“Thanks, guys. I really appreciate all the help with advancing my skills.”
“Of course,” Riller replied.
“We’re in this together, after all.” Sasha smiled and then gestured toward the stage-two beast.
Riller’s Poison Arrow had incapacitated the muscular creature, and she’d tossed a net over it just in case it had any final tricks to play. It was the most powerful jobo he’d ever seen, and Edge was impressed that his friends had been able to defeat it so easily. They even managed to capture it without damaging the hide. I still have a long way to go before I can hunt beasts at their level.
While he mulled the matter over, he reached out with both arms and willed his ultimate to activate. When the chains of oblivion invaded the creature’s core, he stepped inside to see what was on the menu.
Its best skill was Double Strike—one of the powers he’d merged to form Double Slash. Watching the black chains hunt down the double-fisted avatar evoked memories of his first days in town, training with Trapper’s crew while doing his best to keep his core a secret. He had failed that last goal in the end, but in exchange, he’d made some wonderful friends who had become his new family.
Since Mental Fortress was also only a single skill away from ranking up, Edge fed the jobo’s version of Double Slash to Warlord’s Mantle, then Extracted Leap and gave its experience to the mind-protecting power, triggering its advancement.
While Riller put the beast out of its misery with a quick stab through the eye, he popped inside his central chamber, where his Guide was waiting with a list of upgrades.
The skill Mental Fortress has advanced to Rank 2.
Its mana efficiency has been enhanced.
Please choose between one of the following options:
- Add a triggered component that will inflict psychic backlash against anything attacking with a mind-affecting skill.
- Extend Mental Fortress’s protection to all sources of mental manipulation.
- Sense the use of mind-affecting skills, even when they are not targeting you.
Warning: If no option is selected, your skill will remain unchanged and gain a slight bonus to mana efficiency.
While all three options were solid, the third didn’t have any direct combat applications, so he crossed it off the list.
The first offering was interesting, and he would probably have picked it under other circumstances, even if it was a bit too specialized for his tastes. But given what had happened with Skill-Eater during the battle for Puppet Town, Edge immediately chose the second upgrade his Guide had displayed.
While he doubted the Rare skill could overpower the master of skills itself, if he ever found himself in another contest for the right to shape his own destiny, he would need every advantage he could get. Even a partial reduction of the overwhelming cravings would be an invaluable asset. Besides, there are plenty of poisons, abilities, and traits that can manipulate perceptions and emotions. This upgrade will protect me from them too.
When the brain in a bubble that represented Mental Fortress stopped shining, its frontal lobes were bigger than before, the folds were more intricate, and its protective barrier was thicker than ever. The avatar seemed thrilled by the upgrade he’d chosen, and Edge spent a few minutes praising it before interacting with the rest of his team.
He noticed Rue was in here too, even though the fox was sleepy and supposed to be napping. “You need to rest if you want to grow. There will be plenty of time to play when you wake up,” he chided the little bugger. The pup returned to his dimensional den after a whine of complaint that was overruled by a sleepy yawn.
Edge spent some time chilling with his skills before leaving his core, where only a few seconds had passed in the outside world. He helped Riller and Sasha tie ropes around the heavy beasts, then dragged them over to a towering tree with Blue’s help.
The hunters carved out the jobos’ guts and hung the carcasses from a pair of thick branches to let the blood drain. While they waited, he decided to give his newly upgraded attack a try and get a feel for the changes.
He picked out a dead tree with nothing else nearby, let everyone know what he was doing, then moved into range. While Sasha and Riller watched on with interest, Edge gathered his concentration and ignited his core.
The first part of the skill worked just like before, other than being slightly more mana efficient. A miniature vortex engulfed him as Vacuum Blast’s field manifested and started compressing the air trapped inside.
When he visualized his target, the wedge-shaped barrier hit the sun-bleached trunk, biting a few inches into the dense wood. For a heartbeat, all was calm, then the embedded portion of the blade-field destabilized and released the trapped air in that direction. Instead of creating a generalized explosion, Blast’s new upgrade focused the eruption and concentrated its energy along a single vector.
With a crack like a thunderpeal, the blast cut through the trunk before dispersing a few feet later. The shorn tree came crashing to the ground with a bone-shaking thud, leaving Edge grinning in satisfaction at what his wind blade could do.
His friends were suitably impressed, and he contemplated what he’d learned while filling his vault with the firewood he’d inadvertently gathered.
While Vacuum Blast was an amazing skill, it did have a few downsides. First and foremost, it took a few seconds to charge. It would probably get quicker as it advanced, but for now, it meant he had to prepare the spell ahead of time. Since it drew in air to compress, it wouldn’t work underwater, or if Edge ever found himself in an airless environment, although those were trivial concerns.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Moving on, the skill’s field had some cutting power, but it wasn’t that impressive by the standards of a stage-two warrior. He would have to aim for his enemy’s weak points to get the most out of it, since the explosion wouldn’t do as much damage if the field didn’t penetrate his target first. Even still, he could think of several situations where creating an omnidirectional explosion would come in handy, especially since the skill was hard to detect en route.
Finally, Vacuum Blast was a real mana hog, even without using it as part of a combo. But the spell’s destructive potential more than made up for it. Even at rank two, Blast was a fantastic mid-range attack that would dramatically boost his offense going forward.
By the time he took it to rank four, the explosion would be strong enough to deal serious damage to high-stage opponents. Besides, if Edge kept raising his Generation, it would eventually reach a point where he could use the skill freely without it being prohibitively expensive. The twenty points he’d picked up recently were already a big step in that direction.
When the jobos were done draining, the crew lowered them into the wagon and helped Blue pull it back to town. Since Sasha and Riller didn’t have a preference, he asked if they could sell the meat and parts to Izzio the Butcher—a friendly fellow who had taught Edge how to take game apart without lowering its value.
When they rolled the wagon under the covered patio that was attached to the workstation behind the shop, one of Izzio’s apprentices went inside to grab the butcher while the others admired the crew’s kills. Edge had done a decent job, but Riller and Sasha were true professionals and had taken down their prey without damaging the hide at all.
His friends had some errands they wanted to run before the full crew met up to prepare for the stampede. After bidding Edge and Izzio farewell, they took the cart back to Trapper’s lodge.
Edge had stuck around since he was eager to get another lesson from the craft master—partially to refine his technique, but mostly because he enjoyed the man’s company. Izzio was also one of the best cooks Edge knew, and he was hoping to be invited for lunch once their work was done.
The blond butcher was a cheerful fellow, and he was happy to offer some pointers in the art of the knife. They walked into his workshop and began washing up. They were about to start slicing the corpses apart when Izzio decided to take a different approach.
“Considering everything we’ve been through lately, instead of our usual training, I should try to impart some techniques you can use on the battlefield. Help me hang the female from the rafters. I’m going to abuse one of your corpses to offer an impromptu lesson in applied combat anatomy. Don’t worry. I’ll still pay full price since this is a good opportunity for my team to learn how to defend themselves in a pinch. Like Earl said, going forward, we’re all deputies and hunters in addition to everything else, and we need to be able to protect our home.
“Besides.” Izzio pointed at Edge. “You’re starting to take on some powerful opponents—enemies tough enough that simply hitting them as hard as you can isn’t going to be enough. It’s time for you to learn where to hit them, beyond obvious vital points like the eyes, throat, and groin. Put on one of those aprons and help me string the beast up. Then I’ll gather my team and we can dive into the details.
Together, they created a rope harness and lifted the carcass with a series of pulleys until it was hanging from the rafter. While Izzio closed his shop, Edge put on an apron and pulled Trapper’s knife out of his vault.
A few minutes later, the butcher returned with all six of his apprentices. Everyone stood in a half circle as the man began his lecture, gesturing with the point of his blade as he spoke.
“I’m sure you know some of this already, but let’s begin with basics before we try anything fancy. Every muscle in a creature’s body has at least two attachment points. They are always located on opposite sides of a joint, which allows it to articulate. Tendons bind muscle to bone and ligaments bind bones to each other. If you can cut a muscle, or better yet, sever a tendon, you can impair the mobility of that appendage.”
Fast as thought, the butcher lashed out, severing the jobo’s Achilles’s tendon in a flash of razored steel.
“Even the strongest creature can’t move if there’s nothing powering its limb, although on Ord, you always have to watch out for skills like Regeneration. A body’s tendons are under a lot of tension, which is why they snap back so dramatically when you cut them, but severing a muscle can be just as effective.”
Izzio pointed out combat-critical tendons in the shoulder, hips, wrists, and elbows. He described how losing each would impair a warrior’s movements, then had his team apply the same logic to beasts they had butchered before. He had them take turns cutting until each of the muscles along the jobo’s limbs had been severed in several places. When he was satisfied with their efforts, the butcher changed topics.
“Moving on, we have the circulatory system, which includes the heart, arteries, and veins. Nicking a major vessel will make your target bleed out relatively quickly. Even severing a few minor ones can make a big difference over the course of a fight. The trick is to know what depth you’re aiming for and how to target the places where your blade will do the most damage. A horizontal slice will work just fine, although a vertical split might be needed to put down a beast that can heal itself.”
By this point in the lecture, Edge was completely engaged. He’d learned some of this before coming to Ord, and most of it was general knowledge, but Izzio had a way of explaining that made the information easy to understand, and the carcass was a remarkably effective teaching tool. He was certain these insights would come in handy when fighting powerful opponents, particularly gigantic creatures who were notoriously difficult to take down with conventional attacks.
“Nerves are similar to veins as far as cutting them is concerned, and severing one is an alternate method of disabling a limb. The spine is a special case. The best way to cut it is to work your blade between two vertebrae instead of slicing into bone.”
It took a few tries before Edge inserted his knife into the right place. He thought he could find it again with a bit more practice, although it wouldn’t be nearly as easy against a live opponent.
“Last but not least are a creature’s organs. They can be tricky to target, but the results are worth it. Some Durable big bads might survive a blow to the stomach, kidneys, or lungs, but punching a hole in the heart is almost always a fatal blow. Even a bruised organ can be debilitating for weaker opponents, and concussive force can harm them if you’re not using weapons that can pierce or slice. A word of warning. Some beasts have magical organs that will explode or release poison if you break them, although volatile vital points are usually shielded by bone or chitin.”
After the butcher concluded his lecture, everyone practiced what he’d taught them, hacking away at the carcass to get a sense for what it felt like to cut through various tissues to reach the target depth. While they worked, Izzio corrected their techniques until they got it right. The man also provided instruction on how to visualize vital points even when you couldn’t see them, which Edge hadn’t thought about much before.
They turned the savaged jobo into stew meat, and as he’d hoped, Izzio invited him to stay for a meal. While the savory broth was cooking, Edge told the story of his recent adventures, leaving out a few details that weren’t common knowledge. When he was done, they talked about the siege with the Claws and how the settlement had changed while he was away.
Before they parted ways, he turned to the butcher and said, “Thank you. This has been incredibly informative. I think you should offer these lessons to the peacekeepers and militia on a regular basis, along with anyone else who wants to learn. You’re a gifted teacher, and Puppet Town would benefit from your tutelage. I think Dialla would be happy to reward you with Contribution Points, so it should be a win-win.”
Izzio agreed to think it over and promised to send payment once the jobo parts sold.
Thoughts filled with applied combat anatomy, Edge moved on to the next item on his list—visiting Ander at the Forge and having some custom equipment crafted from the massive mound of high-grade materials sitting inside his vault.