Chapter 105: Celebrations

Kaius chewed his lip. The Depths had been explosive for his growth, but even for him, the gains he had made over the day had radically launched him to a few strides from the finish line. One Honour, one legacy skill, one special evolution, and one racial trait.

It was almost too much, it felt unreal. Like something he heard about in bard tales, not the sort of thing he would ever actually live through.

He needed to check his status. Needed to make sure it was actually there, that he wasn’t just dreaming, or bleeding out after a bad hit from a Champion.

Status:

Name: Kaius 

Dynasty: Unterstern

Age: 18 

Class Selection: 1 Year, 2 days 

Race: Human (Dynastic, Greater Beastblooded) - +1 Wil, Str, End, and free stats per level

Layer Reached: 2

Resources:

Health - 460/460 (3.6/min)

Stamina - 360/360 (3.6/min)

Mana - 510/510 (5.1/min)

Free Mana - 510/510

Reserved Mana - 0

Stats:

Endurance - 30 + 16 (46)

Vitality - 20 + 16 (36) 

Strength - 20 + 16 (36) 

Dexterity - 20 + 16 (36) 

Intelligence - 20 + 31 (51)

Willpower: - 20 + 31 (51)

Stat Points: 0

Class Skills (0/10):

N/a

General Skills (10/10):

Rapid Adaptation (Heroic) - 20

Warforged (Unique) - 20

Explorers Toolkit (Unusual) - 17 > 18

Adamant Body (Unique) - 18 > 19

True Sight (Unique) - 14 > 17

Runic Lexicon (Unusual) - 20

Mana Manipulation (Unusual) - 20

Lesser Regeneration (Unusual) - 8 > 14

Uncanny Dodge (Unique) - 0 > 1

Brotherhood of Ichor and Animus (Heroic) - 0 > 20

Glyph Bound Hymns:

N/A

Honours:

Born for Slaughter

Sublime Prodigy - Glyph Binding

Birds of a Blood Soaked Feather

Bound Artefacts:

A Fathers Gift - Common Growth Longsword

Growth Conditions-

Gain a class (0/1)

Acquire suitable materials (0/3)

Forge a link (0/1)

He gulped. His status looked nothing like one that an unclassed should have. His stats alone were the equivalent of a low level classer, with half of them more than double what they should have been.

Though, one thing did stand out to him. It was only a few days until he ticked down to a year until his class selection. It was nearly his birthday, not that it felt all that important with everything else on his plate.

Honestly, he was more concerned about how he would spend the last year of his proving period. Against all odds, he was a slither from being fully capped in all respects. After that, there would be nothing left to do but … wait.

He shuddered, after a lifetime spent in the pursual of his goal, the idea of being forced to wait to continue his work, to fuel his progress, made his skin crawl. Oh well, he was sure they would figure something out. Afterall, it wasn’t like they would be sitting idle, and enjoying fine wine and silks like some sort of noble.

As soon as they were out of here, they were hunting for Father. No two ways about it.

Blinking his status closed, he looked to Porkchop.

“This is bloody ridiculous,” he said. 

“I know what you mean,” Porkchop replied. “How are you going? How far are you from the peak?”

“Not far, not far at all. Just a hair more than thirty skill levels, most of them from Uncanny Dodge. Other than that, I’ll need some practice getting used to these reinforced and inflated stats. Everything feels way too … light.” Kaius explained, swinging his arms experimentally and feeling the way they responded to his intent in a snap.

Porkchop grinned. The human expression twisted his face, almost sinisterly as it revealed dagger-like teeth. “That’s good. It won't be long then, till we fight the Guardian. Anything that you think might be an issue to train on our trip back?”

“No,” Kaius said with a shake of his head. “Almost all of them should come together with enough fights. True Vision might be an issue, but I think that working on getting used to the full acuity of its effects should be more than enough to get it over the finish line. Especially if I can do it in a fight.”

“Where do you want to do it? Here?”

Kaius scoffed at the question. “Gods no, this place can burn in the hells. I’ve had enough of flesh abominations for two lifetimes. I reckon we high tail it back to the fungal fields. Those isolated serfs will be perfect for most of my skills, and if anything starts to taper off we’ll just push back into the city and get into some fights on our way up.”

He groaned, pushing himself up off the floor and walking over to the kitchen. 

“I think with a bit of food and a nap, I should be good to go. What do you think?” Kaius asked.

“Yes please,” Porkchop chittered, plain hunger sinking through their link.

Kaius shot his friend a grin, and started to look through the cupboards. He was pretty sure they still had a little salt-packed bacon from the dwarven city, and since they were about to head back there he had no reason not to pull out all the stops. If he was being generous, he could even justify it as training for Explorer’s Toolkit. 

It was, but really he just wanted some bacon. Plus, they still had some more of the long lasting mushrooms from the fields, and he knew just what he could do with both of those. Hearth pies, supposedly a Hiwiann recipe from what Illendra’s father - Hurrin - had said, though given how the trader-folk picked up any stragglers they could, that was about as specific as saying it was from the Vaastivar continent.

Finding a bowl, some flour, and some yeast, he hurried off to the spigot they had used to wash and collected some water. Moving with sure confidence, he started to make a rough dough. Once it was ready, he could wrap it around some sauteed bacon and mushrooms, before pan frying the stuffed dough. Peasant fare, but delicious.

His mouth was already watering at the thought of it.

….

They set out the next day, leaving the dorm room behind as they back tracked their way through the Fleshwarper’s Laboratory. Thanks to the fact that Kaius had taken the time to mark each door they went through, their path back was a lot less fraught than their initial explanation.

Far faster too.

They passed through laboratories of gleaming glass and vile sludge, specimen cells full of tanks of mutagen and cages that held the bones of failed experiments. There were research rooms too. Small libraries, filled with notes and books. Much like the dwarven city they were filled with some sort of nonsense language. A different one, but still unintelligible. Kaius suspected that the Depths must not have wanted to waste resources developing coherent thought in Common. That, or it wasn’t intelligent enough to, and the books were nothing more than the twisted reflection of a dreaming god.

Strangely, even with multiple days having passed, the corpses of the abominations they had slain hadn’t started to smell. Whatever alchemy and sorcery had been used in the monster's creation, it had tainted the flesh so thoroughly that not even rot wished to touch it.

When they grew tired, they sought another dorm room. They were frequent enough. Each day they passed by at least a pair, so thankfully it was never more than another hour or so’s walk to the next one when fatigue started to set in.

The exit was drawing close. Kaius could feel it in his bones, the navigational bent of Explorer’s Toolkit allowing him to draw on a thousand half forgotten memories of individual rooms to keep track of their progress. 

As they walked, Kaius looked at the count down towards his class selection for what felt like the thousandth time that day.

It had to be any minute now.

*Class Selection: 1 Year*

The counter ticked over.

“Happy birthday to me,” he said softly.

Porkchop looked over sharply as he stepped over the cold corpse of a twisted teratoma. 

“Your birthday? Already?”

“Yeah,” Kaius smiled. “Though before you ask we’re not doing any celebrating until we get the hell out of the Depths. That is, if the meles even celebrate birthdays?” he asked, curious. Sometimes the meles felt like any other race, at others they were utterly alien. He wouldn’t be surprised no matter Porkchop’s answer. Well, that might have been going a bit far, he’d heard some pretty off the wall answers from Porkchop before about life in the Dens.

Porkchop snorted. “Of course we do. You pick what you want to eat, and others will hunt it or find it for you. It’s basically the only time I got to eat Katcha fruit.”

“The thing we found in the Tomblord’s loot?” Kaius asked with an arched brow.

Porkchop chuffed in confirmation. “Anyway, waiting till we are out sounds like a good idea. Mine will be in a few weeks as well. What would you want to do.”

They reached the end of the room, and Kaius opened the thick wooden door to the next.

Kaius hummed, thinking. “Honestly? After all this shit? I’d love for nothing more than to sit by the fire at the Stout Oak and drink enough tankards of ale that I can no longer walk. It might not actually be possible with Rapid Adaptation, but I'm sure as hells going to try my best,” he answered. “What about you?”

“I want more stew, and you will make it for me, as is tradition. A whole barrel full.” Porkchop said with firm conviction.

“Oh? You’ve certainly got the stomach for it. Say, I just have to get it for you right? Not actually make it myself?” 

Porkchop turned to him, giving him a look. “Kaius, I don’t think you will be able to find an unattended barrel of stew.”

He laughed, pushing his way through the next marked door. This room was another library, and thankfully held no stinking alchemy or abomination corpses. From memory, it would only be a score or two more rooms until they were out.

 “I know, but the stuff at the Stout Oak is better than what I can make. Illendra and the rest have actual hospitality-focused classes, not just a general skill. With the amount of depths-coin we have, we could almost certainly get you enough to swim in.”

Porkchop paused for a moment, thinking. “That will do. Enough stew to swim in, it is.”

“Wait a second, I wasn’t actually serious,” Kaius said, blanching.

“It will be my birthday.” Porkchop said with faux-seriousness.

Sighing defeatedly, Kaius slumped his shoulders. “Fine. But not all at once, I'll keep buying you stew until you get sick of it.”

“Though I have a feeling I'm going to regret saying that,” Kaius muttered to himself.

Porkchop chittered, amusement flowing across their link.

They kept walking. 

In the end, ‘close’ was a relative thing, but eventually they made it back to the first room they had entered the laboratory from. A flayed horrors corpse lay smashed and brutalised amongst the remains of broken tables and alchemical glassware. Above it, the same mezzanine library where he had tweaked his spell to better suit the regeneration of the inhabitants of the biome.

He smiled at the memory, compressing the structure of the spell so that it penetrated deep and ruptured explosively was only a small stroke of genius, but it was his own. That made it all the more precious. Work done purely by his own hands, without the aid of Father.

With how effective it had proven against the abominations, he saw no reason to swap the spell out. Without a doubt, it would be less effective against armoured opponents, at least those wearing anything heavier than leather and chain. If the spell was unable to pierce through armour, much of its potency would be lost.

Thankfully, their ultimate target was all but naked, from what he could remember. With his latest gainst to his Intelligence he could hold a full seventeen, though in reality with the mana cost of using his stylus, sixteen was his true limit. It would still be a significant force multiplier against the lightly armoured goblins, though he might need to switch it out for the ogre.

Tearing his eyes away from the seat where he had first crafted the spell, Kaius swung open the door that led to the standard tunnels common in the depths that seemed to surround the compound they had been exploring.

He peered down the hallway, releasing his hold on True Sight just enough to peel back the mists of distance. It was a straight shot, and he was almost sure he could see the far off end of the biome.

“Almost there,” he muttered, anticipation thrumming through him at the thought of capping the last of his legacy skills.