[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 24: Cat

Purring, Komachi listened to the crackling of the campfire, and dried her sodden fur with its soothing warmth. The [Archflame], dancing at its center, felt a little like home. Just like Hawai’i.

Ever since she had met the Sage Raiko, Komachi had learned many things. And after venturing to Islegard’s end, then to the Shardrune of Il’dran and leveling up numerous times, she learned and changed even more.

Still, some things remained strange and unfamiliar. Such as all these choices for advancement and growth.

And the green glowing spirit-like creatures flying nearby that Sam didn’t seem to see. Like fish that swam through the air instead of the water, they darted in and out of view.

She didn’t bother him about them. It didn’t seem time yet.

Upon reaching Level 5 Cleric, she found a number of unlockable skills and abilities open to her. Unfortunately, she could choose only one.

No matter how much she tried to bamboozle the Shard into giving her more, it remained stoic and uncaring. Just like Sam’s automatic can opener.

She had dumped most of her bonus points into Mind and Insight, the former because she was a simple animal who enjoyed seeing “small number get bigger” and having more mana as a healer was brain-dead simple.

For a moment, her two-brain-cell instinct took over. She batted a paw at one of the flying spirit things, and it fluttered away.

“Greebles?” Sam asked absentmindedly, focused on his task of maintaining his equipment.

Huh, maybe they are greebles!  Komachi thought with fleeting fascination.

Then it was back to business as usual.

As for Insight, once she had reached an unknown threshold, she realized she could see Sam’s HP. But not always. With more Insight, she was able to see more of his HP before it went critical. And she guessed that with higher Insight, she might even be able to see it all the time.

But stats were only part of the fun. What was most intriguing were the new toys she would get to play with.

That is, if she could make a choice.

Not the easiest of things for any sapient creature, much less one that was world-renowned for not being able to decide whether they wanted to go inside or outside when presented with an open door.

Still, Komachi made the most of her two brain cells. Which, Komachi would be quick to point out, was double what an orange cat had.

[Recovery Stance]

(Magic Stance) (F-Class)

(★ Common IV)

What’s better than healing once? Continuously, relentlessly healing! You’ve shown that you couldn’t care less about your mana when it comes to helping your allies. Your Regen spell, and any other Healing-Over-Time (HOT) spells that you learn, stack upon targets you cast this on. Each stack placed upon a target incurs a higher cost to the next HOT spell cast upon the same target.

Maximum Stacks: 3

Yis, Komachi thought greedily. She had already blown through all of her MP relentlessly casting [Regen] even though, now that she thought about it, the effect didn’t stack.

But what else was she to do when her best friend in all the world was hurting? Nothing? Nah.

In the end, it had all worked out. Which was pretty much par for the course in Komachi Land. Who knows, maybe she got [Recovery Stance] because she kept spamming [Regen].

[Healing Vapors]

(Restorative Magic) (F-Class)

(★Common II)

You really don’t give a shit about your MP, do you?

“Nuh-uh,” Komachi said, interrupting the notification, fully expecting that the Shard could hear her.

That didn’t particularly seem to be the case. It continued on unabated.

But Komachi forgot where she was, so she skipped back to the beginning again.

[Healing Vapors]

(Restorative Magic) (F-Class)

(★Common II)

You really don’t give a shit about your MP, do you? Most healers take care to meter their mana, preventing themselves from bottoming out. Not only because the effect is decidedly unpleasant, but because it means they can’t heal anymore. The one thing their Job is designed to do. But you have no regard for such mundane things as “mana” or “rules” or even “common sense” and instead blaze forward to new horizons. Whenever you lack the MP to cast a healing spell, you instead emit a localized healing vapor that can weakly heal allies in a short radius. Grants a minuscule bonus to the effect of Mind and Insight when using [Healing Vapors].

“Dang, they both Common-rarity,” Komachi said, getting excited. “Were yours Common?”

“Nah,” Sam said, between the rhythmic sound of that strange flat stone against the blade. “Only my stances were Common. I’m guessing that they’re considered stronger? There’s a little star icon next to them and it’s solid for Common but empty for Primitive. I’m willing to bet that Uncommon is next with both a solid and empty star.”

“Gotta be better than Primitive then. Thing is, how much better?”

“No idea, what’re the tiers at? One of my stances was tier 3, the other was 1 instead of 0.”

“My stance is 4 and [Healing Vapors] is just 2,” Komachi said.

“Both Common?” Sam whistled appreciatively. “Damn. That’s pretty good.”

“Yeah, but those are the only options I got. Really, all I did was cast magic with [Stealth] on, but isn’t that what a Cleric is supposed to be doin’ anyway?” Komachi said, pleased with the rewards. “Maybe most aren’t a two brain cell genius like me that picked the Seeker Legend and got that sweet, sweet [Stealth] ability.”

“So that’s why the golem didn’t seem to care about what you were doing,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Though that might be why you have half the number of options I got. Maybe the things we unlock are based on both our Job and what we do? I know my choices seem to reflect the last fight most of all, but also the first fights with the lizards and spiders.”

“That sounds cool,” Komachi said contently. “I hope it works like that.”

“Stands to reason, doesn’t it?” Sam said. “If every single person received the exact same set of skills, with billions of people, you’d eventually have carbon copies of each other. But if some or all of the options are based on what you do, then people retain their uniqueness. Within reason, probably. I doubt a Fighter who spends all their time trying to heal people will get a healing spell.”

Komachi raised her paw and idly groomed the damp fur as she thought about the two options she had to pick. Clearly one was better than the other, after all stacking healing spells seemed better than farting out a heal only when her MP was gone.

But then again, what if [Healing Vapors] had no cooldown at all and she could use it all the time?

Probably not. That’d be too good to be true. She doubted that the Shard would encourage people to be as scatterbrained as Komachi.

Raising her paw, she batted at the Shardscript floating in the air to make her selection.

Similar to leveling up and acquiring higher stats, Komachi felt a warm glow of knowledge settle into her tiny head. Her ears twitched and her tail thumped as she felt ever-so-slightly more useful.

***

Sam smiled as his cat turned her attention back to her notifications. He did the same.

Considering Sam had a Cleric grouped up with him, he didn’t need defensive stances and skills as much as another Fighter might. Any damage he took, Komachi could mitigate so long as he didn’t take too much damage.

And the easiest way to open himself up to taking life-threatening amounts of damage was to prolong the fight. Had he been able to kill the golem sooner, it might never have broken the ground and he wouldn’t be stuck.

On the other hand, if he did pick [Guard] or [Sturdy Stance], he would be that much more difficult to kill.

Becoming quasi-impervious was appealing in some ways, though nowhere near as much as [Power Stance]. It called to him. It fit the way he wanted to fight much closer.

He didn’t want to be the one standing there, slow as a boulder and just as heavy, soaking up damage while somebody else demolished the monster’s HP bar for him.

Besides, he didn’t have anybody in his group but a Cleric for now. He didn’t imagine that little—but chonky—cat was going to be a damage dealer any time soon.

“Really, the best way to mitigate damage is to just kill the thing faster than it kills me,” Sam muttered to himself. And that meant more damage.

Getting Komachi, his only reliable ally now that Kale, Chris, Kylie, and the rest were lost to him, to do more damage didn’t seem to be possible.

Sure, she had [Blight], but that didn’t seem to do much damage. It didn’t hold a candle to what he had seen either Chris or Matt produce with their spells.

And even their magic seemed to pale in comparison to what Fighters could output. Though Fighters came with the obvious drawback of having to get up close to deal any damage, while Mages could hang back and fling magic until their reserves of mana went dry.

While [Onslaught] might be the ticket, [Power Stance] was not only higher rarity, it sounded like an entirely different breed of ability.

And while a one-time ability was cool and all, what Sam really wanted was a different way to fight. Something that he could rely on fully instead of waiting for a cooldown or MP, whatever the ability used.

The description had been, as with everything else so far, very vague as to how it worked. The only way to get more information was to choose the ability. Considering he didn’t have another Fighter around to talk to, he would have to take a gamble.

He selected [Power Stance] and hoped he wasn’t screwing himself.

Sam’s earlier guess turned out to be right. With the newly added information downloaded to his mind, Sam knew enough about how to use stances in general to tell that they were a new dimension to combat entirely.

Not quite the same as a stance back on Earth, nor a traditional striking form that was learned either. It was something quasi-magical.

Or maybe it was just whatever system-shenanigans that these Worldshards seemed to have going on. He’d seen it once or twice already, things that didn’t quite make logical sense just worked, Earth-based physics be damned.

[Power Stance] came with 3 specific methods of attack, similar to abilities in some video games without the cooldown or additional damaging stats. At least, not that he could tell.

He knew how to use [Shockwave], [Whirling Slash], and [Reaping the Willows] in much the same way as he knew several Meyer forms from his days studying HEMA.

They all were specific motions that needed to be followed, only instead of just executing a perfect cut that only existed as a motion, these Arts used a little bit of mana to empower them somehow.

How, precisely, Sam didn’t fully understand, but it enhanced them beyond just a well-timed attack.

These forms—Arts, really—also gave him something tangible. For every use of [Shockwave], he would generate a single stack of [Fury], which he could then consume as a sort of attack buff.

How much it enhanced his attacks, he had no idea. Though he was eager to find out.

Moving on to the rest of his notifications, Sam was interested in finding one that popped up in the middle of combat.

He had been so focused that he could hardly remember what it was, but it had seemed important. Something about an Incarnate, which he still wasn’t clear on what an Incarnate even was.

I guess that means I don’t even know what I am.

Existential questions aside, it seemed he was due some skill ups as he scrolled back through his older notifications. He’d come across the Incarnate thing eventually so long as he kept an eye out.

Finally, he thought greedily, some solid progress.

“Where do we go from here?” Komachi asked wearily, looking from one end of the ravine to the other. One direction seemed the same as the other. Tall black walls glistened with running water, and a gap below opened to the eternal sky. “I’m sleepy. Normally I like to bounce off the walls right before bed but…”

“I knew you did that on purpose!”

“Yis,” she said simply.

Unsurprisingly, dodging death was exhausting. He needed sleep. Badly. “I’m beat Komachi. How about you?”

While nodding, the cat fell asleep face-first into her tucked paws.

“We’ll explore soon, after we rest and repair. I’ll watch over you,” he said, to the already fast-asleep cat. “Rest well, Komachi.” Sam gently petted her mostly dried fur.