As the SAWS fell apart in my hands, I came to the conclusion that the Beacon Basement Dungeon was very Ozpin-esque. The gun hadn't done much, at least not better than other methods I had, though I could tell it would be quite the weapon for a civilian. Bullets… well, unless they were special, they barely hurt someone like me anymore. It was closer to a sting from a wasp than a fatal attack, getting shot, but I digress.
The walls were of a well-maintained but ancient stone. The sconces were filled with what Ren said were gas lamps. The darkness didn't quite seem so threatening so much as turning a corner or entering a room. There was a pervasive sense of mystery and hidden meaning to the locale and I couldn't help but match the attribute with the school's Headmaster. From what I recalled, it wasn't so much up to his power level; Truly, a dungeon at Ozpin's level would have likely killed us on the first floor before we even saw what did it. It was more… a thematic resemblance.
We took another break on the fourteenth floor after killing our first King Taijitu - the one who had broken my gun. It had dropped from the ceiling in the same fashion as the Geist had, and I was only thankful it looked to be a smaller, less powerful specimen than the one at Forever Fall. As it was, we still had trouble fighting it in such a confined space and so we were taking a rest to recuperate - and at Nora's insistence, break out the pizza. 'Twas a pepperoni day, myself being the biggest fan of the spiced and cured meat.
I made a note to stock my inventory back up with food, as all I had right now was a funnel cake from the festival, a six-pack of beer from my fridge, and a bag of grain I had messed with a little bit to see if I couldn't Craft my way into a Cooking skill. It hadn't worked, though I was a horrendous cook at the best of times so it was entirely possible I just didn't know enough to get the skill.
So, here we sat, water bottles in hand and eyes on a swivel as we let our Aura regenerate and our bodies rest. I made a note to add a chair to my inventory - with my Strength being what it was, my carry weight was almost a non-factor anymore - and sighed as I pushed myself to my feet, my armour scraping softly against the wall.
As soon as I started moving, Pyrrha, Ren, and Nora all capped off or stowed their water (chugging it back and crushing the bottle, in Nora's case) and stood with me. We looked together at the next floor, said not a word, and moved forwards.
Beacon's Basement, 15th Floor
Quietly, my team took stock of the room and spread out to cover the entrances. We'd found the tells of the portcullises… portculli? Either way, Ren dashed to the door and called out "Clear!", letting us know this room wasn't trapped. We could relax, slightly.
"How many did you say it was again?" Nora called, watching her hallway.
"Twenty-five. Then, five more of the Warrens, then boss. Or if we go by Forever Fall rules, sub-boss, we'd have to run it again for the main boss, then a few more times to unlock the Clearance Boss." Ren supplied.
"You wouldn't count the Geist, or the Taijitu as a boss?" Pyrrha inquired.
"No." I answered at the same time as Ren, though I let him go first.
"The Geist, maybe, but then we fought a second one and I'd imagine they're more of a random encounter than a boss or mob. The Taijitu also fits, the rooms we fought each in were pretty similar. I've been keeping my eye out for other random encounters, but so far it's just been Geist and Taijitu. Shame we haven't found a loot room or a shop room."
"Huh. I was just going to say they weren't strong enough, but I like your reasons better."
Ren just shot a small smile over his shoulder in response, then went back to watching his hallway.
"Alright, for this one…" I pondered which question I would use. "How many people made up the inner ring of Riften's Thieves guild?"
"I hypothesize two. Any more and they would lose secrecy, any less and there would not be an inner ring." Ren supplied.
"Two is just a line! Three." Nora based her answer off of Ren's as usual.
"There's a reason you specified Riften. I will guess 5, as that provides enough diversity of talent for them to be successful, as you said they were - well, before you anyways." Pyrrha as usual put some thought into it.
"Nora gets it." I answered. "They had three, two by the time I found them, and none now. Four, if you count the God who gave them their blessings and status. Never five, sorry Pyrrha."
In response, we all strolled over to Nora's hallway, and followed her into the dark.
I'd originally thought it would be a silly way to decide things but my team surprisingly went along with it. Sometimes it was a little disconcerting to have Ren guess at who was responsible for what event and have him get it right. It was even more odd for Nora to bring up my mother's name, as I hadn't thought I'd told them. But that all stopped when Pyrrha had explained that doing it the other way around wouldn't work, as the three of them grew up on Remnant and would have an advantage.
That was fine with me - I'd started to get used to this dungeon and it was much less stressful. I could see the ceiling, the floors were clean enough to relax on, and the light was widespread and consistent when the hallways didn't darken themselves to limit our view.
Dungeons as a whole were becoming less of a mystery to me. I'd done some tests, back when we were running Forever Fall pretty often, and come to a few conclusions:
First, outside of what could be considered 'Loot', the Dungeons didn't intersect with reality. You could put a stone from inside in your pocket and it would be gone when you got out of the dungeon. That was difficult to figure out after our ordeal with the Golden Door, but Arthur helped me discover that if materials were crafted, they could be extracted as they were no longer technically part of the dungeon.
Second, the dungeon had an effect on the world around it. This may seem contrary to my first observation, but it was undeniable. Mainly due to reports that the Grimm concentration has fallen around the Forever Fall area, but again Arthur helped out, taking a soil sample and comparing it to another he'd taken while he was still at Beacon and finding a significantly more friendly pH, to say the least. The warped and diseased looking trees were beginning to bud and bloom, which had initially caused Dr. Oobleck to rush over until he realised it was the equivalent of cleaning up a Dust accident. That, coupled with Arthur's presence, and he'd left in short order. As for Polendina - He'd taken a lot of samples, he had told me once while we were playing some video games - I had rolled my eyes in response and handily gotten my ass kicked at Grimm Nights 17 Redux. That'll show him.
Thirdly, and not finally as we still didn't understand them completely, was that the Dungeon had some form of control. This was more a theory than a proven fact, but in subsequent runs of the Forever Fall Dungeon, using fire-based Dust and techniques tended to draw any enemies on the floor - 'Pulling Aggro', Ren called it. Given how much the Dryad had hated fire, it seemed apparent to me but it was not possible to prove. I was excited to begin interacting with the boss here, even if just out of my ever-present curiosity.
A skittering sound interrupted my thoughts, and a part of my heart swelled as I saw a Deathstalker again for the first time since initiation. The beast was cramped in the wide hallway, its stingers bunched in towards its main body.
"It's mine!" I called out, rushing forwards. To their credit, my team retained their formation and kept a look out for others. I felt the effects of Runaway Train take hold, and dropped a quick Enchantment into my armour to fortify it before proceeding to Whirlwind Sprint right through the scorpion.
I briefly felt the slightest cracking, then a sickly wet squishing, then one more crack before the Shout faded away with a burst of wind that swept down each end of the hallway. Behind me, the Deathstalker scrambled, the hole of my passage leaving it clearly weak but not incapacitated. Fair enough, I suppose.
Deathstalker
Omen of the Fell Sting
Lvl. 56
"So it'll be like that then?" I mumbled, slightly disappointed that I didn't manage to defeat it in one blow. I hadn't believed the Beacon Staff when they said that the creature was never supposed to be a part of our initiation but this proved it - most of our class would have been beneath this foe at the start, and the staff were nothing if not protective of their students.
Well, time to hit it harder.
A quick application of Featherweight and I was moving, pushing myself off the ground to plant my feet on the ceiling as I'd seen Nora do against the Geist. I stumbled briefly but a hastily thrown out Flamethrower allowed me to regain my balance. I debated donning my Grimm Mask and cloak for the attack, but the moment passed and I pushed off of the ceiling, Ruby's Gift shifting into an axe.
I was stocked up on Earth Dust, mainly because it was so damn cheap, and I used it all up to fuel my attack skills. Double Strike, Power Strike, the high levels of my Mastery's, and Divebomb all worked together, and I threw an Aura Enhancement on my weapon result was a reverberating vibration through my arms as I struck the ground beneath the former Deathstalker, little bits of Grimm splattering wetly against the walls, and a ringing sound in my ears that slowly faded away. Curiously, the ground wasn't even scuffed.
"Must have got it lower than I thought with that first hit…" I mumbled, displeased that I had wasted my Earth Dust on that as I made my way back to the room my team was holding.
They appeared to have already found entertainment, watching Ren practise his dodging against a lone Creeper that had shown up. He flowed between the strikes, grabs, and bites easily, occasionally planting a hand almost softly against a limb to guide it up or around him. He noticed me out of the corner of his eye, and finished it off quickly with an Aura Strike that burst its head. "You look unhappy." He said, wiping his hands off even as the Grimm matter started to steam and disintegrate off of it.
I took a brief moment to wonder how the hell he knew that when I was wearing full plate, then dismissed it as Ren being Ren. "I'm not. That thing was level 56, and I just two-shot it. How was it level 56? I'm only at 48."
"You got another one? Wait, Status- Ooo me too!" Nora seemed excited, though I knew she had yet to spend her points.
"Pyrrha?" Ren offered, and I turned to her.
"We were actually talking about this earlier, about what makes a level, and we've essentially come to the conclusion that knowing the level of the enemy is a hindrance."
I raised an eyebrow, then realised she wasn't Ren and waved a gauntleted hand for her to continue.
"Well, let's take an example. We've seen both a level 20 Beowolf and a Level 20 Ursa. Which one was stronger?"
I hummed. "Ursa, most likely, though they're much less capable of dodging attacks."
The redhead nodded in response. "Correct. That would be easy to tell from Dr. Ooobleck's lessons, but from what you said, you fought both White Fang and Atlesian Knights, again at the same level. Which was stronger?"
I pondered that one a little longer. "That's tough. The Knights are more durable and accurate but the Grunts tended to have a certain…"
"Intelligence." Ren supplied, and Pyrrha shot him a look.
"Okay, I see it." I thought I did anyway. While creatures or enemies could be the same level, their capabilities varied greatly. "Like the Dryad. Her and her beast were around the same level, but the beast took some killing whereas the Dryad died to some minor fire."
"Right. But she also separated you from your team and likely had other tricks, had you not burned down her forest." Ren mentioned. "Whereas the beast was mostly a physical threat."
"So… I did something to nullify the Deathstalker's strengths?"
"You have a habit of that, actually." Nora answered. "Still not sure if it's luck or not, but it works so I won't complain."
"The venom." Pyrrha answered, cutting to the chase. "Deathstalker venom is absolutely brutal. It can be ingested via contact and is difficult to deflect with your aura. It causes immediate cell death of the skin, muscle, and bones surrounding the contact area, but has a delayed effect when it comes to blood and capillaries. Even getting enough on your skin can kill a Hunter with full aura. For all that, their shells are relatively weak and they aren't too fast."
"So the level comes from its attack, whereas the Geists level would likely have come from its durability and regen. I can work with that. Should we start cataloguing or something?"
Ren hummed to himself. "I suppose. There are no ends to catalogues of Grimm but they tend to be inaccurate - missing regional variants, incomplete ability listings, and in some cases straight up falsehoods."
I grimaced, remembering a conversation I'd had with Oobleck regarding a Vacuan scam artist who had published such a book called 'Grimm Slaying for Beginners' that had absolutely suicidal advice within, such as 'A beowolf can be lured away from its prey by offering it specifically spiced meat placed within a bowl of milk outside a well that has hanged three children within the last year.' or 'nevermore will not attack if a cat is nearby' or even my favourite 'the best way to trap a Deathstalker is to use a pit trap'.
Nevermind that the Deathstalker is a scorpion that can scale vertical walls, or the fact that Vacuo is largely sand and if anyone can make a pit trap in the sand they likely have the resources to just build a ballista and spear the thing.
"Yea." I said absently. "This one look good?" I gestured at the hallway that had almost been removed of the Deathstalker's corpse, and we continued on in relative silence, stepping gingerly around the dissolving bits of Grimm..
Beacon's Basement, 21st Floor
"Torga?"
"Yes Nora?" I yelled to be heard over the din of battle.
"Why don't you ever take us anywhere nice?" She managed to pout as she decapitated an Ursa with her hammer. "Maybe a beach Dungeon? Ooo, all-inclusive resort dungeon! That'd be nice, we could spend a week there every weekend."
"I don't know." I answered slightly incredulously, punching in the snout of a Beowolf with my gauntleted fist. "We could go back to Forever Fall for a picnic?"
"Na, tha-" I heard a whipping sound of something thin tearing through the air, and Nora's voice cut out.
"NORA!" Ren shouted, and I chanced a glance away from my hall, shifting my tower shield out and holding it crosswise across the entrance to hold back the Grimm. Pyrrha was off scouting the halls, leaving Ren, Nora and I to hold a room with two hallways. Easy enough, which is why Ren had been on wild card and I was holding the hall, but something had happened and my glance saw Nora lying on the floor, wet with sweat and exer- is that blood?
Ren stood overtop of her protectively and in a flash I could see why. His hands swatted at the air, seeming at nothing, but he eventually managed to hold on to whatever he was swatting and with a mighty tug, yanked something down from the ceiling.
I saw it flailing as it fell, but Observe cleared up any uncertainty.
Hopper
The Boiling Bog
Lvl. 55
It was a grotesque, misshapen thing with folded hind legs that looked to have joints at random locations. It's front claws were long, serrated blades on incredibly short arms, but I saw the Hopper puff up then release a croak, its non grappled arm shooting out and forcing Ren to drop his tether in order to deflect it away from the unconscious Nora. The hopper twirled in the air and launched both of its claws back up at the ceiling, yanking itself up to a shadowy corner where it lay in wait. The whole exchange took less than a second, but Nora being down was not something I had planned for in any way and possibilities began to race through my head.
-FireBreath clears hall -temporary-rush-heal-killhopper-reinforce?NEXT
-SlowTime get Nora get Ren regroup too slow dangerNEXT
-UnlockShoutnotimetodoNEXT
-distraction!Ren pull Nora find PyrrhaholdlineNOW!
I moved a split second later, my path clear. With the speed being shown and Nora falling so quickly I put together that these, as per our earlier conversation, likely had their levels due to sheer attack power and dexterity. Not something common among my historical foes, but something I may just be uniquely equipped to deal with, and Nora's comment about nullifying strengths echoed worryingly in my mind.
"Ren! Get her to Pyrrha!"
"No tiiiiiiii-" His voice stretched out as I cursed internally, having already filled my Aura with Acceleration Dust. I dropped a Fire funball at my feet, stomping it into the ground and allowing the explosion - along with a well-timed Featherweight - to send me soaring towards the ceiling on the other side of the room, even as it immolated the lesser Grimm I had been holding back.. The explosion briefly provided enough light where I could see the dark shape in the corner as I made right for it. The light was almost beautiful, catching on the marble speckled floor in a faintly aristocratic way.
It was as the light shifted and the shadow broke apart that I realised there wasn't just the one:
Hopper
The Boiling Bog
Lvl. 55
Hopper
The Gruelling Slog
Lvl. 54
Hopper
The Rotten Log
Lvl. 55
Greater Hopper
And a Cauldron of Frogs
Lvl. 66
I had no time to adjust my plan though, even if I had more time out of these seconds than most, because three separate serrated claws were shooting right for me as I was blasted through the air. It was only the effects of the Acceleration that allowed me to angle myself to take the blows to non-vital areas and avoid the Critical Hits that they had been going for: Neck, head, and heart.
I gasped in pain as they flicked their- arms? Tethers? Tentacles? - appendages and a blade diverted to slash across my throat, screeching against and subsequently rending my gorget and the throat behind it. I briefly felt the hollow feeling of a warm spray splashing down my front and a burning line across my neck, then I was whole, if missing a solid half of my HP and gasping through the experience. My helmet and chest piece held up, but I did have the time to notice deep gouges where I'd been hit. My Aura slammed up in response to the attack, though I worried that they could just shred right through it and dropped it back down, saving the AP for my skills.
I looked back up and had the briefest time to see a wide mouth full of rotting teeth before it clamped around my head, leaving me in the dark. I felt the rest of my gorget and surrounding neck armour creak and crack, then with a snap my body was falling and my head was pushed through warm flesh and darknes-
I came whole again, gasping for breath as I fell beside Ren and ducked out of instinct, eyes glancing all around and not seeing as another claw buried itself in my back. A glance at my HP saw it dangerously low but not nearly gaining quickly enough, not at the speeds these things were going. My empty AP reinforced my decision to let that bite attack hit my Aura. Then the world sped back up, I grabbed Nora off the ground with one hand - grateful that my Conditioned Body considered her as carry weight - and held my shield over her, breaking towards the hallway I knew would bring us to Pyrrha.
Ren followed close behind, still somehow fast enough to continue deflecting the attacks, though the Hoppers didn't follow us as we ran down the hall. We came to a right turn, and I halted us, eyes on the room we had just left that had faded into unnatural darkness. "Ren, cover."
"You still haven't picked up healing, have you." Ren asked, though it sounded more of an accusation.
"No." I answered, frowning at him even as I knelt and placed Nora gently against the wall. "How'd it get past her Aura?"
"Didn't. Broke right through." Ren growled, though he dutifully watched the hall. Thankfully, that made it much easier.
In my inventory I still had a fair amount of Dust. It was more a matter of which colours I had access to than amounts, as given enough time I can use my Mastery-Factory synergy to manufacture more, and the more that Mastery grew the more Dust I could churn out faster. Given that, I kept what amounted to 50 units of each Basic type, in processed form for emergencies. Compared to some of my other purchases, this was largely pocket change.
Which meant that as Ren kept watch, I began a new technique that I had thought about hypothetically but had yet to try. As an aside, this should help me regain my AP faster as well, considering the status I'd picked up:
Aura Exhaustion (Minor)
You used too much Aura. Take a 50% penalty to the efficacy of your skills until your AP is full again.
I could feel it. My AP was regaining, but the actual movement of my Aura felt… off? I looked inwards, closing my eyes to better shut out unnecessary sensory input. I knew Aura was not a liquid flowing through my body, nor a gas inhabiting it. It was no solid I could rip out if I chose.
Aura was a cloud shaped like you. It did not drift, it did not rise or fall, it simply was. The closest we'd gotten to explaining a quality of Aura was more or less. How much more? How much less? We had no idea, and our only way to measure was to grade someone on how much of their Aura we could sense with our sensors, and then assign a value between 0 and 100%.
I was surrounded by things that didn't make sense. The dungeons were unknown to the world at large, Auras were just something that everyone accepted - which was fucking nuts, if you asked me, because we were literally letting our souls get beat up so that our self-repairing bodies didn't have to deal with pain. Semblances were essentially unique magics, each of which could have caused a war on Tamriel over the powers involved. Hell, Yang alone would have been able to form her own small country.
Don't even get me started on whatever the hell Dust is.
I was able to take Dust into my body and harness its power to do things that my Aura would typically be used for - was Dust a soul? Aura's that are given no other form of expression were a shield against harm, and a healing force for trauma. Could I use Dust instead?
I had actually done so a couple of times, though the effects were typically too minor to bother using instead of the more offensive applications. My Aura could slow enemies just barely when coloured with Ice, but I already knew my Ice Form shout would do that much better. It still helped to use it for a bit of extra cushion on incoming attacks, but that was where the effects stopped being useful to me.
However, with quantity no longer an issue, the efficiency of each unit of Dust became much less important. Given I had Dust (and cash) to spare, I poured Lightning into the non-expression of my soul and felt that aspect shift, as if some veil were drawn aside or a lens placed over a light. Not just a little bit, and not taking my Aura Points from the bar, but truly taking in the entirety of the crystal, feeling that power, then guiding it to release like my aura.
It was not simple. It was a lesson in negative pressure, in finding that which was not there. Without my Aura, it was almost impossible to find that cloud of myself in my body, and even when I got my grasp on the faintest wisp, it slid through my proverbial fingers.
I frowned, then activated my aura, feeling as best I could how the very fabric of that cloud changed, becoming solid but not quite. In my minds eye, it was as if a storm front were blowing in, walls of cloud reaching higher than eye could see and seeming like an insurmountable monolith. I found myself drawn to a certain dark part of this wall of clouds, and examined it closer.
It was me. Not all of me, but the impulsive part, the part that saw a path and blitzed it, the part that wouldn't be stopped by any obstacles whether my path needed to go over, under, around, or through. It was the part that sat in tension, ready to unleash violence at any point, it was the part of me that grew angry and calamitous when my nature was upset.
It was the part of me I called Stormcloak, and a clap of thunder echoed across my soul as I grasped it tight and crushed it in my fist, letting the rest of the Aura slip away. Stormcloak tried to follow the rest as it faded off into the cloud of Aura, but I did not let it. My minds eye stared down upon it imperiously, and as much as I could, I tried to push one concept onto it:
Submit.
Stormcloak roared and frothed, lashing out against what I thought of as my fist. Stabbing pains appeared across the cloud, and parts of it withered away to nothing, but I was not worried. Even without Aura, I was more powerful than this scrap. Once more, I bore down upon my own, rebelling soul.
"Submit."
With a Shout that rang with the echo of the Thu'um, Stormcloak defied my will for the second time. The clouds within me grew angry and dark even as more of it faded, rumbling forming deep within the scattered pockets of Aura. I felt personally affronted by the continued existence of this ant, this small part that could never be a part of me. At the same time, though, I admired the tenacity of that little spark, and so I would give it one last chance before I simply expelled it. I knew not how I could do so, but instinctively I knew I could fight for it and cast it out.
One final time, I bore down on Stormcloak. I beat him with the winds, I drenched and froze him with rain and hail and sleet. Mudslides, treefalls, thunder and lightning, I threw every last bit of the brewing storm at the spark but every last bit of it sloughed off, as if Stormcloack had formed some sort of shield.
That was the last straw. With grand, sweeping motions that drained my minds energy, I felt fatigue drop across my body in the real world, gritting my teeth to push through it and continued. With sweat pouring down my face and tremors emerging from tightly clenched muscles, I pulled each cloud back to one mass, growing it until there was no more cloud to retrieve.
Even so, I knew I had not gathered enough. The Stormcloack had held off worse than this amount of clouds could summon.
I looked relatively upwards and saw, high up in the sky, that lightning coloured the vastness of space. Unreachable yet intensely potent power. Why would it not come down, and aid me in my fight? Why was it up there, away from struggle and strife and suffering? The cloud rumbled once more as I directed my fury upwards and with the final push of energy, I once more made my demand:
"SUBMIT!"
Power like the bestowment of a Prince flowed into the meagre cloud that remained and excited it terribly, sparks shooting off in every direction and expanding the cloud with the following heat. I grimaced and spread the last of my energy out around the cloud, restricting it and trying to force it to condense, but the effect was too powerful and eventually my energy was spent.
With the stormcloud growing more and more excited, I switched tracks and gathered it up, pushing it down my arm so I could hopefully expel it without injury but I was too late. It failed, and I exploded out of my Meditation with the backlash of energy, slamming me into the wall.
However, a bolt of electricity shot out of my right shoulder and into the floor.
Due to experimentation and effort, you have unlocked the skill Shock!
Ren gave me a cough as he continued watching over Nora. "Potions?"
"All out. They don't do much anyways." I groaned absently as I pulled myself off the wall, noting that Shock was a low cost, low damage skill that I likely wouldn't bother training. Though it did have a damage boost to- "What's a synthetic?"
"Maybe not for you but Nora doesn't have your vitality, nor does she have hitpoints. A healing potion would help here." Ren answered. "And to answer your question, typically in game terms a synthetic is a robot."
I grunted in assent. It wouldn't hurt, but we didn't have one and I wasn't going to go fight those Hoppers in the hopes they gave us a lucky healing pot.
Time for a new track. I pulled another Lightning Crystal, my second last, out of my inventory and absorbed it into my Dust Factory. I then filled my second Dust bar up with the processed Dust that I kept in reserve. With a glance at Ren, I backed a couple of steps away from the downed but breathing Nora and tried again.
Nothing. I didn't even return to the stormcloud. "Damnit…." I grumbled. "Ren. I'm trying to push the dust into my Aura."
Ren scoffed. "Right. Shove some distilled lightning at yourself and assume your shield won't stop it when you're pushing it at the shield. Are you sure you don't want to take some points in intelligence?"
Huh, I thought to myself as I did my best to let the sting of Ren's jest fade away. What if it wasn't an attack, then? Would my shield still 'defend'? On that thought, what if it wasn't a shield at all? That last line seemed the most promising, so I quickly devised a way to test it and got ready.
I reabsorbed all the Lightning Dust, then with a conscious effort deactivated my aura completely. Ren tensed almost immediately as I did and went from watching Nora to watching the hallway with eyes that seemed to see further than mine. Then, I settled down onto the floor and went back into Meditation.
Stormcloak glared deeply at me, his features not much more than lights and shadows and impressions. Now, from my place high in the clouds, I did not bear down on him, but looked at him with pity and respect. He did not falter before me, who must have seemed as a God, nor did he bow now.
He would, though, it was just how much he would have to suffer before it happened and we could exist in harmony.
He raged, and roared, and flailed about with an incorporeal axe, but I watched from above until he was done.
It drained me heavily, but rather than one words, I emitted several.
"Fight with me."
The flailing stopped. The rage breathed, the roar quieted. I felt an impression. Trust?
I stopped myself from scoffing. What business did a personified aspect of my own soul have asking if it could trust me? No, it couldn't trust me. It couldn't believe in me. It couldn't stop me. I was inevitable, I was inexorable!
"Gods and ants." I answered, knowing my soul would get the meaning, and it did.
It raged, it stormed, it swung until it was in line with me, and I sent the Lightning once more. With an angry, painful roar, the Stormcloak shucked the cloak of electricity and for the first time, I felt something in the physical world and opened my eyes.
Well, given that the world seemed to slow slightly I had time to ponder. If Dust was Nature's Wrath, and the Aura was the expression of the soul, what did it mean to have Dust in place of my manifested Aura? Was my soul Lightning? No, I could tell almost immediately that wasn't true. From the sparks that had taken to falling and shooting off the angles of my armour to the very present tingling sensation across - and through? - my entire body, this was more than just absorbing the Dust, but not as far as becoming the dust.
On top of that, what did the figure I called Stormcloak have to do with it? I typically just shoved my more murderous, barbarian tendencies aside, telling myself I was not a Stormcloak and so that wouldn't be right. That version of myself, the one who gave in to his Nordic rage… Was that an actual part of my soul, of my nature? That sharpness, that sense of being wounded if I so much as got near it? Was… was that me?
Luckily, my power had something for me:
Due to an understanding of the sharp and static nature of Lightning, you have gained the skill Haste!
Oh. Ohhhhhh.
I purged the lightning back into my inventory, hands scrambling to pull out all that I'd need until I sat on the ground in the hallway surrounded by Crystals of Basic and Lesser Dust. Red, Green, Blue, Orange sat around me, with the Speckled Green of Acceleration and the Pale Blue of Ice sitting in between their components. I was too low on Lightning now to do anything with the Yellow Dust immediately, so I left it out of this.
I began truly using Dust Factory.
Due to an understanding of the monolithic and averse nature of Air, you have gained the skill Featherweight!
ERROR! Featherweight is already unlocked. Current XP for Featherweight doubled.
Thankfully, Stormcloak didn't fight nearly as hard, and time after time I infused him with the Dust to power my soul. I got an impression that if he weren't fighting, the skill would not have worked at all.
Due to an understanding of the vast and adaptive nature of Water, you have gained the skill Regeneration!
Due to an understanding of the growing and destructive nature of Fire, you have gained the skill Inner Flame!
Due to an understanding of the great and unyielding nature of Earth, you have gained the skill Sturdy!
Due to an understanding of the keen and cold nature of Ice, you have gained the skill Cool Mind!
ERROR! Cool Mind is nullified by the Gamer's Mind. Skill replaced with Sleetfall!
Due to an understanding of the eddies on the fringes of Time known as Acceleration, you have gained the skill Shift!
Then, I went even further, mixing Fire and Air:
Due to an understanding of the instant and exponential nature of Detonation, you have gained the skill Self-Destruct!
And once more, with the last of the Dust I had left:
Due to an understanding of the random and consuming nature of Growth, you have gained the skill Photosynthesize!
Time after time, Stormcloak was inundated with the esoteric energies of Dust channelled from the Aura-Storm, but time and time again he endured and even, near the end, gave off an impression of gratitude.
"I don't think they're coming after us." I notified Ren, at which point he finally turned back to see what I was doing. Impressive, given that a literal explosion had gone off behind him when I blew up, but not unexpected. He was likely confused. I was not caring, as I was exhausted and soaked in sweat, feeling a deep ache in my body that the Gamer's Body and my full HP didn't help with.
"I unlocked buffs. Give me a moment." I pulled up my screens and couldn't help but let out a low whistle. If I were to use every one of these without the help of some Dust to supplement my AP, I'd go dry before using them all. Most were fine, but a couple, like Self-Destruct and Shift, had costs too high for me to even cast once, let alone as a part of a set like the restorative mages would do in Skyrim. A quick check showed me that costs would likely reduce, as Featherweight's had, and with the XP bonus, it was sitting just short of 99 - and the cost was less than a single AP.
Maybe one day, after enough grinding, I could drop all the buffs at once. Divines with a cost reduction like that I could have them up constantly for my entire team!
Featherweight dropped my mass to allow me to perform some acrobatic manoeuvres my armour wouldn't have normally allowed. Now it was supplemented by both Haste - which increased my attack and movement speed - and Sturdy - which reduced knockbacks by a percentage that worked off my Strength score. I was curious how they would all interact.
Then I had Inner Flame, which increased my Fire Resistance somewhat uselessly but more handily increased my Fire Affinity, then Regeneration which was the longest lasting buff but the weakest: the target would regenerate their HP and MP 1% faster for the next 15 minutes. Most of the other ones only lasted a minute, and the ones like Shift and Self-Destruct only lasted a brief second.
Speaking of which, I would have been giddy at Shift if I could even use it:
Shift (Active, Cost 1500AP) Lvl: 1
The self's place within the dimension of time is variable but constant, and upon meditating on this truth for a century an inverse child was able to determine their own self apart from time.
Allows the user to Shift between adjacent Temporal Flows, to speed or slow their perception of time as required. Further Flows are accessible at higher levels.
Current Flows: 2
Duration: 5 seconds (Remnant)
Remnant
Remnant+
With a groan and a stretch of my neck, I stood once more. "Alright, Ren. You take Nora through to Pyrrha. She should be in the next room." I fuelled myself with Earth Dust, filling both bars with it.
"Initiation again?" He grumbled.
"Not quite the same power up but… more of a shift in the right direction. At the very least I shouldn't be getting decapitated again."I told him as I placed both a Regeneration and a Photosynthesis on Nora - The second wouldn't likely do anything but for the first, even the slightest increase in Nora regianing her strength would be worthwhile.
I left him with that as I took off back towards the room with the Hoppers and within seconds, the unnatural darkness had faded away and I saw my quarry. Quarries?
Hopper
The Boiling Bog
Lvl. 55
Hopper
The Rotten Log
Lvl. 55
I layered up with my buffs and a bar of Earth, which was drained with about half of my AP to cast the lot of them. I found myself pleased that they were growing in level so quickly and reducing costs as the whole suite jumped to third level. Drawing out Ruby's Gift into sword-and-board I charged forwards, the vibrations of my footfalls echoing off the marble and granting a resounding weight to my movement.
Shift was not the game-changer I had thought it was. I had Shifted into Remnant+, draining most of my Aura, and rather than slow everything down, it sped it all up. I frowned and returned to Ren to wait out the duration. 5 seconds was longer in that Flow than the native one. I would have to make do with Haste, and so I re-laid all of my buff skills - save for Shift, this time.
It was odd, I thought to myself, to see the ground react to your footfalls in slow motion. Surely I had seen similar within Acceleration but that had slowed the world down to the point where it was almost a new set of physics being reacted to. This was more as if I was moving at the same speed as before, but simply processing it all faster?
It was a difficult distinction and one I wasn't entirely sure about, but it was distinct. Which is why when the retractable blade-arms of the hoppers extended out towards me at speed, I was able to track their descent. When the first arm was close, I parried it aside with my shield, dropping it in the process. The second sunk short as I floated a step back with Featherweight, then planted myself with Sturdy and took things one step further.
"Tiid Klo!"
The streaking appendages slowed just enough, to seem almost like arrows instead of bullets, and I knew that I had ascended to truly ridiculous levels. I held back the amusement that it was now possible - if expensive - to dodge bullets, focussing on my task as I also dropped my sword.
I grabbed the claws out of the air. It was not easy, and my gauntlets were torn apart in the palms as the serrations ground to a halt. Had I not had the Gamer's body, my hands would be limp and useless right now, but as it was I did. Then I activated a skill, hoping that it would work, and it did.
The Hopper gave a small surprised croak before it was on its journey. Using Lash to direct it, Overclock to power it, and Double and Power Strikes to increase the damage, I slammed the Hopper into the wall, eyes widening as I saw a hairline fracture open up on the polished stone. Redirecting and still burning AP and HP for the Overclock, I lashed the Hopper and attempted to smash it into its ally, but the second hopper lashed out with its claws and sliced through the other's long stretches of Grimm-arm, and I fell backwards as the weight released.
I had to roll to the side as the Hopper grew new arms that were already in the process of shooting out at me even as the Grimm material solidified into another, smaller and non-serrated claw.
Then I was left scrambling as my Shout faded, and I used the last of haste to once again run to Ren who was still watching over Nora at the corner, only taking one small hit on my way out. His pistol came up as he heard my approach but soon went back down, placing his hands back onto hers. He had masterfully applied a bandage, and it had only the faintest spot of blood, so he appeared to be here more for support than anything. "How is she?"
"Aura's gaining just a little faster than her standard recoup rate." Ren said. "However the wound appears to not be receiving the same treatment."
"It is." I told him. "Probably just harder to see since you've got your scroll for the aura. Either way, let me reapply them. Managed to gain a couple skill levels while I was gone." I did so as I talked, and I watched the reader on Ren's scroll accelerate if only just slightly.
"So you killed them. Good."
"Skill levels." I clarified with a wince. "Still.. Regeneration has gone up to level three which means that it will have an effect of three percent rather than one. Looks like it'll be real useful by the end. Any word from Pyrrha?"
My map still showed her in the next room over and the party screen showed her with full Aura and Health.
Ren shook his head. "Didn't check." I frowned at him then double-checked Nora's status in the party screen. Her HP was around half and her aura was just above a third, but she should be-
"Nora, get your ass up." I growled. "You two can cuddle on your own time."
She let out an exaggerated snore, to which I rolled my eyes. "Nora. Rest will come at the Respite. We are not three floors away."
"I don't think-"
"Ugh. Fine! I'll get u- Oof! Faking sleep, not injury!" She protested, but her arms still found their way around Ren's back and she held a smile on her face. I rolled my eyes again and made to get Ren off her when a gunshot sounded. "Pyrrha!"
Humans were so much easier, Pyrrha thought to herself absently, before correcting herself. Honourable fighters were so much easier. Yes, that seemed more correct, though, even that didn't quite ring true. She hadn't personally done so but she imagined there were humans of less than noble intent within the world and bouts with them would likely prove quite tricky.
There was an unwritten way that tournament fighters fought each other, for the officials often have a 'no-holds-barred' attitude. There were rules: Do not attack your opponents eyes. Do not use submission holds to circumvent Aura. If wrestling and both sides lose their weapons, break and reengage. Some rules were for the fighters, others for the crowds.
Many opponents have stood across from Pyrrha Nikos and many had fallen. She hated the spectacle, she hated the expectations of the crowd. More than anything, she hated the way that, whenever she 'made a mistake' and let her opponent hit her, it was always followed by a round of gasps and jeers and who knows what comments.
'He hit the Invincible Girl! Cheater!'
'Leave Pyrrha alone!'
'Do you think she's okay?'
'Boooo! Go Mistral!'
It was all, the lot of it, disrespectful. She appreciated her recent training fights with Torga. She found it odd that he would choose to stop and restart whenever he deemed himself as having 'taken a fatal blow', but he would not accept that Aura would protect them from that and strived to never take such a blow, regardless of its futility in actually injuring him. She found herself quite enjoying those spars - they were fast, dirty, and brutal, and she often found herself only a hair's breadth ahead. She knew at one point he would surpass her - he'd gone from aura-less to tanking Dust rounds, and he hadn't shown many signs of slowing down.
It wasn't that he was better. Not faster, a little bit stronger but if Pyrrha was being honest with herself, he didn't quite know how to leverage that strength. His abilities were varied, but he didn't use them in the one-on-one spars. The reason she had difficulty winning was because he went all out, every time.
He wasn't using dirty moves. He didn't go for her eyes, or try to manoeuvre her out of dignity. He refused to use range advantages, and would not accept his armour being able to block hits that it really should have. He just didn't stop. He used fists, feet, elbows, knees, his head, his weapons, her weapons - that had been a wakeup call, when he was strong enough to stop her from retrieving them with her Semblance - and even dirt or sand from the floor. He angled to take hits to non-vitals, he masterfully and efficiently used the few forms of his weapon he was familiar with, and he would do anything to win. She still sometimes had nightmares about his first real victory.
Blockkickstrike -ow!- dodgethrowcut- what?
Pyrrha had been halfway through a 12 strike combo her trainer had called Dance of the Swallow when Torga's reaction threw it all off. On the seventh strike - the one most prone to finishing the opponent before the combo - she did as she usually did, sliding a leg back and widening her eyes to feint a retreat, while her other leg raised in preparation for the kick-feint. In reality, her sword gathered speed as she swung it down, then around for an overhead strike.
Torga dropped his aura and took the hit, his own longsword screaming through the air towards her throat even as her sword crunched through his shoulder. Her shield was low, even if she wasn't off balance from the complicated feint. The seventh strike was never meant to hit, just raise his weapon for the eighth. Unable to help herself, she angled her sword to cut out of his body, and with a freeing of tension it whipped free and angled up to take the hit even as her other hand dropped her shield and threw out her Semblance at maximum power but it was too late. Just a split second before Torga was flung away, his face went red and he gave a roar of effort.
The point of his sword scratched against the Aura protecting her throat, and a cold sweat arose across her entire body.
No, she would no longer be the strongest on the team at some point, and the thought made her question why she was excited for it. She wasn't averse to the responsibility of being the strongest, nor did she feel guilty for it due to her Semblance, but… it was nice to think that someone else could have that role, that maybe one day she would be able to count on someone to have her back to the degree of trust she imagined others had in her. One day, but not today.
Pyrrha sighed, bringing herself back to the fight in between one parried claw and the next whipping lash. She did not have the benefit of knowing what these creatures were called, but the Frog-Grimm were new to her. She faintly recalled Port talking about the swamp-based Grimm of the southern Anima Peninsula, but neither Mistral nor Vale were close enough for those islands to be a target of culling. There may have been a frog, or a snake? Either way, it was Grimm and thus she was more than capable of defeating it.
Even if the second one was much larger than the first.
With sword and shield in hand, she rose to meet the assault, taking off in a sprint to strafe the creatures while she loaded a specially marked magazine into her rifle. Every step was hampered but she had long mastered how to fight against both whips and kusarigama, and what was this but a bastard hybrid of both? She had been disarmed when they had revealed a small level of in flight adjustment of their blade, but a quick application of Polarity had shot her sword back into her hand fast enough to deflect the follow up.
The smaller one was doing its best to chase her around the room, while the large one seemed content to perch in the centre of the ceiling and take pot shots when she was busy dodging the others attacks. It wasn't difficult to stay ahead - read the trajectory, map out the spaces where it would be beneficial to adjust said trajectory, then avoid the spaces where it would be possible for them to adjust into a slash. She thanked her tutors for teaching her about projectile physics and rope physics, even if she had bemoaned it at the time as unnecessary.
Unfortunately, tagging the blades with her semblance didn't work, as often tended to be the case. The Grimm were made of their own, notably non-magnetic material. As a plan began to bloom in her mind, she charged her rifle to pop out the first round one whose tip gave off a faint red glow, and tagged it with her Semblance before 'dropping' it and giving a curse and continuing on her circle sprint.
I just need the right attack t- NOW!
Pyrrha's mind simultaneously sped to impossible speeds and slowed to beyond a crawl.
Right 8m slash 10 retract left 7/9
hopkickboostshieldFIRE kick -halt- go
Two more - FAST! - dodgerollFIREtwistthrow-pause-FIRE
Her heart soared as she saw it unravelling before her eyes, the small frog readying itself to attack again and the large one mid strike and falling.
GrabpullattractloadFIRETHROW!
And the beast fell limp, tumbling to the ground some 20 feet below as fire exploded outwards from where her javelin had struck home in the creature's gaping mouth. She flipped herself to plant her feet against the roof, only for a streak to come shooting out of the hallway and the smaller Grimm be splattered across the floor as if it were no more than gelatin. A loud clang echoed as the streak hit the opposite wall and stopped, revealing itself to be Torga.
Pyrrha was a sight to behold. I watched as she calmly kept one step ahead of lightning-fast claw strikes, making subtle adjustments as she ran. I'd planned to assist here but she'd pulled some frankly asinine bullshit:
She'd started off by tossing her shield to deflect two of the strikes, the disc bouncing off of one and directly into the other. She'd jumped slightly off the ground as she did, and her Semblance carried her just a bit further than I'd guessed she would go. Then the shield had come back to her, as I knew she would do, but rather than catch it, she planted a foot on it and transferred the momentum to herself, kicking up to avoid the original two claws which had been whipped and slashed just beneath her rising feet. Even as she came level, her rifle snapped out and fired off a shot, a small localised hurricane forming beneath her and pushing her higher.
The smaller one was in the midst of retracting and Pyrrha hung at the top of her arc when a pair of larger blades came shooting out from above my point of view. She flung out a hand to call her shield back and got it into place in time, whipping her arm out as if to throw, but holding onto her shield. The momentum sent her into a spin and with two clangs that struck so close I could've mistaken them for one had I been slower, she deflected both of the shots off course with her shield in a midair roll.
Coming out of the spin she again had her rifle out and level, and fired once more. A sheet of ice spread from the roof the Greater Hopper held to, and I grinned at the ingenuity as it lost its grip and began to fall. She was not yet finished, though.
With a move that could only have been accomplished with her Semblance, she twisted midair to avoid the scythes of the Greater Hopper as it retracted them, and threw her shield right behind them. The Hopper had a moment of indecision in the air and eventually decided not to take the hit, whipping its appendages to send the shield off course. Pyrrha didn't miss a beat, even as she herself was falling, and shot once more.
A dark purple streak shot out and struck her shield as it was passing underneath the Ice patch on the roof, and the Shield shuddered to a halt, engulfed in a purple glow. With a grunt of effort, Pyrrha again flung out her hand and a faint wave of purple emanated from her shield, spreading out just far enough to catch the falling hopper in the area of effect, which was great as it halted the Grimms' fall.
Then in a blur I could hardly recognize, something red shot off the ground towards Pyrrha, who for her part chambered a round. The streak hit her weapon mid-charge, and she finished the move, shifting to Javelin and aiming carefully before with a bang, her weapon shot towards her shield, and I could see her plan. The Javelin bounced at an impossible angle, and with a flick of her wrist a mechanism activated and the weapon gained a corona of flame as it descended upon the Grimm.
It had only the briefest moment to let out a roar before it was choked off by the flames, and finally the Greater Hopper fell to the ground, defeated. For my part, I used Runaway Train and a host of other skills to splatter through the Hopper on the ground, noting with distaste that it was neither of the ones I'd fought in the last room judging by its title.
"Ha!" Pyrrha let out a laugh as she lowered herself slowly to the ground, her weapons floating almost peacefully back to her hands before she put them away. "They're fast, but can't take much of a hit."
"Clever, too." I responded, sending an Ice Spike down the hallway I'd arrived from and listening until I heard it shatter on the far wall. "Good fight."
Pyrrha tossed her hair back with a grin. "That was a great fight!"
"Well, glad you had fun. Nora went down, by the way, but she's on the mend. So long as we don't have to deal with any more of these Hoppers, I vote we push for the Respite then take a nice long rest."
Pyrrha's face went through a mosaic of emotions before settling on a slightly troubled look. "What happened?"
"Hopper's hit us out of nowhere. I should've been keeping my eyes up but I wasn't. Shot went right through her Aura, but I got a few new skills and they- actually, hold on a moment." I laid my hand on Pyrrha's shoulder and gave her the spread: Haste, Regeneration, Inner Fire, Sturdy, Featherweight, and Photosynthesize. The last wasn't particularly useful, giving you a bonus to AP, HP, and Stamina regen proportional to the level of light you are in, but anything counted when it came to gaining experience for the skill and I happily noted that this casting brought them all halfway to level four.
"Oooo." Pyrha's eyes widened, and she took a testing hop off the ground, floating up until Featherweight wore off. I shrugged.
"It was one of them so I figured I would. Barely costs anything anymore."
"Speed, Endurance." Her eyes glazed like she was considering something. "Fire? Why do I feel like fire?"
"Inner Fire. Raises your resistance and Affinity for Fire." I told her.
She narrowed her eyes, glancing over at the still burning corpse of the Greater Grimm. "I can feel the flames. Not the heat but… their drive? They want to burn, but I feel like… I feel like I…" Pyrrha frowned. "It feels like I've tagged them with my Semblance."
I activated the skill on myself, and given I had the base level of 10 already from my experiments with the Super Red Crystals, it was easy to see what she was talking about. Closing my eyes, I still saw the flames, except it wasn't sight so much as - well, sound? It was like I knew that there was fire in a specific space near me, and even somewhat the direction. It was like… reaction, somewhere deep inside me, where the front parts of my body said 'Fire ahead' and those behind said 'nah'.
I frowned, and with eyes still closed, shot a Flamethrower up into the sky. I was startled into opening my eyes, as I saw the gout of flame extended much further and brighter than it ever had before, then my sight confirmed it. Pyrrha stared at it in wonder. "I- it…"
"I feel it too." I breathed, basking in the heat and glow of the fire. Even given the skill was approaching the 80's and had grown slightly with each level, this was far beyond what even my projection of a max level Flamethrower would look like.
What was affinity? I'd thought it was a level of familiarity, such as Storm Wizards in Tamriel using solely storm magic and thus using it better than a generalist. I'd even heard such people declare they have an affinity for the gales and downpours of the storms, but had dismissed it as fable. Was it, though? I could feel, deep within, that I had a kinship with fire. I'd always felt that way, Fire Breath being one of my favourite shouts, but not like this. Before I felt like I understood the flames, their destructive and self-replicating nature, their power, all of which I had spent hours meditating on, but it almost felt like at this moment, the fire was attempting to understand me in turn. What would it find? Would it find the Fire-inundated version of Stormcloak I saw in my soul when I used the skill?
I shook my head as the sounds of running feet echoed down the hallway, and Ren jogged in, clearly slowing down for Nora who walked slowly and with a hand across her stomach.
Something to be considered once we're free of this place and rested up, but if nothing else, we had made gains here.