Frostbitten Wayfarer

The next month flew by as Zoe practiced using a variety of weapons. Both the spear and sword were rather comfortable for her by the end, and the shield felt very natural after the month of practice. She tried out some mauls and axes, but they felt rather clunky and awkward to use. And it didn’t help that the heavier weapons made her feel like she was playing whack-a-mole with the zombies that popped up out of the ground.

Zoe got another level three weeks in, and dumped her stat points into vitality which brought her up to a full thousand health. Seeing four digits in the corner of her vision whenever she checked on her health made her feel a lot more comfortable. It was almost tempting to continue dumping her points into vitality just for even more health, but that was probably a thought driven more by fear than anything else.

And while fear was certainly a valid feeling that Zoe appreciated, it wasn’t how she wanted to make all of her decisions. One thousand health was already plenty. Even when a fight went horribly wrong while she was trying out a new weapon she never lost more than a couple hundred health. And then even if that happened, she was able to quickly restore it all back with her Restoration.

The rest of her points for a few more levels would go straight into Endurance until she got five hundred stamina, and then she’d get back to pumping up her magic stats. Using the physical weapons made her appreciate the physical stats as well quite a lot, but it was hard to decide on what the split should be for her.

In the end, her decision to master a variety of weapons might end up being a waste of time if her physical stats fell behind too much. What would a shield do for her when she only had fifty strength if she’s getting hit by something with six hundred strength?

And for that matter, was her current class even a magic class? She wanted one, and decided on Seasoned Frost thinking it was. But was it, really? It had some magical effects — Haste and Frost Manipulation were both likely affected by her intelligence.

But was Frozen Arsenal affected by her intelligence? It made her weapons and armour, but how did it actually interact with her stats? Did she need a tonne of Strength to be able to wield them, and then also a tonne of Intelligence to be able to make powerful, sturdy creations? Or did Intelligence help supplement her lacking physical stats?

It was worth a test at some point, she thought. Even if her class skills ended up not being all that great, the bonuses from the class alone were exceptional. And even if she ended up with just Alacrity, Eternal Elegance, Restoration and both of the Affinities she’d be plenty happy with her decision.

But once she was done getting her Endurance up to fifty, she’d save up a bunch of points to dump into her Intelligence at once. There was a good chance she’d notice a significant boost to her physical power while she wielded the weapons, she thought. It didn’t make sense to have a class that was so clearly magical require significant amounts of physical stats. Unless the standard was to have a good split between all of them anyway, which didn’t make a lot of sense to her either.

Gafoda changed quite a bit over the month. The two blacksmiths and the three inns were a constant that Zoe got used to, but every week a few of the other shops would change owners and become something completely different. An alchemy shop one day would be a grocer the next. A clinic became a camping supply store. It made her feel a little silly for trying to build up a map of the place earlier in her stay.

The people she saw wandering through Gafoda also changed quite often. There were a good handful of familiar faces — Zoe had seen Obai shopping at one of the blacksmiths just a week prior, but all the lower levelled kids would get a handful of levels and then leave.

Caravans full of clearly wealthy families would replace them and Zoe would see a new crowd of children running around being excited to kill some zombies. It was a strange experience, after her time in Flester and even back home on Earth.

She was used to seeing the same people day in, and day out. But outside of a small handful of people in Gafoda, Zoe rarely saw the same face more than once or maybe twice. Some, she was sure were claimed by the dungeon. People who rushed in too quickly and bit off more than they could chew without anybody around to save them.

Zoe had found a few more unfortunate individuals like Obai who thought too highly of themselves and ended up crying for help. She helped them every time she heard them, and often she wasn’t even the first to get to them. Volunteers scoured the forest, looking for people just like them.

Had she not rescued Obai, Zoe had a pretty good feeling that somebody else might have come by to help out. Somebody else even might have when she was there and she just didn’t notice them before they left it to her. In the higher levels, she didn’t expect that same level of safety, but it was comforting knowing that there were so many keeping the lower areas safe.

Near the end of the month she found herself settling into a fighting style that was rather comfortable. She’d summon a sword and shield with her Frozen Arsenal, but keep them as more of a fallback for when she wasn’t able to take out the zombies with her enchanted projectiles.

At times it felt a little goofy holding her sword and shield while she fired off an almost unlimited quantity of explosive projectiles. But she was grateful for it in particular when she had to rescue somebody. The less mana she consumed clearing out the zombies the more she’d have for healing them.

The fights she had felt a lot better than her first attempt, too. Rather than taking the zombies’ slams head on, she would angle her shield and their rotted fists would slide along its icy surface. With practice she was even able to push them aside and send them tumbling to the ground when they lunged at her. Her sword would slash across their chest and their rotted flesh would sheer off to splatter on the ground.

If she were being completely honest with herself, the whole experience really cemented her decision to be more of a magic focused build — or at least a little more distant. The arsenal of weapons was fun to play with, but getting so close and personal with the mindless corpses was often more tedious than anything else.

The learning part was exciting. Before she got her new Spear, Shield and Sword fighting skills, each fight was something new. She’d make another mistake and be punished for it, then take her time to reflect on it and think about what she could do better. And that was fun.

But now there was no more learning being done. The zombies wouldn’t do anything new, they never surprised her. It’s not that she specifically wanted danger, she just didn’t have a burning passion for wielding a sword like she did when she used her magic.

Watching the raw power that made up her being manipulate the world to her desire and create such incredible effects didn’t ever seem to get old. Even creating a bow and using that to take out zombies at a distance was enjoyable for her. But wielding a sword and shield, or a spear, or any other short, close range weapon she’d tried out left her feeling like a strange cog in some messed up machine. It made the whole process feel so much more repetitive than it needed to. Like an endless, tedious grind just to see her numbers go up.

Fighting like that wasn’t fun, it didn’t spark her creativity and inspire her to try new things. There was one right decision, and once she learned it, there was no reason to try anything else. Even less than that, there was plenty of very good reason to not try anything else. Even if the fights weren’t terribly risky, it was stupid to intentionally make a bad decision just to have some fun. And that stupidity made it not fun any more.

Whereas from a distance, she was free to experiment more. To try things that might not be the wisest decisions but the risk was still low enough to justify it anyway. She could try out a variety of enchantments and effects, different shapes of projectiles. It was fun to play with magic. She couldn’t say that about the sword.

And maybe somebody who truly loved the sword would disagree. Maybe they’d see new things they could do with each fight, new ways to hold their sword or to swing it, flourishes and feints that excited them. Zoe just didn’t get that, she came to realize. The physical combat was out of necessity, while her magic called to her and begged for use. Maybe in time she’d find a weapon she enjoyed, but she hadn’t yet.

It really made her question her Frozen Arsenal skill again, but every time it came up she would remind herself that her favourite enchantments came from its variety of possible effects. The whole thing really annoyed her. She’d love to be able to take another skill — even Eternal elegance and then another enchanting skill would be awesome. But then she’d be stuck with such a smaller possible range of enchantments and that didn’t spark joy.

She added researching skills to her high priority list when she got back to Flester. The only real enchantments she used from her Frozen Arsenal were explosive and piercing, both of which she thought she could find simple replacements for. Maybe there was an Explosion general skill she could get somehow? Find an Explosive elemental and kill it?

Zoe shook her head. That was just being silly. If she were being realistic, the best option going forward would be to get a whole different class with a bunch of different skills that she’d enjoy. But for now the only possible option would be to replace her enchanting class. Which was also not a valid option.

Enchanting had become such a huge part of her life. The freedom her Chrono Enchanter class gave her was incredible, and going back to just a normal Enchanting skill was off the table as far as she was concerned. Even if she didn’t take many enchanting classes, she definitely needed at least one. And more wouldn’t hurt, she thought.

Mana Manipulation was an interesting skill to play with as well, though she still hadn’t found anything that really helped her. She tried pushing her Frost projectiles forward with mana as well but it didn’t seem to have an effect. Even trying to help the dungeon absorb mana also seemed to do nothing. She could push the mana towards where it was being absorbed, but the dungeon never seemed to care and just continued pulling mana in at a constant rate.

It was definitely a lot more fun than something like Acceleration, and Zoe mentally thanked Emma for the suggestion. Even if didn’t do anything super helpful, it hit that very primal pleasure that Zoe felt from the magical skills she had. Just watching so clearly the world shift and warp to her will was an indescribable feeling, and she often got lost just pushing the wisps around in patterns.

Suffocating the zombies in mana slowed them down a little bit, and one time she even tried to take one out with just her Mana Manipulation. It did work, but it was extremely slow, and she wasn’t sure what the damage came from. Was it just from the mana pressing into it? Just too much pressure over time? Or did she accidentally make a weapon from mana?

There must be something she could do with it, she thought. But she hadn’t found it yet. Maybe it would help enchantments run quicker or better, maybe it would help once she learned how to enchant things without first creating an image of her skills?

It didn’t matter to her much. The skill was fun to play with, and it didn’t impede her. That’s all she could ask for. All she wanted, really. As much fun as it was to have a goal of getting to Moaning Point’s peak, she thought she probably would have been just as satisfied if she stayed in Flester and continued refining her skills in safety.

Immaculate Enchantments was the last skill that confused her by the end of the month. It got to level thirteen, which was high enough that for most skills she was able to notice at least a slight difference if she really paid attention to it. But in the case of her cleaning skill? It may as well have still been level one.

She could see there being thresholds to it instead. Maybe at level fifty it would start cleaning more things or give her more options of what to clean. But there didn’t seem to be a linear scaling to it. Or if there was, it was extremely weak and good enough at level one anyway.

Which meant that she didn’t need to always have the skill. She could swap it on when she needed to clean, and swap it off if she needed to do something else. The slot could be a bit of a flex slot for whatever she needed most. Though, there weren’t really any other skills she needed from Chrono Enchanter, either.

Mana Storage was effectively useless, since she could just manually dump her mana into something all day long if she needed it. Alacrity was an amazing skill to have on, and as her Time Affinities and first Alacrity levelled she really noticed the increased quickness. But a sudden boost to her quickness was difficult to get used to as the world around her seemed to slow down.

The steady boost of it levelling was manageable, but swapping it on and off like that didn’t seem wise. It would either be a significant enough boost to help her, in which case it would also be disorienting enough to impede her. Or it wouldn’t be that disorienting, in which case it wouldn’t be a significant enough boost to actually help her anyway.

And the final skills were Mending and Acceleration, neither of which she saw a good use for yet. One was a worse Restoration and the other seemed underwhelming at best.

Zoe shrugged. If nothing else, it was worth keeping in mind for future classes.