount of time he had elementals summoned that was a material boost.
Then his attention switched to the Lightning Tank Class. It had passed the important level threshold of thirty-two and as a result a number of new skills were available, but he was interested in only one of them.
Skill: Lightning Armour – Tier 5.
Your movements creates electricity around your body which is captured and fed into creating energy armour that can protect against a large variety of magical attacks and physical attacks with effectiveness linked to the conductivity of the item striking you.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
When fully charged, the skill can defend against up to four tier five magical attacks and a similar level of physical attacks.
The armour also has a passive effect of empowering Lightning Steps by the percentage that it is charged.
This skill can be toggled on and off and is incapable of differentiating between friends and foes.
Cost 32 skill points.
With a thought, he purchased it and the knowledge of how to use it was imprinted on his mind. The basic level was just a toggle on and off, but in the brief flash of information he could see extra options were available. Once he mastered it, he could choose whether the skill blocked the incoming blows or allowed them through, and he should eventually be able to use it like his own lightning storm. Letting tendrils of energy lash out to strike people standing up to ten metres away from him. Then, as the spell settled the understanding of how to trigger those extra functionalities faded from him. That extra context had only ever been intended to give him a taste. Advanced usage of the spell, just like most things in Existentia had to be earned.
It didn’t matter he had seen that it was possible and with the versatility he had extracted from Spark he was confident he would master that additional functionality.
Lightning Tank, was a great class having given him three amazing skills, but as far as he was aware, this was the last class skill he was likely to get from it. From now on it was only going to be a source of attribute points. Of course, he couldn’t say that for certain because he didn’t know what skills would be available at level a hundred twenty-eight if he raised the class that high. It was possible at that point there might be an ability that was too powerful to turn down. He had already checked what was coming at sixty-four and there was nothing interesting there.
He braced himself and returned to the real world, and the rush of extra attributes flowed through him. His fate pool expanded, his mana reserves increased, and his muscles both grew denser and looser at the same time while his skin hardened. It was a heady feeling, and he stayed perfectly still while the levels changed.
Then cautiously he looked around and could feel how everything felt slower as a result of his improvements. One of the chosen caught his eyes and Tom was able to directly compare their relativities. He beat it in three of the five attributes and was only slightly behind it in the others. At one point, they had been impossibly far ahead of the humans and now Tom matched them. Though he was not convinced that he could defeat them in a fight, even if theoretically they were now on par. The accuracy of their working exceeded what he could do, and he lacked any offensive weapons that could overwhelm their capability to shield.
Not that it mattered. They were allies.
He assessed his friends. Everlyn, Michael, and Bao were the weakest of those gathered. Bao, because of the debt she had gone into fighting the shadows, and the other two because of the diplomatic skills they had been forced to purchase in the last zone. They were all under rank thirty with almost everyone else clustered around thirty-five. Only Soetanto hadn’t reached that level. She had stalled just under rank thirty-four.
Like all the others, he did a few basic stretches to limber up and get used to what he had done to himself. As he did so, electricity sparked around his limbs. Not enough to stop a blow, but it contained the promise of extra protection. Tentatively, he ran at a distant wall and lengthened his stride to get the pace up. He jumped and dashed upward and easily reached three metres above the floor before he did a flip and landed effortlessly on his feet.
Lightning Steps had helped propel him the whole way, speeding him and granting explosive force with every step. Yet, it had felt different from how it usually did.. A large chunk of its crackling power had been drawn to him, clinging to his body rather than being expelled out into the external environment. Standard movements were sufficient to charge his new armour, but apparently those boosted by Lightning Steps were going to do even more. The presence of a natural synergy between Steps and Armour made a lot of sense to Tom, as they were core skills of the same class.
Visible sparks of electricity were now arcing across his skin. It was beautiful. For a moment, he focused on the new senses that had come with the ability. The armour was only five percent charged, but that was enough for a test.
“Thor,” he called out as he caught sight of the bigger man running through simple hammer swings forms. “Can you hit me lightly. No skills.”
He stopped moving and assessed Tom curiously. “That’s a new skill.”
“It is. I need it tested. Can you.” He patted his shoulder.
The big man grinned and without hesitation swung the weapon, aiming for the spot he had indicated.
Time slowed slightly.
Tom’s mind processed a variety of scenarios. It would be easy enough to lean backwards and twist, basically shift out of the way of the blow and take no damage. If he did that he would preserve the integrity of his shield. Other calculations flowed through him.
The best action for him was obvious, and that was to let the blow land.
He tensed in anticipation but held his position.
Boom!
Sound and intense light erupted from his shoulder. It should have affected him like a flash bang going off right next to his face. A normal reaction would have had him deafened and disorientated, but his new skill protected him. He was aware of the radiant burst, but not blinded by it. As for the concussive thunderclap it produced, he was warded from that as well. The extra functionality had not even been hinted at in the description, but it did more than just protect him from physical damage. If he was fighting in melee, it would act to distract and potentially stun his opponents.
The hammer bounced away and Thor cursed as in addition to the light and the sound some of the electricity sparked out to strike him directly.
The big man blinked rapidly and shook his head to try to shake off the aftereffects. “What sort of skills is that? And you didn’t you warn me?”
Tom hit him with a burst of remote healing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know or even suspect.”
Thor stopped blinking so quickly. “Thanks, that was too bright and loud.”
“That’s a hole in your defences that you should probably fix.” Tom told him. “There’ll be monsters out that will do that.”
“Yes, I agree, and it’s on the list. But it wasn’t that bad, more shocking than anything.” Thor chuckled at his weak pun. “If it happened for real, I could have fought through it.”
“But not if my spell’s side effects had been bigger. And trust me, it can be a lot more powerful than that.”
“Yes, I said I’ll fix it. Wait, it was unintended? Only a side effect,” he continued suddenly as Tom’s phrasing registered. “Then I guess that means the skill’s primary purpose was the recoil. So, your new skills, this light show is magical armour and not a flashy taunting ability?”
He nodded and checked the efficiency of it. His reserves had dropped three percent to leave only two remaining.
“Do you want it stressed further? I can hit you with skills active.”
Tom shook his head vigorously. “No, no. That’s not necessary I have a baseline on the abilities effectiveness. If you infuse your skill, then you hit like ten times harder. Right?”
“Depends on how many skills I layer, but anywhere from six to fifteen.”
He did the mathematics quickly. A hammer blow was not indicative of the normal strikes he would be hit with. It was metal, which was good but with a long wooden handle which was bad. He would be able to block sword blows far easier, but a monster’s claw would take more energy. It was however a baseline he could use for his estimates.
If he was fighting Thor, then stopping a full-blooded strike would require a third of his shields charge. That was significant.
For a skill that could recharge in thirty seconds, it was actually a lot of damage mitigation, but it had downsides to it. A wooden club would hardly be impeded and when it was charged the crackle of electricity would be a beacon to both sight and sound and the armour Tom realised would also zap anyone who brushed up against him until he improved his control of it significantly. With a thought, he toggled it off as it wasn’t needed, and he didn’t want to hit the surrounding people.
Unfortunately, the use of the skill was going to be restricted. There would be lots of monsters, those whose claws didn’t conduct electricity where using it wouldn’t be worthwhile, but there was also the rather large issue of the noise and sound it generated. In the majority of battlefields that he had fought in, the spectacle of those thunderous booms going off would have drawn unwanted attention. They would have drawn monsters from miles away. It was clear he would only be able to use it in places where the side effects would make no difference. Even advancing his mastery of the skill would not help. Such expertise would let it do a lot, but denying the physics of light and sound was not one of the improvements.
With nothing else to do, they waited for the points of power to switch to them all channelling wind. Half an hour later, they all felt the change when the air around them swirled subtly.
“Move now.” Everlyn ordered. They had an agreement for an hour of channelling, but it was better not to risk them cutting it off sooner and leaving them stranded.
They were already positioned to leave, arranged in lines with keys in hand. They jogged forward and when he got closer, his perception of the portal changed from a murky, uninviting colour to a welcoming clear blue.
He plunged through it and appeared in a new place. For better or worse, they would soon be out of this trial.
Tom breathed in fresh air that smelt of storms and lightning. Curiously, he looked out over the zone they had entered. The pictures from the tile did not do it justice. He stood upon a round, regularly, paved area that was barely fifty metres long. It had no features and no barriers to stop them from dropping off the edge, with the only variance in the even paving being an occasional slightly glowing stone in the very last row. Behind him in a massive wall that stretched both down, up and horizontally was dense packed cloud that radiated a feeling of denseness. It was impermeable. There would be no going through it, and it had a slight arc to it as it folded around him. Tom knew deep in his soul that the barrier encased the zone fully. The zone might be hundreds of kilometres wide but if he flew in a straight line in any direction eventually he would run into it.
With a force of will, he tore his eyes away from that impossibility and instead looked at the zone proper.
In front of them was a sky filled with islands. Some were no larger than the one they stood on, but others stretched kilometres from one edge to another. Both ruins and intact stone structures covered them along with verdant greenery. There was a tree that was a hundred metres tall but its branches spread out to cover an island that must have been over a kilometre wide.
The number of islands he could see was extraordinary. They floated at different heights with some moving up and others down. The underside of all the floating constructions looked like they rested upon perfectly formed two metre high disks created out of a magical orange metal. The juxtaposition of the high-tech underneaths and the medieval buildings on top was striking.
An extraordinary clash of sci-fi with classical fantasy. In all, it was beautiful to see.
Tom wasn’t sure how long he stared out at the myriad of unique biomes. They all had a circular footprint and were flat, but beyond that they varied. And while all the dwellings were constructed from similar yellow stone, each platform seemed to have been created for different sapient species. The height of the buildings and the varied size and shapes of the entry points made that clear.
There were hisses around him as people returned from checking their quest screens. No one gossiped about the details, as they had an agreement to wait until everyone was done, but it was clear that most of them wanted to discuss the particulars. He watched Toni until life flooded back into her and then he stepped into his own system room and read the words on the wall.
Prove your right to reach the final layer by completing the following.
Global Requirements - 3 of 4 Completed Unify the 4 Great Fractions – Incomplete Reclaim 8 Lesser Holds – Complete Crack 16 Devourer Spawn Points – Complete Eliminate at least 32 Devourer Champions - Complete
Personal Primary Quests - 0 of 2 Completed Claim an Island with a size greater than small Defeat 128 devourers
Personal Sub Quests – 0 of 4 Completed.
Tom absorbed the information and briefly checked on the sub quests. There were over twenty available and he could pick which of the ones he wanted to finish. Some of them, like crack a devourer spawn point had been crossed out already as presumably all of them had already been destroyed. Even with the four options that had been removed, there was a lot of choice and none of them seemed to be difficult to achieve. For example, there was a sub quest to kill two hundred and fifty-six devourers which was like the primary quest only requiring twice as many victims.
He sighed and returned to the real world.
He was sure Selena’s group or Phil when they linked with them would point out which ones to complete and even if they didn’t with almost three weeks in this zone Tom was certain they would finish sufficient sub quests to move on even if only to ease their boredom. They weren’t going to need to make a special effort.
“We’re here and the others should be on that platform,” Everlyn said quietly, pointing at an island that was larger than all the others. A massive temple that looked like it was constructed from marble instead of the usual sandstone was the only feature on it. “Twenty days and then we face the dragon. Before meeting the others, is there anything we need to discuss.”
“Yes, there is,” Clare volunteered. “Everyone needs to know about the title we get for a fourth class.”