Chapter Sixty-Eight – Companions at Nine

I opened my eyes and grabbed Tremble, as I had so many times before.

I could still hear the skin-shredding howl of the wind, the rupturing ground, the blasts of flames, and the lashes of water both liquid and ice. Bloody axes sweeping by, the sky dark with hundreds of arrows, all aimed at me, a forest of spears, and quicklings dashing by at enhanced speed to shred me with their daggers.

No, I hadn't quite made it to the point where the erlking had to come down. The combination of elementals and quicklings trying to back-stab was a little much. The arrows were actually not a problem, unable to pierce my skin without a crit, and they couldn't crit with Stand there. They basically just poked at me annoyingly.

My bones weren't creaking as I sat up, but my blood was flowing measured and ready. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

"That was a lot of fighting," Tremble said in a low voice, and Stand beat once in agreement. "I thought we were fighting a lot before, but, wow. That whole sustainability thing you were talking about, that's really a thing…"

I lifted up Doc, still embedded in Stand, gleaming and ready to do its job. "Casters have sustainability based on how much magic they have. Warriors have sustainability based on stamina and their pool of Health and Soak, their Hit Points. If you can recoup those two things as you go, a warrior can just go and go and go."

"I had no idea Healing Edge would be so powerful," Tremble sighed. "I can see why you made Doc. I didn't think he was necessary, but without me being able to get Slot Akt, there wouldn't have been any real progress without him, would there?"

"Not really. We could have stockpiled Healing Potions and then splurged them in an occasional run, but it wouldn't have been sustainable. Constant healing potential is a must for the melee warrior on the go."

"Is there any other kind of healing item out there we could acquire?" Tremble asked eagerly.

"As good as Doc? No. Per-use items are useless, since I can't activate them. There's a Ring out there, but you need twelve Ranks in Spellcraft to make one without huge penalties. There was only one guy with the Feat back in the game, and he never managed to make a second Ring after he made the very first one. If precedent held, it would regenerate a Hit Point per cycle, so about ten a minute, and could even regrow limbs. The main difference with Doc is that it worked in between fights, instead of just during them."

"That is a lot less then Doc was giving you, yeah." While Doc couldn't keep up with even one giant's blow landing per cycle, it had easily dealt with the AoE effect of the swarms and clusters of lesser creatures landing multiple blows, given how high I'd juiced my DR.

"Exactly. And you picked up on how the Curse spaced out the encounters to try and wear me out, right?"

"Yeah, squad after squad, open area, no down time to speak of. You couldn't re-engage Battle Focus or Wardancing. Heck, if we couldn't Shard them down and force them to keep attacking, that could have gone very badly."

"I didn't much like it messing the tactics, but one of the points of all this fighting IS to make me better at fighting, so I actually didn't mind all that much. Stops it from being boring."

"Dodging twelve-foot swords never really gets boring…" Tremble mused, and I had to smirk.

"True. Know what this means?" I moved an invisible lever in the air, and the air hummed around me as the largest Karma allocation yet was sucked away. Way less then I had built up, of course, but that was par for the course.

"You're hitting Nine!" he called out happily, and Stand beat three times in congratulations.

"Yeah, I am." My soul was rumbling as more room opened inside, both expanding and condensing.

"Penultimate Badass!" Tremble crowed expectantly. "This is a big Level, right?" He flicked up the Assay List of my Stats, zipped down to the Level Nine stuff that was waiting for me.

Damn, there was a lot of it.

Nine was the final Level for most Masteries, a Power Feat Level, and gave access to Tier Five Forms and Spells for the Powered. Getting Nine meant you were in the big leagues, lacking only some additional depth and force for advancing to Ten.

Not so much for Forsaken, who were kind of on a straighter curve, and didn't get the power to raise the dead, teleport, walking on air, manipulate things telekinetically, travel between planes, and so forth.

We just got bigger and more solid numbers. But given this was a numbers game, that was hardly a bad thing.

But there was some real power coming in this level. All the Stat Masteries would be maxed out, so +1 to each Stat as I flipped the levers while working through the Classes.

The Way Schools' Power Feats were coming due. Way of Water, Fire, Storm, Shadow and the rest, along with Roll With It. My base DR was going to top out at base 11/-, which was basically invulnerable as far as most normal people were concerned.

Combat Technique, Training Technique, Bonus Sustained Combat Feat, Two General Feats with Sustained again. Another Hit Die, and +1 to Reflex Saves, giving me 6's base across the board.

Skill Points, 4 + 3 Resolve +7 Int, +1 Human +1 FC. 16 of them this time. +1 MAB, +1 RAB. Mostly spent on my Profound Artisan skills.

I tapped over Constitution Mastery/5. +1 to Con, now 38. +1 Essence, +1 Fort Save, +3 Null total. +14 bonus.

Health +4, to 117. Damn, that was a lot of Health. Many 10 HD monsters didn't have that much, and I was working off Human/3.

Soak, 9x (10, +14 Con, +1 FC, +1 Tough) + Fort Save of +33 for Tough/2, + Tough Soul of +42, for 309. I could only regain 133 during my 19 cycles of Battle Vigor… well, I suppose it was a good problem to have.

Combat Technique, War Marshal. Basically, it gave a constant morale bonus to underlings, personal followers, and the like near me, bonuses to morale checks and command decisions, loyalty checks, blah blah. Military leader Technique.

Which was important, because now I was going to mess with the Curse, as I picked Leadership for my Nine Training Technique.

Which meant it had to provide me a henchman and a group of loyal followers, along with a fighting force willing to follow me. If he wanted to spring an army on me, then by gum I was going to practice with an army of my own!

And since every day was a fresh new start, then even if they died, they'd be back tomorrow. I was going to get me some practice in.

Bonus Combat Feat: Way of Water III, As the Tide. Total bonus to hit against armor and natural armor, +6. 3 ki required in total.

General Feat: Soulspark Familiar, +2 Health, to 119, +1 Essence, +1 Soak, to 310, as it was a Soul Feat and Tat binding.

Sustained General Feat: Animal Companion

Yeah, this was going to get very interesting, as far as the number of entities going to be at play.

There was a hiss and strobe of electrum light, and an electrum ball of energy that was somewhere between lightning and fluid materialized over my shoulder. It was about as big as a fist, humming with surprise as it came into existence, and seeming to spin around to survey the area with interest.

"Sparkie, I'm Sama. This is Tremble-"

"How do you do?!" Tremble spoke up, startled but refusing to show it.

"-and this is Stand." My Shield beat a couple times in greeting. "This is all pretty sudden for you, and I've got some things to do, so I'll let Tremble catch you up to speed on what's going on, and then you can demonstrate the kinds of things you do so we're all on the same wavelength, okay?"

The little ball of light bobbed in place, popping and humming softly as tendrils of energy wrapped around it.

"I'm not going to have you fight for now, you're going to be watching and observing what is happening, so you have a better idea of what we're going to fight, and how you can contribute."

Tremble disgorged our haul from yesterday as well as what tools we had, before drifting over to start chatting with the floating ball of light. Item and Soul Familiars both got along well, as they were basically made from me, anyways, and since Tremble actually had full telepathy, could actually directly communicate with the little fellow. I was just aware of emotions.

Sparkie would get stronger the more Essence I could put into it, but that was restricted to three right now. If it was destroyed, I basically just had to Inspire to 'reallocate' the Essence, and I could bring it back into being, it was just a destruction of form. Of course, I only had so many Inspires, but that was a different problem.

I wasn't worried about it being targeted. It wasn't a big target, and the monsters were hard-coded to go after me. Also, it could fly, and shoot ranged attacks, so I was far less than worried about it.

Of course, the key thing was it was a monster, and the Curse was automatically upgrading all the monsters to be greater size and power now, and that naturally would include Sparkie, who would receive commiserate advancement to tilt the scales. So Sparkie was actually much tougher and stronger then it would be in the real world.

I had Potions to process and make, and goldweight to Invest. Work, work, work, and then go get played. That was my day.

But I had a feeling things were going to change as I introduced these new complexities.