Unexpected Healer Book 2 -- Chapter 24

Chapter 24

Unfortunately for Thaden, there were no new spells waiting for him when he reached Level 54 nor at Level 57.  He still received a spell selection for each of those Levels, as well as another +36 in Mentality and 16 free stat points; he ended up finally taking Major Lifelink and Major Wardlink because he had the spare spell selections, but he didn’t know if he’d ever use them.  After those were chosen he only had Resurrection, Regrowth, and Mana Rejuvenation at Lesser quality, as everything else was now at Major with no other spells he didn’t have access to.

His accumulated PICK was still going strong as he pushed it all the way up to 60, when he received two more spell selections and saw brand-new spells that he was able to pick from.

Major Healing Burst (Single Cast): Greatly replenishes the Health of a single target.

Healing Amount: 360

Duration: Instant

Range: 90 feet

Casting Time: 2 seconds

Mana Cost: 210

Cooldown: 10 seconds

Major Stacking Buffers (Single Cast): When cast on an ally, they will begin to accumulate stacks of protective buffers for each instance of damage against an enemy; these buffers will be consumed upon taking damage and can negate all damage types up to a set amount.

Number of Targets: 1

Range: 20 feet

Duration: 10 minutes

Buffer Stack Limit: 300

Buffer Damage Protection: 9

Casting Time: 10 seconds

Mana Cost: 800

Seeing the description of both spells, there was no reason not to pick them up.  First, the Major Healing Burst was the single-target, single-cast spell he’d hoped to have acquired long ago, as he didn’t have one that wasn’t channeled.  It had a cooldown of 10 seconds which was similar to Major Mass Healing, but it was better for the fact that he didn’t have to worry about healing any monsters around him when he cast it. 

Major Stacking Buffers was unique as far as his protection spells went, because it was the only one that wasn’t his channeled Fields that he could cast on himself.  From what he could tell, every time he – or whoever he cast it on – did damage to an enemy, he would start to accumulate up to 300 stacking buffers, which were consumed to prevent damage upon himself.  He could only assume that it was designed for those who could actually do a bit of damage, which was likely why he wasn’t excluded from casting it upon himself, and it was an extremely powerful spell.  On him it wasn’t as effective because he had his Fields to rely upon for damage prevention, but it could come in handy if he had to switch out one of his Fields to cast another channeled spell at some point, giving him some extra insurance to make sure he didn’t die.

With PICK still burning a hole in his figurative pocket, he kept on leveling. 

Level 61 and 62 gave him +7 Mentality each as well as 5 free stat points, which wasn’t anything surprising by this point.  What did surprise him was that at Level 63 he received another pair of spell selection choices – and there were more spells to choose from. 

PICK requirements met!  18,400/18,400

Increase Personal Level? Y / N

Note: This can only be completed while not currently in combat and while not in a dungeon.

Level up!  You are now a Level 63 Lifewarden!

As part of the Leveling process, you have received the following:

Mentality +7

(2) Spell selection choices

It was shocking because he expected there to not be anything, as had been the theme for the last 20 or so Levels, but something was different about this Level.  The new spells he had a chance to choose from reflected that.

Major Health Transformation (Single Cast): Allows the target of Major Health Transformation to temporarily transform a portion of their current Health into a boost to a single stat of their choice to natural limits; any Health transformed in this manner cannot be healed or regenerated until this effect is cancelled; after a transformation is canceled, a cooldown will be in effect that prevents another such Health transformation for a limited time.

Health-to-stat-boost ratio: 20 to 1

Boost Duration: Until cancelled or Major Health Transformation expires

Transformation Cancellation Cooldown: 30 seconds

Spell Range: 10 feet

Spell Casting Time: 1 second

Spell Duration: 30 minutes

Mana Cost: 480

Spell Cooldown: None

Major Mana Transformation (Single Cast): Allows the target of Major Mana Transformation to temporarily transform a portion of their current Mana into a boost to a single stat of their choice to natural limits; any Mana transformed in this manner cannot be regenerated until this effect is cancelled; after a transformation is canceled, a cooldown will be in effect that prevents another such Mana transformation for a limited time.

Mana-to-stat-boost ratio: 20 to 1

Boost Duration: Until cancelled or Major Mana Transformation expires

Transformation Cancellation Cooldown: 30 seconds

Spell Range: 10 feet

Spell Casting Time: 1 second

Spell Duration: 30 minutes

Mana Cost: 480

Spell Cooldown: None

Both Transformation spells were interesting and unique compared to what he already had access to, because they had nothing to do with either healing or protection.  From what he understood of them, anyone with the spells cast on them could essentially sacrifice a portion of their current Health or Mana pool in order to boost a stat, such as Physicality or Celerity, at a 20-to-1 ratio.  So, if he were to transform 200 of his Health, he could boost Celerity by 10 points; boosting Physicality by 10 would bring his Health back up by 100 points, making a net loss of 100 Health, but it would make him stronger.  He looked at the lesser versions of the spell and saw that they simply had worse conversion rates, which he supposed made sense in how they gradually got better.

The same could be done with Mana, which was something he had a lot to spare, but whether it was Health or Mana transformed in this way, it couldn’t be healed or regenerated.  That was bad enough with Health, but if he couldn’t regenerate Mana—

Wait a minute, is my Mana actually regenerating? 

Ever since he arrived on Tarth and began casting spells, Thaden had quickly discovered that he couldn’t run out of Mana.  Although his Mana pool got larger, even his earliest tests showed not even a blip in his current Mana available when he cast spells, so he didn’t think that it was as if he was spending it and then, faster than thought, it was regenerating.  It simply wasn’t being consumed at all, as if he had an unlimited supply. 

Would this work to consume some of my unlimited Mana and boost myself indefinitely?  It was something he couldn’t wait to try, as thoughts of having a million Physicality flowed through his mind, where he could simply punch a monster and have them explode in a spray of blood from his immense strength.  Since he wasn’t planning on upgrading anything else, he quickly picked both spells and closed the windows in his mind’s eye, eager to try it out, but he was interrupted by another message.

Congratulations for reaching the pinnacle of your current Class!

Current Class: Lifewarden

Achievement received: Class Act II

Bonus reward: Additional Classes unlocked

Contender World First Achievement: 1 additional Class selection

Please see a Support Class Representative to receive your Support Class Evolution Assignment!  Until you complete your Support Class Evolution Assignment and then select your new Class, your accumulated PICK up to your current limit (103,542/540,000) will be held in reserve; you will not be able to increase your Level until you receive your new Class.

“What?!” he yelled, nearly throwing himself from the tree in his shock at the notification.  “A new Class already?  And what is this about an ‘Evolution Assignment’?”

There was no more information available as to what that would entail no matter how much he concentrated on the message, so he was left without an answer.  The only good thing, he supposed, was that it also told him that he wasn’t anywhere near hitting his PICK limit, which seemed to be three times his previous PICK limit back at Level 21.  In fact, Level 63 is three times the previous Class evolution – I’m guessing that’s the theme?  If it stays the same, does that mean I’ll get the next one at Level 189?

Thaden wondered if this had all been covered in the Training that he missed; if so, then he might have to find another person willing to talk to him about such “commonly known” information.  Regardless if they knew this or not, that didn’t stop the fact that he had hit his Level cap for the moment, at least until he found out what the new Evolution Assignment thingy was all about.  Based on how much additional PICK it seemed he’d already accumulated, he thought he had another 5 Levels or so that he could tack on to his current Level, so it wasn’t a huge loss, but it was nevertheless disappointing.  The only thing that salved that disappointment was the fact that he would acquire a new Class once he finally got to that point, because his current Class was a huge step up from his original one; he could only assume that the next one would also be a major change, as well.

Before he started testing his new spells, Thaden looked at his current stats.

Physicality – 36

Celerity – 21

Mentality – 279

Personality – 16

Fortuity – 116

(72) Free Stat Points

He had 72 free stat points to distribute how he wanted them, but he held off for a moment on putting them anywhere.  Normally, he would’ve simply shoved them all into Fortuity to help with his chances of activating his bonus traits such as the 5% damage reflection for his Fields, but he had to think about what he was doing for a change.  Given that he was going to be doing a lot of traveling, raising his Celerity would allow him to run faster and Physicality would allow him to run longer, both of which would be highly beneficial.

But what if his new spell worked in the way he hoped it would?

There was only one way to find out.

Casting Major Mana Transformation on himself, he didn’t feel any different, but there was a subtle sense of anticipation in his body, as if it was waiting for something to happen.  Instinctually knowing that it was waiting for him to transform some of his Mana, he mentally commanded 20 of his current Mana pool of 2,790 to convert into Celerity.  As he watched his Celerity immediately tick up from 21 to 22, he looked at his Mana pool again with excitement.

Mana – 2,790/2,790

It didn’t change!  With excitement, he transformed another 200 Mana into Celerity, giving him another 10 points in the stat, and his heart nervously thudded in his chest as his Mana pool didn’t even twitch.  

“Hehehe, I’m unstoppable now!” he crowed, giggling uncontrollably as he pumped 2,000 more Mana into the transformation, converting it into 100 more points of Cele—

He grunted in consternation as his Celerity stopped at 63 without budging.  He attempted to pump more Mana into the transformation, but nothing worked to raise it up higher. 

“What happened?” he whined, his dreams of being the fastest and strongest person in the world dashed as his stat hit an invisible ceiling.  Looking over the spell descriptions again for an answer, he groaned when he found it:

…boost to a single stat of their choice to natural limits…

He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to know what it meant by “natural limits,” but apparently it was something like three times his base Celerity of 21.  He briefly put on some of his items that gave him some extra Celerity, which he’d taken off while around other Contenders so as not to draw attention to himself, and the result stayed the same at 63. 

Thaden quickly tried to affect another stat, but he discovered that he could only boost a single stat at a time.  With that in mind, he cancelled the transformation of Mana to Celerity, waited the 30-second cooldown required for him to affect another stat, and then started pumping Mana into Physicality.  The sudden addition of 72 Physicality to his body made him scream out in pain as it felt like his muscles were about to explode; he found that he had actually hurt himself for a 20-point loss in his Health, but a quick Major Regeneration fixed him up quickly. 

The pain at least went toward proving his theory that he could only boost his stats by three times its “natural” base score, at least as far as his new Mana Transformation spell went.  He could add more Physicality with items after he’d been boosted, but they didn’t affect the actual boosting process.  To verify that this was the same for everything, he raised his Mentality to over 800, which made him feeling lightheaded and extremely sharp-minded at the same time; it was actually uncomfortable even after a few seconds, so he cancelled that transformation as quickly as he could.  Personality only increased by 32, bringing him to 48, but he couldn’t really feel any difference there. 

Something odd happened when he increased his Fortuity by 232 points, bringing it to 348 in total.  He looked at his Character Report because he was wondering if his chance to reflect 5% damage with his Fields would go past 100%, potentially for bonus damage or something, but the chance hadn’t been brought up to the 104% that it should’ve been, or even 100%.

On the contrary, it was stuck at 50%.

50.0% Chance to double-cast support spells (From Lifewarden)

50.0% Chance to reflect 5% of prevented damage from defensive spells (From Lifewarden)

A few minutes of experimentation showed that as he approached went from 166 to 167 in Fortuity, his chances went from 49.8% to 50.0% instead of increasing to 50.1% like it was supposed to.  In other words, he’d found a cap on his Fortuity, meaning he wouldn’t be getting to a 100% chance for either of the bonus traits from his Lifewarden Class.  The stat was supposedly good for other things, of course, such as getting better loot drops or being in the right place at the right time – which he attributed to him finding that Failed Chilling Necklace in the first place – but it really wouldn’t help him in a more concrete way past 167. 

Thaden played around with the Major Health Transformation spell as well and found something that wasn’t noted on either of the spells’ descriptions: The same stat couldn’t be boosted by separate spells to pass the natural limit.  In other words, even if he had enough Health to boost Celerity to 63, he couldn’t also boost it another 42 points using his Mana.  He supposed it made sense even if it didn’t explicitly say that in the descriptions. 

He also found out something that hurt his head a little thinking about the interactions between the two spells – and gave him a scare because he nearly died.  Using Mana to boost his Physicality, the Lifewarden then used his extra Health to boost his Celerity; when he cancelled his Mana Transformation boost on his Physicality, the loss of Health that was spent to boost Celerity might have killed him because it was less than his current Health pool.  Fortunately, there seemed to be a failsafe that wouldn’t allow someone to kill themselves, and he dropped down to 20 Health as his Celerity boost was reduced to the point where he wasn’t using all of his Health anymore. 

All of his experimentation wasn’t just for fun, because it also helped him decide where to put his free stat points.  Remembering how he had been nearly at a 50% chance to reflect damage in the Magma Dungeon when all of his Achievement bonuses kicked in, he didn’t need to shove all his points into Fortuity.  Instead, didn’t add any to Fortuity because at its current 116, which was slightly more than it had been at the time, all of his bonuses would now bring it to 170 – more than enough to max out his chances at 50%.

Which left his other stats, and one in particular, as the beneficiaries of the free stat points.  First, because it was always nice to be stronger and have higher Health, he stuck 14 of his 72 points into Physicality to bring it to 50; if he used his Mana Transformation spell on it, he could bring it—gradually, next time—to 150, which was insane for any type of healer to have.  The rest, totaling 58, he threw into Celerity, bringing it to 79; when tripled, it would be at 237 – which was likely going to make him quite fast.  He wasn’t sure how fast, and was slightly worried about testing it in case he hurt himself, but if it worked out he would be able to get around much, much faster than he had been.  When he added in the few additional points of Celerity from his items, especially his Traveler’s Boots which added 2 Celerity and an additional 15% increase in traveling speed outside of combat, he was nearly at 250 for the stat. 

When he was done playing around, he looked at a portion of his new Character Report without any items equipped or bonuses applied, and he was pleased at what he saw.

#32599999-E

Lifewarden

Level – 63

Progressive Internal Combat Knowledge (PICK) – 18,700/18,700

Adventurer Coalition Rank: Silver 540/540 RP

Health – 500/500

Mana – 2,790/2,790

Physicality – 50

Celerity – 79

Mentality – 279

Personality – 16

Fortuity – 116

Done with all his preparations, Thaden descended from his temporary tree bed and got ready to leave.  In the end, it should’ve been obvious that Thaden was in no way prepared for the sudden increase in his speed of movement, and as soon as he attempted to run with his Celerity boosted to its maximum he ran into a massive tree and took off half of his 500 Health in the process.  Thankfully, he was easily able to push the ribs that cracked upon impact with the arboreal giant back together and heal himself, before trying again.

With only a slight boost to his Celerity which brought it to only 100.  Even that was quite quick, and he found himself dashing through the forest with agile steps, moving at a clip that he estimated to be somewhere around 25 miles per hour if he was a car.  He was able to boost it a little more while in the forest without hurting himself, up to the equivalent of about 35 miles per hour at 125 Celerity, but once he passed out of the trees and onto the open plain, he was able to gradually increase the boost until the was practically flying over the ground like some sort of super-powered anime protagonist. 

Hitting his limit at a Celerity of 200, at which point his body had difficulty keeping itself together without a higher Physicality to maintain it, he still found that it was plenty fast enough for his purposes.  That, and he wasn’t used to moving that fast and was having trouble thinking about where to put his feet with each step; he figured that, in time, he would become accustomed to it and perform better, but for the moment it was all he could do to not trip over himself. 

Just in case, he always made sure to cast Death Ward on himself.

With his travel capabilities increased nearly ten-fold, things were looking up.  He knew which dungeons he needed to visit to find the Anchoring dungeon among them, but there was a stop he wanted to make first.  Before, it had been a bit of an unnecessary journey because it would take him some time to get there, but with his newfound speed, what would’ve been a couple of weeks of travel time, he thought that he could cut that down to only a couple of days. 

It was time to visit another city and the Adventurer Coalition there so that he could upgrade his Badge, visit one of the Support Class Representatives to see about this mysterious “Support Class Evolution Assignment” and hopefully unlock his new Class, and to speak with the leadership there to see if they had any hints on where it might benefit him to look for the next Anchoring dungeon.  

He just hoped he didn’t end up destroying the place this time.