Sponsored Apocalypse Ch 30

I hovered over the button and took a breath before pressing it.  “Big money, big money,” I whispered.  I felt like a dork, but nobody was there to watch me.

The skill I was awarded made me sigh in disappointment.  No exploding bullets or anything cool for this one, I thought.

[Transfiguration: Alcohol to Water]

Instantly turn alcohol into water at the point of touch.

Since the apocalypse started, this was by far the most useless ability I’d received.

Swallowing my disappointment, I went to the next random skill button.  With another nervous breath, I hit “Accept.”

What came up made me raise an eyebrow.  “Are you kidding me?” I muttered.

The skill read:

[Toxic breath of Hellas Portentis]

Releases potent, noxious gas from the mouth.  Poisonous, and also damages several types of supernatural power. Extremely potent but delivery can be problematic. Best used at extremely close range.

I tapped my arm with a finger as I read my screen.  So what am I going to do with this? It definitely wasn’t useless, but I struggled to figure out how it’d be better or more practical than any other attack I had.

Since I’d gotten my two new skills, I checked my stats page

Miles Lindstrom

Title(s):

First Ten to Five

First Five to Ten

First Transcendents

Challenge Room Champion
Champion of Anubis

Goblin Vanquisher

Level 34

Class: none

Traits: none

Stats:
Str: 7

Dex: 5

End: 10

Int: 6

Will: 8

Luck: 6

Reflex: 7

Armor (nat): 1

Affiliations: Sponsored by *hidden*

Associated Sponsor Titles: *hidden*

Boons:

Eternal Struggle Reward System

Prime Skills:

Tsukumogami Embrace

Spirits of the Past

Built Different

First to Five Eyes

Lower Prime Skills

Bone Strengthening

Elastic Joints

Natural Armor

Basic Magic Resistance

Active Skills:

Saliva of Hared Ha

Bone Truth Eyes

Basic Enchanted Sleep

Pulverizing Pebbles

Angry Arrows
Transfiguration: Alcohol to Water

Toxic breath of Hellas Portentis

Equipment-related Skills:
Better Days Auto Whisk

Beaded Benediction of Delayed Solace

Stalwart Pan of the Lonely Mountain

Lindstrom Family Hammer

Private Malone’s Last Stand

Weeping Island’s Resolve

Passionate Earth Mover

Enchanted Equipment

Iron Bracelet of the Weeping Island

Skills:

Dagger Combat

Hammer Combat

Magic Combat

Club Combat

Spear Combat

Sword Combat

Scythe Combat

Explosive Combat

Enchantment Combat

Earthworks

Ambush

Healing Salve Application

Firearms (pistols)

Combat Endurance

Pet Combat

Familiar Communication

Available Advancement Points: 4

***

Before I reached the location of  the weird aquatic kobolds, I kept looking at my character sheet.  Eventually I decided to follow my gut and spend some time on my powers before fighting again.  I found a dilapidated shed in the woods, went inside to hide, and took another serious look at my stats to try and figure out some more about my abilities.

[Toxic breath of Hellas Portentis] kept drawing my attention.  The shack I was staying in was missing a door, and I directed the skill through the opening.

When I breathed out, I could actually see the green vapors with my naked eye. I’d been ready to pick a fight with the nearest monster I could find if I got poisoned,then [Built Different] would kick itn,  but it wasn’t necessary.  The gas didn't affect me–I could just feel a tingle in my nose.

The skill description didn’t lie.  It really didn’t seem to travel far despite how dense it was. However, I had something that might work to make it a little more effective.

I looked up all of my skills and abilities.   [Better Days Auto Whisk] drew my eye.  I had experimented with this one a little bit. Each time I had, it hadn't exactly wowed me. I’d tried to move dirt with it when I was digging in the Challenge Portal.  Hadn’t helped much.  I'd even tried to use it on other random media but it had just never seemed strong enough to move solid material very easily.

My experiments so far  had been disappointing because it’d dashed my hopes of just being able to slap a monster and rearrange his intestines or something. However, there was one use of [Better Days Auto Whisk] where it’d done pretty okay, using it sort of like a really powerful fan. Moving the air wasn’t too hard, and I could even just do it with my mind…at least at low speed and up to 10 feet or so.  Of course, momentum would carry the air father.

So logically, because I was still not super confident in hand to hand fighting yet, maybe with using [Better Days Auto Whisk] I could push my new poison gas to reach longer ranges, either ending a fight or making it easier. Not only that it’d help my other abilities scale, at least in theory.  And exploding Hammer was good for goblins but I knew better than to even try that on the cyclops.

Killing the giant that totaled my home was still my biggest short term goal.

I activated [Toxic breath of Hellas Portentis] and then I also triggered [Better Days Auto Whisk]. It worked. I watched as the green vapor slightly dispersed and shot outwards, just like smoke in front of a powerful fan. I had to assume that the poison wasn't as condensed this way but it was definitely a way to affect a monster that was maybe a stone’s throw away.

Not bad, I thought.  I could work with this.

I spent a while experimenting with some of my other skills, and also going through my menus.  The number of items in my special, sponsored-only skill menu had decreased a ton.  I could only assume that the gods had chosen their sponsors wisely.  They were probably all try hards like Aldina or lucky idiots like me to have earned the points.  Or maybe others folks had had quests like me

Even though it was a grab bag of random stuff, I felt strange seeing how few “Unique” entries were actually left.  I still thought it’d be smartest to raise my stats the next time I spent points, but part of me wanted to roll the dice on another skill.

I shook my head and rolled my eyes at myself.  Fear of missing out had always been something I was weak to.  For now, I chose to ignore everything else and focus on the matter at hand.  There was no point to dreaming about how to spend points if I didn’t get more of them.

And with Bacon sleeping, I’d have to risk my life for it.  That thought sobered me up really quick.

The rest of my trek through the woods was surprisingly uneventful, and my extra point of Agility really made walking silently a lot easier, even with all the junk hanging off of me.  Having high Strength and Endurance meant I could contort my body to walk in awkward ways without even growing uncomfortable.  It actually felt like my body was on autopilot a few times.  If I’d had these stats back before the apocalypse, I might not have dreaded doing cardio workouts so much.

Finally,  reached where I'd seen the “lesser water kobolds”  before and blew out my cheeks in surprise. A really large ship and a barge were pulling away from the area as I watched, apparently crewed by monsters.  These things were obviously much more sophisticated than any goblins.

Where I'd spotted that first group moving up from the river to their hideout was less of a trail now and more of a road. I was amazed. It had been barely two hours since I'd last been at this location.  The kobolds moved fast.  Whatever they were doing, they were definitely prioritizing over anything else.  If they hadn’t been monsters, I would have found that encouraging.

Inside the mouth of the tunnel, where all the kobolds had been heading before had changed, too.  Now there were…skulls and magical-looking stuff placed around it.  There was also flickering  torch light, and weird green glows. I heard faint inhuman chanting coming from within.  All the noise sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well and whispered, but at the same time, it also sounded like it was full volume.  At first I was confused until I realized there might be some sort of noise-muting magic at play.

I didn't know what the kobolds were doing but I had to figure it was nothing good  There was no crisis of conscience on my part for hitting them first before finding out for sure what their intentions were.  A few months ago I might have thought that was xenophobic.  Now I couldn’t bring myself to care, not after all the death and horror I’d already witnessed.

From what I could see there were only a few sentries on duty. They were both looking at the cave, almost in a trance.  The kobolds were definitely armed in an intimidating way–decent armor, glittering spears, and big daggers at their waists–but also weren’t acting as very good sentries.

At the moment there were no boats in the river nearby either. It was probably possible that another boat might come soon, but there was nothing now. The coast was as clear as it was ever going to be.

Normally, I would have observed longer and maybe formulated a plan. But I could feel in my bones that if I were going to attack these kobolds, especially with some of them having a skulled named before, now would be the best time. It was possible that the skulled name leaders I'd seen before might not have their skull status for me anymore since I've leveled up. But even so, they were likely to be much more powerful than most of the monsters I'd fought so far.

One of the guards seemed to break out of their trance, but instead of turning attention to the forest around them, they mostly faced the river. I thought that was a little dumb. Maybe right now the monsters were most worried about other monsters than humans.  It kind of made sense to watch the water.  A big monster or group of monsters would make a lot of noise and most humans were still weak right now.

If the most powerful humans were more like Nate and his group that I met earlier, or even just people with guns, the kobolds probably wouldn’t be too worried.  They seemed to have very thick, knobby skin.

I crept up closer to where the monsters’ new lair was. The concrete mouth of the drain system had the eerie green glow I'd seen before, but it’d grown stronger.  The chanting came through louder.  As I got closer, I could feel a chill. I silently took out my hammer and considered what I was going to do.

In the heat of the moment, I latched onto the first plan that had come to my head.  I could bomb the ones inside, maybe disrupt whatever ritual they were doing, and then run like hell.  With any luck, they wouldn’t even know where the attack had come from and I could get away after harvesting a decent amount of XP.

And I decided to try something I'd never done before. Instead of only enchanting my hammer with [Angry Arrows], I bolstered the skill with [Weeping Island’s Resolve].  As I used them in tandem, the knowledge of how to combine the two entered my mind and it was as easy as attaching two pieces of putty together.  An insane rush of power traveled down my arms, flooding into the hammer.

Part of me was so surprised I wanted to just throw the damn thing, but I was also curious and willing to ride this train out.  In addition to more power, I could charge it a lot longer.  In fact, after a while the Hammer began to tremble.  It also began to glow. Not super bright, but bright enough that I was nervous holding it in an otherwise dark night with enemies around.

I used my enhanced Strength and Agility to help throw the hammer through the mouth of the tunnel, then I threw myself down on the forest floor.

A few seconds later, I was still lifted up and scooted back like a god had hit me with a pillow.