12: Daring Adventures Give You Wings

Congratulations! You have reached level 5!

Congratulations! You have performed an aerial maneuver! As an activity linked to one of three Ascension paths, this has caused you to gain a Fae Race Ascension point!

Level 5 Ability Unlocks:

Spring Slash. Cost: 1 Ability Point

Gripping the hilt of your katana in just the right way and using an accompanying mental command, you can send a short-ranged blade of energy flying towards your opponent.

Level 5 Racial Ascension Unlocks:

(You may only unlock one option.)

Stubby Little Wings. Cost: 1 Fae Race Ascension point.

The beginnings of your foray into the skies. These wings are new growth, and will only aid you in staying aloft for a few extra seconds. Fear not, however, as they can be upgraded later.

Horn Nubs. Cost: 1 Fae Race Ascension point.

To the Fae, horns are conduits with which to increase their casting abilities. Much like various races will use staves or wands, the Fae have their horns. These ones are just the beginnings of your journey into the deep arcane secrets of your race.

Digitigrade Stance. Cost: 1 Fae Race Ascension point.

Your body begins to take on more animalistic traits, which one day may lead you down a road of shapeshifting. At this base level, you will only gain a slight increase in Athleticism and Dexterity.

Oh, wow! Racial ascension? Oh no, but I could only pick one of the three paths! Wings for like, aerial combat, horns for magical, and animal traits for shapeshifting? Damn, this was tough.

The idea of turning into animals sounded fun on paper, but I had a feeling that many of the forms it would have me taking wouldn’t be as fun as say, a wolf or a tiger. Turning into a bear… no thanks.

Horns sounded fun too, being a fae caster would probably give me some pretty insane abilities. However, I wasn’t really intending to become a caster, which left me with… wings.

It was always going to be my choice anyway, if I was honest. The ability to fly just sounded so damned amazing. I selected the option right then and there, and was surprised when the effect was immediate.

Out of my back, something fluttered and twirled. When I craned my neck to look, I saw a combined burst of sakura petals and shamrock four-leafed clovers that had puffed out into the air. Just visible over my back, two much larger pink petals could be seen, fluttering slightly when I willed it. Wait, were my wings… cherry blossom petals? Oh my goodness.

Experimentally, I hopped up into the air and beat my tiny wings, feeling my body hang in the air for a brief moment longer than I was used to. Ah, that was great! Even in their base form, I could think of some really fun uses for this! Hell, I could probably get my dash to be like twice as long simply by hopping mid-dash!

Grinning, I turned to my other level-up rewards. I had an ability point to spend, so I opened up my ability screen and took a look at my options. There was Pinprick Strike, Mind Flutter, and Spring Slash to choose from.

The ranged slashing attack called to me with a sweet siren’s song, but I knew I couldn’t take it just now. Sadly, I needed defensive options, of which I was sorely limited. In fact, there was only one option that was even close to being defensive, and that was Mind Flutter.

Selecting the ability, I pulled its description up and had another read of it.

Mind Flutter

A gesture-cast spell that causes a flickering illusory attack in the target’s vision, distracting them.

A distraction was probably the best I was going to get right now, so with a sad sigh, I picked it over the cool slashy attack.

The last thing I had to do was assign my two attribute points. One immediately went into constitution, because holy crap was I low on HP. Then, the next went into strength, putting me up to four in that stat. As a human, four would have been more than enough to allow me to get into smithing, but unfortunately, I was a four and a half foot tall fairy girl. Thus, it only got me up to what would be a baseline human level of strength.

Should be enough to start my smithing journey, though, so whatever. This masochist doesn’t mind a little hard work. I could take it. I had a job to do right then, though, so it was time to collect my loot and head into the homestead.

I just shoved everything into my inventory to deal with later, and turned for the buildings. I approached cautiously, sword ready for any attack that might come. I was already noticing some weaknesses with my build thus far, but the main one was how small I was. My reach was terrible, even with the katana. There was the ranged slash attack in my ability options as one option, but I had another idea to help.

After all, it made no sense to pursue smithing when I had an evolving sword like this. So, the plan was to craft myself a few more weapons, including a naginata. If I was going to start flying, I could see myself using it as a sort of lance or slashing weapon while I flew past my enemies.

The homestead was crawling with terrifying monstrosities, corrupted further than the ones I’d fought just now. The humans had all fused with their tools, which now took the place of hands and forearms.

Rather than let them rush me, I hopped and beat my tiny wings, skipping through the air and into a Scatter Dash with my sword outstretched. My sword was rammed up to the hilt inside a farmer with a hoe fused with his hand, damage numbers bursting out of his back in a spray of multicoloured gore.

Rather than try to pull the sword all the way out with brute force, I ducked under the zombie’s clumsy swing with his hoe and twisted both him and me. That brought his back, and the point of my sword, right into the path of another charging foe. The second corrupted farmer helped push my blade free, and I immediately imbued my sword with power and spun, casting Graceful spin.

I laughed in delight as two heads rolled, my enjoyment honing my reaction times into a razor thin edge that had me dodging backwards and out of the path of a pickaxe. My newly grown wings fluttered to the beat of a silent song, taking me clear out of the way of a clumsy follow-up strike from the third zombie farmer.

Raising my free hand slightly, I sighted my newest foe and flicked my fingers through the gesture to cast Mind Flutter. The corrupted man twitched and lunged to the side, attempting to strike something that simply didn’t exist. To me, it appeared as a slight green shimmer in the air, along with a single four-leafed clover hanging at its center. Deception, shamrock style!

With that opening, I jumped forward and extended myself into a lunge that took the thing in the throat. Taking me by surprise, a pulse of energy ran down the length of my body and out the tip of my sword. A blast of force tore the back of the zombie’s neck open, sending damage numbers in all directions.

Pinprick Strike Performed!

You have learned this ability without the use of an ability point. This ability will begin with a penalty to its damage until you practice and refine your technique.

“Fuck yeah!” I exclaimed, ducking a leaping corrupted dog. I’d just unlocked one of my abilities without needing to spend a point on it!

Round two? Practice? I think so!

Still ducked low, I turned on my heel and thrust my katana out again, allowing the barest tip of my sword to pierce the corrupted dog. How had I done it again? There’d be a sort of twist with the hilt, then push it forward and extend— 

It was like I’d just stabbed the dog with a shaped charge, the way it exploded into corrupted energy from the rear out. It was a bottle of water that had just been hit by a 30cal round or something.

The game stepped in quickly, respecting my gore settings by replacing all its internal organs with generic meat and damage numbers, but god, what a mess. A very impressive, glorious mess.

I didn’t have time to admire my handiwork, though, because another pair of farmers was coming at me. Parrying a scythe, I bounced and skipped backwards through the air, giving myself some breathing room to plan my next move. Of course, my next move was basically the same as all my other moves. Dash in and slash at them as fast as I could until they were dead.

Another two waves hit me in the courtyard of the farmstead, but I cut each one down with precision. They were the perfect type of enemy for me to fight. Slow moving, clumsy, and stupid. I figured I would have a much tougher time with an intelligent enemy who was capable of exploiting my weaknesses.

I took the time to loot the monsters and the houses, although the latter didn’t have much besides a bit of coin and some crafting materials. Once that was done, I just had the gully behind the farm to check out, which, hopefully, would contain the dark circle that was spreading the demonic corruption. Otherwise, I’d have to go back and tell the quest broker that a demonic acolyte had been through here.