Chapter 265: Jorn’s Hunting Dogs (Patreon)

Author’s note:

 Changes to the last chapter:

Jorn has a last name, I discovered when I grabbed his stat sheet.

Also changed the Bone Arrow debuff from confusion to necrosis. Added a period that separates the Resistance bypass effect from the necrosis. It now always deals necrosis and separately bypasses resistance on same species. The idea was to upgrade the necrosis debuff into something that creates roaming undead if desired. The necrosis debuff is basically a plug-in point to create powerful debuff cocktails.

Sourdough.

“Damn that itches,” Will muttered, carefully watching as the potion grew his hand back.

The kid, Jorn, was watching Will’s right hand sprout from his forearm in a matter of seconds, his eyes bulging out of his head.

Good potion, Will thought, storing the expensive potion back in his Dimensional Storage.

What he was paying the closest attention to was the miasmatic structures that ran throughout his hand. He knew it would probably come back, because he hadn’t sacrificed the hand yet, but he couldn’t help but be paranoid, given his history.

Will watched as his Class grew inside his arm, pulling his flesh along with it as it grew a brand-new right hand.

Hmm. Will flexed his hand a few time, making sure everything was in working order. It was a bit weak, but that was normal.

Will nodded, and Loth handed him his preserved right hand to offer to the Tower.

William Oh’s right hand Sacrifice for Phantom hand.

Phantom Hand gains an extra hand. The extra hand has all the abilities of the first. Despite having two hands, only one of the 10 preserved Relics can be slotted.

Do you wish to Sacrifice William Oh’s Right Hand to Phantom Hand?

No.

Just to check, Will offered the hand to Aspect, Map, and Uru Drake’s Eye.

Map rejected it on account of being too similar to a previous Sacrifice, Uru Drake’s Eye gave him the ability to see Notoriety, and Aspect…

Qualitative upgrade to Aspect of the Immortal Serpent detected!

Aspect of the Immortal Serpent Becomes Aspect of William Oh.

Abilities of Aspect of the Immortal Serpent are retained and bundled in with Aspect of Wiliam Oh.

Qualitative Upgrade increases Upgrade Slots from 6 to 9.

Aspect of William Oh:  The Coil guides you to your fate.

…Well, that’s creepy.

Will thought about that for a moment. Perhaps it would be best not to take that qualitative upgrade.

In layman’s terms, if he was planning on punching fate in the nose, he should probably not have a leash for it to tug on.

Will switched back to offering his hand to Phantom Hand.

Do you wish to Sacrifice William Oh’s Right Hand to Phantom Hand?

Yes.

The hand disappeared in a flash of light, and Will immediately checked his right hand to make sure it still had miasma in it.

Will let out a breath when he spotted his Class still shimmering under the skin of his right hand.

“My guess is that when your Class imprinted on you without a left hand, it assumed that was the default.” Loth mused. “It doesn’t have a blueprint for your left, but it does for the right…which is why you can use magic and potions to grow it back.”

Phantom Hand has been upgraded. It is now Phantom Hands. Check the Ability Description for details.

Phantom Hands *(X7)

Passive

Active: 1 charge.

Toggle: 14 Focus

Gain the use of two armored* ethereal Phantom Hands. Access a tiny amount of dimensional storage with a Charge. Items inside the Dimensional Storage shrink, scaling with Acuity.

Sacrifice a stored Relic to imprint its effect to one of ten slots. Only one slot can be active at a time. Switching to another slot causes the previous one to be inactive for 24 hours, and overwriting a slot causes the slot to be inactive for a week. Relic potency scales with Acuity.

Create a physical manifestation of a stored item for the Toggle cost. May also manifest imprinted Relics and grant them to allies. The imprinted Relic has its full boosted stats, lasts only a short time outside the ally’s possession, and disintegrates immediately if revoked or relinquished.

While manifested, the Relic is not available to the User. The manifested Relic cannot be modified, and if damaged beyond a certain point, it will disintegrate and return to the user, regrowing over 24 hours.

There were probably more aggressive choices Will could’ve made, but with this, he could easily create custom Relics for a handful of Vassals that would perform far beyond their capacity.

Only two Phantom Hand upgrades left, Will thought.

Will still had a Primary, two secondaries and a tertiary to sort through…but that could wait until he got his new Vassal brought up to speed.

“Alright, I’ve got that taken care of, let’s take a look at your status,” Will said, turning his attention to Jorn and bringing up his status in the Party.

Jorn Hreinnson

level 32 Abyssal Guide

96 Strength

128 Resistance

32 Kinesthetics

96 Acuity

96 Focus

Charges: 88/96

Free point: 32

Primary Abilities: Totem Guardian, Bone Arrow

Primary Ability Upgrade Available X6

Secondary Ability Upgrade Available! X3

Tertiary Ability Available!

Very tough, but his Kinesthetics means he’s probably not gonna be amazing in a dynamic fight, Will thought, studying Jorn’s Class. Kinesthetics made a good duelist or scrapper. Someone operating at high speeds with a narrow margin for error. An archer simply didn’t need more Kinesthetics than necessary to land a shot. Especially with accuracy Relics available.

The raw stats are better suited for camping out in one spot and hitting a creature with a devastating strike. Maybe trading blows in close combat rather than dodging.

He’s had some hunter apprenticeship, so maybe…Will shook his head. He didn’t want to be heavy-handed when consulting for the kid’s Class. Maybe Jorn would come up with something that suited him better. He should ask him directly.

“What kind of hunter did you want to be?” Will asked.

“My father had a taming skill. He had a couple dogs who would flush prey out for him and he’d shoot them. The prey, not the dogs. I picked Totem Guardian because I thought I could use it like that.” Jorn said.

Hunting dogs. So that’s what he was thinking. Makes sense.

“There’s so many roads available to you at the beginning. let me go through them.” Will said, writing down Jorn’s Abilities and guiding him through their description.

Totem Guardian

Active: 5 Charge

Upon slaying a creature, the user may pay 5 charge to create a bone totem.

Toggle: 7 Focus. User may break a totem to summon the spirit within. The spirit has all the abilities of the original, and fights on behalf of the user. Its power scales with the user’s Focus, up to the limit of its original strength. Dismissible.

Bone Arrow

1 Charge

Craft Focus/10 Arrows from a single bone. When used against targets of the same species the bone originated from, these arrows ignore a portion of their Resistance. Arrows apply a necrosis debuff. Scales with Focus.

“Pay close attention to every word in the description,” Will said, pointing with his pen. “Every specified limitation can be bypassed or negated by the right Sacrifice.” Will said. “You see where it says you have to break the totem to summon the spirit?”

“yeah?”

“If you don’t want your totems to be single-use, look for a monster that can recycle, regrow, or reproduce it’s most eye-catching Ability” Will said. “Eventually you’ll stumble across something that ameliorates the problem.”

“What’s Amelia rates mean?” Jorn asked, glancing up at Will.

“To make something less bad.” Will said.

Loth stood opposite Jorn, peering down at the description of his Abilities.

“And here.” Loth said, putting a single black claw on the description of Bone Arrow. “It doesn’t say the bone you make arrows from has to come from a dead body. Normally a person or creature’s innate Miasma would resist the external intrusion of miasma, so it not working on living bone is heavily implied, but with the right tweaking, this Ability could make the target erupt with bone arrows from within, and since its their own bone, the Resistance bypass would be built into the spell if you could get the effect past their Focus.”

Loth made an ‘exploding’ gesture.

“You can always find the most horrifying uses for Abilities.” Will said as Jorn stared at the massive winged kobold with a pale face.

“It’s a gift.” Loth said with a razor-sharp grin.

“Pay attention to what she has to say,” Will said. “She’s one of the best in the Tower at optimizing a Build.”

“Both of your primary Abilities hinge on the use of bones.” Loth said. “Keep your eyes open for Relics and secondary Abilities that synergize with bones, as they could drastically enhance both primaries. You may also find a way to combine your bone totems to make some kind of chimeric abomination that is more specialized for your purposes.”

Jorn’s eyes began to glaze over as he was gradually overwhelmed by Loth’s advice.

“Don’t worry about it all at once.” Will said. “Jorn, your job is going to be to hunt monsters, as many as possible, to make it easy for the guardsman to keep the farmers safe. What do you think would be the best first step towards making that happen?”

“I guess…If I didn’t have to break the totem I could use them more freely.” Jorn said.

“That’s a good first step. Let’s get started,” Will said, and the three of them went to his tower.

As a Lord who had been taxing Climbers coming through for the last three years, Will had an entire underground floor of his tower dedicated to Sacrifices. Some things, such as the monsters on this Floor, he had so much he needed to sell it down-floor, and for other things from upper Floors, he only had a few examples from Climbers he taxed on their way down.

Because of the trade moving through the Burned Stronghold, Will had a little bit of everything, with shelves stacked to the ceiling, row after row carefully organized and labeled by Badur.

Wealth beyond what he could’ve imagined starting out, and he couldn’t use any of it directly.

They walked through the warehouse, going through row after row of monsters with regenerative and restorative Abilities, but the effect largely either gave the totem spirit regeneration, or the ability to create regrowing spines or teeth or such things.

“OH!” Jorn said, drawing Will’s attention. The kid had a preserved piece of flesh wrapped in wax paper in his hands, eyes wide.

“Whatcha got?” Will asked, prompting Jorn to share.

Mindweb Broodmother sacrifice for Totem Guardian

Totem Guardian gains slots for up to five totems. Slotted Totems can be used without consuming them, and the spirit will have a mental link with the User.

“Nice.” Will said, giving a thumbs up as soon as Jorn finished describing the effect. “Add it to the basket and we’ll keep looking to see if we can find anything that suits you better.”

The next thing Jorn found was a pale piece of flesh that reminded Will of the underground worms on the 1st Floor.

Infester Sacrifice for Totem Guardians

Totem Guardians Focus cost is increased to 14 Focus. The Totem is no longer consumed, and Focus/10 identical spirits are created. These spirits are smaller and weaker than the original.

“Add it to the basket!” Will said.

Over the next few hours They found a few other ones, but at the end of the day, they had discarded the others and were faced with the final choice between the first two upgrades.

Both of them gave the ability to bypass the requirement to destroy the Totem, but they each had their downsides.

The mindweb was powerful, but had a limit of five.

The Infester looked like a good way for Jorn to fulfil his role of clearing the wilderness of the Floor. If Will gave him a Focus-boosting relic, he could easily make forty or more spirits from each totem and clear a huge swath of land.

From the standpoint of a Lord, Will wanted his Vassal to choose the infester.

From the perspective of a Climber, Will preferred the Mindweb broodmother. Being in direct mental contact with his spirits would allow him to give them precise instructions and even use them as scouts.

Having five strong units with the ability to share information and coordinate across great distances was more valuable while Climbing than a simple flood strategy.

“Which one do you want?” Will asked, bluntly.

“…Which one do you want me to take?” Jorn replied.

“I think it’s more important that the upgrade suits you.” Will said. “Which one sounds like more fun?”

“I…don’t know. Milord wants me to clear as much land as possible, so shouldn’t I take the infester?”

“But it sucks for Climbing!”  Will said, clutching his head. He didn’t want to screw his Vassals over professionally.

Loth wandered away as the two of them hemmed and hawed about the decision for the better part of an hour until Badur walked by with his new apprentices.

“You guys are still here?” Badur asked, frowning as Will and Jorn stared at the two finalist Sacrifices. “What’s going on?”

“We’re agonizing over which Sacrifice to use for Jorn’s primary.” Will replied.

“Is there a reason you can’t use both?” Badur asked.

They stared at him for a moment.

“Huh. Thanks Badur.” Will called.

“No prob.” Badur said, waving before returning to giving his apprentices the tour of the warehouse.

Jorn sacrificed the Infester, and then the Mindweb Broodmother.

Because he added the Infester first, the Mindweb’s effects were altered, doubling the Focus cost again rather than having a strict limit of five.

Totem Guardian**

Active: 5 Charge

Upon slaying a creature, the user may pay 5 charge to create a bone totem.

Toggle: 28 Focus. User may choose a totem and summon the spirit within.

Summon a single spirit with a mental link to the user. The spirit is accompanied by Focus/10 smaller, weaker clones of itself under the mental control of the spirit.

The spirit has all the abilities of the original, and fights on behalf of the user. Its power scales with the user’s Focus, up to the limit of its original strength. Dismissible.

“I don’t know sir, that’s a steep Focus cost.” Jorn said, looking a bit queasy. “I could only make three spirits, and each of them would only have one copy. I guess I could make one and it would have…six? Should I raise Focus?”

Good math.

“No, this works well for us. There’s a necromancer Relic effect that reduces the Focus cost of maintaining undead. I’ve seen it before.” Will said, thinking back to the ring he’d spotted in the bazaar of Akul.

Ring of the Undead Horde

+5 focus

Increases potency of Necromancer Archetype Abilities by 15%

Reduces Focus cost to maintain Undead minions by 2 each, cannot lower the Focus cost below 1.

“Badur, could you go through our necromancer gear and find something with an ‘undead horde’ affix? The kind that reduces focus cost?”

“Right away, milord.” Badur said, taking his gaggle of young logisticians with him.

“This is a good start for a Build that can cover a lot of ground.” Will said, turning his attention back to Jorn. “I think your Attrition Sacrifice is doing a lot of the work allowing these upgrades. Instead of being mentally linked to the entire swarm, you’re linked to just the alpha, who controls the squad. That’s a good division of mental labor, there.” Will mused. “I like it. If you get the right totems, you could have quite the potent setup there.”

Jorn looked up at Will with a slack jaw and wide eyes, as if some hero of legend had descended from the heavens and given him a thumbs-up.

Will tousled his hair.

“Now, before we make any more big decisions, let’s check your secondaries.”