68 Chapter Sixty-Eight – Companions at Nine (1/2)

I opened my eyes and grabbed Tremble, as I had so many times before.

I could still hear the skin-shredding howl of the wind, the rupturing ground, the blasts of flames, and the lashes of water both liquid and ice. Bloody axes sweeping by, the sky dark with hundreds of arrows, all aimed at me, a forest of spears, and quicklings dashing by at enhanced speed to shred me with their daggers.

No, I hadn't quite made it to the point where the erlking had to come down. The combination of elementals and quicklings trying to back-stab was a little much. The arrows were actually not a problem, unable to pierce my skin without a crit, and they couldn't crit with Stand there. They basically just poked at me annoyingly.

My bones weren't creaking as I sat up, but my blood was flowing measured and ready. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

”That was a lot of fighting,” Tremble said in a low voice, and Stand beat once in agreement. ”I thought we were fighting a lot before, but, wow. That whole sustainability thing you were talking about, that's really a thing…”

I lifted up Doc, still embedded in Stand, gleaming and ready to do its job. ”Casters have sustainability based on how much magic they have. Warriors have sustainability based on stamina and their pool of Health and Soak, their Hit Points. If you can recoup those two things as you go, a warrior can just go and go and go.”

”I had no idea Healing Edge would be so powerful,” Tremble sighed. ”I can see why you made Doc. I didn't think he was necessary, but without me being able to get Slot Akt, there wouldn't have been any real progress without him, would there?”

”Not really. We could have stockpiled Healing Potions and then splurged them in an occasional run, but it wouldn't have been sustainable. Constant healing potential is a must for the melee warrior on the go.”

”Is there any other kind of healing item out there we could acquire?” Tremble asked eagerly.

”As good as Doc? No. Per-use items are useless, since I can't activate them. There's a Ring out there, but you need twelve Ranks in Spellcraft to make one without huge penalties. There was only one guy with the Feat back in the game, and he never managed to make a second Ring after he made the very first one. If precedent held, it would regenerate a Hit Point per cycle, so about ten a minute, and could even regrow limbs. The main difference with Doc is that it worked in between fights, instead of just during them.”

”That is a lot less then Doc was giving you, yeah.” While Doc couldn't keep up with even one giant's blow landing per cycle, it had easily dealt with the AoE effect of the swarms and clusters of lesser creatures landing multiple blows, given how high I'd juiced my DR.

”Exactly. And you picked up on how the Curse spaced out the encounters to try and wear me out, right?”

”Yeah, squad after squad, open area, no down time to speak of. You couldn't re-engage Battle Focus or Wardancing. Heck, if we couldn't Shard them down and force them to keep attacking, that could have gone very badly.”

”I didn't much like it messing the tactics, but one of the points of all this fighting IS to make me better at fighting, so I actually didn't mind all that much. Stops it from being boring.”

”Dodging twelve-foot swords never really gets boring…” Tremble mused, and I had to smirk.

”True. Know what this means?” I moved an invisible lever in the air, and the air hummed around me as the largest Karma allocation yet was sucked away. Way less then I had built up, of course, but that was par for the course.

”You're hitting Nine!” he called out happily, and Stand beat three times in congratulations.

”Yeah, I am.” My soul was rumbling as more room opened inside, both expanding and condensing.

”Penultimate Badass!” Tremble crowed expectantly. ”This is a big Level, right?” He flicked up the Assay List of my Stats, zipped down to the Level Nine stuff that was waiting for me.

Damn, there was a lot of it.

Nine was the final Level for most Masteries, a Power Feat Level, and gave access to Tier Five Forms and Spells for the Powered. Getting Nine meant you were in the big leagues, lacking only some additional depth and force for advancing to Ten.

Not so much for Forsaken, who were kind of on a straighter curve, and didn't get the power to raise the dead, teleport, walking on air, manipulate things telekinetically, travel between planes, and so forth.

We just got bigger and more solid numbers. But given this was a numbers game, that was hardly a bad thing.

But there was some real power coming in this level. All the Stat Masteries would be maxed out, so +1 to each Stat as I flipped the levers while working through the Classes.

The Way Schools' Power Feats were coming due. Way of Water, Fire, Storm, Shadow and the rest, along with Roll With It. My base DR was going to top out at base 11/-, which was basically invulnerable as far as most normal people were concerned.