Healer Arc 2 -- Chapter 15

(As a heads-up, this is the final chapter of Healer Arc 2 Book 1 for my $2 Patrons until the book is completely written; at that point, I'll gradually release all the chapters leading up to its publication on Amazon.)

Chapter 15

“Are you sure this will work?” Thaden asked, glancing over at Sadia who was back in her giant squirrel form. 

She spread her hands to her sides and moved them up and down with her palm up, as if to say she wasn’t sure.  “Probably.  I always seemed to confuse pursuers in those movies you watched back on Earth, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.”

Currently, they were traveling down the river in relative comfort as he controlled all 8 of the Tentacled Stranglers of the Depths, with one of them holding 5 of the large appendages nestled together and flat against the surface, creating a relatively stable platform where Thaden and Sadia could sit or stand.  At the moment, Thaden was sitting down next to his companion, who was comfortably sitting on her back squirrel legs, and he could feel the rough, blubbery skin of the dark-grey tentacles beneath him.  They were firm yet squishy, with a texture that reminded him of very fine sandpaper – which explained how they were able to inflict so much damage on whatever they snatched up with their appendages.

Only one of the Stranglers was required to keep them afloat and moving down the river, using its other tentacles to literally carry itself across the riverbed like some freakish spider, so the others were available to act as defenders.  As they progressed eastward down the river, they encountered many more Gators, Piranha, and Swordfish, as well as a number of other varieties of aquatic monsters, though the greatest threat continued to be hostile Stranglers – but his own force of Stranglers was more than enough to handle everything they came across.  While his minions couldn’t actually attack and deal damage because they only had Dominate Spirit controlling them instead of Befriend Spirit, they could still grab ahold of everything in a defensive manner and then leach Health from them – which was more than enough to kill them after a while. 

They didn’t even stop while they picked up more of the monsters to leach Health, as they were able to snatch their meals along the way; once they were dead, he discovered that he could instruct his minions to extract loot for him since they were touching them, though most of the materials – and even some weapons and equipment that was suited for other Classes, and therefore useless to him – ended up getting dumped because he couldn’t hold them in his Inventory.  Still, his store of coins quickly increased, which was better than holding onto stuff that did him no good at the moment.

So, being safe from the dangers beneath the water of the river, Thaden had made the decision – with Sadia’s input – to travel along it instead of going to the other side and continuing through the forest like he had been doing.  She had thought that if anyone was chasing them, such as those people from the Local Legion, then they would have difficulty tracking them through the water.  He understood what she meant about making it harder to track through the water, but that typically referred to losing a scent if dogs were coming after someone – he had no idea if it would work on people who might have some sort of magical tracking method.  Nevertheless, it was still a good idea, and they could move fairly swiftly over the water, even when they had to slow down a little to kill the Tentacled Stranglers in their way.  Fortunately, the further east they went along the river, the fewer monsters in general that they encountered, until they were moving at a rapid pace without any major obstacles.

Thaden had decided to head downstream instead of toward Fanebridge, mainly because he didn’t want to head toward someplace anyone tracking him would likely figure he would go.  He might be a bit paranoid, as he didn’t even know if anyone actually was following him, but he would rather err on the side of caution than be caught out when he least expected it. 

“Well then, do you have this under control while I look at some things?” he asked.

She nodded instead of answering, and Thaden immediately dove into his message feed – and was rocked backwards at the sudden influx of information and energy that flowed into him from multiple sources, causing his body to feel like it was being ripped apart.  He was glad he was sitting down, because he nearly blacked-out from it all hitting him at the same time, but he’d fortunately had experience with such things in the past and was able to hold back the unconsciousness that threatened to drown him while he processed it all.  When he finally managed to recover from his body and mind being assaulted by some significant changes, he looked at what had caused it all.

You have slain a River Gator – Minimal – Level 10!

You have received 3.0 PICK!

PICK reward altered based on 1 party member(s) as well as Level disparity!

You have received 12.0 PICK!

Fortunate Catastrophe bonus trait activated!

You have received 15.6 PICK!

>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>> 

You have slain a Tentacled Strangler of the Depths – Medial – Level 50!

You have received 50.0 PICK!

PICK reward altered based on 1 party member(s) as well as Level disparity!

You have received 200.0 PICK!

Fortunate Catastrophe bonus trait activated!

You have received 260.0 PICK!

Spiritual Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 1,458!

>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>> 

Spiritual Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 1,612!

Support Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 31,524!

>>>>>>> 

>>>>>>> 

Support Spellcasting Competency has increased to Level 31,526!

Extractions complete!

Loot obtained:

5 Gold, 43 Silver, 13 Copper coins

(Other loot abandoned)

Congratulations for simultaneously controlling 150 or more targets while as a Support Class!

Achievement received: Why Aren’t You A Control Class? IV

Bonus reward: 900.0 PICK, +10 Personality

Fortunate Catastrophe bonus trait activated!

Bonus reward: 1,170.0 PICK, +13 Personality

World First Achievement: +50 Mentality, +100 Personality

Fortunate Catastrophe bonus trait activated!

World First Achievement: +65 Mentality, +130 Personality

Congratulations for simultaneously controlling 300 or more targets while as a Support Class!

Achievement received: Why Aren’t You A Control Class? V

Bonus reward: 9,000.0 PICK, +100 Mentality, +200 Personality

Fortunate Catastrophe bonus trait activated!

Bonus reward: 11,700.0 PICK, +130 Mentality, +260 Personality

World First Achievement: +30% success increase to any spell or ability where Personality reflects the outcome, +500 Personality

Fortunate Catastrophe bonus trait activated!

World First Achievement: +39% success increase to any spell or ability where Personality reflects the outcome, +650 Personality

Congratulations for solo slaying a monster 9 or more Levels above your own!

Achievement received: Lone Wolf II

Bonus reward: 90.0 PICK, +10 Strength

Fortunate Catastrophe bonus trait activated!

Bonus Reward: 117.0 PICK, +13 Strength

Congratulations for solo slaying a monster 27 or more Levels above your own!

Achievement received: Lone Wolf III

Bonus reward: 900.0 PICK, +50 Strength, +30 Celerity

Fortunate Catastrophe bonus trait activated!

Bonus reward: 1,170.0 PICK, +65 Strength, +39 Celerity

I can see why it almost knocked me out!  That’s… a lot.

Calculating it altogether, he received +78 to his Strength, +39 to Celerity, +208 to Mentality, and a whopping +1,040 to his Personality stat because of his Achievements – which was a huge change to his existing stats.  He also received another bonus trait from Why Aren’t You A Control Class? V that increased his chance of success for any spell or ability that relied on Personality by 39%, which – when coupled with his Ultimate Spiritual Domination Advancement of an 80% chance of success – made him pretty much unstoppable.  Of course, resistances and Level disparity still played a part in reducing his chances of success, even if it was over 100%, but for the most part he shouldn’t have to worry too much against targets within 50 Levels or so of his own. 

He thought it was slightly odd that he didn’t receive a World First Achievement for at least Lone Wolf III, given that it was for solo killing a monster 27 Levels above his own, but he supposed that the world was extremely big and there had to be some powerful individuals out there that could accomplish such a feat.  In fact, once he thought about it for a moment, he realized that it would be even more strange if someone hadn’t been able to do that before him.  Now, whether or not they reached the next tier of the Achievement was something else entirely, and he was looking forward to finding out.

As far as PICK went, while he’d gained quite a lot from his Achievements, most of his current total had come from killing so many monsters in the river with his minions.  With everything far above his Level, he received bonuses because he was by himself as well as from the Level disparity, which was then increased by his Class bonus trait – leaving him with just over 37,000 PICK.  It seemed like it should be more, but everything he’d seen so far pointed to the fact that he was receiving only about 90% of what he received on Tarth, so it was more like the equivalent of 370,000 PICK if he was still on Tarth – which would’ve been enough to shoot him all the way up to around Level 50 on Tarth…

...but on Plangea, the result was quite different.  When he calculated how far it would get him, he estimated that he could push one of his Classes up to Level 17, or bring them both up to Level 12 with a little bit leftover.  That’s just ridiculous.  It’s going to take me forever just to get back up to Level 100.  Then again, he had to admit that he wasn’t doing too bad for only having unlocked his second Class a couple of days ago, as he understood that it usually took most people a year or longer to get to Level 15 with their combat Class – and the time only increased after that.  Completing Quests from the Coalition helped to supplement the PICK earned from killing monsters, but it was still a grind for 99% of the population.

Before he spent his PICK, Thaden asked Sadia a question he’d been wondering about.

“You know about the Contenders being transferred here after their developmental world, correct?”

“Somewhat,” she replied quickly, “but not everything.  What do you want to know?”

He thought about how he wanted to phrase it.  “I understand from what you said earlier that highly evolved Classes are superior than non-evolved or even low-evolved Classes, but are there any disadvantages?”

“What do you—ah, I think I know what you’re asking,” she said, glancing at him and seeming to extricate what he was getting at from what he said.  “Yes, there are definitely some disadvantages, though most people don’t see them right away.  First, and this applies to you significantly because of your current Level, those who arrive here with evolved Classes from a developmental world do not unlock any additional spells or abilities in those Classes until they’ve exceeded the Level they managed to receive on the developmental world.  For you, that means you’ll have to Level-up Fortunate Catastrophe more than 550 times before you’d start to see some additional spells, so the only real reason to Level it up is for the extra stats it would give you.

“Secondly, and more importantly, you cannot evolve your Class again until the next threshold – which in your case would be Level 1,701, something which is a long way off.  For the other Humans that moved on from Tarth, I don’t believe any of them managed to reach Level 567 for their fourth tier evolution, so they would get there eventually, but I don’t have enough information to know how likely it is that they’d reach ever reach it.

“Does that answer your question?”

It does, unfortunately.  He nodded before he turned back to his PICK and his Classes.

If what Sadia said was true, and he had no reason to disbelieve her, then Leveling his Fortunate Catastrophe Class was currently only really good for the stats that it provided.  To be fair, the stat increases for each Level of his powerful Class was incredible, as it would give him +10 to Physicality, Celerity, and Mentality, as well at +50 to Fortuity for two-thirds of the Levels, but it would also take away 60 Personality for each 3 Levels he raised it.  With his recent bonuses from Achievements, that wasn’t that big of a deal – at least not yet – but it also wasn’t ideal for operating his other Class.  If it was just the stats he was considering, he’d push all of his PICK toward his Fortunate Catastrophe Class to get as strong as quickly as possible, but now that he knew he wouldn’t be getting any more spells from the Class for a long time, as well as no new Class evolutions, he had to consider some other options.

With his second Class, Novice Enthraller, the stat increases were pretty much pathetic compared to Fortunate Catastrophe – but its ability to still evolve as he reached certain Level thresholds, as well as obtaining additional spells that would expand his available repertoire, had a much greater weight to him at the moment.  While he’d made some significant progress toward being able to cast more of his spells with some additional Mentality, thanks to his recent Achievements, he was still a bit away from casting most of them.  He’d have to check to see if some of them were now low enough of a Mana cost to cast, but he was fairly certain that the most important of them would still be out of reach for quite a while.  For instance, while he now had around 2,500 Mana in his Mana pool, he thought that some of the least expensive spells were around 3,600 Mana, but something like Celestial Wild Health Leach (which was the main way he did damage to monsters back on Tarth) required over 30,000 Mana per cast.  His defensive spells were even more of a Mana hog, if he remembered correctly.

As a result of that understanding, he decided that it would be smarter to spend most of his PICK on his new Class.  That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to spend anything on Fortunate Catastrophe, because he still needed to keep working on building up his Mentality, at least, but he would rather acquire new spells and work toward evolving his new Class.

First, he 8,700 PICK into his Fortunate Catastrophe Class, bringing it to Level 9 and acquiring 2 additional spells selections as well as some much-needed stats:

Physicality +60

Celerity +60

Mentality +60

Personality -120

Fortuity +300

The stat increases (and decrease) were what he expected, and just as Sadia had told him, while he received more spell selections, there was absolutely no new spells for him to pick from.  With his remaining PICK, he spent 28,200 of it on Novice Enthraller, leaving him with just over 300 PICK to spend later, and he brought his newest Class up to Level 15.  While the stats he received couldn’t compare to his other Class, they were still welcome:

Physicality +8

Celerity +8

Mentality +24

Personality +36

But the most important part of Leveling up the new Class were the spells, of which he received another 4 spells selections – though he didn’t really need them, given that he had more spell selections than he knew what to do with them in his back pocket.  Needless to say, he picked up every single spell presented to him at Level 6, Level 9, and at Level 15; unfortunately, there was no new spell at Level 12.  In addition, now that he had more Mana at his disposal, he also upgraded his previous spells up to Lesser strength, improving them significantly.

Lesser [Weak] Enthrall (Channeled): Battle the spiritual will of a single target and temporarily control them through magical enthrallment; enthralled targets can only be used to passively defend or activate non-damaging abilities; can only Enthrall targets up to 4 [even or lower] Levels higher than caster.

Spiritual Will Battle Success Rate: (20% [10%] per 1 Personality and 1 Mentality)/target Level

Number of Targets: 1

Range: 60 [30] feet

Casting Time: Instant

Mana Cost: 12 Mana per attempt; 3 Mana per second (while channeled)

Lesser [Weak] Subjugation Aura (Reserved): Lesser [Weak] Subjugation Aura reduces the spiritual will of all hostile targets within range, making it easier to bend them to the caster’s will.

Spiritual Will Battle Success Rate Increase: 20% [10%]

Range: 60 [40] feet

Casting Time: Instant

Mana Cost: 35% [25%] of Mana pool

Lesser [Weak] Health Siphon (Single Cast): Lesser [Weak] Health Siphon transfers Health from a single caster-controlled target to a single secondary target; cannot siphon more than 60% [50%] of a caster-controlled target’s Health.

Siphon/Healing Amount: 60 [5] Health

Range: 60 [30] feet

Casting Time: 1 second

Mana Cost: 50 [10]

Lesser [Weak] Sacrificial Backlash Aura (Reserved): Whenever a target dies while still under your control and is within range of your Lesser [Weak] Sacrificial Backlash Aura, all other non-controlled hostile targets within range will receive a spiritual backlash stack that will reduce their stats while they remain in range of your Aura.  Stat reduction cannot surpass stack quantity limit (60% [50%]).

Stat Reduction (per stack): 6% [5%]

Stack Quantity Limit: 10

Range: 120 feet

Casting Time: Instant

Mana Cost: 30% [20%]

Lesser [Weak] Minion Regeneration (Single Cast): Grants a single controlled target continuous healing energy that replenishes Health for a limited time.

Healing Rate: 9 [2] Health every 5 seconds

Duration: 60 seconds

Range: 60 [30] feet

Casting Time: Instant

Mana Cost: 50 [10]

The biggest impact, as far as he was concerned, was with his Enthrall spell, which now allowed him to control targets up to 4 Levels higher than his own.  With his 200% bonus to spell efficiency when he focused on multiple targets, he calculated that instead of only Level 19 targets (since he was now Level 15), he would be able to control Level 57s – as long as they didn’t resist his spell.  That meant that the Tentacled Stranglers were now able to be controlled even without Dominate Spirit, which made it much safer to confront them without an army of minions protecting him.

In addition his previous Enthraller spells improving, the spells that had been altered from Fortunate Catastrophe – such as the aforementioned Dominate Spirit – had also improved when his Mentality stat shot up.  He estimated that once his Mana pool passed 2,000 Mana, the Mana cost for all of them bottomed out at 15% of his Mana pool, while the casting time, range, and effectiveness of the spells improved.  They were gradually returning to their original states as Celestial-strength spells, but were perhaps only about halfway there.  He had a feeling that once he passed another Mana threshold, perhaps around 5,000 or so, all of those spells would return to “normal,” though he was hoping that since they synergized with his new Class, they would maintain some sort of Mana cost discount.  Celestial Dominate Spirit, for instance, was originally a Single Cast spell instead of Reserved as it was at the moment, and it cost 90,000 Mana to cast it; he was hoping that it would stay as a Reserved spell, especially since it currently didn’t have a duration that would run out.

In all, he received 6 new spells from his Novice Enthraller Class Leveling-up, each of them seemingly exploring more aspects of his Class, and he picked up the Lesser-strength version of each of them since he now had the Mana to cast them.  He was looking forward to trying them out once he had the chance, but he barely had time to check his updated Character Report and his stats before his attention was pulled away once again.

Thaden

Primary Class – Fortunate Catastrophe

Primary Class Level – 9

Secondary Class – Novice Enthraller

Secondary Class Level – 15

Progressive Internal Combat Knowledge (PICK) – 306/2,500

Adventurer Coalition Rank: Platinum+ 705/810 RP

Health – 1,680/1,680

Mana – 3,370/3,370

Physicality – 168

Celerity – 129

Mentality – 337

Personality – 998

Fortuity – 412

Secondary Support Spells:

Lesser Health Siphon (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Minion Regeneration (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Health Reinforcement (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Life Cooperation (Reserved) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Explosive Recuperation (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot

Secondary Spiritual Spells:

Lesser Enthrall (Channeled) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Subjugation Aura (Reserved) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Sacrificial Backlash Aura (Reserved) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Spiritual Absorption (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Enthrallment Infection (Single Cast) – 1 Access Slot

Lesser Willful Concealment (Channeled) – 2 Access Slots

This time, he didn’t need Sadia to warn him that he needed to pay attention, because he was in between screens when he saw the large boat rowing up the river in the distance.

“So, what do we do about that?” he mumbled to himself in surprise, as he hadn’t expected any sort of transport to be moving along the river, given how it had been infested with monsters before he came.

“I don’t know, but you better think fast,” Sadia replied.  “If they haven’t seen us yet, they will soon – and I’m not sure how you’re going to explain the fact that we’re using a monster to transport us down the river.”

Thaden chuckled at the sight they had to present, as the tentacles were just barely above the surface of the water; to anyone a little further away and unable to see them, it probably looked like they were floating along on nothing.  However, his humor evaporated after a few seconds of contemplation about what they were going to do, as he had been caught off-guard by the appearance of other people.

Like she said, I better think of something soon.  Otherwise, this is going to be a very awkward conversation with an unknown number of individuals.