The group had met more and more resistance as they continued on their path. After their first encounter with the hobgoblins, they’d met intermittent cliques of varied monsters. Most were goblin-like, with treeants and giant wolves sprinkled in their numbers with just enough frequency as to not be clear whether it was a goblin led force or not. During their travels, they’d been able to finally push Sherman over the edge and into level 2. He held off on choosing his class, as the others informed him that the experience was something best done in safety.
Sherman was not the only one in the intrepid party to level up. Far from it, in fact, as everyone other than Arthur himself leveled up at least 3 times. Everyone had reached level 10, with Ema being the slowest to reach the milestone as she had the furthest gap to fill. Before meeting Arthur, experience gain had been an unpleasant slog. Admittedly it was no less unpleasant, but it was at least faster. Gideon and Aurora were nearly level 11 each before Ema finally caught up as the only member of the party who didn’t actually participate in dealing any direct damage. Arthur noted that the System seemed to discourage classes that didn’t at least partly dip into damage dealing.
It was put to her several times that maybe she should take up a weapon to make greater use of her massive dexterity stat, but she was adamant in her refusal to do such. She’d chosen her class not only because she preferred to take on a supportive role but also because she disliked the idea of direct confrontation. Tossing out buffs, debuffs and heals like a certain large man in red handed out presents was not only her unyielding preference but also played to her strengths. A good support focused player always had two qualities; strong situational awareness and an at least moderate ability to multitask. In this regard, Sasaki Ema was an exemplary overachiever.
Her class was not simple like Arthur’s or Aurora’s. It did not reward simple churning through skills after their cooldowns were up. Rather, it demanded attention to detail and quick thinking, with its panoply of positive and negative effects that can be increased, decreased, or moved at any time. To maximize her potential, she needed to keep a careful and constant watch on whatever battle they may end up in, enhancing specific stats or harrying opponents. She’d used that need to pay attention to every single detail as a shield against picking up a weapon herself. Additionally, while it hadn’t occurred to her until later, Ema’s depth in dexterity gave her the speed to react to situations effectively. Leaning into that strength, she had dumped all 20 of her free points into said stat.
Identity Screen
Name: Sasaki Ema
Title: [Dedicated Friend]
Class: [Greater Keeper]
Level: 10
Stats
STR: 1
VIT: 1
DEF: 1
DEX: 132
INT: 105
Accord: N/A
Link Mates: N/A
Feats: N/A
After the battle where Aurora had turned the entire field to ash, she’d gained a title. It wasn’t much as all it did was grant a small bonus to the buffs she could give her allies, but any advantage was one she’d steal away with no regrets.
Aurora, like her friend, had dumped all her free points into one stat. Unlike her friend, she chose to invest in intelligence to deal greater damage.
Identity Screen
Name: Aurora Diné
Title: N/A
Class: [Rumbling Sky]
Level: 10
Stats
STR: 1
VIT: 1
DEF: 1
DEX: 35
INT: 173
Accord: 2 offers
Link Mates: N/A
Feats: 1
As their party’s dedicated damage dealer, she didn’t consider any other stat as an option. Her only regret was that she couldn’t put more into it, as her class was a lower rarity than Ema’s.
Gideon chose to split his free points evenly between strength and dexterity, as both were stats he used frequently. During their constant desperation and retreats, he had been considering going for a more robust build, but with the arrival of the Audacity Knight, he would be free to invest in the stats that his class actually depended on.
Identity Screen
Name: Gideon Omari
Title: N/A
Class: [Domain Warden]
Level: 10
Stats
STR: 81
VIT: 18
DEF: 13
DEX: 81
INT: 3
Accord: N/A
Link Mates: 1 [Inactive]
Feats: N/A
During the battles and retreats, his pending Accord offer had been rescinded. This didn’t matter to him, but the item under it had caught his attention long ago.
No one in their group had this information yet, but Link Mates were essentially powers that were unlocked through specifically strong bonds. One person was allowed a maximum of 2 active Link Mate bonds, but these bonds could not just be anyone or any friend. The relationship between Link Mates had to be both powerful and reciprocated, which in the Macrocosm often meant lovers would choose each other as their Link Mates, be them polyamorous or monogamous in preference. Using that bond, certain skills would gain grand powers that would only work on their Link partner, and the same would be true for the other end of that connection.
Gideon was not the only person on Earth to immediately have an option for a Link Mate. A prime example would be Walker Marlowe, as he and his husband had long ago activated their Link. While neither were powerful on their own, their combination of focused healer and focused tank empowered by a Link pushed their combined might to such heights as to gain a name like The Immortals. The community they were known in was the survivor’s sanctuary that the group had heard of and was bent on heading towards. This community was essentially a post-apocalyptic city that currently had a population of thousands of people, and many of them knew of The Immortals, the power of their Link essentially making them famous. That same fame was quickly being stolen by a woman people called The Heartbreaker, a damage healer that had appeared out of nowhere very recently. Unlike The Immortals, she did not gain her might through a Link. How she was in such a league of her own was, in fact, yet unknown, despite the probing of multiple fast acting factions and interested parties.
Gideon was smart, but lazy. He’d long ago deduced that Link Mates had to be about relationships, and if that was the case, he knew who the other end of this Link would be.
He dared not to even highlight the line on his Identity Screen.
Two of the three had also gained new skills. Ema had been surprised about gaining multiple skill choices as compared to her friend, who had gained none at all. All that Aurora had gotten for her trouble was an addition to an ability she already had.
[Static Bolster]: Passive – Gain stacks of [Static] passively. Trade 1% of your max MP for 1 stack of [Static]. Grants additional [Static] effects to the [Lightning Bolt] skill as you level up.
- Level 5: If expended stacks of [Static] equal 10 or more, inflict additional explosion and fire damage.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
- Level 10: Effectiveness commensurate to [Static] stacks used increased. Increases mana cost per stack of [Static].
At a first glance, the level 10 changes to the Static Bolster skill were negligible. It seemed to do something that using the mentioned Static stacks already did. It also increased her mana usage overall, so it could even be taken in a negative light. Aurora instinctively knew, however, that this was not the case.
The Lightning Bolt skill had multiple effects that were activated through the use of Static. While most of them were damage focused, not all of them were. Most of them could, however, be resisted, with the sole exception of explosion damage. Most susceptible to this was the Stunned effect, which could be resisted with sufficient willpower. Shocked could be resisted to a degree, but explosion damage would always activate to its fullest. It could be called a “shocking” development that a bomb to the face would always be effective.
The thing that Aurora could feel from the new effect of her newest skill was that each one of her Lightning Bolt’s payoffs would not only be more punishing, but would also be harder to resist. The damage boost for using her stacks of Static was also at least moderately increased, with the final Static effect of increasing the damage dealt being vastly empowered. As a whole, the new level 10 addendum empowered everything about the centerpiece of her skill set, meaning it empowered everything about her. While she didn’t gain any new skills, this was more than enough for the relaxed woman.
Her friend, however, was another story entirely.
[Expanse Bubble]: Create a large barrier encompassing an area. Longer uptime results in mounting mana cost. Shield HP equals 80% of max MP, with an additional 5% per positive and/or negative effect currently employed by the [Greater Keeper].
[Seize]: Control objects or enemies with your mind. More effective on enemies inflicted with the [Greater Keeper] debuffs, with greater effectiveness commensurate to amount of debuffs on affected target. Cannot control enemies beyond certain thresholds of force application. Mounting mana cost proportional to uptime and amount of enemies/objects controlled.
[Greater Remedy]: Remove a maximum of 3 debuffs from an ally. The more debuffs removed, the greater the mana cost. Low cooldown.
Sasaki Ema had gained no less than three skill choices over the course of their fight through the horde. The numbers they faced had never been overwhelming, but she had still had to heal her allies often, with the exception of Lindow himself, as he never got hurt. The one she had healed the most was Sherman, as his determination to unlock the full capabilities of the System drove him into battles with no prior experience of violence. He made many mistakes, but with Ema present, such mistakes were immaterial.
Healers gained experience from healing allies, fighting themselves, and whenever a recipient of their buffs made a kill. While they had more than double the avenues for gaining experience than most classes, they made the trade-off that those avenues gave individually less experience than a normal damage dealer slaying an enemy. It was to such a point that all three together would roughly equal one normal monster kill. Damage healers like Mira did not have the advantage of multiple ways to gain exp, but instead gained it the normal way.
Ema had gained 3 new skills, and she was increasingly more buoyed by each one more than the last. The first was a large scale shielding skill, perfect for blocking large magical or physical attacks, though she could feel it would be cumbersome. She couldn’t use it unless she was prepared to stand in one spot for a long time, and as soon as she moved, it would be withdrawn.
The second was a telekinesis skill. It would allow her to take a more active role in battles and take control of enemies, for either supportive or offensive purposes. She was most excited about the possibilities the prior option offered, as she might be able to stop one of her friends from being hurt more actively than simply sending them a shield or healing. As she’d seen many of her peers fall up to this point, the idea of being able to actively stop any more from meeting the same fate was a somber satisfaction.
The final skill was simple, yet essential. As her first skill that could remove debuffs, no one mentioned how they could’ve used it earlier, mostly to avoid causing Ema any more distress than she’d already felt for her ineptitude his sickness had brought her. Said maladies encroached on her, anyway.
Although he had only gained one skill as compared to Ema’s staggering three skill choices, he was satisfied with his gain.
[Stone Grave]: Cause a spot within your area of influence to explode upwards with spiked stone. The larger the area, the longer the cooldown.
While Gideon’s class was thorough about dealing in violence, he was a strategist at heart. While the political training his family forcibly imparted to him didn’t exactly take, it did at least instill in him an appreciation for subtlety and being in the right place at the right time. This skill, while it could be used offensively, also offered Gideon some tricks up his sleeve that he wouldn’t waste. Using them as strategic block off points was just one of the many ways he could use this skill to control the battlefield. Though the ability he gained was more than satisfactory, Ema still pointed out that compared to her, his skill gains were still exceedingly “mid”. Arthur and Aurora watched as the two descended into their usual bickering.
While her two longest standing friends present understood it was part of her coping mechanism, they played along anyway.
Later on that night, Sasaki Ema was sitting by herself. After the group discussions had finished, she’d sequestered herself in the far corner of the room, thinking to herself.
She didn’t notice Arthur approaching until he was sitting next to her. She had positioned herself directly next to a wall, and was now boxed in by the excessively average man. She groaned in complaint, but all he did in response was to settle in for comfort.
A long time went by in silence. Arthur didn’t say a word, the only noise coming from him was the occasional shuffle or rub of his hands together. The night was slightly chilly, and while they’d finally found him a less destroyed shirt, he didn’t have anything to fight the cold other than his armor.
An hour passed, then two. When Ema finally accepted that she was cornered, she spoke up. The lecture hall was large and her small voice would seldom wake the others, but she spoke in a hushed tone, anyway.
“Is this the part where you give me a speech about keeping my chin up?”
“You see me as the speech-giving type?”
“Excessively.”
Arthur crinkled his nose. “Hah… sorry to disappoint you, but I would cringe into a black hole before I could even start. Giving speeches to huge groups of people sounds just about like my worst nightmare.”
“So you can show off in front of a group of college kids by over-killing monsters, but you can’t talk in front of them?”
“Dear gods, don’t remind me of that. I thought I was turning into a tomato under that armor.”
She chuckled, relieving just a tiny sliver of the pall hanging over her head. To Arthur, that was already a victory, but knowing that would not be the same for her, he pushed further.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”
Ema let out a single yet harsh laugh, just loud enough to reach the other side of the room. Aurora looked on with concern, as she had been for a long time.
“You know that skill I got today, Greater Remedy? This wasn’t the first time I’d been offered that skill.”
Arthur stayed silent, waiting for her to continue.
“The very first day this nightmare began, I leveled up along with Aurora. A monster broke into our art class, and Aurora and I were the only ones to survive. She gained her class after killing it, and I gained mine after helping patch her up. The class came with a healing skill already, but for my first skill choice…” She took a breath. “…I could have chosen Greater Remedy. It was even the recommended option.” She sniffed once, regret heavy and clear in her tone.
“But I’d just watched that… thing murder an entire group of people! I was… so angry. I wanted… I wanted to bite back, so I chose Erosion instead because it was the only remotely offensive skill available.” Arthur said nothing, his eyes fixed on her face impassively.
“Every skill choice I’d gotten, I picked offensive spells. Then after that, I… watched student after student die to poisons that I could’ve taken away if I had just made the right choice! Then Dr. Sherman took a hit for me, and…” Arthur hadn’t known that was how Sherman had become on the brink of death, but he didn’t let his shock show on his face.
“Did you know I was the one who pushed everyone into fighting back against the monsters?” She said, her train of self deprecation chugging right along. It was as though it had been a long time coming and Arthur had just happened to be in its path.
“I’m the one who convinced everyone to run to their deaths. If we had run away, more people might’ve survived, but I told them we should stand our ground! They listened to me and now so many more of us are…!” Her voice cracked under the pressure of guilt. Though she was still too quiet and too far for the others to hear, it sounded like a gunshot to Arthur. She hung her head, the energy leaving her in moments.
“I’m supposed to keep us alive, but I’m the reason why so many people died. I’m a healer. Do you want to know the real reason why I don’t want to pick up a weapon to fight myself? Because the last time I prioritized attacking our enemies over supporting our allies, I got everyone killed. I can’t… I can’t do that again.” Her voice was shaky. Afterwards, she hunched forward in her chair as if she made herself small enough she could disappear.
Arthur wasn’t sure what he could say in the face of that. While he knew that something had been getting under her skin for a while, he had no idea it had been something of this magnitude. He wanted to empathize with her, to feel her pain to understand that pain and help her better, but he simply couldn’t. She was essentially admitting that she was the reason for much of the survivors’ suffering, which gave birth to a guilt so deep he couldn’t possibly root it out in one night. So instead, he decided to empathize with something about what she’d said that he did understand. After a moment of silence to gather his thoughts, he spoke.
“I know how you feel.”
Ema let out another razor sharp laugh that sounded more like a sob. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I… I got my second family and my best friend killed.”
Ema emerged from the ball she’d withdrawn in and looked at Arthur. He was leaning forward as well now, elbows on his knees, as he looked forward at nothing.
“The… staff at the aquarium.” His sentence was interrupted by a gulp as he dug up feelings he’d buried. “They saw me all the time, treated me like… well… you get it.” He looked down, already feeling the emotions beginning to pool in his eyes. “When everything went to shit, they were trapped in the Redoubt with me. I was supposed to save them, supposed to do… something. Anything.” He sighed. “They died without me even seeing what became of them. I got a notification about it, as though their lives were nothing but… fucking flavor text.” He wiped his face in a downward motion, as though clearing a table of his thoughts.
“Then… during the fight for our lives… I watched my best friend be chewed to mulch in front of me.” Arthur didn’t let the tears run freely. He wiped his face again. “He’d been turned into a monster, you know. Something called an Abomination, a monster that isn’t supposed to be around yet. His mind wasn’t his own, and yet… he still chose to help me. Saved my life. All he got in return was… a second death.”
Neither person spoke for a long while. Ema and Arthur sat together in silence until Arthur took something out of his storage space. Looking over, she noticed he had two cans of overly sweet beverages with very high contents of alcohol. He offered one to Ema, not looking in her direction. She took it.
“I’m not old enough to drink.”
“Sod that. The world ended. The only rules we need to follow now are our own hearts.” He looked down again. “For those of us left with them.”
She looked at him for a moment, then the can. She thumbed it open.
Time passed as they hardly spoke. Ema, who had been spiraling, was not completely better, but knowing she wasn’t alone in the magnitude of her regrets was a bitter balm. As the hours grew, she got up and told Arthur she was going to go to sleep. He responded by getting up himself, turning to her, and wrapping her in a powerful hug. Extremely surprised, her immediate instinct was to get away, but couldn’t so much as make an inch against the powerhouse’s strength stat.
“I know you don’t feel that you deserve to keep going.” He said, the soft and warmness of his tone like an ice-pack on a festering burn. “But we have a responsibility to the people we failed and the people who are left. We have the power to keep them safe, especially you. I’m nothing but another way to hurt things, I can’t rescue people on the brink like you can. I might have a bit of social standing between them right now, but you’re the one who keeps saving their lives. We’ve both made horrible mistakes, but unlike myself, you’ve saved just as many people. They may be looking at me right now, but really, you’re their hero, not me. They believe in you just as much as I do. Never forget… you’re not alone. Please.”
Ema had stopped struggling when he began talking. After he finished, her hands shifted behind his back. She embraced him, bunching his dingy shirt in her tiny hands with a sniff and a hic. She buried her face in his chest, that same shirt obscuring her small face in its dirty folds. A combination of “thank you” and “okay” stuck in her throat, never seeing the light of day as she added tear drops to the dust of his clothing.