Ti continued to pass, and pressure continued to mount on our settlent.
On a personal note, at least, things had gotten better over ti. The first big upgrade I had gained was that I reached the point where I could build my eleventh rune. This was, at least in theory, a major upgrade to my capabilities, and one that I could even take with to the Market after my death, thanks to the {Brand of Miria} that Felix had given . It also ca with a free chunk of Achievent.
Power: Form Your eleventh Rune out of Absorption Essence
Achievent 1650
1,650 Achievent was less than I had been hoping for, but it was far from bad. I was still quite happy with the boost to my overall pool of Achievent, and especially the fact that I could take this rune back with .
Of course, while this was, in theory, a notable upgrade… that was mostly in theory. The tenth, eleventh, and twelfth runes of the rune System all had similar functions. They upgraded the user’s compatibility with a certain weapon, and enhanced the user’s ability to utilize that weapon. My tenth rune, which I had acquired near the end of last world, had allowed to ‘bond’ with a certain weapon type, and then do a variety of odd things with it, such as seeing out of my weapon, hearing out of it, enhancing the weapon, and generally just improving the ways I could use my chosen weapon.
Since I had still been routinely using {Breath of the Storm} at the ti, I had improved my compatibility with umbrellas. Then, after we returned to the Market, I started hoarding piles of consumable items, since I figured we would need it to survive our fight for more lives, and then in this life, I had leaned very hard into my role as a mage and a healer over everything else.
My eleventh rune, as far as I could tell, expanded my talent with umbrellas. Out of sheer curiosity, I made a very low quality umbrella with a carving knife during so of my off ti and then tried fighting with it, and I very rapidly realized that I was learning things faster and more efficiently than ever before. I had a sneaking suspicion that this was how Sallia felt when she picked up a weapon - as if the moves were just… blurring together into my muscle mory monts after trying a move. I could learn things faster, retain them better, and repeat them with less thought re minutes after trying sothing out.
The other function that my eleventh rune had was that it allowed to bond with one specific umbrella, which would, in turn, allow to teleport that umbrella back to my hand, so long as it was within a certain distance of . I imagined this would be quite useful if I wanted to use my umbrella as a throwing weapon, or my umbrella got knocked out of my hand.
The problem was that this still wasn’t very useful for .
The problem, of course, was that I had found such little use for weaponry in this world that I hadn’t even bothered to replace {Breath of the Storm} after handing it off to Felix. I suspected this was going to be true in future worlds, too. I was investing so much more ti and effort into my magic and support skills that weapon skills would probably never catch up… and if they were never going to catch up, I wasn’t that willing to waste glut penalty or ti on them. Thus, the eleventh rune might as well have not existed as far as my strength went.
This made really hope for so kind of Ability evolution to change the situation. One of my previous ability evolutions had totally changed the function of the first six runes in my rune magic System, so I already knew that so evolutions could warp what runes did and how they worked. I hoped to find another ability evolution that turned all of my other runes into sothing a bit more mage or support oriented - or perhaps sothing that leaned further into my more eldritch side. In any case, my rune abilities clearly needed so kind of upgrade to make the later runes relevant to .
While my growth in runes was sowhat disappointing when it ca to results, my healing and buffing abilities had seen a massive upgrade.
The first step towards this massive growth spike was when I hit level 80.
You have leveled up!
Frost Void Mage has advanced from level 77 to level 80!
12 Free Attribute Points (X4)
9 Sense (X4)
9 Mind (X4)
9 Vitality (X4)
20 Mana (X4)
Power: you have leveled up a (3-facet) Compound Spark (X4)
Achievent 1200 (X4)
Naturally, this triggered a new feat selection. Once I saw my new feat, I couldn’t help but let out a triumphant cackle, because I had finally gotten sothing absolutely terrifying out of this world’s System. Even better, it was sothing I could take with back to the Market.
Level 80 Feat Choice (Pick 1)
Strength of the Void
Devours multiple skills in order to create one new, unified skill.
Skills consud:
Third Mysterious Rune Ability (Spatial Protection)
Born of Winter’s Hold (Second Spark Skill Reward)
Light of Healing (Granted by level 40 Perk)
Frozen Void (Granted by level 70 Perk)
Instead, you will gain a new Skill: Songs of the Void.
Effect:
This Skill can affect up to 10 people at once.
All people affected by this gain a massive stat boost (3.375X boost) to ALL non-mana attributes.
(Market note: This will not impact any essence stat, but will affect all physical and ntal stats).
This buff effect costs very little mana or (unknown_mana_type) to maintain, but people influenced by it must not be more than 1 kiloter away from you.
People influenced by this skill gain the ability to perform short bursts of teleportation at the cost of their own mana reserves. They also restrict all spatially related abilities perford by entities they feel genuine hostility to, so long as those entities are within five ters.
(Market Note: the local System’s description implies that only mana can be used to fuel this ability, but this is incorrect. Any of the four essence types can be used by companions or allies to fuel short-burst teleportation, and you may pay any type of essence to maintain the buff granted by this ability).
This Skill will be folded into your third Mysterious rune, replacing its original ability.
Normally, I would not be able to take this back with to the Market, of course… but Felix’s {Brand of Miria} let erase my original third rune ability and replace it with the new, enhanced version. Which ant that in all future worlds, I could now grant my friends a full 3-grade buff at almost no essence cost, along with a few minor spatial boosts.
This skill, of course, was completely insane. It was a huge payoff for all of the other skills I had collected and failed to level up during our ti in this world. I had been very busy working with my Market abilities during the great migration and the struggles to establish our new colony. I had originally intended to find so ti to finally grind up all of these skills once things settled down, since I knew I could take Skills back to the Market with , but with how desperate things had gotten, I had been forced to rely on my strongest abilities over and over again to keep us alive. Sadly, that ant that the Skills from this world’s local System had fallen to the wayside - because I didn’t have the ti to work on them when every mont felt like a crisis. Therefore, I was happy to fold them all into my third rune ability, especially since I could still take this upgrade with .
After that, naturally, I picked up my fifth Spark. I had already consud my first three sparks to make my compound spark… so I was now picking up a totally new Spark. Since I had mostly been focusing on souls and healing recently, I ended up going for a healing spark this ti.
You have leveled up!
Acolyte of Healing has advanced from level 80 to level 81!
20 Free Attribute Points
20 Vitality
25 Mana
Power: you have leveled up your Fifth Spark
Achievent 1000
In total, this ant I had gained another 7450 Achievent from these three upgrades, bringing from 324,724 Achievent to 332,174 Achievent.
Interestingly enough, this Spark only gave 65 total stats, which was actually FEWER than I had gotten from my compound spark. I had kind of expected that though, since I had already known that compound sparks were worse than basic ones, and I currently had no basic sparks to blend together. As always, I also got a new Skill from the local System when I acquired my new Class.
This one was called {Light of Healing}, and as usual, started at Tier 0. I got the feeling that it was sohow bouncing off of my eldritch side, to enhance my healing abilities and extend them into more soul-related healing - which was a good thing, because I was already doing an awful lot of healing. Unlike my other abilities, I suspected I had a real chance of developing this Skill, since I was already healing people pretty frequently. Over the past few months, injuries had beco more and more common as the pressure on our settlent grew.
My friends had also grown notably over the past two months. Our settlent had begun to give warriors so level of individual rewards for each fog bank we killed, and I had traded most of mine with the fog pillar. In exchange, the fog pillar had helped Anise develop a new line of fog spells.
Anise could now create a blanket of fog that concealed us exceptionally well, and she could also replicate the summoning abilities of the fog banks we had been fighting. Thanks to her ability to level up her spells through repeated use and Achievent investnt, Anise had actually beco a terrifyingly powerful summoner. She was one of the reasons our casualties over the months hadn’t been higher - she was capable of creating a large army of fog monsters to protect the kids anyti a fog monster was nearby. Since the fog monsters lacked any direct offensive ans, she was surprisingly good at holding them off long enough for one of the heavy hitters to reinforce whatever area was being attacked.
Felix and the other craftsn had also been working on finding a way to stick the extinguish-based spells on sothing other than the kind of wood we had been using for swords so far, with unfortunately little luck. However, Felix had at least gotten a few more of his skills ready for when we returned to the market.
Sallia, of course, had been part of the front line swordsn who killed fog banks. She had experienced a similar level of growth to when it ca to this world’s local levelling System, and she had also rebuild her runes up to the ninth rune. This ti, due to her ability evolution from last world, she wouldn’t lose her runes, either.
However, while things were going great for the four of us on a personal growth level, on a settlent level, things were getting bad. The fog banks had started to inflict more and more casualties on both the children and the defenders, and people were growing more worried and stressed out with every passing day. Over the past two months, we had lost about fifty people. Our original population of around 1,000 people had dropped to about 950. About two thirds of those deaths had co from two unfortunate incidents, where fog banks had managed to sneak past the front line fighters and get at the children before their screams alerted people that they needed to be rescued. However, front line fighters, and even two of the people who were wielding soul-severing swords, had died.
After two months of gradual wear and tear, it was becoming very clear that this couldn’t go on. The night marking our second month into this new, hellish routine, Veritum called everyone to yet another village eting. As I walked towards the eting, I felt a mixture of anxiety and relief. Veritum must have called us together because he had so kind of plan. I suspected it would be a desperate one, because if there was an easy solution to our problems, we would have done it already.
But it was also clear that this couldn’t go on. Sothing needed to change, fast, before we went extinct. This was our final chance to turn the tides before things passed beyond recovery. I just hoped that Veritum had a way to turn the tides.
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