Warsinger James Baldwin (read this if TXT) 📖

ignores armor. Flying enemies (including other dragons, but excluding constructs and undead) are afflicted with severe Vertigo, which disrupts the enemy’s gyroscopic orientation and impedes their ability to correctly navigate in the air. Vertigo lasts between 5-60 seconds, depending on the enemy’s Stamina or Integrity. Undead and constructs will take damage, but not become disoriented.

Damage is equal to your dragon’s Dexterity divided by her Wisdom x 750 (current damage: 4125).

At Level 20, your dragon is able to use her sonic attack to disorient flying undead. At Level 25, she can disorient flying constructs.

Karalti wasn’t going to level for a while after this one. She needed roughly twice the EXP per level that I did. I’d be Level 26 after gaining 2868 more points, but she needed to accrue 7464 before she’d hit Level 16. It was all stat training for both of us from here.

After she was leveled, I turned my attention to my own Path, and the new abilities that were available to me:

Spectral Gaze

When triggered, this ability drains 1 HP per 5 seconds, but you gain the power to see in the dark, as well as detect living beings and magical items through walls and other surfaces.

As much as I really, realllly wanted darkvision, I held off on selecting a new ability for now: because at Level 25, I now had access to Level V combat abilities. I had four points to spend, and they were distributed between Jump, Master of Blades, and Mantle of Night. The first two were for the damage and crowd control; Mantle of Night V boosted my movement speed and special attack power by 25% for a cool 120 seconds, a massive improvement from its Level III incarnation.

Mark of Matir abilities were a bit different to the normal smorgasboard of combat abilities I was presented with whenever I leveled. Every time I gained a level and got my two or three combat ability points, I could go back and pick up anything I’d unlocked. With the Mark of Matir offerings, which I received every four levels, I had to pick one and could never choose from either of them again. The abilities, naturally, we always awesome, making it very hard to choose.

Dark Vitality

Your HP regenerates at x2 speed outside of combat. If you have recently killed an enemy, you regain x4 HP for 1 hour per slain enemy.

Dust to Dust

If you kill someone using stealth, your enemy will turn into dust, leaving no trace of a corpse to find.

After agonizing over my choices, I decided on Dust to Dust. While the Dark Vitality skill had its advantages, I had cheap Green Moss-based potions that could do the same thing. Dust to Dust was unique, and I could think of at least ten times it could have been useful… assuming I played Dark Lancer as a stealth class. That raised an interesting question. Why hadn’t I been?

Our next stop after levelling was Litvy, where Rin was waiting for us. The Mercurion had the shabby look of someone who had been working from home for too long. While she didn’t eat or drink food, her hair was a muss and her clothing was smeared in everything from powdered metal to machine grease and amalgam.

“Hi guys!” she called to us chirpily as Karalti shifted down beside me. She was not yet a mature dragon – that happened at Level 30 – but she was starting to fill out a little more in the hips and chest when in human form. When Rin saw her, she blushed a brilliant sapphire-blue and pressed her lips together, staring fixedly at her feet. “My gosh, Karalti! I swear you get more gorgeous with every level.”

Karalti’s eyes lidded. “Why, thank you.”

“Maybe put some clothes on before Soma realizes we’re here and comes rushing out with a bouquet of chicken legs for you?” I cleared my throat as a flash of sympathetic heat prickled through my skin. Karalti was starting to get hormonal again, and she wasn’t the only one.

“Why not? I thought you’d want him to have a stroke.” Karalti laughed, obligingly equipping her daily monk-in-training wear. She had started braiding her hair: now that she was officially Vash’s protégée, he had given her a row of small onyx beads that I had woven onto several of her thin flat braids.

“Come with me, guys! I’ve been working all through the morning. I’ve got some stuff for both of you.” Before we could answer, Rin bounced off toward the college buildings.

“Hookshots?” I asked hopefully.

“No, sorry. I wasn’t able to figure them out in time… I’m having some trouble with building a gassing system that can be properly mounted to a small crossbow or pistol AND support the weight of a person while it winches them in AND carry enough cable to like, actually be useful. A rifle might work better for firing grapples, but then you’re going to have to haul a rifle underground and that’s an extra twenty pounds you really don’t need…”

“Don’t worry about it. If we can’t Batman around the place, we’ll figure out a good old Tyrolean Traverse if we need one.” I said, offering Karalti a hand. She smiled prettily, linking her fingers with mine as we followed Rin into the shade. “I didn’t think making a grappling hook gun would be so difficult.”

“Me either. It’s all a bit silly, to be honest with you, but we were still working some of the physics rules out when HEX hit America,” Rin replied absently. “The game was still in beta. There’s actually a lot of gear and balancing issues that were left to fix, and not just in Crafterland. At least, that’s what I was told before I was uploaded.”

“I’m glad we all made it,” I said. “The game relatively seems stable so far, at least.”

“It is. But it’s a closed system, and after that message you got… I dunno.” She trailed off. “Let’s not talk about that now, though. I made you something super useful, and want