Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

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Boss Defeated

The announcement came immediately after an explosion that did, itself, happen about two seconds after the Boss spawned. It was immediately followed by an Achievement that didn’t stay put in the notification stack.

Achievement Unlocked: Dangerously Cheesy
Spawn kill an Arena Boss.
I suppose you think that was terribly clever.
Reward: 50 EXP, a bag of cheetos, Arena Bosses no longer have fixed spawn locations.

Level Up

Apparently, cheesy strategies that could be generalized too far, such as onto all Arena Bosses, would get slapped down. But since the Developer wasn’t doing anything about the Pit of Rat Roasting, situational cheese was evidently fine.

While waiting for Qhila to come down from the roof, he put the stat points into WIS as planned. When she did, he gestured at the still open window. “So, the Developer took exception to blowing up bosses immediately when they show up.”

She read the window and grimaced as she got to the end. Understandably so, given that they had unwittingly traded away a long term advantage for a short term gain. Even if they had never used it for a one shot trap, knowing exactly where the Boss would spawn would still have been useful.

No sense crying over spilt milk though, and it wasn’t really something they could do anything about now. Better to turn his attention somewhere positive. “That aside, wanna go find out if we need to do an extra clear or not?”

The point of the question was simple. She was 252 EXP from getting her second Level of the evening. That was roughly what killing the Boss would net her, if John had estimated correctly, but he wasn’t sure if it was a bit more or a bit less than was currently awaiting them in the Boss Chest. Obviously, if it was a bit too little, they were poking enough rats to make up the difference before calling it a day.

Unsurprisingly, even indirect mention of her Leveling Up wiped the frown off the kobold’s face. They walked to the Boss Chest at what was more of a jogging pace for her. True to form it had appeared where the Boss died, which is to say it was blocking the hole that the giant rat had crawled out of.

The loot was somewhat underwhelming, consisting of an essence, a bone and another bundle of cash. That didn’t really matter, though, because the EXP was still enough for Qhila to hit Level 15.

Grinding goal for the day completed, they set about taking down the traps. It was, Qhila explained, more delicate work than putting them up most of the time. Even with him helping, they were close to midnight when it was all packed up again.

They spent the last handful minutes making a midnight snack of the chicken tenders he got from an Achievement on Monday. Qhila was, once again, seated in his lap, and while he wasn’t sure that had actually happened enough to be considered a habit yet, it had quickly become his favorite habit anyway. At precisely midnight, the Quest window popped up.

The window was immediately followed up with another.

Achievement Unlocked: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Level someone up past the limit of their natural potential.
Naturally, you took one of the few shortcuts bigger than boosting a mundane…
Reward: 2 Lesser Rare Candy

‘Thank you for putting me on that shortcut,’ John retorted with a mental smirk. After all, if the Developer hadn’t bumped him into that barrier at the recycling center, he and Qhila might have never met. Turning his attention to the kobold, he couldn’t help but ask, “So, how does it feel to be the world’s strongest Kobold?”

To his surprise, she shook her head. “I’m not. What you have given me today is uniquely precious, but the dragon’s share of both descriptors lie in that it is a true gift. Not a loan or a shackle. The same cannot be said of the other ways to exceed the limits of my race. But I am still a ways from matching a Herald. Or a Divine Champion, should there be a god somewhere that has deigned to take a kobold for such.”

“I think you mentioned Divine Champions before?”

“When I was trying to explain the Abyss and you asked about the gods.” She nodded. “I’m not exactly an expert on these matters, but the gods and goddesses of the Abyss can mantle a chosen mortal in a fragment of their godhead and in so doing bestow a limited ability to wield the Faith they hold dominion over. The price of such borrowed might is that the Champion falls entirely into the power of the divinity. The deity can see all their champion perceives, sense their every thought and feeling, compel action or inaction, and even decree their champion’s demise without effort spent.”

Qhila’s tone was grim as she explained the downsides, which was very understandable given her own experience of having been a dragon’s thrall. To John it was… well, it was a terrifying amount of control to hand off to someone else, but on the other hand it was more or less what he would expect to be the strings attached to being named foremost champion of a god. And as best he could recall, it wasn’t that much more than what gods could do to any mortal in the version of pagan mythologies known to the mundane world anyway.

“Are the Wardens of the Golden Rose Divine Champions?”

Qhila’s expression turned into a now familiar frown, indicating that she was dissatisfied with the answer she could give him. “That is debated. Apparently, they don’t follow the rules that are believed to apply to Champions, though I don’t know the details of those rules or how they’re broken. Except for one thing that doesn’t quite fit… As far as I know, if the Wardens are Champions, the Lady is the only deity, other than the Old Gods that evaded the God Eater’s hunger, to have kept more than one at a time.”

“Old Gods? God Eater?” This sounded interesting. And also potentially terrifying.

“Romulus the God Eater was the most powerful demigod since the fall of Atlantis, possibly the most powerful one ever. He was able to claim some of a god’s power for himself when he slew them, and to hold the power of multiple gods at the same time. He died when he attempted to slay Bahamut, leading to the collapse of his empire.” All of that, she said with the tone of someone repeating a lesson that they hadn’t been particularly interested in.

Then she added with a more conversational tone, “I think the mundane part of the Roman empire managed to meander along for another century or something before falling apart… In any case, the Old Gods are those gods who were divine while he still lived but whom he did not slay. Their divinity tends to be broader in scope than that of younger deities.”

So Romulus was kind of a cross between Kratos and Julius Caesar, it seemed. John wondered if he would be that kind of powerful by Level 500 or if Romulus was more in near-impossible optional endgame superboss territory. The latter was probably the more reasonable assumption. In either case, it wasn’t really immediately important. Which was probably true for the Herald thing as well, but he was still curious enough to ask, “Okay. And what’s a Herald then? ‘Cause I assume it’s not just the guy who announces when an important person is about to enter the room.”

“It’s not.” She shook her head, then took a moment to think before explaining, “I think the simple way of explaining it is that it is an inferior imitation of a Divine Champion’s mantle, using mana instead of Faith. Though, uh, most creatures that use Heralding will probably take offense to that description. That would be powerful non-deity immortals, like old True Dragons, Demons, Fae lords, and a few demigods.

“The power granted is under more limitations, some of which are set by the independent power of the Herald rather than their master. Additionally, the power that the master gains over their Herald is not as effortless and inexorable as that of a deity over their Champion. The one firm advantage that Heralding has is that the number of Heralds a single master can have is limited only by how much of their power they are willing to partition off. Some High Dragons have kept as much as two dozen kobold Dragonheralds.”

Heralds were more or less like D&D warlocks, it seemed. “So, once you’ve got some more Levels, people will assume that you’re a Herald of some sort, then?”

She nodded. “When it becomes noticeable, people will likely assume either that or that someone has invested an immense amount of resources into transmuting me stronger. Which would arguably be true.”

“I’m not really investing any resources though. Other than time, I guess, but you’re helping me get stronger as much as I’m helping you, so I don’t really think that counts…”

“That’s not… Whatever EXP is outside of the vernacular of your Ability, what you can do with it makes it an extremely valuable resource.”

“Ah, I guess that makes sense.” He shrugged. “Not like I can Level anyone else up with your EXP though…”

On the topic of resources that could Level people up, however, he did just get something that was probably along those lines if the name was any indication. So he brought up the item description.

That was… between how many Levels he had already gotten today and the ‘lesser’ prefix, he had kind of suspected already that he wouldn’t be able to use them himself. Despite trying not to, however, he had still hoped that either he or Qhila could benefit. Enough so to feel a slight sting of disappointment, at least. But this was clearly still a pretty big deal.

The question was who to give them to. His first line of thought was his family, especially his grandparents given the likely Abyssal burglar. But since they were mundane, there was no guarantee this would actually improve something that would help keep them safe. The best bet there was probably hoping to enhance some of what Sam learned as a young man in Vietnam, but if John’s memory served, his grandpa was already just a bit too high level to benefit from these.

He could still give them to his mom or grandma just to make their lives easier, though. With their respective Levels, it would presumably make a pretty significant impact. And particularly his mom deserved better than life had given her since- for the last several years.

But that brought to mind someone else who had gotten an undeservedly raw deal from life. Someone who was severely under Leveled compared to basically everything. Who was, sooner or later, going to have to deal with the Abyss even if she was at least not going to have to deal with that alone.

And just like that, the decision was made. He would ask Lord Chastain-Wessel’s permission to give these to Christie. If he got a no, he would give them to Brenda instead.

Qhila hadn’t said anything to this, but she didn’t seem like she was collecting her thoughts to speak either. If anything, there seemed to be a hint of solemnity to her expression that he took to mean that she had decided that she shouldn’t weigh in on this unless asked. And since he had already come to a decision, he didn’t ask. Instead, he moved on to his fresh wealth of stat points.

His current plan had been to take all stats, or at least all stats except LIB, up to 25 so he could have a look at the Perk offerings and round out shortcomings, but it occurred to him that keeping at it might be neglecting his main stat a bit too much. He wasn’t really looking to make a jack-of-all-trades build after all.

With that consideration in mind, he decided that going forward he’d put at least 1 point in INT every Level, but otherwise stay the course for now. That made for 3 each in INT, WIS and STR, bringing the latter two to 25 and leaving him with 6 points and a decision between AGI and CHA.

Previously, he had been leaning away from CHA for reasons of it having fairly little direct impact on his ability to survive in the Abyss. At this point, however, he was feeling pretty good about his chances in a fight against a rat ogre, as long as he could keep it from being a pure melee slugfest.

Meanwhile, getting to the point of being safe in a fight with other Abyssal people was likely a more long term project. Especially if Marisa was ‘nothing special’ at Level 27. Double especially if it was a matter of a hostile group, rather than an individual. The shortest path to a measure of safety there was likely in allies, be it informal ones, through joining a guild, or through founding one.

For that, investing in CHA was unquestionably an advantage. Especially because he suspected that Pheromone Aura was more of a supplement to, rather than substitute for, social competence. Presenting that reasoning to Qhila saw her agree, so he committed and moved on to the comparatively more exciting matter of the Level 15 Perk Point options.

From the General Perks, Minimap remained the standout option for reasons of immediate applicability. From Wisdom, Danger Sense seemed like the best pick. Between the dangers of the Abyss and his own barriers, it was guaranteed to come in handy on a regular basis.

Hawkeye had no combat relevance since he didn’t use any weapons with enough range to make it matter, and for any other situation he felt like it wasn’t enough of an improvement over keeping binoculars in his inventory.

Meditation was more interesting, but still felt like a poor fit. The main thing he wanted mana regeneration for at the moment was producing more alchemist’s fire in the background. This would let him increase the production rate at the cost of being unable to do anything else useful in the meanwhile. He wasn’t sure if that trade was worth it at all, let alone worth the opportunity cost, except when a pointless class was preventing him from doing something useful anyway. If he had had enough mana expenses during barrier fights for this to help him recover and run another faster, it would’ve been a lot nicer.

From Strength, Runner’s Legs was the stand out choice. His first order strategy was about kiting, so movement speed was important. Armor of Brawn was for either a STR based build or to justify a bit of offense on a tank, and the inventory booster was still not an immediate concern.

“Between Minimap, Danger Sense and Runner’s Legs, what do you think would be best?”

“I am not really sure what Minimap does,” she replied after a moment, “but between the other two, Danger Sense can get you running sooner when you need to, while Runner’s Legs can’t help you spot dangers.”

That brought the choice down to Minimap versus Danger Sense. As a teamwork improving measure, the former somewhat suffered under there only being the two of them for now. But they were on a trajectory to finding more allies and either founding or joining a guild. And having more people to help watch each other’s backs would also lessen the need for Danger Sense.

“That is a very good point… but I think the Minimap might take the first spot after all.”

He made the selection, pinning Accessorize, at which point Qhila studied a point in space with narrowed eyes that was probably where a Minimap was just added to her HUD. After a moment, he explained, “it’ll move with you when you do, and change orientation as well, so the direction you’re facing will correspond to up.”

“Convenient,” she commented, her tone a mix of drowsy and approving, but didn’t say anything further.