Chapter 161 – A Class to Work On

AG. Second of Two. If you haven't read the first chapter today then go back and read it.

Prepared as he was ever going to be, he checked the first question that he needed to ask.

Does the attached list of classes contain a class that, if I obtain it will be within ten percent effectiveness of the best class that I’m likely to identify before I turn fifteen?

Then there were the definitions of each of those keywords which would force the oracle question to answer what he really wanted.

Effectiveness was defined around helping humanity avoid the consequences of placing below fourth place. 

Likely was a ninety-nine percent chance in the ordinary course of events he would both discover and recognise the appropriateness of the class without wasting anymore than sixteen oracle questions.

He couldn’t see any fault in the question and he had reviewed the text over five times already. With a deep breath, he asked it.

“Yes.”

The single word response from the room sent a shiver through him.

One of these classes was the one he needed to strive to make his own. At a minimum, it would be legendary and it was more than twice as good as the expert class he had gotten in his first life in Existentia.

That first question was key. Now it was just a routine matter of mathematics. Quietly, he numbered them from one to sixteen and then halved the possibilities, question by question as the counter on his wall ticked down.

With only the number one on the wall, he was down to his final choice.

Unbidden, he smiled. He still had his reservations about it, but mythic Magical Tier Empowerment was one of the two that remained and he guessed if that was chosen that he could live with it. The other was a later addition. A soul based legendary that theoretically looked good, but the requirements he would need to meet were brutal.

He nodded to himself.

He guessed he was getting a magical class. It made sense, as it was the most powerful of the options he had included in the bundle and thanks to his first question, he could take it and know that there was nothing materially better that he had missed. Surprisingly, the idea of specialising in magic wasn’t as horrifying as he thought it would be.

From the moment he had seen this class he had a love, hate relationship with it.

Loved what it gave him but hated that gaining it would waste the domain and the bonus that choice had been going to earn with his fourth class.

But on a fundamental level, it suited him. He had always been about getting the best out of his tier zero spells, and that’s exactly what this class would facilitate. The normal weak spells would start to hit like a truck and would become absolutely deadly especially with the range increase. He had imagined him leaning into his spear skills and eliminating high value targets, but if saving humanity involved him becoming a one-man army, that’s what he would do.

“Is the best class out of options seven and fifteen number seven?”

Once more, the word best had extra definitions associated with it. Specificity with oracle questions was vital if you wanted to be able to trust the results..

“No.”

It was a simple answer but not the one he was expecting.

A legendary class and not the mythic one and not even a particularly strong one as far as he could tell.

His eyes leapt to the implications of what this oracle choice meant.

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself as he stared at the prerequisites he had to gain before he turned fifteen. “That’s…” his shoulder slumped. “That’s… going to make an interesting few years.”

Prerequisites

·        An Expert or better class–Not Met.

·        A tier 4 skill or above in each of Spear, Soul, Spatial and Precognition. At least three must be created from scratch—Not Met.

·        A tier 4 spell or above in each of Soul, Spatial and Precognition. All three must be created from scratch—Not Met.

·        A tier 4 (equivalent) trait that enhances Spear, Soul, Spatial and Precognition—Not Met. At least three must be created from scratch (Met).   

·        Spear mastery with at least four supporting skills and based on skills is the preferred weapon.

·        Has killed using soul attacks.

·        Has survived lethal attacks with the use of precognition.

·        Has engrained teleportation as part of fighting style—Not Met.

·        Have 70 affinity in Soul, Spatial and Precognition—Not Met.

·        Have at least one 90+ affinity in one of Soul, Spatial or Precognition.

A lot could be unpacked from reading between the lines of what criteria he had met and what he hadn’t along with the fact he was even eligible for this path. For example, it had been as good as confirmed that after the divine fruit or the proportion of it that he could afford that Soul and Spatial affinities would cross the seventy threshold. He had suspected that to be the case, but he hadn’t known for certain.

The trait classification also helpfully informed him the Fateful Earth Body was doing a lot of heavy lifting and apparently counted as a supporting trait for spear mastery. 

That was interesting, but he focused on the outcomes he hadn’t met. He needed to acquire a tier four trait that would enhance his soul magic. A quick check of the experience shop told him that buying one within the first couple of months of turning fifteen was not going to be an option, as the cost was well over a million.

That meant either Dimitri would have to come through with something or Known Heretic would have to do a lot of work to get someone to gift him a tier three trait stone that could be upgraded to the relevant strength.

Then there was imbedding teleportation as part of his fighting style. He was surprised he was failing this requirement as he was consistently triggering Fateful Earth Body in combat. For whatever reason, the system didn’t consider what he was doing to be sufficient to be called incorporating. Internally, he shrugged. It might be tricky to achieve, but leaning more heavily on the physics bending properties of the trait to teleport might be sufficient to achieve the outcome without him acquiring more skills. Alternatively, if at fourteen he still hadn’t met the requirement, he would need to get a blink style skill to fuse with his spear forms. After that extensive practice both in the divine champion’s duels and the lairs would get him over the line, he was certain of it. .

Finally, there were the skills and spells he had to create from scratch. Three spells in each of soul, precognition and spatial. Potentially, there was synergy there. He required a blink spell for his combat forms and potentially that need could be met by this spell. While creating three spells that complex would be challenging, if he pivoted immediately, he was hopeful he could manage to create all of them. A year and a bit per tier four spell was definitely achievable.

The skills were more problematic. He had self created both spear and precognition tier two skills so he could extend them, especially with the synergy between rewards from the Divine’s Champion trial and April. Buying a tier four blueprint, so to speak, would only cost him fifty or so coins. That was three weeks of dueling at his current fifty percent win rate or a similar amount of time crafting disks to sell, so he was not worried about affording them.

Soul was more complicated.

Currently, he did not meet the requirements because the abilities Mr Cricket had helped him develop were not considered to be created from scratch. That meant he had to create an entirely new skill or evolve bulwark to a higher level. Something he suspected he would have to do without the use of a potion. Alternatively, he could make a new skill but given he had Stun, Scalpel and Rend already it would be difficult as most attacking skills would overlap with one of those three which would mean he would be more likely to evolve one of them to do a little more than to gain a completely new skill.

He winced at the conclusion that he had subconsciously formed. An open competitor would have to help. Continuous, varied soul attacks should allow him to evolve bulwark to the level he needed.

He shook his head and reviewed his questions, hoping for an out. Subjecting himself to years of soul torture along with everything else he would need to achieve was intimidating. Unfortunately, there was no doubt this was the class that he had to dedicate everything toward gaining. He shuddered when thinking about the effort and focus he was going to need to meet those requirements in time.

As for the class, Tom glanced at the wall, and it displayed the pertinent information. He could see why it was good, but there was something that made him feel it was underwhelming.

Class: Phantom Soul Spearman. Rarity-Legendary – Cost. 112,000

This class harnesses the power of the spear, soul, spatial and precognition to destroy your enemies.

On acquisition gain the following.

·        Enhance all soul attacks and defences by 20%

·        Soul Spear: Passive ability that makes your spear attacks do soul damage. Sometimes enemies will die via blood loss other times by soul injury.  This ability can be toggled on and off.

·        Soul Awareness: Gain an innate understanding of the power of souls around you.

·        8 class skill points.

Per level Gain

·        Enhance all soul attacks and defences by 0.5%

·        Plus 2 to all attributes and 2 free attribute points

·        1 class skill point

At its base, this class was ultimately closer to the vanilla legendary spearman class than the others he had investigated.

It was about empowering the four class areas, Spear, Soul, Spatial and Precognition and there were over a thousand places he could spend his skill points.

A full ten different boosts could be added to his Soul Spear ability, including increased penetration, enhanced soul leakage from wounds, extended range, echo strike and all of them had either eight or sixteen levels associated with them.

Passive: Enhanced Soul Leakage. (0 of 16)

Enhances soul spear to leave a large wound that will leak soul energy depending on the location of up to 16% of initial damage.

Each subsequent level added a further sixteen percent to damage. If he maxed it out, the upgrades represented a almost four times boost to damage. 

All the soul passives had a similar level of impact and with it being possible to invest a hundred class skills into Soul Spear, if he wanted to fully maxed out the ability, most creatures around his rank would basically have their soul shredded to oblivion with a single blow. It was like the Power Strike in the legendary spearman class, but instead of being limited to twenty skill points he could throw over a hundred into it. That and unfortunately, at least in raw damage calculations, each class skill point was a little less powerful.

For that class, the Power Strike boosts had been twenty-five percent, while this class only offered up to sixteen percent.

In raw power, it was not quite as strong as the other legendary class, but the fact it did damage to the soul was important.

Most people could do nothing against soul damage. They couldn’t heal it, and their healing treasures wouldn’t work to protect them. That made the up to sixteen percent of this class much more powerful than the flat twenty-five percent offered by the other legendary class. Against truly powerful opponents, the fight was rarely ended with a single blow and if they survived the mundane attack, they could heal themselves back to full strength. Against a soul wound, at least for most, there would be no recovery and they could even lose access to critical skills mid battle. 

He shivered as he imagined just how powerfully this ability would scale. Maybe this class was not that weak. The more he considered its benefits the stronger it felt. It was just the seemingly impossible requirements that had been initially putting him off. Once he had some levels, every spear strike would be devastating, and the best thing was it wasn’t like he would be pigeonholed in that role. There were other valuable abilities to invest in like.

Skill: Soul Shock (0 of 16)

Briefly prevent every enemy caught in the abilities target area from using any skills. Effectiveness is driven by soul strength.

It sounded like a devastating debuff, and it wasn’t the only one.

Skill: Soul Fear (0 of 4)

Project fear at a level beyond biology to incapacitate most opponents.

Then there were the boosts to the other aspects of the class. They were as equally diverse and amazing like.

Passive Skill: Faster Teleportation (0 of 16)

Reduce cooldowns and resource use of all teleportation spells by 6%. Each level gives a flat bonus.

That might not seem like much until you put sixteen class points into it and suddenly all your teleportation spells only cost four percent of what they used to. A spell that used to cost twenty-five  mana would only cost one and skills would have similar reductions. Ones that would have been a strain to use in combat four times in a row would be able to be chained a hundred times before it started to become difficult.

There were so many similar powerful boosts that he wasn’t sure what he would spend all of his class skill point on. Especially if he was switching to a mythical class at level thirty two when he got an extra class slot, something he was going to use an oracle question to check if he should be pursuing. It wasn’t a guarantee that it would be the best strategy as most mythical classes even once he had a legendary class and so could mitigate one of the exotic requirements rather than an effective level barrier would still take decades of focused effort to gain the accolades necessary to obtain it. It could very well be that this class was one that would be his primary class until he had hundreds of levels. 

For a moment, he shut his eyes as he thought about his new class and the extra power that a legendary class possessed versus an expert one. It was an immense gulf, but one, given what he would have to achieve to receive it, would be earned. He would get it, and he would grow and eventually he would become unstoppable.