Guilds at War: The LitRPG Saga Continues Read online

  As he went down the list – over a dozen options were available – he spotted one that made his heart skip a beat: Mana Mystic.

  Mana Mystic (Elite Hybrid Class)

  Prerequisites: Mana Channeling Two or higher. Level 20 or greater in a Spell-Casting or Fighting Class.

  Mana is the force that governs all things in the realms, the giver and taker of life, the source of all magic and a fount of creation and destruction. A Mana Mystic is devoted to its study, eventually coming to understand the fundamentals behind the building blocks of the Realms themselves. This understanding can be expressed in two ways: you can wield Mana in combat, becoming a mystical warrior who needs no weapons or armor to become an unstoppable opponent, and you can apply your knowledge to magic, improving the power of your spells beyond the limits of normal spellcasters. This class gives you access to a number of special abilities:

  Mana Channeling: Your effective Mana Channeling level is increased by one for every ten levels in this class (Current Bonus: 2).

  Imbued Body (Damage): You can use Mana to imbue your weapons and armor, or even your limbs and skin, making them stronger and capable of inflicting and withstanding more damage. This effect is always on. Damage Bonus: Mana Channeling Level x Class Level (Current Bonus: 120; this bonus is doubled if striking with your bare hands or feet (Current Bonus: 360).

  Imbued Body (Defense): Your body is permanently infused with Mana, becoming more resistant to attack. This effect is more powerful when not blocked by heavy armor. Channeling Level x 10 (reduces damage from all attacks by that amount, after accounting for any and all other defenses, armor and resistance values); this bonus is tripled while wearing light or no armor (Current Bonus: 60).

  Mystical Resistance: Mana Channeling Level x 5% against all Elements and Forces; this bonus is doubled while wearing light or no armor (Current Bonus: 30%, 60% when unarmored).

  Enhanced Spellcasting: All the effects of a spell (including damage, healing, range, and area of effect) can be enhanced. The bonus is equal to your (Class and Mana Channeling levels) x 2, at the cost of 100 Mana per spell. Current Bonus: 52%.

  Enhanced Mana Channeling Abilities: All known abilities’ damage, range, and other effects are increased by 2% per level. Current Bonus: 40%.

  Mana Pool Bonus: 15%.

  The Class didn’t add any new spells, its Mana bonus was lower than normal, and it was only useful for someone with Mana Channeling. In other words, it was almost tailor-made for someone like him. Not only would he gain a Channeling bonus, but all his abilities would be improved. And if he learned Kung Fu, losing his weapons and armor wouldn’t render him helpless. That wasn’t likely to be necessary very often, but you never knew.

  “Do you know any unarmed combat techniques you might teach me, Saturnyx?”

 

  “I took some boxing and Karate lessons when I was a kid. Nothing too serious.”

 

  Hawke winced at the thought of more time spent in Saturnyx’s pocked dimension doing painful physical labor instead of pleasurable physical labor, but it couldn’t be helped.

  “Well, I think I’ve found my third class.”

 

  “I think whoever is helping me wants me to do this.”

 

  “I don’t like being told what to do, but if my patron, or puppet-master, hadn’t helped me out, I’d be dead three times over. And I’d have probably picked that Class anyway.”

  A mental click later, he became a Mana Mystic. He was ready for some major ass-kicking.

  He also had new Perks, Spells, and Class Abilities to choose from. For his Perks, he picked both Mana Adept and Master of Mana, which combined would raise his Mana regeneration by a massive thirty points per minute, for a total of 62.6 Mana per minute. It would still take him over an hour to go from zero to full, but every bit helped. Thanks to his Greater Bond with Blaze, he could use his own Mana to fuel the Drakofox’s flying ability. They could fly nonstop now. The dream had been reborn.

  Spells were easy: his two choices were Major versions of his preexisting spells. In Extremis and Mass Blast Undead were his choices. The first spell would heal him for up to 1,000 Health if struck by an attack that reduced his pool to ten percent or less. The other inflicted 20 Life damage per level against Undead targets, which when boosted with Celestial and Order energies added another 20 from each Force. It was a nice nuke, with a cooldown of thirty seconds, although his abilities reduced that to eighteen seconds. At some point, he would start looking through new spells, especially of the Forces he had acquired, but he wanted to use his current rotations until they became second-nature before adding more to the mix. Too many choices could lead to fatal moments of hesitation in the middle of a fight.

  The Monster Trainer Class gave him a new ability: Advanced Summon Monster, which raised the level of any critter he summoned to match his own. That would be extremely helpful, since all the monsters’ he’d analyzed and added to his ‘stable’ had been fairly low level. He couldn’t wait to drop a level 20 Darkness Guardian on someone.

  Finally, he gained Greater Hidden Status from his Twilight Templar class, letting him pretend to be as much as ten levels higher or lower than he really was, on top of hiding his actual Classes. That gave him a lot of leeway when creating a secret identity.

  Minutes later, he reopened his stat sheet:

  Name: Hawke Lightseeker. Race: Half-Elf, Eternal. Classes: Twilight Templar, Monster Trainer, Mana Mystic. Level: 20

  Experience/Next Level: 100,736/120,000

  Attributes (All Bonuses Included):

  Strength 90, Dexterity 80, Constitution 120, Intelligence 64, Spirit 66, Perception 37, Willpower 60, Charisma 25

  Characteristics (Regeneration):

  Health: 1,656 (32/min)

  Mana: 4,424 (62.6/min)

  Endurance: 1,350 (32/min)

  Identity: 23

  Skills

  Blacksmithing 6, Climbing 2, Detect Traps 3, Disarm Traps 7, Dodge 7, Lore 4, Riding 3, Shield 7, Spear 4, Stealth 5, Survival 3, Sword 8(23), Swimming 2, Tracking 3

  Languages: Common Fey, Vulgate, Lesser Celestial

  Perks

  Aegis of the Fae, Dark Vision, Fae Stealth, Mana Adept, Mana Sight, Master of Mana, Sidhe Caster, Sidhe Speed Casting, Speed-Casting (Life and Light Magic), Spell Penetration, True Sight, Undying, Unlimited Potential

  Known Elements, Forces, and Schools of Magic

  Celestial, Chaos, Darkness, Death, Fire, Life, Light, Mind, Nature, Order, Twilight, Undeath

  Spells

  Animate Shadow, Armor of Life, Army of the Dead, Aura of Light, Blast Undead, Bless Crops, Bolt of Darkness, Bolt of Life, Bulwark of Light, Burning Light, Consecrated Ground, Chaos Funnel, Dark Tendrils, Deadly Roots, Death Cyclone, Death Stare, Enlightenment, Fireball, Gift of the Martyr, Growth, Hammer of Light, Hammer of Twilight, Healing Blows, Healing Wave, In Extremis, Indomitable Aura, Lesser Healing, Mass Blast Undead, Minor Death Curse, Nature’s Grip, Nature’s Guardian, Raise Dead, Sense Life, Send Thought, Shadow Leech, Shadow Step, Shield of Light, Shroud of Darkness, Shroud of Twilight, Simple Spell Inscription, Song of Sorrow, Steal Life, Terror Gaze, Touch of Light, Transference, Twilight Mantle, Twilight Step.

>   Special Abilities

  Alter Magic, Analyze Monster, Chaos Spike, Create Magical Trap, Disarm Magical Trap, Dispel Magic I, Dual-Casting, Enhanced Spell-Casting, Enhanced Channeling, Evolve Monster, Greater Bond, Greater Hidden Status, Identify Spell, Imbued Body, Leadership XI (Chosen Foe I, Command IV, Generalship III, Messenger I, Shared Magic I), Living Shadow, Mana Channeling IV, Node Mastery VIII (Advanced Node Travel, Create Node Guardian, Node Portal, Node Recall, Node Sight, Summon Node Guardian), Monster Pet (Level 16 Young Tarakken), Ritual Magic I, Seal Inscription I, Soul Rider, Spell Deconstruction, Spellcraft III, Stop Monster, Summon Monster, Tame Monster, Tantric Touch, Timeless Mind, Tulpa Creation II

  Arcane Vocations

  Blacksmith 4, Mining 5, Skinning 2, Steward 5.

  Guild Powers (Level Three)

  Guild Headquarters, Guild Quests

  Hawke dismissed the floating screen. A part of him still felt like he’d cheated by consuming the Soul Shards to undo the damage Kaiser had done, but he set that aside. The stakes were too high to hold back any advantage he could get. While he was in the Common Realm, he had gone as far as he could, at least in that category. He could still advance in many of the other ‘subsystems’ like Mana Channeling, Node Mastery, and Leadership, on the other hand, and those he would have to improve the old-fashioned away.

  Now all that remained was to find out if he had gained enough power to handle what he would face next.

  Twenty-One

  My second sewer trip, Hawk thought as he trudged through the muck-covered walkway. Hopefully it will be my last.

  The tunnels were much wider than the ones he’d seen below Orom, with elevated sidewalks to allow workers to enter them without having to trudge through the filth flowing through the canals on its way to the Corax River, which would carry it out into the swamplands to the southeast. Not exactly sanitary, although with magic it wasn’t as big a problem as on Earth, and the swamps were supposedly so disgusting that some raw sewage wouldn’t make much of a difference.

  Hawke and his team – Tava, Boris, Grognard, Korgam, Lady Pew-Pew and the Witch Heketa, as well as Rabbit and Digger – were moving through one of the main arteries of the extensive sewer network. They had taken the information the High Priest had given Hawke and mapped out the spots in the city where people had disappeared. The closest one, out in the Lowers, was about a mile from their position in a straight line, and more like double that distance, given all the twists and turns they would have to take while underground.

  Hawke’s auras and a couple of spells provided illumination for the party, letting everyone see the arched tunnel that ran some seven feet above the walkway and another two feet over the slow-flowing current in the central channel. The smell was as bad as he’d expected. So far, only Boris Imdoomed had upchucked at the assault on the senses, but everybody looked a little sick.

  “Couldn’t be helped,” Hawke said apologetically. “If we’d traveled aboveground to get closer to the disappearance sites, we might have run across one of Kaiser’s sniper teams. They have all of our names and descriptions.”

  “Yep. Better to stink than to die,” Grognard said.

  “I just hope we can get the stink out of our stuff,” Boris grumbled.

  The Ranger wasn’t a bad guy, but he’d grown up in a nice suburb on Earth and his ‘character’ was used to forests where animals mostly buried their scat. Hawke couldn’t blame him for losing his lunch. He also had to be nervous, being just seventh level (tenth level thanks to Hawke’s Party Leader bonus) in a group that averaged nearly twice that. He and Lady Pew-Pew were the weakest links in the group. The good thing was that, as ranged damage dealers, they could stay out of harm’s way and add their firepower to the team. Hawke, Korgam and Grognard were the designated tanks, whose job was to keep the enemy away from the rear team. Tava was acting as a ranged combatant and off-tank. She and her Dire Bear would act as a reserve and protect the Rangers and their new Witch ally if something unexpected happened.

  The group was small, but Hawke didn’t want to risk the other Eternals. He could have gotten another half dozen Sterns to join in, but most of their high-level Adventurers were away from the city, dealing with other troubles. A war in the northwest was heating up, as Orc nomads threatened several Dwarven kingdoms, and there had been Undead outbreaks elsewhere. Hawke didn’t think those were mere coincidences. He’d gladly accepted Korgam’s help but persuaded Thane Stern to keep his people on alert, just in case they were needed to defend Dwarven Hills. In any case, he wasn’t planning to clear the sewers, just to find out what was happening and report it to the authorities.

  The group walked quietly after Boris’ outburst; the tunnels had echoed with their voices, so they stuck to hand gestures or relied on Hawke’s ability to send messages to the rest of the party. He, Tava and Saturnyx could keep up a telepathic conversation, but they remained quiet as well, concentrating on the job ahead, and on listening for anything suspicious.

  A few minutes later, Hawke heard something in the distance. They were almost to the closest disappearance cluster, where the poorest section of the city abutted the Warrior’s Quarter and spread out through much of the southern quarter of the city. He raised a clenched fist to order everyone to stop. It sounded like a fight in progress. The sounds of metal on metal, and metal on flesh, were unmistakable, even when distorted by the echoing tunnels.

  “Let’s go. Prep your spells and try to be quiet,” he said, and led the way, refreshing all his buffs on the go. He had Digger run along the ceiling; the Tarakken’s scrambled up like a cat, his claws digging into the brick and mortal surface as if it was made of soft wood. Things might get tricky; the sidewalks were only five feet wide, which meant only one person could fight on them effectively. The same applied to any enemies they encountered, unless they wanted to dive into the canal. He didn’t know how deep the sewer waters ran and had no intention of finding out.

  Saturnyx warned him.

  Fast zombies sucked. Hawke passed along the news as he pushed on. Less than a minute later, he reached a major junction where two tunnels dumped their contents into the central canal. There was a bridge connecting the two sidewalks along the tunnel, about fifty feet from where he was. That was where two people were making a stand, fighting back to back. Dozens of zombies were on both sides of the bridge; more dropped into the sewer canal, splashing in the sludge and trying to scramble onto the bridge from below.

  Hawke was shocked to recognize the surrounded fighters: Artos Dunford and Glorificus, two Nerf Herders from the sniper crew that he had wiped out the day before. Neither of them had a gun this time: Glorificus, too hard-pressed to use his bow, was hacking at the zombies with a pair of long daggers, while Artos wielded a sword in one hand and directed a Flame Jet spell with the other. The magical fire turned two Undead into crispy critters; several others were burned but didn’t fall. The Undead they were fighting looked like ordinary citizens of Akila turned into the living dead, but their stats were shockingly high.

  Exalted Risen (Undead)

  Level 12 Elite

  Health 1,200 Mana 600 Endurance n/a

  He could have left the Eternals to their fate; just reporting on the numbers and power of the critters attacking them should satisfy the local authorities, but he dismissed the thought as quickly as he had it. Without hesitating, he ordered the attack, and opened up with a dual-cast Mass Blast Undead, enhancing the spell with both Celestial and Order energies, dealing 120-2,400 damage to every zombie within a hundred feet. Only a few monsters dropped, indicating a high resistance to spells, but a moment later Heketa unleased the same spell, burning off their remaining Health. More Undead were coming up, however, with even more powerful monsters directing them:

  Exalted Risen Leaders (Undead)

  Level 14 Elite Lieutenant

  Health 2,800 Mana 1,400 Endurance n/a/

  The Undead leaders – Hawke spotted six or
seven – were surrounded by purple-green auras that protected them and any lesser zombie within twenty feet of them. None of them took enough damage from the next barrage of spells to drop them. And they could do magic of their own: the monsters howled at the same time, a deafening sound that did more than hurt their ears: it tore into all the members of the party and the two luckless Nerf Herders, inflicting Death damage on them.

  Luckily, everyone in Hawke’s group had several layers of protection against that sort of attack. As it turned out, so did the Nerf Herders, although Hawke saw their Health bars dip to dangerously low levels. He charged into the fight, firing off his anti-Undead spell rotation. Bright yellow light with silver and white highlights poured out of his Solar Plexus and Crown Chakras, enabling him to keep wielding his sword and shield without distractions. Spells that healed friends and burned the living dead kept the team and the Herders alive as he reached the first monsters still on their feet.

  The reanimated corpse of a day laborer tried to grapple with him, but an overhand slash with Saturnyx severed both of its arms at the elbow, and he slammed his Lesser Shield of Order on the reeling monster, finishing it off. One of the leaders took its place, and unlike the regular zombies, it had a weapon, a huge stone maul that was probably used for construction rather than war. It didn’t matter what its original intent was, the Elite monster swung it as if it weighed nothing, and the maul’s head was glowing with the putrid light of Undeath magic. Hawke blocked one hit, countered with a thrust that burned the monster for over a thousand points of damage, but was hit by the backswing when he miscalculated how long it would take the monster to recover from the first blow.