Chapter 81: Upgrades and Danger

Tess sat down on a rock, instructed Silky and Isabella to keep an eye out for any monsters, just in case, and began looking through her options.

The first thing she took note of was that she had yet another slot for an attendant, putting her up to four, but she wasn’t quite sure she wanted to make another couple at that moment. She had yet to find anything as…low visibility as Silky and Isabella, and she was leveling up just fast enough that she felt that, unless she used a rather powerful core as a base, whatever she made would become quickly become obsolete and she’d have to upgrade it soon after.

She was running into that problem with Silky and Isabella again, too. She was of half a mind to just keep them stored within her core storage, where they’d be a little safer than they would hiding around her, but they provided just enough utility that Tess felt it was worth keeping them outside.

So, she wrote that particular avenue off, and decided to revisit it once she hit level fifty and leveling slowed down once again. Instead, it was time to look at her Attributes. Fortunately, she had a core from the boss of the savage dungeon, and while she had given it a quick once-over after finishing the dungeon, the excitement with Maven had put truly sitting down and tinkering with it out of her mind, and she had only hastily put one of its abilities into her list. So, she pulled up the core and the derived Skills she had received from it and looked through them again, dismissing any Attributes that had to do with shape or body composition.

Cold Affinity:

Strengthens the effect of Cold Magic cast by the creature by 50%

Mad Dash:

Allows the creature to instantly stop moving or instantly accelerate to top speed while preventing the normal side effects of such drastic changes in speed. If the user chooses to accelerate in this fashion, they are rendered unable to turn until they stop.

Monstrous Strength:

Lifts the usual restrictions tying physical condition to the Power stat, effectively allowing the creature to fight at full strength regardless of damage taken or the overall health of their body. Prevents the normal negative effects that would come from fighting while heavily wounded, sick, malnourished, or the like. Increases Power by 50%.

One With the Wind and Cold:

Provides immunity to wind and cold damage from most sources. Additionally grants the creature complete resistance to temperatures warmer than -100°C, and partial resistance up to -200°C. Prevents wind from pushing or otherwise affecting the user unless they wish it.

Skills:

Aura of Terror

Rarity: Mythical

Type: Passive

Description:

You project an aura of fear, causing any enemy that is lower leveled than you that comes within 30 feet to be afflicted with Terror for 10 seconds. Provides immunity to fear effects.

You’ll probably still appear in their nightmares for weeks to come.

Baleful Bound:

Rarity: Mythical

Type: Passive

Description:

For five seconds after hitting their top speed, the user deals triple damage on all attacks.

Speed begets strength.

Glutton’s Reward

Rarity: Mythical

Type: Passive

Description:

Allows the user to regenerate missing HP, Mana, and Stamina by consuming food at the cost of the food not filling their stomach. HP, Mana, and Stamina restored is directly proportional to how much the food would fill.

They ate until long past the point their body should have given out, then ate some more.

Invoke the Mountains

Rarity: Mythical

Type: Active

Description:

You may spend 250 Mana to call the fury of the mountains upon the area. For ten minutes, the area in a half-mile radius around you becomes filled with the cold, wind, and feeling of hunger. This chills the area to -20°C, creates a 65 km/h wind in the direction of your choosing, and makes all within feel as if they have not eaten in three days. The chill and wind from this effect cannot be mitigated by any source save One With the Wind and Cold.

If you wish to stand atop the world, then you must withstand the dangers that accompany it.

Derived Skills:

Aura of Fear

Rarity: Legendary

Type: Passive

Description:

You project an aura of fear, causing any enemy that is lower leveled than you that comes within 30 feet to be afflicted with Frightened for 10 seconds at a 50% rate. Provides immunity to fear effects.

You’ll probably still appear in their nightmares for weeks to come.

Speed Demon:

Rarity: Legendary

Type: Passive

Description:

For three seconds after hitting their top speed, the user’s attacks deal double damage.

Watch out for cops.

Taste Test

Rarity: Legendary

Type: Passive

Description:

Allows the user to regenerate missing HP, Mana, and Stamina by consuming food at the cost of the food not filling their stomach. HP, Mana, and Stamina restored is proportional to how much the food would fill.

It may not look that different, but it’s less efficient than its counterpart, promise.

Call Upon the Mountains

Rarity: Legendary

Type: Active

Description:

You may spend 250 Mana to call the spirit of the mountains upon you and your enemies. For ten minutes, the area in a 250 meter radius around you becomes filled with the cold, wind, and feeling of hunger. This chills the area to 0°C, creates a 25 km/h wind in the direction of your choosing, and makes targets feel as if they have not eaten in a day. The chill and wind from this effect cannot be mitigated by any source save One With the Wind and Cold.

The mountains care not for those upon them. If they cannot withstand the mountains, they deserve their fate.

Fortunately, much of this core could safely be ignored. While many of its effects were powerful, they also came with downsides or were simply not worth her time – Invoke the Mountains and its derived Skill affected everything in the area, including Tess and her allies, which made it less than ideal for her purposes.

Glutton’s Reward was tempting, but its effect was, ultimately, niche. Taste Test would serve her almost as well in most purposes, so the slot was better spent elsewhere. Aura of Terror was likewise a Skill that was overshadowed by its derived version; the Frightened condition would upgrade to Terror thanks to Artisanal Afflictions, and while that meant she was missing out on Terror becoming Frozen With Fear, that was a minor thing. And, finally, she didn’t use cold damage enough for Cold Affinity to be worth it.

That just left the rest. Baleful Bound was in a rather interesting spot; its effect was enormous, but effectively required her to use Mad Dash if she wanted to get the most out of it. She wasn’t opposed to that, but that meant it effectively cost two slots to use. Alternatively, she could make do with Speed Demon, but the difference between double and triple damage was enough to make her weigh her options.

To make matters worse, Monstrous Strength and One With the Wind and Cold simply seemed too good to pass up. Monstrous Strength was, effectively, a fifty percent damage increase before all other bonuses. The issue with a Skill like Baleful Bound was that it was, well, a Skill; it “only” stacked additively with all other passive Skills, meaning that outside of a vacuum, it wouldn’t actually triple her damage.

She hadn’t run the numbers in a bit, but she seemed to recall having double, maybe triple damage from all her passive Skills combined, so in practice, Baleful Bound would “just” double her damage, while the fifty percent boost from Monstrous Strength applied directly to her Power and stacked multiplicatively with basically everything.

That was if she put it in a regular slot, anyway. During a particularly boring stretch of the hoverer ride over, she had taken a few hours to check what all her Attributes did in user fundamental slots, and while most didn’t really provide enough of a bonus to be worth considering over the two she already had, Monstrous Strength had given her pause.

Which…well, really meant that it was the only one that would even go in that slot anyway, so she locked it in, transferring it to her user fundamental slot and confirming the effect.

Monstrous Strength (User Fundamental):

The user’s body continues operating at perfect strength, regardless of the state it is in, and all negative effects from pushing it while it is in a heavily wounded state (such as attempting to sprint with broken legs) are prevented. Pain is not prevented, but the user may choose to dull their sense of pain somewhat. Furthermore, the user’s Power is increased by 100%.

One With the Wind and Cold was the Attribute she had put into her slot she had received from level twenty-nine, replacing a more…filler Attribute she had had in there before. That was…almost certainly not going to be replaced, so she really only had one more slot to work with.

She scrolled through her Attributes and realized, to her surprise, that she still had one of the Skills she had obtained from Isabella in there, Piercing Wail. She hadn’t used that in…months, it seemed. After reviewing its effect once more, she decided that it wasn’t worth the slot she had put it in and took it out in favor of Mad Dash before filling her last slot with Baleful Bound.

Her work done, she stood back up and walked over to the group. “Finished.” She said. “I’ll tell you more about it later if you want, but just know I should be a fair bit stronger now, since levels that are multiples of ten are power spikes for Monster Breeder.”

“We finished a few minutes ago and were just cleaning up.” Ker said. “You never want to have the scent of blood on you while you’re traveling in the wild; there’s no telling what might come after you. Usually it’s nothing, but on the rare occasion that aggressive monsters with particularly strong senses of smell are in the area, you’ll be glad you cleaned yourself up.”

“And don’t stay at the site of a kill for long if you can help it.” Alice added. “Which means we should leave as soon as possible.”

“Sorry.” Tess said. “I would have waited if I was thinking more.”

“No.” Alice said firmly. “You made the right call. You spent maybe five minutes, ten tops, sorting out your Attributes, and if the power spike is as good as what you’re saying, then that time is absolutely worth it. We really only had two or three minutes of waiting, so it’s not like it was delaying us for long either.”

“One of the things doubled my Power stat.” Tess said. “That alone is worth it, right?”

Alice gave her a flat look. “Yes, that’s worth it.” She said. “That’s absurd. How did you…”

“Something from the boss of that dungeon we went to.” Tess said. “Boosted in effect because of putting it in a user fundamental slot. It also lets me ignore pain and fight at full strength regardless of the state my body is in without further damaging it, but I don’t know how much that’s really gonna come up.”

“What happens if your arm gets cut off or something?” Ellie asked. “How can you fight at full strength then?”

Dungeons: That’s assuming the arm can be fully severed. It can’t, not anymore.

Tess: Wait, how does that work? What if someone like…pins me down and really tries to saw it off?

Dungeons: Their attempts will do damage to you as if they have fully severed the limb, but a few bits of sinew, muscle, and bone will remain attached, which will let you use your arm as normal. It will, however, be excruciatingly painful, and you’ll be feeling that even through Monstrous Strength, so I would suggest not letting that happen.

“Apparently, it can’t.” Tess said, for the benefit of The Rumors. “It’ll just hurt really badly, and a few bits of arm will stay attached so I can still use it.”

Alice sighed. “Do I even want to know what kind of monsters you three fought in there?”

“Confidential, sorry.” Tess said. “Anyway, you were saying we should get moving?”

“Right, right.” Alice said. “Tess, do you mind holding the mapper again?”

“That’s fine.” Tess said. “Who has it right now?”

“I do.” Maven said, holding out the orb for Tess to take.

“Thanks, Maven.” Tess said, grabbing the mapper.

With that, the group set off once again in search of new sights. And, for the next few hours, it went about the same as it had previously; slow walking to allow the mapper to create its map, with the occasional monster spotted.

And then, finally, they found something. After cresting a particularly tall hill, they were able to catch sight of a ravine that looked to be half a mile or so away, a large gash in the terrain that spread out to the edges of their line of sight, disappearing behind yet more hills.

Alice’s eyes lit up. “Jackpot!” She exclaimed. “Alright you three, one thing to keep in mind is that dungeons tend to be in notable locations such as this.” She instructed. “So, whenever some part of the landscape stands out, it’s a good idea to go check it out.”

“Even more important is to remember caution.” Jin advised. “If there truly is a dungeon in this ravine, it has probably grown out of control due to no one having cleared it before. I’m sure Maven, as the crown princess of Paumen–”

“Former crown princess.” Maven said.

“Former crown princess.” Jin corrected himself. “She’s probably received some sort of training or accounts on what dungeons that have gone feral are like, but Ellie and Tess probably have no experience with it, right? Unless your duties have taken you to one while we weren’t here.”

“No.” Tess said. “They haven’t, and I don’t have any experience, so I…assume Ellie doesn’t either?”

Ellie nodded in agreement, so Jin continued. “Feral dungeons have this nasty tendency to spew their monsters out into the surrounding area. The monsters don’t tend to leave the vicinity of the dungeon unless there’s a truly huge number of them outside of the dungeon already, but what that means is that there’s a good chance that ravine is crawling with monsters. So, we’ll be on high alert the entire time we’re in there.”

Life: If things look hairy, we will Descend. However, during our Descent, your safety will be our first priority; we are only safely able to inhabit your bodies for a couple of minutes, so we will prioritize fleeing, first and foremost. Let The Rumors know of this, but also let them know that, if it comes down to it, we will leave them to die. Their bodies can be recovered and revived. The three of you are not so easy.

“Um…” Ellie began. “Life says that, if things get too bad, the gods will Descend so the three of us can run. But…he also wants you to know that the gods will focus entirely on us running away. They might help if there’s an opportunity, but if push comes to shove, they’ll leave you to die. He says your bodies can be recovered and revived, but…well, Appointed have to jump through a few more hoops.”

Jin nodded gravely. “I expected as much. To be blunt, fleeing is probably the best thing you could do to help us in an emergency. If we come under sustained assault from a horde of monsters, your Descents would likely end before it well and truly ends. The three of us came here knowing the risk, and we’re prepared to do what needs to be done.”

“But hopefully it won’t come to that.” Ker said, cracking a smile in an obvious attempt to lighten the mood. “If we come across monsters that are a bit too high leveled or a bit too numerous for comfort, we’ll flee. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.”

“That’s enough sitting and talking about it.” Alice said. “Just remember that you three are to obey all of our orders at all times while in the canyon. Do not question it, just do it; even a moment of hesitation could make all the difference.”

“We understand.” Maven said. “Please, lead the way.”

Fighterman481

I also planned to actually get into the ravine itself this chapter, but...hashing out upgrades took longer than I had expected it to, so...whatever.

Speaking of, we finally got to see the stuff from the boss of the savage dungeon! I do want to say that, yes, its abilities are way stronger than normal, they're supposed to be, it's a raid boss. But I also wanted to say that One With the Wind and Cold in particular is...not as strong as it seems. 

Obviously it's still leaps and bounds stronger than, say, Fire immunity (which Tess got from the Spitfire Phoenix core), but lumping wind and cold damage immunities together really isn't that much stronger than just cold immunity. Wind damage isn't particularly common, so the secondary effect of being able to ignore the wind is the big part of that. 

And, while Invoke the Mountains seems kinda...garbage, that's because...okay, well it is garbage, but only in the context of Tess using it. Obviously the boss didn't have allies to worry about and was immune to the wind and cold from the ability, but the hunger thing is actually a benefit to that specific boss. It's designed to feast on the corpses of the things it kills, so it can regen mid-fight, and that ability keeps it from feeling full regardless of how much it has eaten.

Anyway, I've been talking for much too long, next time we're gonna explore the ravine, so look forward to it!

And, as always, thanks for reading!