Level One God

[Common] Active Skill: Devour Mana. [Tier 1] Cause your target to devour their mana in exchange for health.

[Rare] Active Skill: Mana Shield. [Tier 1] Create a barrier of pure mana.

[Common] Passive Skill: Mana Leech [Tier 1] When targeted by mana-fueled attacks, you will absorb a portion of the mana in the attack. Does not reduce the power of the attack.

[Rare] Passive Skill: Sense Mana [Tier 1] Your perception of mana deepens. Detection of hostile magic moderately improved.

I hid my reaction to my new abilities until I set the stone on the three-pronged device. Poppy apparently planned to linger and read over all the abilities with me.

She sucked in through her teeth when the readout appeared over my stone. “Whew-wee, boy! Two rares? Are you and Ithariel secret bedfellows? Got a naidu on your payroll?”

“Uh, no,” I said, smirking. I liked the old woman. “I wonder how the first ability works. Does that mean I can’t heal somebody if they’re out of mana already? Or somebody with a low amount of mana won’t be as easy for me to heal? And could I use it to simply drain an enemy’s mana, so long as I didn’t mind healing them in the process?”

“Hm,” Poppy said. “I suspect that’s all possible. Of course, pushing the limits of your abilities can always have surprising effects. There’s no telling how these might grow with enough practice. But I will say these are very strange Heart abilities,” Poppy said. Her arms were folded, and she was tilting her head. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen a mana-themed Heart class. If you had dreams of working as a simple healer, you may wish to stow them. These seem more suited for a healer who plans to wade into the fray. Might I suggest learning the bow or blade?”

“I’ll definitely keep that in mind,” I said, plucking the stone from the prongs and moving aside so Lyria could take her turn. I was curious to see her new skills, especially since I was supposed to help her learn them.

I quickly thought through my abilities while I waited for Lyria. At first, I had been a little disappointed. In my mind, I thought my Heart stone would give me a straightforward healing ability. Ideally, I had hoped for something with a lot of range. Whatever else came with the class would just be a bonus, after that.

Instead, my main healing ability seemed like it had a baked-in limitation.

Lyria, for instance, seemed to have a pretty shallow mana pool. How effectively could I even heal her? And that would mean I couldn’t heal somebody who had tapped out their mana pool, either. It also meant my allies would only get to benefit from my healing if they didn’t mind their own mana getting drained in the process.

The only big winner seemed to be me. I seemed to have a decent depth to my mana pool already, along with above-average abilities to replenish it. If my mastery of my own mana continued to grow, it would quickly turn into a deep well of potential healing I could tap into at a moment’s notice.

I supposed it wasn’t so bad. After all, I could focus more on preventing damage for allies with Mana Shield—assuming I could cast it far enough and with enough precision to protect others, that was.

Mana Leech was nice, and I thought it would synergize with my cloak quite well, but it seemed more like a perk than a foundational aspect of my new class.

Sense Mana would be interesting, as well. I felt like I already sensed mana, so I hoped it wouldn’t turn out to be redundant. But the part about hostile magic made me doubt that. My guess was that I’d get an improved ability to feel when magical attacks were coming toward me. Maybe I could learn to dodge them or counter them. With my cloak, I could at least hope to get my back turned to absorb a small portion of the damage—which, I remembered, would now also restore some of my mana.

The class seemed to turn me into something like a wizard killer. Of course, if I had to limit myself to one class like everybody else on Eros, I would be more like a wizard annoyer.

Thank you, Path of the Fertile Seed. The more I thought about it, the more excited I was about my new abilities.

Lyria’s stone flashed momentarily, and a readout appeared above it.

[Common] Active Skill: Wind Wall. [Tier 1] Cover your body in localized wind.

[Common] Active Skill: Gust. [Tier 1] Direct a powerful gust of wind.

[Rare] Passive Skill: Venting Wounds. [Tier 1] Your wounds release deadly jets of pressurized air.

[Rare] Passive Skill: Survivor [Tier 1] Delay death by [10] seconds. You may be healed during this time to avoid death. If mortal wounds are not healed in [10] seconds, you will die after the duration of [Survivor] expires.

Poppy let out a low whistle. “A Wind Shield class,” she said. “Rather unusual. But I’ve been around long enough to see just about anything. Once, I saw a boy with similar abilities, though he had one called Wind Armor. Catch was it didn’t work if he had clothes on. Quite unfortunate, that was.”

Lyria’s brow was already furrowed as she contemplated her new abilities. She was probably trying to decide if this new set of skills was worth giving up the Sword abilities she had been using her whole life. Then again, it sounded like she had only learned to use one of those four abilities, so maybe the choice to switch wasn’t that difficult.

“That’s right,” Poppy continued. “Never saw him again after he claimed his stone. I heard he took a spike trap to the head. Shame, that is. I don’t know if he forgot to turn on his wind armor, or maybe he was just too embarrassed to walk around like that.”

“Oh,” Lyria said.

“Your ‘Survivor’ skill is really something special,” she added, suddenly serious. “That right there is the kind of skill people start paved paths for. You could get yourself quite a following for that alone.”

“Really?” Lyria asked. “It seems… kind of dangerous.”

“Oh,” Poppy said. “Not as dangerous as actually dying when you die, I figure.”

I grinned. “She has a point. If we make sure we’ve got healing supplies on hand, that will be huge.”

Lyria nodded thoughtfully. “I’m just not loving the idea of coming close enough to death that I count this as a handy part of my toolbag.”

“Fair point,” I admitted.

The strength of Lyria’s abilities seemed like they could vary pretty wildly. It all depended on just how the wind behaved. In my mind, wind wasn’t strong enough to deflect a sword, for example. But what did I know about magical wind?

If it was anything like my Soul abilities, she could hone it over time, probably making a wall of wind stronger than steel. And the ability that made pressurized air vent out of her wounds seemed absolutely incredible. I only hoped she could control that one, otherwise I could imagine a few fatal mishaps.

Then again, her Survivor ability would only turn them fatal if she didn’t get healed fast enough.

And rushing to heal somebody who was violently venting deadly air from all their wounds was probably going to be a bit of a tricky task if my Devour Mana ability didn’t work at range. I needed to really hope she could control that.

“Now, if you like, I can go in the back and fetch Asmodan,” Poppy said. “He loves to talk skills with new recruits. I think he’ll throw out his back with excitement to read both of your abilities. And if I—”

“We need to go. Urgently,” I added. “But if there’s anything you can tell us about the dungeon, it would help.”

“Oh,” Poppy looked slightly put off by my rush, but recovered quickly enough. She pulled out a scrap of parchment and stretched it on the counter between us. “They’re calling the dungeon Beastden. A bit dramatic, if you ask me.”

“Beastden?” I asked. “That sounds ominous.”

“Yes, well, each dungeon tends to arrive with a bit of a theme. The dark magic in Beastden has drawn all sorts of critters and animals, granting them intelligence and ferocity. Based on early reports, the deeper in, the more intelligent and ferocious they appear to be. But there’s good news for you nice, young, Woods! The early levels are apparently quite vast and approachable.”

“That’s great,” I said, looking at her map. It seemed to depict the city of Thrask and the river. From the looks of it, the river wound through a narrow passageway, passing by several smaller openings in the larger cave structure. The dungeon didn’t look far, and the entrance was just off the river’s path. “Any maps of what we’ll find inside?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Poppy said. “The guild has folks out there currently mapping what they can.” She handed us wooden badges, just like the one I had stopped wearing at some point in the Black Wood. “Show these if you find the cartographers. I’m sure they’ll let you copy down your own sketch of their maps if they know you’re from the guild. If they try to charge you, tell them Poppy will have a word with them when they get back.”

We thanked Poppy and left the guild with our new class corestones.

[Hunger 40%]

There were two tasks I wanted to handle before we left, but I decided paying another visit to the alchemist would have to wait. One was a very quick trip to Quillon’s shop. I remembered something he had shown me that didn’t catch my interest before my bow, but now I thought it would be just the thing. It was a “Viperlilly,” which would produce a necrotic toxin that caused blood to thicken and eventually rot within the body. It had seemed too slow for my Elemental Projection ability or my Alchemist’s Kit, but it would be perfect with my new bow. The herb cost me 40 silver, which I would have to hope I could replenish with my loot from the dungeon.

Next, I tried to find a place to fully identify my Alchemist’s Kit and Voidgaze. Based on what I had seen, I was starting to suspect both of them could have powerful active abilities. Without knowing what they were, I had no way to try to use them.

After a brief conversation with a blacksmith, I learned that lenses capable of identifying Angelic, Cursed, and Demonic items were powerful relics themselves. In most cases, people with items so powerful earned them in their personal space and didn’t need to identify them. In cases where people came into the possession of unidentified items of such a rarity, it was seen as a potential criminal case. I would need to document how I earned the items, hand them over for holding, and wait for a formal review to be conducted. If that all passed review, I’d get my items back, fully identified after paying a five gold fee per item.

As that was definitely not happening, I asked if there was any other way.

“Well,” he said, scratching his thick beard. “You could hope to find a well of revelation. Sometimes they appear in dungeons. Or you could ask around on the black market. For the right price, you may find someone with an unregistered relic capable of identifying your items. Course, you didn’t hear that from me. And if you did, I would’ve told you something like that would cost in the neighborhood of fifty gold.”

I sighed, but thanked the man for his help.

Damn it. Identifying them would have to wait.

“Let’s go, then,” I said, giving Lyria a nod once we were outside the blacksmith’s shop.

“You’re sure about this?” Lyria asked. “Destroying the bedroll is always an option. It would give us time to wait for Bloody Steve. Maybe even gather a bigger group.”

I shook my head. “The bedroll could be a huge edge for me. I need to do whatever I can to make sure I keep it.”

“I had a feeling you were going to say that.” She shrugged. “Had to try, though. Come on, I saw some stairs leading down to the docks back that way.”

#

Securing a ride to the dungeon cost us five silver, but Lyria insisted on paying. It reminded me that she had earned the same cut from our exploits, and I suddenly felt bad that she didn’t get a chance to go on a shopping spree.

We were on a thin, small wooden boat with only room for the two of us and the boatmaster at the back. Our boatmaster was a hunched man who leaned on an old, waterlogged oar. The cave river’s current carried us, so he only used a long oar like a rudder, guiding us between dangling rock formations and around turns.

It smelled like salt and plant growth as we cut through the silky, dark waters. The ever-present sound of water falling down to the city finally faded as we drifted deeper down the river.

“What do you plan to spend your share of the money on, anyway?” I asked Lyria as I looked around us, taking in the faint glow of rocks above and the occasional creature swimming close enough to the deep blue water’s surface.

“You mean if somebody didn’t recklessly do a certain thing that forced us out of the city before I could spend it?”

I rubbed the back of my neck, grinning. “Uh, yeah. If that hadn’t happened.”

“I was thinking about some new armor,” Lyria said. “If I’m going to be a Shield, I probably need better than the Riverwell guard plate. I happen to know the smith, and she was an asshole. If she got deep enough in her cups, she’d admit to thinning out the metal as much as she could without Jarn calling her on it.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “Maybe you’ll find something useful in the dungeon, too.”

A huge warship sailed into view ahead. Our boat and several other small fishing boats pulled to the side of the cave. Our driver used a hook within his sleeve to grip the cave wall, holding us still against the current. I saw other people on boats doing the same.

The warship creaked and groaned as it passed us, so large that I felt a sense of vertigo as I looked up. I saw several armored Kiergard on the upper decks and multiple races of people wearing the same ragged clothing with their heads down as they walked.

“What’s that about?” I asked, pointing up.

The boat driver’s response was a ragged grunt. “Prisoners of war.”

I wanted to ask who was at war with whom, but thought it was probably the sort of thing I should know. I could ask Lyria later.

The warship passed and the smaller boats unhooked, resuming their travels. The fishermen heading upstream toward Thrask were rowing hard, while the boats moving downstream glided silently through the darkening waters.

The glowing stones above were becoming less frequent. We took a few turns and the only light was from the faint glow of eel-like things drifting beneath the waters. They let off pink and teal colors, casting shifting lights on the cave walls and our faces.

It was getting colder, too.

I set my jaw, focusing on what was coming as darkness set in around us. I was stronger now than I had ever been—by my guess, significantly stronger. But I had to remember that strength was an opportunity, not a promise.

Even with all my new tools, I could get us killed if I wasn’t careful.

We turned the corner and torchlight bloomed in the distance. I saw a dark hole in the wall surrounded by bustling activity. There were tents, hastily made structures like storefronts, campfires, and dozens of people unloading from boats.

I noticed with a touch of curiosity that I didn’t see anybody on their way out of the dungeon. I only saw people going in.

I rolled my shoulders, telling myself not to worry about that. The dungeon was just new. People hadn’t had time to get what they wanted and leave yet.

“We got this,” I said to Lyria.

The boatmaster made a low coughing sound. “Expedition?”

Was he asking if we were planning to join a bigger group? “Just the two of us,” I said.

He laughed again, stopping to cough and wheeze as he steered us onto a rocky beach in front of Beastden.

I hopped off the boat, cringing as I got water on my Abyss Walker boots. I stuck out a hand to help Lyria, but she ignored it, jumping farther than I had and landing on dry rock.

I turned to thank our boatmaster, but he was already pushing off the rocks and paddling hard against the current. He cackled over his shoulder. “One-way ticket!” he laughed, voice echoing in the large cave.