[Beastborne: Tower of Blight] Chapter 30

“I am going to have some hard choices to make, it seems,” Hal told Elaise, dodging the question. Then he rattled off all the Social and Survival Skills he had to the group.

Val whistled tunelessly. “That’s a lot more than me. But hey, at least your Combat and Magic Spheres aren’t clogged up, right?”

Hal shrugged. He wasn’t about to reveal he had Darkweave Skill. He would much rather never Advance that particular skill. It was detrimental to his MP regeneration, though its power was disturbingly effective.

A parting gift from the Drakst, a monstrous artificial abomination.

Beast magic was his bread and butter Magic Skill. He did not want to live in a reality where he was reliant on mana potions to exclusively recover his MP because he delved too deeply into darkweave.

“With each Advancement you take,” Elaise continued, “you are giving the Shard more information about what you desire. As each Advancement is… how to say… consented? Yes, I believe this is the word. As you consent to each Advancement, the Shard weighs these choices more heavily than others.”

“I don’t see any change from my Leadership Advancement on my Sword Skill,” Hal said with a frown. “At least, not that I can tell.”

“Perhaps you have not looked hard enough.”

Hal opened his mouth to reply, then snapped it shut. Perhaps Master at Arms was a bit like Warmonger? Though he saw nothing that reminded him of the Founder Advancement.

He shook his head. “I’m not sure.”

Elaise shrugged, lifting her hands to the ceiling. “It is not always so. Especially across Spheres with no Advancements within. You are likelier to see a change between Spheres that have a connection, however. Your Leadership Skill is in Social, and your Sword Skill is in Combat, yes?”

Hal nodded.

“There is very little connection between those two. Perhaps if your Advancements were of different Skills, this might change, but for now…” She shrugged again. “What will you choose?”

“Well, there is one more I haven’t looked at, but I’m probably going to pick Way of the Sword.”

“It would suit you,” Robas told him. “You did say you just finished completing a Perk tree for bleeding, yes? From what you told us about this Lacerate affliction, it is significantly more potent. Doubling your chance to apply it based on your Bleed Affliction chance is good as well.”

Hal raised a brow at that. “How so? My Bleed Affliction chance is 75%. Doubling that brings it over 100% which means it’ll always proc, but beyond that it’s pretty useless, isn’t it?”

Elaise and Robas shared a look.

But it was Val who spoke. “Hal, resistances don’t work like that.”

Hal turned to her, lifting a brow.

“Take an urganite, you know those?”

“No.”

Val smiled gently. She didn’t look down on him for his ignorance. “Okay, think of a really large slimy stinky snail with skin like leather and a massive shell harder than titanium. Got it? Good. So, those things are resistant to just about every damn affliction and type of damage in the world. Even beast magic. It’s why we often train on them because the damage we deal to them is so low, we can work out effective strategies for dealing with stronger creatures. Plus, urganites are so hilariously slow. If you can dodge their poison gas, you’re fine.”

“How does this have anything to do with my Bleed Affliction chance?” Hal asked.

“I’m getting to it!” Val shook her head. “Boys. Always so hasty. As I was saying, it has incredibly high resistances and damage mitigation. These are two different things. In combat you have first resists, then mitigation. With me so far?”

“Resists then mitigation,” Hal repeated.

“Right. If you have 100% chance to apply an affliction to a creature, but that creature has a 25% resistance, what do you think happens?”

Hal took out some packed meals from Vorax’s pockets and passed them around. The Tower wasn’t cold, but there was something comforting about being gathered around a fire and eating a meal.

“Based on how you’ve been explaining so far,” he said, “I would wager that the 100% chance becomes 75%.”

Val leaned forward, her eyes dancing in the firelight. “Bingo! And so having more than 100% chance doesn’t actually mean anything above is wasted.”

“Except on things that don’t have resistance,” Hal added.

“Nope. Not even then.”

Hal’s face must have looked pretty interesting, because she snorted a laugh. “Most afflictions–but not all, mind you–are able to apply multiple stacks. If you have a 150% chance to apply Lacerate, and the creature you’re targeting has no resistance? Then you have a 100% chance to apply one stack, and a further 50% chance to apply another stack. So you can see how useful having a high affliction chance is.”

That would make afflictions a lot more potent and versatile than Hal realized.

“Like some of the spells the blighted creatures used in that last pit,” Hal said. “They were able to shred our resistance to Poison Afflictions. I’m guessing that, just like raising affliction chance, you can do the opposite and lower–shred I’m guessing is the official term?–your opponent’s resistance to an affliction.”

“Give this boy a gold star!”

Elaise suppressed a smirk. Hal never thought he’d see the day she was trying not to laugh at him.

“The girl is correct,” the Ebon Star Scout Leader stated. “You have a sufficient grasp on the mechanical nature. Little surprise, considering I tutored you.”

“But you didn’t–”

“As I was saying,” Elaise continued, as if nothing was amiss, “you have a sufficient understanding. Now do you see why your Way of the Sword Advancement is so desirable? If you were to attack a creature with zero resistance, you would be able to apply many more stacks of Lacerate than you would otherwise be capable of.”

Though Hal didn’t appreciate being cut off, he nodded along. “And that makes it even more important to find more of those fish-faced blighted monsters. That acid spell they spit out would be great.”

“Do you have any poison spells?” Val asked, intrigued.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Hal told her, “but I’m not going to let something as little as that stop me. I intend to get every affliction under the sun. If we’re going to be stacked up against the blighted creatures, we might as well do some spell farming, don’t you think?”

Val gazed into the fire, as if searching for answers within. “I would be honored to go spell farming with you.” She said the words solemnly, as if they were far more important than the simple activity Hal was suggesting.

“To be honest,” Hal said. “I haven’t had much chance to focus on spell farming… at all. Mostly I stumble across them, and even then it’s fairly rare that I’m able to influence it much. Even you have more spells than I do.”

Val lifted her chin haughtily and smiled at him. “That is because I learned how to farm spells effectively. I could teach you, of course.”

The others around the fire looked curiously at the pair. “Would it be… wrong to ask how one farms spells?” Robas asked.

Hal never thought anybody would care to know, especially since they weren’t a Beastborne. But why not? It’s not like explaining it would harm him in any way.

With a nod from Hal, Val cleared her throat. “Some Beastbornes, the exceptionally lucky ones–” She shot a glare at Hal. “–are able to learn spells simply by defeating a monster once they have sufficient essence from that monster.”

“How does one get this essence?”

“Defeating them, usually,” Val told Robas. “When we kill a monster, a part of its monstrous essence flows into us. When we get enough synchronization between ourselves and that monster type, we are able to learn spells from them. Those lucky few are able to do so without ever seeing the spell.”

“Most of us have to witness the spell first, before we can claim it as our own,” Val continued. “A spell targeted against us or an ally increases those chances of learning it. However, greatest chance to learn the spell comes once we kill the creature. When part of its essence joins us, we have a significant chance to learn the spell they recently used.”

“What if you do not kill it?” Robas asked.

“Then the odds are far, far less,” Val told him, staring into the fire as if she were dredging up old memories. “However, we can still learn it then. Retreating is not dishonorable among Beastbornes. When faced with an overwhelming foe, letting yourself be killed is rank idiocy. You learn what you can and flee. Maybe you’ll learn a new spell. Maybe you won’t. Staying alive is the important part.”

Though Val wasn’t looking anywhere near Hal at the moment, he felt like her words were meant for him. He had done precisely that, time and time again. Pushing himself to the brink and beyond against foes that he should have fled from.

Not that I had a choice, he thought to himself. Running would be easy if I didn’t have people depending on me, people who would come to harm or even die if I didn’t stand in the way.

Robas leaned forward, interested. “How do you get a monster to use a specific spell?”

“Random chance, unfortunately,” Val told him. “You can try to get it to use a spell you’ve seen before if you know what will trigger it. For example, that terrormantula everybody hates so much?”

A chorus of shivers ran through the group. Hal could practically hear Komachi cry again.

“Yeah, that one,” Val said with an impish grin. “It uses a spider web attack that slows a creature down and weakens their magical strength at the same time. It’s a horrible thing to witness, but it only unleashes Terror Web if it is hit by a strong magical attack and you’re able to consistently dodge its many other non-magical attacks.”

Hal was catching on. “So if you know what sort of spells a monster can do, you can abuse its instincts to get it to use what you want.”

Though he sounded authoritative on it, Val nodded, confirming that he was correct.

I had no idea it worked that way, Hal thought. It’s almost like abusing game logic to get a monster to do a specific thing so you can learn it. With my Heartsblood Path, I should be able to better discern what a monster will do more than most.

It was the one boon he had that he hadn’t taken much advantage of yet.

Speaking of not taking advantage of something, Hal turned his attention to his final Sword Skill Advancement while Robas peppered Val with questions about Beastborne.

[Beastblade]

What is a Beast without claws? Unlike many of your brethren, you have not entrusted yourself wholly to the powers of Beast Magic, but instead worked to strike a balance. As a true monster would use its claws and magic in tandem, so too have you striven to use all the tools at your disposal.

Tirelessly working with blade and spell has allowed you to tap into the full breadth and depth of both. Your Sword Skill will transform into the Beastblade Skill, combining your magical and physical prowess into one. Any magical damage enhancing equipment also enhances your Beastblade Skill and the weapon you wield. Additionally, physical attacks by your Beastblade Skill reduces a target’s defense to Beast Magic spells. All effects for Beastblade are further augmented by your Monster Core Rank in addition to your Beastblade Skill Level.

Beastblade Perks

(Reap)

With every strike you deal to an enemy, you shred their resistance to your Beast Magic. The amount of shred depends upon the Rank of your Monster Core.

(Copper Effect): By enhancing your sword with a given essence, you are able to further shred the specific target’s resistance to that essence. The amount of shred depends upon the Rank of your Monster Core and chosen essence.

Hal tried not to gasp. Aside from the killer name–way better than Master at Arms or Sword Skill–he noticed that this was the only Advancement that not only took into account his Monster Core, but its primary Perk included an effect based on his Core’s Rank.

There was only the one Perk, Reap, but it sounded infinitely more powerful than any other Perk he had on hand. Stronger than all the Leadership Perks combined, and that was saying something since his Founder Advancement gave him free Manatree EXP as well as Manatree Skill Levels.

Neither Master at Arms nor Way of the Sword could possibly compare to how well Beastblade fit his fighting style. If he was something other than a Beastborne, he might have been more tempted by Way of the Sword.

Except Hal was exactly that, a Beastborne that wielded swords and magic.

This Advancement was perfect for him.

It was then that Hal noticed the conversation had died and everybody was staring at him.

“What?”