“Diplomacy? Do I look like someone who knows diplomacy?” Talisha said, laughing at Mark’s question.
I, for one, was certainly a good diplomat and talker. At least I thought so. Who else could convince four different people to join in with him on the first time they’ve met? And that wasn't even accounting Martin who, although we had differences, managed to become something like a friend.
He still owed me money though.
Mark sighed and just turned his head. “Okay, listen up, we'll need at least ten people. Preferably we would want some more as a…”
“As a what?” asked Crudia, looking at him questioningly.
“I don't want to say it in a way that sounds bad, but as insurance.” He said, cringing at his own words. “We don't know how many of us will survive when we go into the dungeons that the gods want us to go through. We'll need some scouts. We'll need to find players in the first place, which will be difficult if I'm being honest, and they will need to organize with us. We need to map the dungeon out. Find a boss. Hope that said boss doesn't go out of the dungeon, and then we'll have to cooperate and try to attack it.”
“Okay, that doesn't sound that bad.” I said, trying to think about what he was saying. We fought several of these bosses already, and none of them were impossible to kill.
He shook his head. "This is the ‘fun’ part. Since there's ten of you, and the boss is required so we can go to the next floor, I reckon it won't be as easy as anything you fought until now. The dragon wasn't an easy fight, but that was an exception on the last floor. Do expect something of that difficulty in the dungeon we’ll have to delve into.”
“But there will be ten of us.” Crudia said, her ears perking up.
“Ten of you against a boss of a strength like that you've never seen? I promise you it's not going to be easy. You saw the dragon outside right? Like, really, prepare for fighting something like that, but in a closed space.” He sighed. “And that doesn't even include us finding players, so prepare for us traveling and trying to find a dungeon, and finding your teammates.”
“This will be just a new big traveling journey, won’t it?” I asked, looking at him and already dreading the walk in marathons. It already felt like we were spending way too much time walking on the last floor, and definitely didn't like the prospect of walking more on this one. “Can’t we just find a dragon like that one outside, and ride it?”
“If only we could.” Talisha said, chuckling at the notion.
“What do you have to complain about? You can just float your way everywhere! Worst case scenario, I get teleported, and you and Mark just get dragged away!”
“Whoa whoa whoa hold up. Do you know how fucking terrible it is to noclip through the walls?!” Mark exclaimed.
“I can’t float anymore, apparently. I’ll just teleport along with this room, though. Also, this place needs decorating.” She looked at Mark. “Also, stop with the game lingo please. You are saying that we will need to travel right?” Talisha stretched, and sat on the ground.
It was strange how he was now the only one that was blue. Crudia went and sat next to Talisha, rubbing against her shoulder. Mark looked at me, probably uncomfortable with the sight, and continued. “Yes, we will need to travel. This city will probably have a few buildings that could be useful, and the guards mentioned a dungeon, but we will need to assess if it's one that we can clear. If it's not, then we'll need to find a new one. The guides mentioned having one of the dungeons per ten islands, so we were quite lucky to find one right where we spawned. But yeah… not going to be easy.”
“Okay, so players first?” I asked Hoping that he wasn't right on this dungeon being too hard. What was ‘too hard’ anyway? After the last fight with the dragon, I was pretty damn sure I could fight just about anything. The new items would definitely be helpful as well.
“Yeah, new players first. First off, contact Bryga and Dusk. We need to get them to our location as soon as possible, or we'll need to travel to them.”
Crudia perked up, looking at Mark. “Yippee! I was wondering when we'd meet them. I'll text them ASAP.”
Talisha nodded and smiled. “Already on it.” She said tapping away into the air.
“Well that settles that.” Mark smiled looking at me. “We'll still need to find a few more players though. As I said, 10 players. I feel like a repeating, like a broken record right now, but we need to get this into your head, and I don't want you to keep asking me about the rules again like last time. Are we understood, still?” He raised his eyebrows, looking at me questioningly.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said rolling my eyes. “10 players. We find a new dungeon, I beat them up, we go to the next floor. Easy!”
“I sure hopes that's the case. For now, rest up a bit. Look over your skills, and then we'll go and select your evolution.”
Mark met my eyes again. “And then we go outside, look at the city, go and inquire about the dungeon, and then try to see if there are any players on this island. If there are not, we'll have to find out how to get to the other islands and find six others. “
“Sounds simple enough.” I nodded, and opened my menus again.
“It's not gonna be as simple as you think. The clouds aren't close to each other. There should be bridges if I remember correctly. Though, do you remember that dragon that chased us here? The place is going to be crawling with them. We'll need to plan out carefully and try to avoid them as much as possible.”
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I waved him away and opened my menu. The skills were listed just as before, and the dragon plus the fact that we survived the first floor did indeed increase some of my skills’ levels.
Bullet strike - Level 3
Dash - Level 1
Block (tied to an item) - Level 2
Heat vision - Passive - Max LVL
Aquatic breathing - Passive - Max LVL
Analyze - Passive - Level 1
Bubble flash - Level 2
Bad boy - Passive - Level 1
Vibrant Rage - Passive - Level 2
Battering Ram - Level 1
Wall up - Level 2
Sprinter - Passive - Level 1
On Fiah - Level 1
Wall Bounce - Passive - Level 1
Oh, a new skill? I somewhat remembered getting it on the last floor. I opened up the description.
On Fiah
Skill - Active
Level: 1
As the peak of the Mantis Shrimp skills, we would like to bestow upon you the beautiful skill named "On Fiah." Although it might have a silly name, it's based on a very real thing about the Mantis Shrimp, just like all of your skills. Or not. Who cares at this point? The misspelling is on purpose, per request of one of the gods.
This skill works in tandem with Mantis Shrimp's abilities. It boosts his power, boosts his strength, boosts the constitution, all at the low cost of burning one mana point per second. Beautiful, right? Now you might be thinking, "But wait, I have no mana points?" Well, that's a you problem, you dumb fucking shrimp. Maybe you should have picked up some, and then you wouldn't have a skill that you can't even use. Just like always, we are already placing bets on whether you will be able to set some of your friends on fire or not. We’ll leave the rates hidden, for now.
“Wait, why do I not have more new skills?” I looked at Mark, a bit disappointed.
He opened his Own menu and raised his eyebrows. Then he smiled. “Well, I'll be damned. I guess you got all your skills to the max level before we got to the second floor. Oh wait no sorry, I meant to say that you got all the skills you could before you got a class. That's a good accomplishment.”
“Ok, so this means I can still get new skills?”
He nodded. “Yeah, once you get to the second floor getting new skills works a bit differently. Or at least it should but I have no idea how these gods make these floors again now. Too many differences from the books already.”
“That's why you never become a book nerd!” Talisha shouted from where she sat leaning against the wall.
“Yeah, yeah.” Mark chuckled. "What you need to do on this floor is that once you get to level 25, you can select a class. Once you have a class, you will be gaining new skill levels and new skills every few experience levels."
"How many levels?" I asked.
"That remains to be seen," he said. "Apparently it was different for each tournament before, and seeing that we'll probably only be getting to level 40 on this floor, it probably means it will be different than in the previous incarnations."
Ah shit, I forgot about getting to level 25. Running from the dragon thing definitely didn't help me focusing on finding small enemies.
“Okay, open the evolution menu now. I wanna have a look.”
“Sure, but I still want to have a choice, you know?” I said, making sure he wouldn't just tell me what to pick outright.
“Yeah, I will tell you just about a few that I think would work the best for you. Crudia, come here, I'll look at yours as well.”
“That's what I am here for!” Talisha exclaimed, but we could see that she wasn't really protesting that much, probably just having fun the true Talisha way. Crudia didn't even protest and just said right next to me switching her nuzzling from Talisha’s shoulder to mine.
Mark sighed as he swiped through the endless list of evolutions, his eyes widening and then getting small as he scrutinized all the things that were listed. In the end, he selected a few, and only those that remained showed on my menu.
“I think these will suit you the best,” he said, not nodding at his decision-making. “These are some of them; they will allow you to fight better, move better, or survive more hits. Crudia for you. I selected some others since you fight in a different manner. I thought that some focusing on more survivability, trickery, or dexterity could help you more. Have a look, tell me if they seem like something that you could get a good use out of, and then we can select them.”
I look at the list, finding his selection kind of good. What surprised me though was that he didn't even order us to pick one thing or one of the five. This actually felt like a good discussion, for once.
“Are any of these better than the rest?” I asked.
Mark shook his head. “I think all of these are pretty good. I would personally pick the Ant Strength muscles, but it's not the kind of power you need, you know? Explosive and all that. Would be useful, but you might value other things.”
“And you're not just going to order us to pick one thing?” I smirked provocatively.
He chuckled. "Just don't expect me to baby you when you select something else and then come crying,"
It probably should have been a difficult choice to choose one of the most important choices so far. But in reality, it was easy. I already knew I'd select it once I opened up the description. The new skill needed Mana points, and I wouldn't get Mana unless I stumbled into getting a lot of Intelligence points. Also, I thought that this evolution would look kind of neat. I looked it over one last time.
The antennae of the lochness
Evolution - Epic
Grants:
1 mana point per level
30 intelligence
The ability to Scan, which will reveal all enemies in a 50m radius even if they are using a stealth ability.
Once selected, cannot be removed unless forcefully cut.
I definitely didn't like not having the option of removing something I selected. I also didn't like the fact that I would be wasting this precious, oh so precious evolution on something like Intelligence. But I knew I'd need it eventually. That knowledge even surprised myself, but I just knew, somewhere deep down, that I would have to max out or at least get all of my stats to an acceptable level. If my class needed Intelligence, I wouldn't get an opportunity like this again. With a sigh, I clicked accept. A new pain began.
