Aurelian wasted no time dithering over his attribute points.
With his bonuses to Strength, Vitality, Charisma, Willpower, and overall physicality and durability; he was not worried about his ability to output damage. What he lacked and most desired to shore up was his speed. Agility was his main physical weakness, and that was exactly where he dumped every single one of his attribute points.
Name: Aurelian Lucis Imperius
Temper: Initiate Temper
Infusions: Mind 1/2 | Body 1/2 | Spirit 1/2
Core: Calamity Core (Attunement Stage)
Chakras: 1/7
Level: 25 | Race: Elysean (L) | Origin: Nephilim (L) | Gender: Male | Zodiac: Dragon (L)
Health: 990 | Mana: 498 | Stamina: 288 | Anima: 0
STR: (85) 94 | AGI: 72 | DEX: 55 | VIT: (91) 99 | END: 63 | INT: 54 | PER: 48 | WIL: (99) 123 | CHA: (61) 91
Mind Skills: Revelate (E) 20 | Linguistics (UC) 1 | Philology (R) 5 | Exploration (UC) 11 | Investigation (UC) 6 | Dragon’s Resolve (E) 23 | Tactician (R) 19 | Deception (UC) 4 | Dragon’s Gaze (E) 27 | Intimidation (R) 6 | Persuasion (UC) 2
Body Skills: Pain Tolerance (UC) 39 | Longsword Mastery (C) 32 | Running (C) 35 | Dodge (C) 33 | Dragon’s Sanguination (E) 29 | Brawling (C) 27 | Fire Resistance (UC) 27 | Lightning Resistance (UC) 23 | Ice Resistance (UC) 17 | Breath Control (UC) 22 | Acrobatics (UC) 23 | Poison Resistance (R) 14
Spirit Skills: Mana Control (R) 34 | Firebolt (UC) 24 | Lightning Bolt (R) 11 | Soul Sense (UC) 14 | Spirit Bond: Dragon (M) 15 | Force Dominion (T) 2 | Calamity’s Blade (T) 15 | Anima Conversion (E) 8 | Anima Syphon (E) 13 | Anima Infusion (E) 5 | Anima Diffusion (E) 1 | Oathforger (L) 2
Traits: Fast Learner (E) | Dragon Force (E) | Aetheric Osmosis (E) | Godsbane (T) | Sanguinated (L) | Force Nullification (U) | Truesight (L)
Titles: Elysean Reclaimer (U) | Survivor (R) | Aether Sage (E) | Dragon Rider (E) | Defiant (L) | Primogenitor (U) | Lord of Force (T)
Languages: Common | Elysean | Draconic
13% to Level 26
You have 7 Skill Points Available!
You have 1 Skill Upgrade Points Available!
You have 1 Skill Evolution Points Available!
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With that done, he grabbed the Skill Compression Tome he had yet to examine and popped it into his armour’s storage rune. He had an idea for that, but first he needed to consult with Zylara and Karsys—and that meant he needed to deal with the immediate impediment to that possibility.
I’m coming. He sent to Bahamut.
Good. Tarry not. We can discuss what occurred afterward. Bahamut responded simply.
Aurelian chortled while pushing himself to his feet, and then stumbled after he did. His body was no longer what it had been.
Aurelian glanced down at himself, and felt the surge of increased potency within his limbs. Elysea had said that Tempering changed Nephilim, and that it would have a more saturated effect due to his bloodline, but he had never imagined what he now felt. His Soulforce was like a furnace of potential energy churning around his Core and body, buoying him with its potency and infusing him with hitherto inconceivable levels of underscoring power.
He felt good. Really good. He felt like he could run ten marathons and then run ten more. While it might have been an exaggeration, it certainly wasn’t that far from the truth—and his body felt overall improved as well. The change to his Agility hadn’t even registered, but Aurelian realised that it was because his overall capacity had essentially skyrocketed with his level up.
His combined bonuses had pushed him to a level of physicality that shattered his previous capabilities. While not a profound change, it was a notable change, and he could already feel the greater density of his muscles, the responsiveness of his body, the newly sharpened clarity of his mind, and the surging river of his expanded mana pool.
“Yeah. Okay,” he said while squeezing his hands into fists, “I can definitely work with this.”
Aurelian lifted his head to peer at the lip of the crater and he bent his knees, subconsciously tapping his Strength and Agility attributes and then launching himself forward. His eyes widened at the sheer explosion of momentum he experienced, and he let loose a wild laugh of excitement while he bound up the crater’s edge.
Two thirds of the way to the top he launched himself upward, leaping the remaining seven or so metres and slamming into the ground beyond the crater’s edge.
He turned back to look at the inverted dome he’d carved into the world, shook his head in amazement, and then spun to race toward where he could sense his Arisen and Zylara doing battle. For good measure he put his hand to his side and started his ten-heartbeat-count for his Crest, while his enhanced vision honed in on the distant site of on-going battle.
Power coiled within him in yearning to be used, and he began cycling mana as had become second nature. His Calamity Core started to race in his body at the same moment, rotating with prismatic radiance veiled behind scarlet shielding as he surged toward the fight. His left hand rose and he focused on his Soulforce and the mana pooling within him.
At the same time, he cautiously tapped into his Force Dominion.
Power roared to life within him, and Aurelian relied on the upgrade to his Dragon’s Gaze to observe the fluctuations of mana and the essences of power gathering around his hand. For the first time since gaining the power, he found himself able to properly understand the subtler essence of his ability.
There were still layers he did not comprehend—he could tell that at a mere glance, but compared to when he was Untempered and before he gained his Dragon’s Gaze Infusion; the intricacies of his Force Dominion clicked in a way they hadn’t before. Interest replaced wariness, and Aurelian realized that it wasn’t mana that truly controlled the ability; it was Soulforce.
The Dominion was a thing of will, not simply magic. It was intent itself.
Aurelian smiled broadly at the realization and redirected his gaze toward the fight ahead. His increased Agility combined with his accelerated Strength allowed his legs to carry him further with each stride, and gain velocity more swiftly as well. A distance that might have taken him ten, or even fifteen minutes to cross prior to his Tempering was now almost traversed in less than five.
When he came within full range of the raging battle, he took it in immediately with his enhanced Perception and Intelligence.
Zylara fought alongside his Arisen with terrifying coordination, leaping through the air more than she was earthbound and launching arrows of pure mana, wrapped in scarlet lightning from her Bloodstorm Core. Each shot of her bow punched through the body of a skarnid with brutal accuracy, felling them in sometimes one, but never more than three shots.
Their carapaces were not simply pierced, they were scorched where the mana penetrated—and she left them as ruined husks upon the earth.
Karsys was fifty meters afield, working with Bahamut to ferry the vast majority of the remaining swarm against his shield. Aurelian could see the Earth and Fire mana he was wielding as it danced and swirled around him, working to instigate the molten powers he wielded, while his Soulforce coerced the aberrant arachnids into attacking him with continuous ‘taunts’.
Aurelian’s bond, meanwhile, was a force of nature as was his nature: delivering blistering torrents of dragonfire and destructive blasts of magic that obliterated groups of skarnids at a time. Despite the seemingly endless number, Aurelian could already discern that the horde was thinning—succumbing to the power of the dragon’s fire and the ferocity of his other companions.
“Time to get to work,” he said at the same time as he let his newly evolved Soulforce precede him in a wave of presence.
Zylara, Karsys, and the Arisen all snapped their heads around to stare when Aurelian entered the battle—responding to his Soulforce instinctively as his Nephilic power blanketed the battlefield.
Then, he harnessed his Dominion.
Soulforce came together into threads of radiant power that defied a true description of colouration as he willed it to tether to multiple different skarnids. Once he had tagged five of them, he felt a subtle strain within himself that told him any more than that would be exorbitantly dangerous.
Five, it seemed, was his current hard limit.
That’ll do just fine, he thought to himself savagely.
Aurelian instinctively used his mana and threaded pure Force through the ribbons of Soulforce that connected him to his enemies. When he did, he envisioned with utmost clarity exactly what he wanted to happen.
Eighty mana vanished from his reserves in a shock of depletion and at the same moment, all five of the skarnids imploded.
Their carapaces snapped with echoing cracks of chitinous substance, and Force magic compelled their entire bodies inward to the point of tethering centered upon their massive spines.
The horse-sized arachnids screeched in terror as they were abruptly smashed together and their insides were forced outside like an immense fist was crushing them. Their exoskeletons condensed, shattering together while their putrid insides exploded outward in a visceral explosion of guts, gore, and corruption.
“What the hell was that?!” Zylara shouted mid-leap, while looking between him and the skarnids.
“I used the Force!” he answered with a self-indulgent cackle, and threw himself into the fray.
The Arisen parted for him smoothly when he charged into battle, and Aurelian lifted his Crest to sing its ruthless song. Steel whined and cleaved through the air, and he became the death he was learning to command. The first skarnid he met attempted to swipe at him with its pincers, and Aurelian moved nimbly out of the way, dodging out from under the sweeping limbs and slicing the creature’s legs off on its left side.
He rolled away before it could respond, spun, and slammed his left hand against its collapsing left flank to envision and push with his Dominion.
The creature’s right flank exploded outward in a detonation of its internal organs, twenty more mana was lost, and Aurelian moved on.
With the inefficiency of his Dominion’s mana cost revealed, he did not rely on it too much. Instead he wove in Lightning Bolts with his strikes; cutting open carapace and igniting their insides with blasts of eviscerating energy that sent the creatures spasming to the earth—only for his Arisen or Zylara to secure the kill.
Aurelian was drunk on his new abilities, and he danced through the battlezone like he had never been able to before. His current speed was incomparable to even thirty minutes prior, and he revelled in it. Pincers were dismembered, legs were cut away, heads were hewn in twain, and Aurelian started leaping from skarnid to skarnid in his haste for more.
A familiar sense of thrill filled him, and he felt something resonating across the bond.
Finally! Bahamut roared with approval in his mind. Finally, you hunt like a Dragon!
Aurelian sent back a formless wave of love to his soulpartner and launched himself off his latest victim, tearing Anima from its body as it collapsed. He landed on his feet lightly, turned, and peered at where Zylara was approaching him from behind while idly firing off arrows at the now greatly-thinned swarm of skarnids.
“You seem to be in fine form,” she said wryly after she approached, while his Arisen charged back into the disoriented mass of their still-living, corrupted brethren.
“You could say that again!” Karsys announced as he joined them, and took a moment to regain his breath. “You turned them almost the minute you arrived, Aurelian. What the hell happened?”
“I Tempered,” he said to them simply, and flexed his Soulforce again to enjoy the feeling. “Because of it, I learned to better control a new ability. I don’t think skarnids are going to be an issue for us moving forward.”
“Skarnids are the Desolation’s version of pests,” Zylara noted while openly admiring the changes to his body. He had bulked up notably, thanks to his Strength and Vitality enhancements, though had not quite erred toward being too large thanks to the even distribution of his Agility. He also suspected it had something to do with his Elysean genetics and density of muscle mass, as opposed to outward bulk.
“He is not the only one that has changed, Zylara, as I said earlier,” Karsys noted while eyeing her speculatively. “You look quite different.”
“A gift from the Reclaimer,” Zylara answered simply, and tossed her hair with her left hand smugly. “Call it repayment for him almost crippling me.”
Aurelian groaned at that, and lifted a hand to forestall Karsys when the human raised both eyebrows and turned to look at him.
“I promise, I’ll explain later, Karsys,” he said quickly to the other man. “For now, we should focus on finishing these skarnids.”
“That is assuming there are no more Behemoths lurking around here,” Zylara said warily.
“There shouldn’t be, but it wouldn’t be the worst thing. I have some experiments with Anima I’d like to run on one of those.”
“Why not the one from earlier?” Zylara queried.
“I intend on testing that,” Aurelian said with a nod, “but I have a feeling it may be too destroyed to be of use. We’ll have to see.”
A roar and strafing run from Bahamut pulled their joint attention, and Aurelian smiled.
“First, let’s clean up these skarnids. Afterward, we can take stock. I’ve gotten a hoard of Anima so far. I’d like some more before the creatures eventually flee.”
Both his companions nodded, and the three set off for the diminished and intimidated swarm. Aurelian had no doubt it would be a relatively simple affair to clean them up, but he still wore a grin of anticipation as he moved.
He had an amazing new toy.
He couldn’t wait to test it out further.