Chapter 22

An Old Friend

I crashed back into the forest in a small glade a bit away from the place where we fought the Matriarch. Since my time in Primal Form hadn’t expired yet, the crash was not nearly as bad as I expected. I still had to dismiss my conjured earth and stone and dig myself out of a small crater, but I was fine. Mostly. I even had a quarter of my health left.

My form morphed back to normal right about the same time I got back to the battle-site. It looked like a miniature of one of the tamer warzones I have been to, or a sanitized version of the level 400 zone Death Fields of Carnage.

Steaming piles of flesh and organs littered the clearing, and huge chunks of bone stuck out of the ground like gruesome flag poles. Much of the clearing was red from blood, but the majority of the Den Mother’s body and skeleton remained where she died, like some sort of macabre sculpture of muscle and bone… one that dripped.

As the rest of the group was resting or sifting through the remains for something interesting, Shinobi was dancing through puddles of blood singing. “It’s raining meat! Hallelujah!” It was pretty disturbing; I was starting to think there was something wrong with that man.

I got nods or hails from the team, but most were too tired to care much. That was a long fight above their level, with a matchup that was terrible for all of them except Doc. Afflictions like poison and the armor-ignoring holy smites of a priest, would have worked well if Doc was a higher level, or they would have worked eventually even at her current one. Surviving long enough for it to matter would have been tricky, though.

Rocky tossed a small bag of coins to his dancing brother, who immediately stopped and pocketed it.

“Okay bro, you win, I will admit there was a way this scene could be more disturbing.”

Oh good, Shin wasn’t crazy, it was just a bet. Strange bets were something I was used to, I once participated in a bet about who could use the most mana to cook a chicken in under a minute. I lost, but my solution was inventive. I used a dark magic curse to make its feathers fall out and then custom wove a death spell linked to a soul combustion spell to burn its organs to fry the bird. Using necromancy, I walked the bones right out of the flesh and turned them into a plate with Bone Molding.

Sadly, a guildmate used a massive amount of lightning and control to heat the air from a distance and vaporize the innards and feathers, costing me the bet and a Nova Core.

“Find anything interesting in the cave?” I called.

“We found some interesting crystals and rocks, but that’s about it.” Rocky said.

I took a look for myself; I picked my way through the rubble and summoned a small globe of mana for light. The cave wasn’t that deep, barely bigger than the bear would have needed to walk a few steps in any direction and lay down in. When I got to the rear of the cave, I realized why the group hadn’t found anything. The rewards weren’t leaking mana and looked normal. There were a bunch of crystals that looked like quartz all along the wall. Here and there I could also see bits of green that almost looked like old copper set into the rock. To your normal player, this would look like junk.

To me it explained why a boss had such an absurd level of regeneration at this low level. The green was Vitacryst Ore, and I quickly used my earth magic to extract as much as I could. I only ended up with a pile as tall as I was from the entire wall, so it wasn’t a large deposit. Combined with the Frost Quartz, the bear would have absorbed its aura as she rested. I gathered the quartz as well and brought both materials outside.

Calling everyone over, I explained what the rocks and crystals were. “This is Frost Quartz,” I held up a white crystal and ran ice mana through it, making it give off a cold aura. “This crystal is good for most things having to do with ice and cold, from training against it, learning better control, or even gaining a body affinity. You run ice mana through it, and the mana gets magnified and refracted into this aura. When crafted into accessories, it can boost ice magic and abilities, among other things.”

I divvied up the collection of crystals equally and passed them out.

Next, I held up the unassuming greenish rock. “This is Vitacryst Ore, it is impure crystalized life energy. The bear has so much regeneration because she spent all her time absorbing the power of these stones. There are a ton of uses for Vitacryst. While this isn’t the best quality and is somewhat tainted by the ice energy from the quartz, it is still valuable. You could sell it, but I recommend you keep it for when you find a crafter you trust to make you something special. This could boost health and regen, increase stamina, or create an aura to grow plants faster. It’s life energy so its versatile.”

Once again, I divided the ore among the group.

Sgt.Reaper was about to say something when there was a massive crash from the cave. Turning to look, we saw that a large frozen bird had crashed right into it headfirst.

The Ice shattered and a short burly man walked out of the dust cloud that had been kicked up. Holy shit that was Santa, I thought he wouldn’t be here for another week at least. Maybe I counted the days wrong? The time difference was hard to get used to again after 19 years. Even so… I was pretty sure he was very early.

As he walked over to us, I took another look at the bird; I had a hard time identifying it because it was missing its entire head.

“Is that you Laz ol’ buddy?” He called. “Thought I saw something large, dense, and destructive up there.”

… yup, same old Santa.

I turn to the others, “I would like to officially introduce you to my old friend FistOfSanta, ice monk, motormouth, and jackass extraordinaire.”

To Santa I said, “I have to ask, Santa… what the fuck did you do?” I gestured to the dead avian.

“Nothing much, just froze it’s head, ripped it off, covered it in ice, and rode it like a glider.”

It was official, my best friend was insane.

Without even a pause to acknowledge the ridiculousness of his statement he continued, “I happened upon this young Skypeak Condor on top of a mountain when it picked me up for dinner, I objected and figured I could cut down on my travel time. So here I am, tada.”

With that he released sparkling ice powder above him like confetti.

“I am just going to ignore your existence for the moment, Santa.”

Turning back to the others, I scheduled some more group training in the time before the attack. We then split up for the day to manage our own affairs. We all agreed this was a decent place to end our little expedition. I was pretty sure that they had all leveled a few times and needed to test out a new skill or two.

Returning to Santa, I smiled, “So you pulled the old ‘shortcut’ routine?”

“You know it, man.”

The ‘Shortcut’ was a technique used by some high level, or at least tough to kill, players in the future. It involved finding a powerful monster and getting them to toss you in the direction you needed to go. Sometimes you could use a friend with an absurd strength stat instead. There were a bunch of variations on it, starting a stampede and hitching a ride, sitting on a titanic bird that doesn’t notice you and jumping off at your destination, pretty much anything that abused the power of another to make you travel faster than you could normally counted.

This was usually a technique used by the most daring or crazy players, a group Santa practically founded.

Santa of course picked the option of ‘kill the bird in midair and steer it’, while it works its risky and fairly difficult to pull off. Then again, I don’t think Santa has needed to use a ‘Shortcut’ in years. He could run on air by freezing it under his feet before we got sent back. First time I saw him ‘run’ upward at a forty-five-degree angle, I choked on my lunch.

I asked a question that had been bugging me for a while.

“So… if you weren’t going to stay, why the hell did you start off in the middle of nowhere? I know you didn’t just leave to meet up with me.”

Santa looked like the cat after its proverbial canary feast.

“I integrated a Glacier Tear, knew where to find it, and wanted to snatch it before someone else did.”

What… The…. Fuck…….. A Glacier Tear was a Legendary class gem that I once heard described as ‘the mana got cold enough it collapsed into a frozen singularity that generates cold’. It wasn’t the best source of cold and ice energy, but it was way more than someone on our level should be able to even touch without freezing solid in an instant. There were things of a higher tier out there, hell I knew where dozens of such Legendary and Mythical items were. The reason I didn’t get them is that they’re either too well protected or would kill me on contact. Most of them were also really far away from my current location.

“How?”

Santa pulls down his collar to show a shining mote of icy light visible under the skin of his chest.

“I got my hands on a Soulbind scroll and rigged up a runic timer, got myself to the place where this beauty was hidden and cut my chest open. Then I triggered the scroll and fell onto the Tear. It bound to me just as I died. I had ‘acquired’ a couple top shelf regen potions and when I revived, I was barely able to down them before it killed me again. With my limited time, I got myself to the cathedral and hired the head priesty chap to heal me until I could move on my own. It took two days after those potions wore off for me to build up enough Cold Resistance to survive the Tear. Luckily, I had ‘liberated’ some nice coin from a flowery prick to pay the holy man and he did his job. Hurt like a bitch though and cleaned me out of funds. On the plus side, I have 253 Cold Resistance and it upped my Ice affinity so high it’s practically a crime.”

“….. tell me”

He briefly turned into a living statue of ice, “126”.

Should I kill him now or later when he doesn’t suspect it? Who am I kidding he would totally expect it. Getting over 100 in a body affinity was tough, but it let you briefly become whatever it is you attuned yourself to. The thing was, you could only have one body affinity over 100 once you got one all future body affinities would cap out at 100. For Santa this was a no brainer, he did ice, and hitting people, and hitting people with ice. So he put himself through nearly unimaginable torture to get some of his powers back quickly. He probably has a damn tier 5 class by now and at least half a dozen titles from that feat alone. To offset this his class probably costs a ton of experience to level up, that’s why he only registered as a level 18 to Identify.

Hah, that fucking level 18 could kick every player’s ass but mine in this region, and to survive against him I would be forced to dig into my old powers and go all out. Blood rituals, sacrifices, soul magic. It would all need to be on the table if he was as powerful now as I thought he was.

Just to show he could still read me like a book he spoke up, “hold on there man, yeah I got a kick ass class out of it, but its not as powerful as you think. It’s a tier 5 with a focus on Int and Strength, my speed is shit, my Con is shit, my Wisdom is just awful. Its an unbalanced class all around and takes so much xp to level it isn’t funny. On the bright side, it packs a ton of ice and body conditioning skills, so when I balance my stats out, it’s going to be incredible. That’s going to take a bit though, the exp from the things I can kill quickly is shit if I don’t use practically all my mana.” He smiles, “For all its downsides it was a good find, it’s called Glacial Temper.”

Ah, one of those. They were fairly rare, but the ‘Temper’ classes were usually very unbalanced. They also gave an amazing foundation in whatever it is they specialized in. ‘Temper’ classes tended to give skills that did things like percent damage increase or decreases, and these skills could be trained. I once had the Death Tempered class; it was a very annoying but important part of my rise to power.

With those limitations, he was a highly skilled glass cannon. If he got hit, he was fucked. If not, everyone else was. The latter was far more likely, Santa was way too talented to get hit by things at our current level range. While his idea was utter bullshit, it paid off, and I was reluctantly happy for him, it’s not like I hadn’t had my share of luck as well. I shouldn’t cast stones, I had taken far worse risks for power in the future without the safety net of respawning. Maybe I should follow his example somehow.

I had a sudden thought and looked at him, “Vi is doing better than both of us, isn’t she?”

He just stared me in the eyes. “You know her, she probably has a tier 4 that only gives Will or something ridiculous like that.”

“God… I hope not. That would be terrifying with her skills… and her temper.”

He just grimaced and nodded.

“Anyway, enough with the grim talk. When are you planning to fight the potential city-killing world hopping monstrosity?”

From there the conversation turned to including him in my plans to take out the Shadow King. With Santa here, it should be easier. As we plotted logistics, I wondered if I should try for a Temper class of my own. The classes were usually only useful if you knew what direction you were trying to take your growth, and that still didn’t really apply to me. On the other hand, they were powerful boosts to whatever you did. This usually stemmed from the fact that every single one recorded required a body affinity. That was the only consistent thing about them. The affinity level required varied, and the rest of the requirements could be wildly different, but that one thing was a constant.

Like so many things, I put the decision off till later.

We walked back to town, talking about old times, the future, and which one was which.