So here is a list of what I want you to work on while I’m gone,” I said, sliding a paper across the table to Constans. She took the paper absently as she stuffed her face with whatever food the inn was serving for dinner tonight.
“First,” I said, repeating what was on the list just to make sure she understood everything, “charter a boat between here and the main part of the city so you and others you may hire can get across easier. I’m going to craft you a revolver like I use, and I want you to start getting used to hunting during the day to get yourself experience.”
“Yes!” she yelled, spitting some of her food on the table in front of her. Several patrons looked over in disgust, and I despaired that the tutor was never going to be able to teach her proper table manners.
“I know you’re excited,” I said, leaning back in my chair as far as I could go. “You just have to promise to be extremely safe, to never get captured or reveal the revolver, and to always head back to Sycae hours before it’s even close to getting dark. Can you do that?”
“Yesh,” she said, biting into her food once again. “I promish.”
“If you follow those directions,” I told her, “when I get back, I have a very powerful class that utilizes the revolver in unique ways.”
Her eyes gleamed as she stared at me in excitement, but she managed to restrain herself from yelling or spitting this time. Maybe the very obvious way I was leaning backward had reminded her to not yell when she was eating.
“Next,” I said, “you’re going to start putting to use what you have learned about this area and what you know about Perama.”
I flipped the paper around so she could read it and drew attention to the next area I had written. She had been learning to read from the tutor and had made decent progress, considering she had been completely illiterate before.
“First, we need to do some recruiting now that we have the money and resources to pay people. Our top priority is finding a team of people who can fight for us, about four or five of them. They don’t have to have any classes or experience, but I want loyal people. If we give them classes and help them level, I want to know they will stick with us.”
I actually preferred people with no classes, since they would appreciate what we gave them more than those who had already earned themselves a class or two.
“Can you find us some people like that? I’m thinking more people from Perama that you might know and were in similar situations to yours.”
“Hmm,” Constans said, her face scrunching up in thought. “I think I can do that. I have some ideas.”
“They need to be trustworthy. I don’t want any criminals or people who will take what we give them and disappear.”
“I have an idea of who to approach. They are trustworthy people.”
“Good,” I responded, “once you have them, we’ll bring them over here and set them up in the inn. I want you to start working them into your training. Pay your weapons trainer to work with them. See if the tutor will take them on as well. If not, find a tutor for them. Offer to pay each person you recruit a salary on a trial basis, and if they work out, we will offer them classes and experience. You should be able to afford all this, and if you need more while I’m gone, you can always go scavenging yourself once you have your revolver.
“After that, we need two established groups that are willing to work for us, but they don’t need to be as loyal. They just need to be willing to work for us and be willing to take risks. We need a group of miners and a group of sailors. I figure Sycae might have people who still know how to do that kind of work around here somewhere, hopefully. Use what you have learned of the city to find some people that will work.”
“Are you going to tell me what you need them for? Am I going to tell them? They’ll be more likely to join if they know what we want to hire them for.”
“We are going to go on a little expedition,” I replied, “once I get back. I will tell them the details myself. Just identify the miners and sailors who might be willing to work for us for now and we’ll approach them together when I return. We don’t need to hire them just yet. We’ll start with the loyal group and get them working together with you while I’m gone.”
“Wow, okay,” she said, finishing her meal. “That is a lot.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I know it is, but we are facing some pressure from the priests and the Emperor’s people, so we need to move up our timeline a bit. I will be gone a few months, I think, to give things a chance to settle down around here. Otherwise, I might get tracked back to you and you could get caught up in my problems before you’re ready.”
“A few months?” she said, surprised. “Where are you going for that long? I didn’t think there was anywhere to go anymore!”
“I got a lead on something that might help me,” I told her, leaving it vague. “I’ll be fine. I just want you to focus on building a team of people we can trust. Continue with your training and work to gain experience safely across the water while you build our team.”
“Will you train me in your super-secret class before you go?” she asked, a look of eager anticipation on her face.
“Yes,” I said, “after you hire a boat and go hunting on your own first. Once I know you can be responsible and not get killed or caught by our enemies, I’ll teach you.”
“Yes!” she said, grinning. This time, thankfully, she didn’t have food in her mouth.
We talked a bit more about how her training had been going and then she turned in for the night. I retired to my room but didn’t fall asleep. Instead, I began crafting a revolver and ammunition for Constans and reviewing my plans for the future.
The next day, Constans went to find a boat to hire and then do her training and schooling while I relaxed at the inn and let my nanobots work on finalizing the items for her. Romanus and Valens weren’t around, but I hoped they would return soon because I had an offer for them as well.
Once Constans returned in the afternoon, her revolver was ready. I showed her the different types of ammunition and presented her with a holster and ammunition satchels on a belt that was fitted for her size. They would be a bit heavy, but she would grow into them. After that, I told her to practice drawing and loading over and over as I watched and made sure she was doing it correctly.
I only gave her Penetration Bullets and Explosive Bullets to start. I figured those were already dangerous enough for a teenager to be using; there was no reason to give her more bullets to worry about right now. I just had to hope the maturity and dedication I had seen from her so far would keep her safe.
I made her practice for the next two days, which made her stir-crazy, but I had to be sure she could use everything safely. Once I was confident she knew the basics, we left for the docks. Once we got there, I saw that Constans had not just hired a boat but someone to row us across the water as well.
“How did you work out this deal?” I asked her as we watched the man she had hired get his boat ready for us.
“It was basically the same price to just keep him on retainer,” she said, “and easier since we don’t have to worry about storage or if someone was using the boat when we wanted to rent it.”
“Good idea,” I said, impressed by her planning.
We rode over together and then spent the day using our Stealth skill to hunt monsters. We didn’t encounter any other people, thankfully, and no real surprises either. Constans was a good hunter, using her Stealth to get a first shot at whatever we found, often killing it immediately. Packs of creatures made her nervous, but she was able to keep her nerves about her and reload when needed. There were a few times that if she had fumbled her reload, she might have been seriously injured, but she kept her cool and handled the situation perfectly.
“This thing is powerful,” she said, eyeing the gun in her hand after she had just finished killing a small pack of feral bees the size of her own head. She had rapidly dumped her Penetration Bullets and reloaded with Explosive Bullets to kill them all before they could get close to her.
“It is,” I replied, “which is why we need to keep it secret and make sure that nobody gets ahold of it. It would be easy for them to figure out how to make more once they had the concept in mind. I’m sharing it with you because I trust you, so be very careful.”
She smiled as she picked up the bullets she had dropped earlier. It was a bit of a bloodthirsty smile. She was happy at being trusted with such a secret and clearly enjoying her newfound deadliness. I smiled back.
“Now,” I told her, “I’m not sure how this works, but I want to share my class with you. It’s called Gunslinger. It uses the gun as its primary weapon but also focuses on tricks and luck to survive. I believe the class is based on a time I come from, when people used these weapons to fight, duel each other, and survive in a dangerous environment. That is the mythology of it, at least. The reality was a lot more complicated, but you don’t need to know all that.”
We found a safe building to sit in and I continued to tell her about the class. After explaining the concept, the mythology behind the class, and the style of combat, I felt an announcement overtake me.
You have initiated a class transfer. Do you wish to share the Gunslinger class with this person? I thought yes and felt something pass between Constans and me. She sat in front of me, staring into space for a minute, and then gave me a big smile.
“Wow,” she said, a bit breathless in excitement, “this is the coolest thing ever!”
I laughed at her unbridled joy. It was undiminished by what she had gone through to survive in this dying city. It was great to see her so happy.
“Now you have a real reason to gather experience,” I told her.
We finished up for the day and I took care of some chores to prepare for my trip. I bought a bigger backpack and stocked it with a sleeping roll, an oiled blanket I could string up to protect myself from rain, rope and string, an extra canteen, and plenty of nonperishable food that should last a normal person several weeks.
I also collected several large stones for a new project of mine. I carved and imbued them each with the Concealment rune that was on my cloak, and I tried to find a way to link them together to create a field that could hide me when I camped. Unfortunately, I was missing something; I could only make the rune cover the rock itself. It wouldn’t stretch beyond to connect with another rock to form a field, as I had hoped. I had thought the shield that protected the priests’ enclave might use enchantments in this way, but it was clear I would need to spend more time experimenting before I could figure it out.
From crafting a new revolver and the ammunition for Constans, my Enchanter class leveled again, granting me another point of memory and bringing the class up to level 5. Romanus and Valens didn’t return to the city in time for me to let them know I was leaving, but I had no reason to delay any longer, so I set out the next morning.
Constans and I said our goodbyes as she left to do her daily routine. I packed my backpack and double-checked my revolver, sword, armor, and cloak to make sure everything was in perfect shape.
After that, I left Sycae and hiked north for about an hour before activating my Trickster’s Dash to throw myself upward into the air. I activated it again at the peak of my dash, launching myself forward several hundred feet in a matter of seconds. I activated it again and again, flying forward, covering miles in just a few minutes.
I became physically exhausted after just ten continuous uses of the skill and had to land to catch my breath and recover. Even with my attributes and my Steadfast Endurance, which reduced the fatigue from activating a skill multiple times in a row, the drain was still significant. I fell into a routine of using the skill to travel as far as I could, and then I walked briskly on the ground for an hour to recover before dashing into the air and using the skill again.
Flying through the air helped me scout the land in front of me and avoid as many monsters as possible. I could see large creatures below me as I flew. Instead of swarms of smaller creatures, the land outside of the city seemed to be dominated by gargantuan monsters that jealously guarded their territory. I saw slugs the size of buses, insect-like creatures as tall as trees, even a giant that stood twenty or twenty-five feet tall and carried a massive tree as a weapon.
When I walked, I huddled in my cloak and avoided drawing any attention to myself. I had a rough idea of where I was going, but even with the help of my Trickster’s Dash, it would take me weeks to get there. I needed to be careful and learn how to move safely in the world outside of the city.
I rarely camped since I didn’t need much sleep. If I got tired, I scouted out a safe area and curled up in my cloak during the day for an hour of rest. The monsters outside the city were active during both the day and night cycles and seemed to spend most of their time hunting or guarding their territory, but if I managed to find an out-of-the-way place to sleep, I was rarely disturbed.
I learned that smaller monsters did exist outside the city, but most of them were so busy hiding from the behemoths that they weren’t easy to spot from the air. A rough ecosystem seemed to have developed in this monster-infested world, the smaller monsters surviving on whatever scraps they could scavenge, the larger monsters eating the smaller monsters and each other, and the largest monsters eating anything and everything that dared to enter their territory. It was a harsh reality, but in many ways, it was reminiscent of my world. The only difference was that instead of the predators being a pack of wolves or a coyote, it was a colossal centipede that was big enough to knock over a building.
Winter was in full swing as I traveled. When I was dashing through the air, it wasn’t much of a problem since my skill let me ignore the wind that blew around me, but when I landed, I often had to trek through snow, which slowed me down significantly. The land around me had once been fairly settled; the remnants of farms and small towns dotted the countryside. I also encountered a few medium-sized cities with thick walls, but they were also empty and abandoned when I stopped to explore them.
It was the fourth day of traveling like this when I came across another regional quest.
Regional Quest Discovered: Down with the Queen.
You have discovered a regional quest. Complete this quest to receive additional rewards. Quest requirements: You must kill the queen of the ant hive to stop them from ravaging this part of the world. Reward: +2 to an attribute of your choice, 2500 experience, the skill Ant’s Strength.
I was soaring through the air when the quest alert entered my mind, so I looked around and saw a large mound of earth to my left. From here, I could see a number of ants climbing up and down the mound of dirt, many of them shoveling snow off the mound to keep it clean. I dashed to the ground, alighting gently back onto the earth some distance from the hive. I took a few moments to catch my breath, eat a snack, and drink some water.
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Once I was feeling rested, I crept through the lightly wooded area toward the ant mound. Snow covered the ground in places, but I stepped carefully to avoid making too much noise. I saw several ants between the trees around me. Most of them ignored me, but when I got too close to one, I saw its antennae begin to twitch, and it turned to observe me as I passed. I had been moving quietly and using my Stealth skill, but the ant seemed to have no problem detecting me.
I quickly walked past the ant that had detected me, but it somehow managed to silently alert the other ants to my presence. All of the nearby ants began to turn toward me, their antennae twitching frantically in my direction and their large mandibles clacking threateningly.
The ants came up to about mid-chest on me, making them the size of small ponies from my world. Their mandibles were longer than my arms and looked capable of applying significant crushing strength to anything they caught. I dashed past the closest ants, not wanting to get bogged down in a fight this far away from the nest if I could help it.
Unfortunately, when I cleared the forest and saw the nest itself, I realized it was too late for me to do this quest through stealth. The ant hive was boiling with ants, all of them alerted to the presence of an intruder. Larger and more powerful ants were coming out of the mound, presumably warrior ants here to protect the nest. The worker ants weren’t shy about trying to attack me either, swarming forward with the warrior ants and trying to overwhelm me with pure numbers. A quick count showed me at least a hundred or more ants. Possibly as many as two hundred swarmed toward me.
I activated Never Bring a Mob to a Duel.
I felt my attributes skyrocket. My luck, my memory, and my physical abilities became so powerful I instantly knew I could kill every single one of the ants with a mere flick of my pinky. I felt flush with power, my attributes soaring so high my mind raced to try to understand what was happening.
As I continued to grow stronger and stronger, well beyond the strength of the two hundred ants that were approaching me, I realized that something was wrong. I struggled for a moment but managed to pull out my book to see how high my attributes had risen. My numbers scrolled upward and upward, well over a thousand already. I panicked, realizing my skill must have included all of the ants in the hive below me that were gathering to defend their queen. That could be thousands—potentially millions!
My body and mind froze as I stopped being able to control myself. My mind was in full overload, unable to form enough synapses to comprehend what was happening to me. I felt like I was going to explode when darkness began to creep over my vision. I welcomed the darkness, my mind retreating gratefully into unconsciousness.
When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that I was starving. My stomach felt like it was eating itself from the inside out. It wasn’t just mere hunger but a rapid pain deep inside of me. It demanded I eat anything that would give me even a moment of relief from the starving void inside of my stomach. I was only distracted from the gnawing pain of my hunger by the feeling of pressure on all of my limbs, as if something was trying to crush me and tear me apart at the same time.
My eyes shot open as my memories returned, but I saw nothing but total darkness around me. My necklace must have fallen off or been destroyed. Even with my genetically modified eyes, I couldn’t see a thing.
But I could feel what was happening to me more than enough to realize that I was still surrounded by ants that were actively trying to kill me even now. The ants were crushing my body and limbs, but somehow my body was regenerating the damage they were doing so fast they hadn’t managed to kill me yet.
I sat up, throwing the ants off of me. I heard the crunch of the ants’ exoskeletons being crushed as I moved, and a second later, I heard the ants’ bodies as they were thrown backward into walls all around me. The bodies splattered against the walls, making a loud sound in the darkened room.
I frantically felt around me, trying to find my necklace. I felt pieces of my clothing and armor; what little was left near me was shredded and destroyed completely. I dug through my clothing until I found the necklace. The string that held it around my neck had been severed, but the necklace itself was still intact. As soon as I grasped it in my hand, I felt it activate.
I looked around the darkened room, finally able to see where exactly I was. A number of ants were embedded in the nearby walls, their bodies and exoskeletons plastered to the compacted dirt like they were abstract paintings. I stood, flying upward from a mere flex of my legs, and painfully slammed against the roof above me. I realized as I fell back to the ground that I was still enhanced by my Never Bring a Mob to a Duel skill. The ants had never stopped trying to eat me, so I had never actually exited combat. The thousands of attributes I had gained were still in effect.
I scrambled carefully around the floor until I found what was left of my backpack. Inside, I found that my food and water had been left undisturbed by the ants. I ate everything I had brought with me, weeks’ worth of food and days’ worth of water gone in minutes. Even after eating so much, I had barely managed to take the edge off my hunger. I would need more food soon, or I was going to starve to death.
I was mostly naked, the scraps of my armor and clothing barely covering my body. I found my sword and revolver tossed around the room. My sword was undamaged but my revolver had been bent and crushed. I gathered my backpack and stuffed everything useful I could find inside of it. I fixed the string attached to my necklace and slipped it back over my neck, carried my backpack in one hand since several of the straps had been broken, and then gripped my sword in the other.
Once I realized I was still under the effect of so many attributes, it became much easier to control my movements. As I gathered my things and ate my food, I moved slowly and carefully, able to perform small movements much easier than I had the last time I gained a lot of attributes at once. Above ground, my mind hadn’t been able to handle what was happening to me, but some part of my mind must have been overwhelmed and then adapted while I was passed out, because I felt better able to control myself now. I just hoped I hadn’t broken something permanently in my brain by doing this.
I knew I was somewhere inside the ant hive, because I could sense thousands of monsters all around me. My attributes were so high that when I stepped into the larger tunnel outside the nook I had been in, the ants seemed frozen in place, their movements so slow they didn’t appear to be moving at all. I walked closer to one of them and watched as it was very slowly stepping downward, its foot barely moving a centimeter every couple of seconds.
I swiped my sword through the ant’s neck, decapitating the creature with ease. Its head had only just begun to separate from its body by the time I moved to the next ant in the tunnel and killed it as well. I killed every ant in sight, and none of their heads had even reached the ground by the time I turned the next corner in search of more ants to kill.
I made my way through the ant colony, slaughtering the monsters without remorse. If I hadn’t had such insane attributes and my Regeneration perk, the monsters would have easily killed me. Each monster I killed reduced my attributes by one, but I barely felt the difference as I continued forward, killing as I went.
After killing hundreds of ants, I finally found the queen’s chamber. Her chamber was a large bowl set deep in the earth, and the queen was ten times larger than the ants that stood around her. Soldier ants and worker ants filled the chamber, but none of them were moving fast enough to react to my presence.
I began killing the smaller ants first. The queen moved much quicker than the other ants, reacting to what I was doing by rearing up on her large back legs and waving her mandibles in my direction. I was surprised that she could move so quickly, but the more powerful a monster was, the higher its attributes would naturally be. She must be pretty powerful to move fast enough to even see me when I had this many attributes. If I had tried to fight her normally, I wasn’t sure what would have happened. But I figured I might as well take advantage of the attributes while I had them, so I faced the queen and yelled, “Duel Me!”
Duel activated. You and your opponent have both wagered your experience. Good luck.
Unfortunately for her, even with a faster reaction time compared to the other ants, it wasn’t fast enough. I leapt forward, slamming my shoulder into her body. My strength and speed were so powerful that I felt the queen’s exoskeleton crunch as I slammed into her. I landed at her feet, but the queen’s body was thrown against the wall behind her, killing her instantly.
Congratulations, you have completed Down with the Queen. You have been awarded +2 to an attribute of your choice, 2500 experience, and the skill Ant’s Strength.
Ant’s Strength: When you lift or carry objects, your strength attribute is magnified three times.
Winner: Alexander! You are awarded 1700 additional experience.
I killed the rest of the ants in the room in a matter of seconds. I continued through the colony, hunting as much experience as I could get while I had the chance. My enhanced memory allowed me to memorize the layout of the colony, so I only got lost a few times.
I saved the ants on the surface for last. My attributes were significantly reduced by now but still high enough for me to almost instantly kill any ant nearby. As the last of them lay dying, I turned and walked to part of the forest that wasn’t covered in snow, exhaustion overtaking me. I lay down under a large tree, feeling dizzy and weak as the adrenaline of combat faded from my body, leaving me sick to my stomach. I closed my eyes as the notifications began to roll through my mind.
Congratulations, you have earned the achievement Mass Slaughterer. For killing over 1000 monsters in under an hour, you have been rewarded. You receive +3 to all attributes, and when you are outnumbered, those who dare to attack you will be overcome with dread, weakening their strikes and reducing their accuracy.
Congratulations, you have earned the achievement Attributes of a God. For having all of your attributes over 1000, you have been rewarded. You receive one divine racial evolution. Please choose from your currently unlocked choices:
Evolution of Slaughter: You do significantly greater damage to your foes. Your strikes are more deadly and your foes tremble before you. Your body size is increased and your appearance is altered to reflect your brutal nature.
Evolution of the Tinkerers: Your mind is able to process information extremely fast. Your devices are more effective and your creations are quicker, more intelligent, and require fewer resources. No physical changes.
Evolution of Leadership: Your patronage allows for those who serve you to benefit twice as fast when training or earning rewards. Loyalty from others is increased. You may form magically binding contracts. Your physical appearance is more magnetic and beautiful.
Evolution of Exploration: All of your senses are enhanced, and you gain a new sense for adventure and treasure, able to sense where to go at any time to find something interesting or rewarding for you personally. No physical changes.
Evolution of the Dungeon-Delver: You gain the power to modify existing dungeons, which includes allowing others to leave or enter the dungeon at will, keeping the dungeon from closing when cleared, and stopping monsters from leaving a dungeon once you have completed it.
That was . . . a lot to take in. I had never even heard of a biological evolution, but then again, I had never expected to get all of my attributes over one thousand either. It must be extremely rare, if not impossible, to survive such a surge of power. Other duelists had to have taken the same skill as me, although I didn’t know how many duelists had actually ever existed, only that at least one person had discovered the class before me. And however many had selected the class, wouldn’t most of them have focused on single-target skills since that was why they would naturally choose the class?
Of those that did take Never Bring a Mob to a Duel, would any of them ever dare use it on thousands of monsters at once? I had the feeling that I had only survived because of my unique mental framework and my Regeneration perk. I had spent the majority of my life regularly integrating and analyzing hundreds of thousands of independent pieces of data, something that seemed similar to what had just happened to me. My Regeneration not only kept me alive as the ants tried to tear me apart, but it likely repaired any brain aneurysms, strokes, or other critical injuries that occurred as my brain struggled to adapt to the surge of attributes. If I had been a normal person, I was sure I would be dead ten times over.
I also couldn’t help but notice the achievement hadn’t been for being the first to achieve over one thousand in each attribute, which implied other people must have done it before. Some might have even done so by leveling normally, which was a scary thought. I had only done it through abusing a skill and survived only by luck, a powerful perk, and my unique mind. It was a good thing using Never Bring a Mob to a Duel boosted my luck attribute at the same time as all the others.
I considered all of the possible evolutions I could pick from. I ran through my short- and long-term goals, trying to decide what was best for me and my future. I had put into motion a plan to start building a group of loyal people I could trust, so the Evolution of Leadership was very interesting. The ability to form magical contracts could help me find people I could rely upon, and they would grow in power significantly quicker if they benefited from the evolution that improved their training and rewards. Some of the vague, as yet undefined long-term goals I had in the back of my head could benefit greatly from such an evolution.
The Evolution of the Tinkerers was decent, but my brain was already able to process information incredibly fast and I didn’t plan to build many creatures that could gain intelligence, although it would be interesting if it applied to my nanobots, since they had rudimentary intelligence. The Evolution of Slaughter was not a good choice for me, since I did not want to look like a murdering madman, as the evolution implied would happen.
The Dungeon-Delver and Exploration evolutions were very interesting as well. I could set up permanent dungeons with the Dungeon-Delver evolution or I could find rare treasures with Exploration, but ultimately those were evolutions that relied upon the random chance of finding interesting dungeons or treasures. With the Leadership evolution, I would be able to build a base of people that I trusted and grow my power by my own deliberate choices rather than chance or a lucky find.
I made my choice and selected Evolution of Leadership.
I felt the evolution envelop me. A warmth spread through me as my body began to shift and change in subtle ways. I had no mirror to check on what exactly was happening to me, but it felt odd to sense my skin and body moving without me controlling it. The sensation passed after a moment, thankfully.
As I considered what to do next, the experience from killing all of the ants began to roll through my mind. The lesser ants only gave five experience each, but I had killed over nine hundred of them, so the announcements went on forever. The soldier ants gave ten experience apiece, and I had killed around two hundred of them. Plus, the queen awarded me five hundred experience on her own.
With the reward from the quest and the duel I had won with the queen, plus all the ants I had killed, I had earned a whopping 11,375 experience, which was split evenly between my Gunslinger class and my Duelist class. My Gunslinger class only increased to level 15, but my Duelist class shot up from level 4 to level 11. It seemed like I should have gained more levels, but I could see what people meant when they said it could sometimes be better to specialize in a single class, because dividing the experience two ways really slowed my growth.
Still, those levels gained me +2 to endurance, +5 to coordination, and +3 to strength, plus the +3 to all of my attributes from the Mass Slaughterer achievement, and I put the +2 for completing the quest into my luck attribute. And I earned a new Duelist skill at level 10 as well.
Please choose a level 10 class skill:
You Dare Challenge Me: Pick a target. You gain +3 to all attributes until you or your opponent are defeated.
Look Over There: Distract your opponent, guaranteeing one attack hits a vulnerable area.
You Fight Worse Than Your Mother: Insult your opponent, reducing all of their attributes by three and reducing their coordination by 10%. Your attributes are increased by +1 for the duration of the fight and your coordination is increased by 10%.
If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get: Pick a target. The longer you fight your opponent, the higher your attributes soar. Gain +1 to all attributes once every minute you are in combat until you or your opponent are defeated.
No Retreat, No Surrender: Pick a target. Neither you nor your opponent may retreat or surrender, and nobody else can interfere with your duel until one of you is dead.
The Slow Deserve to Die: The duelist gains increased movement speed from their coordination and is able to move rapidly around any battlefield or arena. Movement speed is twice the speed of your coordination.
Weapon Master: Pick a weapon. You gain an increase to the speed with which you learn to master the weapon.
Get These Gnats Out of My Face: The duelist gains the ability to deflect projectiles with their weapon, striking projectiles from the air with a flourish.
Cripple the Fool Who Dares Challenge You: You gain a sense of where to strike to inflict crippling pain and injury on your foe.
The new skills were interesting, and I continued to appreciate the humor of the class and its skills, but If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get was the superior choice. It was the counterpart to Never Bring a Mob to a Duel, helping me fight a single enemy that was too strong to take down easily, granting me a +1 to all attributes for every minute the fight dragged on. The infinitely scaling attributes of the Duelist class were extremely powerful, if I could manage to survive them. I selected If It’s a Fight You Want, It’s a Fight You’ll Get.
Once that was done, I moved away from the ant colony. The smell of the dead ants was sure to attract something dangerous soon, and I didn’t feel up for fighting, my body exhausted and my mind strained. I was also still starving; my stomach made sure to remind me that it had exhausted itself by keeping me alive while ants tried to dismember me for who knew how long.
Once I put enough distance between myself and the ant colony, I found a secure place to settle down and dumped out my backpack to see what had become of my gear. My armor, clothing, and cloak were in tatters and my gun was nonfunctional. My bullets and grenades were fine, but my food was gone and one of my canteens had been damaged and wouldn’t hold water. My backpack had large rips in it, and the straps were broken when it was torn off of me by the ants. I would need to acquire some food immediately and give my nanobots time to repair my gear. It was still winter as well, and now I didn’t have my clothing, armor, or cloak to protect me. My body was pretty resistant to the weather, but I couldn’t continue on without some protection at least.
