Chapter 267 - Individual Paths

Kiri strode through the mud, her eyes fixed on the castle walls before her. Spears were launched in her direction and she carefully picked a

Kiri strode through the mud, her eyes fixed on the castle walls before her. Spears were launched in her direction and she carefully picked a path between them, occasionally catching one and spinning to launch it back at the thrower. The Legendary Dungeon of Etrua was finally hers to explore and she was using it to explore her new Path.

Now, experiencing the Dungeon for herself, she could begin to see how possessing it had given rise to Paths like those of Bordain and Morgane. The Dungeons theme seemed to be entirely based around conquering a Kingdom. A small one, sure, but still, it leant itself to the idea of dominating or subverting your enemies. The monsters populating the Dungeon were faceless humanoids. Literally faceless, their heads just smooth ovals. Kiri, with her Skills related to Souls, could tell that they were actually Spirits inhabiting what were basically golems.

So, with a Dungeon that pitted you against opponents that could use Soul-based Skills and with the Dungeon quest being to conquer the Kingdom, it was easy to see how subversive Paths like Morgane’s Resonance or dominating Paths like Bordain’s Supremacy would be not only advantageous, but encouraged. In fact, it was entirely possible that the rewards the Royal Family of Etrua would have gotten would have been skewed in that direction.

Kiri had considered those factors, and then discarded them. She didn’t care if the Dungeon had an ulterior motive. She only cared about advancing down her new Path. Unlike Nate, Kiri had no intention of trying to incorporate all of her existing Class Core gifted Skills into her new Path. Her Path of Enduring would be built upon a foundation of an unbreakable Soul that would support an unbreakable body, culminating in an inexorable march forward. 

To that end, she had discarded her daggers. They simply no longer fit her. They were outside of her, they could be stopped, they could be broken. Her body was her weapon now, and her Regalia a second skin. She had joked with Ankh’Aris that by wearing his scales she was an honorary dragon. Rather than shoot her down, Ankh had merely told her that she wasn’t there yet. That just meant she would need to endure until she was.

With her plans in place, anything to do with shadow had been cast off. The same was true of her Magic Stats. Once she started applying processed mana to herself through her Divine Vessel she would be focused on the Physical and Mental. Her Will would remain her greatest strength and continue to be used to reinforce her physical presence till she could endure anything. An important step considering their upcoming battle.

The Lesser Divines of Etrua would battle soon and she was still getting used to her new Path. That was why she had come into the Legendary Dungeon alone. It was also why she had refused to seal her Divine Energy when The System offered. She wasn’t here for rewards. Wasn’t here to gain levels. She was here to field test her new style of combat and search for gaps in it. And, of course, to Endure.

Her Path of Enduring focused on how long she could handle outside pressure. She had sunk into the bay to endure drowning. Soul Shifted so high into the sky that she couldn’t breathe. Let herself fall from those heights to endure both the heat of reentry and the impact that followed. And with each attempt, she died. Over and over. Enduring through death and returning. Each time she lasted a little longer. Except for the falling, she thought with a smile. It would take her longer to make herself tough enough to survive a fall from such heights.

With each attempt the Divine Energy had flowed. For the first time, she was actually generating Divine Energy faster than Nate was. That Divine Energy would go towards improving her Vessel, but for now she was stockpiling it for the coming battle.

With a smile she dashed forward, dodging a few new spears, before launching herself onto the ramparts of the castle. Among the faceless enemies, she extended the dragonscale blades from her Regalia and went to work. She might be a brute who sought to endure, but she was still a dancer, and amongst these enemies, she might as well have been death incarnate. Their headless corpses were left in her wake as she dropped into the Castle Keep, marching for the doors and the final two challenges of the Dungeon. She didn’t want to leave Etrua again so soon. Well, specifically, she didn’t want to leave her parents and friends so soon. But, she wanted to be a hero, and heroes did what was right, not what was comfortable. With a frown on her face she marched beneath the arched doors, intent on venting her frustration on the Dungeon and its challenges.

*************

“I’m finished, Professor Frick!” called one of the little snotlings.

Frick, morphed into the appearance of a metre-tall blue goblin wearing a suit and glasses, marched over to review his pupils' work. The child, or snotling as Frick preferred, had finished scribing out a basic light rune.

Frick ran his clawed finger down one of the many interlinking lines of the rune.

“Clean lines but the geometric shape is overly simplistic. What is Weber’s Third Law of Runic Structures?”

“Runes drawn in two-dimensions still function in three-dimensions,” shouted the class in unison.

The little snotlings had long since learned that any request for the Weber’s Laws was to be answered by everyone, lest the entire class be kept back for revision. Frick would’ve preferred to give them the whip, like real goblin snotlings, but he was also aware that Nate would have trapped him in the Familiar Contract for physically harming human children. Frick maintained they would’ve learned faster though. Pain was an excellent motivator for fleshbags.

“Exactly! Your simplistic geometric shape means you’re going to lose mana efficiency at your F and K points of the dispersion field. Do it again.”

With his admonishments delivered, Frick resumed his stroll through the classroom. Frick was aware that Nate’s understanding of runes and runic structures was almost innate, stemming from his artistic tendencies coupled with a basic understanding of physics. The snotlings did not have that benefit. Well, most didn’t. Frick was willing to acknowledge that there were one or two snotlings that might have a natural aptitude. But most didn’t, and so, they needed rules to follow.

Those rules had been mostly supplied by Jacque, but the terminology was all wrong. The kind of naming that one would attribute to a stuffy professor that didn’t comprehend that a large portion of his students had dirt for brains! So, Frick had reworked the curriculum. Two-to-Three Dimension Dispersion Fields had become Weber’s Third Law of Runic Structures. Dispersion Intersection Amplification had become Weber’s First Law of Runic Empowerment. Sigil Differential Management in Two-Dimensional Structures was now Weber’s Second Law of Runic Empowerment.

Frick suppressed a cackle. Nate was going to be famous across Galle and for more than one reason now. Of course, Frick wasn’t just doing it because he thought it was funny. Fame, whether Nate wanted it or not, would be beneficial to him. And, as Frick was providing this benefit, debt was being incurred. Slowly, for now, but it would build until Nate had the power to free Frick from The System as well. Once free, well, who knew how far the Horde could go.

Frick reached the front of the classroom, picked up a ruler that was used by the less dexterous to draw clean lines, and slapped it against the chalkboard detailing the Sigils they could make use of.

“Weber’s Fifth Law of Runic Structures!” he shouted.

“Three-Dimensional Runes increase mana efficiency at the expense of material costs!” the snotlings shouted back.

Professor Frick smiled. These snotlings might just be useful after all.

*************

Nate reviewed the changes in his Status. He’d committed forty units of Divine Energy to improving his Vessel. The results were both good and bad. His ability to store Divine Energy in his body had increased by ten in response, taking him to a total possible of sixty. The System also showed that the Divine Vessel itself had progressed from a tenth of a percent to two-tenths. Minor, but that improvement along marked a one-percent increase in his total stats as well. 

That meant by the time he had completed the Divine Vessel Stage he should be able to store over two-thousand units of Divine Energy. That just went to show how much stronger those who followed a Path of Ascendancy were when compared with The System. He also could see very easily how it could take decades. Eight thousand Divine Energy to raise yourself to the peak of the Divine Vessel stage, and that was without any set aside for self-enhancement. In comparison, with a far lower cap, the Class Core of The System could likely raise someone to the peak of True Divine in the same period. But Nate knew who would win in a battle between a Peak Divine Vessel and a System True Divine. After all, he’d seen what Ankh’Aris did to those Eternium True Divines. Or, at least, the altered memory of their encounter.

Nate wasn’t one to seek power. He did what he did to satisfy his curiosity and to do the things he loved. But, it did make him feel a little safer and more confident knowing that, even at the earlier steps of his ascension, he would be more powerful than most of those he encountered. Only most though. There were old monsters, as Ankh put it, who like the dragon pre-dated The System. They had willingly chosen to join it, seeing the gift as a way to seize extra power for themselves. Ankh had described them as those who had hit roadblocks in their Paths. They were True Divines now, but they still had the power of a Vessel at their fingertips, and while Ankh was confident that they wouldn’t have shared their secrets with their underlings, Nate wasn’t so sure.

Certainly, most wouldn’t have been given such knowledge. But most wasn’t all, and what better way to get your progeny ahead than by giving them a gift that would see them more powerful than their peers?

Still, even if there were a few Seeds in the Heartlands that had access to such knowledge, they were still likely to be limited in how much Divine Energy they could get their hands on. Nate and Kiri could generate somewhere between two to five Divine Energy per day, most days. But they were also second evolution Divines. Seeds were apparently always third evolution. Another fact that Nate was dubious about, but for now he would work with that assumption in mind. That meant they would likely produce Divine Energy at half his rate or less. At one Divine Energy a day, it would take them decades to gain enough to max out a Divine Vessel. It also sounded like the Heartlands were an absolute bloodbath for Lesser Divines. The few that survived rising to Greater Divines and not Nate’s problem, yet.

Right now, at this moment, his Class Core was providing him with roughly two-thousand Stats. At his own rate of twenty-five Stat points per Divine Energy sequestered, he would need eighty-points of Divine Energy to match that. Plus he would need enough Divine Energy to be competitive with his opponents. 

The Seeds of the Heartlands should have access to up to sixty Divine Energy from their Class Cores, assuming they didn’t also possess Vessels. So, to be on par with his current capabilities, Nate calculated to divest himself of his Class Core he needed to achieve a Vessel that could contain two-hundred-and-forty Divine Energy. 

To get there, he would need seven-hundred-and-twenty Divine Energy to improve his Vessel, then another two-hundred-and-forty to fill it. Almost a thousand Divine Energy. That was more than he had acquired to date, excluding whatever Divine Energy and Truths he had taken from Ankh’Aris’s cultivation chamber. 

Basically, he had his work cut out for him. With a sigh he was forced to accept that for his first year in the Heartlands he would be forced to continue to rely on The System and his Class Core. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t be growing more powerful. While he had no intention of increasing his Class Levels, he had every intention of increasing his Stats with his Vessel and his own processed mana. He was also going to be merging his Class Core Skills until they were in forms that he was comfortable recreating outside of the Class Core.

Thinking of his Skills, he brought up his Status.

Looking over his Skills, Nate could easily see three themes present. Spatial Authority, Rune Creation and Conceptual Awareness. Those would be his goals as he folded his ten remaining Skills together, using those synergistic Skills to design his own abilities. The thought made him happy, even if he knew it would take time, and likely some new Achievements.

However, the time for thinking and planning was coming to an end. He could sense her approach, Aisling’s consistent footfalls like a metronome counting down to the end of his quiet days spent in contemplation and creating art. Her knock on the door of his home was simply the hammer driving the nail into the coffin. He stood, ready to go do what he knew was best for Galle, even if it meant seeking a battle. He didn’t want to fight, but in this brutal Reality, sometimes, it was a necessity.