I awoke to feel deeply refreshed, with a bubbling power sitting within my chest. I stood up and stretched, feeling the joints in my arms and wings pleasantly extend. I could already tell that my body was different than before, as the coloring of the metallic armoring on my arms and legs had lightened considerably, now gleaming a pearlescent white beneath the short fur. I could also see that the claws on my hands and feet had shortened slightly, looking more like long pointed fingernails than the inconvenient talons that they were before. They, too, had changed in color, shifting to match the change in my skin. Experimentally, I dragged a fingernail across the shiny flesh, only to marvel as the claw slid right across, deflecting off the hardened flesh. It was clear the new connection to ice had improved my base defenses, but how would that be reflected in my status page?

Status:

Name: Victoria (Vic) Gale

Age: 27 days

Gender: Female

Race: Storm Paraelemental Warrior (Rank 2) (90%), Human (10%)

Class: Way of the Storm Martial Artist

Job: Fighter

Level: 30/40, 115/2983 XP

Affinity: Heart of the Warrior, Enhanced Physicality, Wind, Water, Ice, Electricity, Order, Chaos, Electronics, Crafting, Graceful Presence

Character Archetype: Lone Wanderer

Current:

Regen:

Health:

550/550

90/day (180/day)

Stamina:

625/625

440/hour

Mana:

400/400

330/hour

General Stats:

Strength

47 (49)

Agility

52 (56)

Dexterity

37 (39)

Constitution

34 > 44

Intelligence

40

Wisdom

33

Charisma

30 > 35

Luck

20

I hadn’t seen the updated menu since the last wave released, but I thought that it managed to get the point across. It was especially easy to see the different stats that had yet to reach their max. My race had been added to, and now depicted the human part that had proved itself just as useful as it was dangerous. I also had both order and chaos added to my affinities. More importantly, though, my constitution had increased by a staggering ten points and was now my third highest stat. That was probably a consequence of my body doing its best to heal and fight off the invasion of the order aether stream. Seeing my charisma similarly increase as well, I walked into the bathroom to take a look in the mirror. Not needing to worry about being seen in the buff, I just left the sleeping area without any clothes. I would be training body strengthening today anyway, so there was no need to get dressed only to immediately get undressed.

After seeing my reflection, I had to double-take. Was that me in the mirror? It was ridiculous what just a few points more in charisma actually meant. I had managed to grow another inch or so and was well past six and a half feet tall. My skin had been pale since my rank up, but now it was practically glowing with vitality. It was still extremely white, but it no longer looked like stone, now appearing full and lush. My white hair had taken on the pearlescent sheen that my arms and legs had, and the length had increased as well, the strands now reaching down to my mid-back. The individual hairs were thick and strong, and when I experimentally tried to cut them with my claws, I found it required a lot of effort to even attempt. I was sure I could give myself a trim using the knight’s sword, but it wasn’t particularly important right now as it wasn’t in the way.

Now that I was thinking about it, charisma was a weird stat. Yes, it affected attractiveness, but I thought that was a rather bad description of what it did. In D&D, the stat played a more important role. There was a mess of spells that relied on charisma to resist, each one involving some kind of vague inner strength needed to overpower them. It wasn’t willpower, exactly, it was more like your force of being. You could command a room, get your soldiers to do what you wanted them to, or to hold a concert while keeping your fans entertained. You could get out of lots of problems by having a decent charisma, which is the biggest reason that I had always tried to commit a couple of points to it when I hit a milestone.

With my physical changes documented, the last thing I needed to do was look at the changes to my magic skills. For that, I pulled up my recent alerts, groaning at the appearance of yet more tables.

Alert! Skill: Storm Command Fragmented!

Alert! New Skills Derived! New Skills Unlocked!

Magic Skills:

*NEW* Electric Mastery – lvl 15/100 – Manipulate and generate electricity. Intensity based on mana and proficiency.

*NEW* Ice Mastery – lvl 6/100 – Manipulate and generate the cold. Intensity based on mana and proficiency.

*NEW* Water Mastery – lvl 15/100 – Manipulate and generate water. Intensity based on mana and proficiency.

*NEW* Air Mastery – lvl 15/100 – Manipulate and generate air. Intensity based on mana and proficiency.

*NEW* Order Mastery – lvl 1/100 – Manipulate and generate order. Intensity based on mana and proficiency.

*NEW* Chaos Mastery – lvl 1/100 – Manipulate and generate chaos. Intensity based on mana and proficiency.

Alert! Skills Electric Mastery, Ice Mastery, Water Mastery, Air Mastery, Order Mastery, and Chaos Mastery Combined! Passive Skill Unlocked!

Magic Skill:

*NEW* Elemental Mastery – electric (15/100), ice (6/100), water (15/100), air (15/100), order (1/100), chaos (1/100). Manipulate and generate the elements. Intensity based on mana and elemental affinity. Elemental affinity increases with use and technique.

Passives:

*NEW* Elemental Resistance – Resistance to elements is 30% of elemental affinity. Electric (4.5%), Water (4.5%), Air (4.5%), cold (1.8%), order (.3%), chaos (.3%)

Alert! Skills Elemental Resistance and Intermediate Storm Resistance Combined!

Passives:

Elemental Resistance - Resistance to elements is 50% of elemental affinity. Electric (7.5%), Water (7.5%), Air (7.5%), cold (3%), order (.5%), chaos (.5%)

Elemental Mastery was certainly the strangest skill I had to date. It was more like a collection of subskills than anything else. I was glad I didn’t have all of them on my list, though, as that would make my skill sheet even more annoying than it currently was. I was starting to find it hard to remember certain abilities, and I could see the problem getting worse as time went on. I would have to consult Luna about it, but I thought it likely that there was nothing to be done. I really should look at getting a memory enhancement skill, though that was a task for another time.

The Resistance Skill change was a bit surprising but didn’t seem like that big of a deal. The fact that it was considered passive instead of a resistance skill like the others was curious as well. I had yet to encounter a monster wielding something I had resistance to, so I couldn’t tell what effect it had. It was strange that the resistance was reduced, but considering I now contained conflicting elements, I was counting my blessings. Because the storm resistance merged with the elemental resistance, the latter must have been a much higher quality skill, so I was sure it was a good thing. On the bright side, the path to getting my elemental resistances up to 50% was clear, and I wouldn’t need to punish my body to make it happen.

I let out a sigh as I sat down in the warm water, getting ready to start body strengthening. I had work to get done.

---------------------------- ---

The next three days moved by in a blur. It seems another effect of having a connection to order or perhaps my enhanced constitution was a further reduced requirement for rest. After sleeping for only four or five hours, I would be back up and running, so I got a ridiculous amount of meditation in.

I broke into the 40s of Beginner Chaos Body Strengthening rather quickly, but after that it slowed down, requiring over three hours per level. On the third day, I was stuck on level 49, doing cycle after cycle fruitlessly trying to max out the skill. It was well into the night of the fifth day that I got to the max. I had gotten three more milestones with the skill, with three more unassigned points. My strength max was now 52 and agility sat at 62. I put one unassigned point into dexterity to bring it up to 40, and put the other two into wisdom, bringing it to 35.

Alert! Skill: Beginner Chaos Body Strengthening Removed! Skill Partially Reverted!

Checking the skill sheet, I saw something new. It looked like the classic skill meditation had combined with the body strengthening technique. I was surprised it wasn’t at the max level, but to be perfectly fair, I was kind of bad at the whole “calming the mind” side of things.

Meditation

35/50

By focusing, the user can calm the mind and absorb the chaotic energies in the atmosphere. While practicing the technique, all regeneration is increased by (100%).

Now that that was all done, it was time to move onto the final order of business. I had yet to test chaos flight with my new magical domains, and I wanted to try it out. First up, I wanted to test all of my previous abilities to see if they worked the same way, and I quickly found that it was not the case.

My electricity, water, and air manipulation were several orders of magnitudes weaker than before, and I was immediately disheartened. My ice magic had increased in proficiency greatly though and was now comparable to my other abilities, but it was little consolation. As for chaos and order, I had yet to figure out how the abilities worked and I was unable to use them.

The mastery skills were strange and using them was a distinctly different experience than using storm command or the old manipulation skills. It took another thirty minutes for me to figure out what that difference was. Where storm command was a practice in bending the elements to my will, the mastery skills were easy. I was using the elements like parts of my body, moving them in intricate paths, sending lightning out to further distances, and making shapes from ice and water that I never thought possible. I had ended up sacrificing power for finesse, at least for now. Hopefully, when I leveled the skills once more they would return to their previous strength.

I spent the next couple of hours experimenting with my abilities, eventually rediscovering out how to cloak parts of my body in elements, and how to channel that elemental energy into my chaos wings. When I tried to channel ice into the skill, I watched in fascination as dense crystalline daggers grew to replace the feathers. By flexing them, I could send the daggers out in a hailstorm of destruction, similar to how I envisioned the Razor Wings skill. The wings should also protect against physical attacks, helping to regain some of their defensive properties.

There was but one afternoon left before the weekly reset when I would be ejected from the floor, so I opted to spend my time practicing ice elemental mastery. I could use the magic, but it was still behind the others, so I wanted to do what I could to allow it to catch up. When I reached level 15 with the skill, the leveling abruptly cut off. There was some type of soft cap at that point, as no matter how long I worked to reach level 16 I was unable to. I cleaned up with a bath, then went to sleep, luxuriating in the soft silk sheets.

When I awoke, I hurriedly packed all of my gear away and got dressed in my Agile Chitin Vest and Pants, before walking into the main room. I went to the sign-in sheet and found my name, before leaving a stellar review of the place for whoever would come next, hoping they would find it as useful as I did. Before leaving through the door, I waved at one of the air vents.

“Thanks for taking care of me. It was a wonderful place to stay and train, and if I find the time I’ll definitely come back.”

*hiss*

I took that as a “you’re welcome” and walked back into the dungeon proper. It had been a long time since I’d been back here, but I felt far more prepared for what I might face, partially due to my increased status threshold, but mostly because of the new techniques in my beginner arts. I just waited around in the entry hall for the next hour, and when the reset happened, I was again ejected to the hub, though this time I wasn’t alone. Kaitlyn was right there with me, clearly having beaten the tutorial and started on the dungeon proper.

She looked a little worse for wear, her once-nice black armor now ripped and ragged.

“Wow, Kait. You look like whatever the cat dragged in.”

Her response was to slump against a wall and close her eyes. Reaching into a belt pouch, she took out a potion and downed the whole thing with a grimace. After a second, she opened her eyes again, looking up at me. She spoke in a groggy voice, and rather slowly as well.

“Geez Vic. How the hell did you get through the spawning caves on the eighth floor? There are just so many freaking spiders…”

“Well, actually, I started rather close to the exit. I ran into a major pathway, took out the spiders on the road, and followed it to a central chamber with a statue. It was pretty easy all things considered.”

She let out a sigh.

“That’s not freaking fair… for me, the floor is a web of random tunnels and dead ends… I keep running into rooms full of orange eggs, which immediately throw out masses of warriors and broodmothers.”

“Well, all is not lost. There’s plenty of chests on that floor, and the boss is on the tenth. If you’re going to take it on solo, you probably need as much training as you can get. On the eleventh floor, I almost died several times, and I could already take out the warriors in only a few seconds. I think grinding up levels and stats is probably a good idea.”

“What’s the boss on the tenth floor like?”

“Haha, well… actually, when I got to the boss floor it was empty. The dungeon master gave me a couple of coins and shunted me into the next floor… sorry I can’t really help.”

Her only response was to angrily squint at me. It was clear that she was too exhausted to focus on her social anxiety and embarrassment.

“Well, I’m going to head off to the guild. I want to let everyone know I’m okay, and I might pick up another class while I’m there.”

I expected Kaitlyn to respond again, but perhaps unsurprisingly, she had passed out in the hub. She must have had a hard time, but I was happy she was getting stronger. My skill set let me cheat my way through lots of encounters, but hers wasn’t necessarily as forgiving. That being said, she was extremely fast, and I understood that in a straight fight between us I might not be able to do much, similar to my encounter with the guardian of agility.

Not wanting to see her die though, I went ahead and wrote a brief description of the next few floors and what she needed to do to succeed in them and tucked the paper into her shirt where she would find it quickly. I then reached into her bag, covering her lithe form with a blanket. She would be safe here, as anyone who could bother her would have to beat the tutorial first, and it was a very difficult thing to do.

I took to the skies once more and turned east-northeast towards the guild headquarters. There was some useful information I needed to get to the higher-ups, namely Cindy. I would also pick up some quests if I could. I was tempted to go back to the ranch house and get my new set of armor but considering that I was the one providing ingredients for it, I would reach the end of this dungeon before doing so. I might get some impressive crafting materials on the lower floors, and it wasn’t every day you got a custom armor set made by the god of magic. As I flew, I was tempted to ditch my current more revealing gear for something more modest but decided not to. I had high enough stats and charisma that no matter what I wore, I would receive lots of attention, and changing clothes any time I went into public just seemed tedious.

Doing a barrel roll, I accelerated to the max, beating my wings quickly, and using wind pressure to increase my velocity. I screamed through the sky, luxuriating in the morning sun refracting through my crystal feathers, warming me to the core.