by Aaron Oster
Cost - 85 RP per second
Blink Cost - 125 RP
Rift Cost - 50 RP
Sunblast - Harness the power of the planet’s star within yourself and control it at will. This skill is stronger in the daytime and weaker at night.
Cost - 400 RP per second
Sand Cyclone - Manipulate the earth and wind to create powerful tendrils of whirling sand. These tendrils may be extended from your body or the ground. Turning to points, they have incredible piercing power.
Cost - 150 RP
Frenzy - When a certain threshold of injury is reached, you can trigger this skill. Your injuries will be healed (up to a point), and your Strength, Agility, and Constitution will each receive a 50% boost. Instead of costing RP to use, this skill will function on a filling a ‘Meter.’
The Meter can be overcharged up to 1,000/100% to increase the duration of the skill. When the skill is triggered, all of the Meter will be used at once.
Meter - 342/100%
Duration - 30 seconds per 100%
Morgan paused here for a moment, rereading the skill’s description. It was an impressive skill, to be sure, one that would cost him nothing but pain and injury to use. The boost it would provide was impressive, but nothing like his Maximum Increase. Still, having a skill he could use for no cost at all, and one that would heal some of his injuries on the spot, was something he could definitely use in a pinch.
It was unfortunate that he could save up and use his pain as he pleased, but that was fine. What was shocking, though, was how little of the Meter was filled relative to his injuries. Then again, when he thought about it, he’d only absorbed Decagon’s core after the massive attack had been launched. If anything, it was terrifying how much damage it had done in the seconds between absorbing the core and him fleeing.
He continued reading his traits, even though nothing had changed since the last time, seeing as he had nothing but time until his injuries were gone.
Traits:
Dense Body Max. - Your body has undergone an evolution and has become denser and more compact. All physical attacks are now 49% less damaging, and all skill-based attacks have a 4% chance of failing to damage you at all. This is the maximum your body can manage in its current state.
Recovery Max. - The spirits of the air have blessed you with the power of healing. If you can survive for 3 hours after being wounded, no matter the injury, your body will be completely healed. Your body will begin healing immediately at 20% per hour for 3 hours, and the last 40% will heal at the end of the 3rd hour. This is the maximum your body can manage in its current state.
Aura Sense (inherited) - You have been bestowed the gift of sight by an Omniscient. By concentrating on the natural energy within yourself, you can read the aura in the world around you. You now have True Sight and can see through any deception, be they words or abilities. You can read the statuses of others, so long as they contain weaker wills.
Aura Flare (inherited) - You have been bestowed the gift of power by an Omniscient. You can make those around you feel your power, merely by focusing your intent. Your aura will now stun the weak-minded for up to ten seconds and may cause some severe physiological damage as well.
Perfect Self - The road to the Pinnacle of power is nearly at its end. Gather the required energy and find your Perfect Self.
Progress - 72%
Soul Stealer - You now have the ability to tear the cores from supers or mages, absorbing them as you would a beast core. The energy you will receive will vary based on the strength of the individual.
Suppression (inherited) - You have been granted the ability of control by Order. You can fully suppress any emotion you choose at any time. However, feelings of physical discomfort cannot be suppressed.
Extra:
Gravity Breaker (10th Category) - Summon a massive storm of tearing winds, lightning, intense gravity, and spheres of superheated gas in a targeted area. The earth itself will erupt, the oxygen in the air will detonate, and the very atoms will rupture.
Cost - 5,000 RP
AOE - 150 Ft
Cooldown - 8 hours
Collapsing Star (HyperNova) - Create a small sphere of super dense gravity that exudes the crushing force of a collapsing supergiant star. The collapsing star will then explode outward, burning all in its path with the heat of a HyperNova.
Cost - 3,600 RP
AOE - 45 Ft
Duration - 35 seconds
Cooldown - 40 hours
Shooting Star (Inferno) - Cloak your body in fire hot enough to melt diamond and the power of a shooting star. Your body burns so brightly that it will blind any who look upon you. When you strike, your target will be engulfed in a roaring inferno.
Cost - 4,800 RP
Duration - 45 seconds
Cooldown - 100 hours
Massive Meteor (2nd category) - Tear the ground by pulling a mass of earth and stone into the sky. Then, bring it plummeting down to earth.
Cost - 5,500 RP
AOE - 100 Ft
Cooldown - 240 hours
Continental Crush - Split the ground with a massive burst of power, detonating the very earth itself. This skill has the range to demolish an entire city, so use with caution.
Cost - 7,000 RP
AOE - 25 Square Miles
Cooldown - 2 Weeks
Soulstream - The power of your soul manifests in the form of your inner beast, cloaking your body in its incredible power while leaving you in control. While in this form, any damage received will be instantly healed, though it will shorten the duration of the skill.
Cost - 8,000 RP
Duration - 10 minutes
Cooldown - 24 hours
Morgan closed his skills, noting once again that his Perfect Self hadn’t budged. Still, as he opened the next portion of his status to refresh himself on the cost of improvement, he already knew what he had to do in order to reach the Pinnacle.
Skills:
Hypersonic Flight - 25M/100M
Maximum Increase - N/A
Maximum Stormforge - N/A
Earthen Shift - 12M/75M
Nature’s Wrath - 18.5M/25M
Compression - 68M/100M
Maximum Gravity Rift - N/A
Sunblast - 54M/120M
Sand Cyclone - 0/200M
Frenzy - 0/200M
Traits:
Dense Body Max. - N/A
Recovery Max. - N/A
Aura Sense (inherited) - N/A
Aura Flare (inherited) - N/A
Perfect Self - N/A
Soul Stealer - N/A
Suppression (inherited) - N/A
Extra:
Gravity Storm (7th category) - 167M/200M
Starbreaker (7th category) - 202M/240M
Collapsing Star (HyperNova) - 277M/280M
Shooting Star (Comet) - 144M/145M
Massive Meteor (2nd Category) - 110M/370M
Continental Crush - 1.1M/500M
Soulstream - 0/800M
Morgan noted how expensive both skills he’d received from the Pinnacle Kings would be to improve, which surprised him. He hadn’t actually ever used Sand Cyclone, but now that he saw how expensive it would be to upgrade, he was definitely going to try it out.
He sighed, realizing that it hadn’t taken him all that long to go over his status after all, which left him with another hour and forty minutes to contemplate his decision.
17
Morgan slowly rose to his feet, flexing his hands and beginning to run through a series of stretches to make sure there was no lasting damage. Now that he was no longer in excruciating pain, he could feel the differences. He felt stronger, faster, better able to move. His mind was sharper, and his body felt denser. None of this came as a surprise to him. Between the two Pinnacle King cores, he’d had roughly 1.8-billion energy, and while a portion of that had gone to upgrading his teleportation skill twice, most had gone to advancing his rank.
He breathed out, throwing a few quick punches and kicks as he did,
then began testing his upgraded skill. With his Maximum Gravity Rift, his transitions were smoother than ever, with hardly any lag and zero disorientation upon moving. He could literally take a single step and appear ten feet away, as though it were the most natural thing in the entire world.
Next, he began testing the limits of the rifts he could open in space. They weren’t large, perhaps six inches in diameter, but he could open them just by extending a hand and exerting a minor force of will. The best part was that they remained where they were as long as he wished.
He stuck his hand into one of the rifts – the small, circular, purple-tinged hole in space, swallowing the limb up to the wrist before his arm brushed the edges of the opening. He felt around for a bit, but didn’t really feel anything. It was only once he opened a second rift that the skill’s usefulness became apparent.
This time, when he stuck his hand in, it appeared out of the other rift. Morgan watched in fascination as he waved his hand, manipulated his fingers, and even used his Compression by flicking into the air.
He summoned several more rifts, then forged a spear and thrust through one of them. The spear extended from the same rift as before, but when he pulled back and focused on another, the spear extended from that one next.
Morgan then had an idea. Moving around in a circle, he created six rifts, then threw a spear into one of them. He then watched in fascination as it blurred between the rifts, emerging from whichever he concentrated on. The spear eventually ran out of momentum, but with just a small force of will, he made it start again and kept it at top speed. He summoned another and watched as they continually blurred around one another.
However, when he summoned a third, the spears collided, shattering with an ear-splitting crack and damaging a few of the rifts in the process. Still, the possibilities were endless, and he was excited to see what he could do with a hundred of these, all arranged perfectly.
There were several limiting factors, the main one being that he couldn’t open the rifts at a distance, and that if struck hard enough – as he’d just witnessed – they would shatter. They were also quite visible, so it would be impossible to ambush someone. But he could trap a group within a dome of these, then unleash a dozen spears, and they’d be all but defenseless!
He then picked a target – a large protrusion of stone – and began blinking around, setting up a series of rifts. His teleportation was so smooth and quick that he managed a dozen rifts in about a handful of seconds, leaving the stone surrounded. Then, he punched into one of the rifts, using his Compression, and watched the skill fly between them, ripping chunks off the stone until the skill ran its course.
Morgan hadn’t really put all that much power into the blow, but he was impressed with the test, nonetheless.
The last thing he tested was using the silver spear and seeing what it could do. He tried reaching out to it beforehand, calling Sarah’s name at least a dozen times before giving up. It seemed she was still too unaware to answer him at will, but he hoped he’d hear from her again when he visited another of the three Wells.
The spear behaved just as any of his other weapons forged from his skills, and the best part was that just like his Stormforged spears, he could still manipulate the spear with his will to keep it going indefinitely. The only thing he had yet to test was the speed at which he could move great distances, but he had a feeling he wasn’t even remotely close to where the fight had been happening.
Morgan sighed, looking toward the ceiling of the cavern, then used his Earthen Shift to move the stone out of the way as he headed upward. He had no idea how he’d ended up down here, and as he ascended, he soon discovered that he’d been some half-mile underground. When he finally emerged into the cool night air, he found himself surrounded by tall stone spires and barren, rocky soil.
He continued to rise until he reached the maximum allowed by his skill and began to get a better lay of the land. From way up here, he could see where the stone spires ended, turning into a familiar mountain range. Several miles away, he could sense a group of powerful cores, all clustered together in a single area.
It was hard to distinguish friend from foe, but when he spread his Aura Sense wider, he soon found the trail he’d been searching for. Grace and Lumia’s familiar auras trailed off to the North, proving Lumia’s quick thinking and their ability to do what needed to be done. It showed him that even without him there to guide them, they’d known that no one in the South would be of much use.
It was exactly what he would have done if their were situations reversed, and he couldn’t break the siege with brute force.
Still, despite knowing that, he still hung in place, his eyes moving between the direction of his friends and Faeland, where the Wells awaited him. This decision was one that was surprisingly difficult. Once, he would have ditched anyone in favor of saving Sarah, but now, there were others he cared about as well. There were people he didn’t want to see get hurt because he was too selfish to go help.
Gold’s words echoed in his mind then, and Morgan found his fingers curling into fists. It was an impossible decision – deciding whether or not he trusted his friends enough to save themselves. He knew why Gold had phrased it that way, and Morgan hated him for it.
For nearly an hour, Morgan remained where he was, thinking over all of the reasons why he should or shouldn’t go. Finally, it was the spear that decided it for him. While he was agonizing over whether they really deserved to be stuck there, whether he trusted them or not, it began to hum lightly in his grip.
“Sarah?” he asked, his attention now fully on the spear.
Once again, he received no reply, at least, not a verbal one. But he did get a feeling of warmth. He had no idea what it meant, but it had been enough of a distraction to break him out of the endless loop of arguing with himself.
Letting out a long sigh, Morgan turned away from the battle sight – and his friends – his mind now made up. He had an important mission to complete, and Gold, while selfish and self-serving, had never given him detrimental information. Sure, Morgan had been hurt plenty of times because of Gold, but that was a given.
Right now, Morgan couldn’t see the bigger picture, but from the way Gold’s plans had worked in the past, he knew that they would come together in the end and that he’d understand if he managed to pull off the impossible in just two weeks’ time.
A gust of wind wafted of him as he turned to leave, and Morgan looked down at himself, realizing sheepishly that he was all but naked. All of his items, armor, and belongings were with Grace. He had no money of which to speak either, which meant he’d have to steal some clothes along the way. This made him feel oddly nostalgic for the old days, when it was just him and Sarah against the world. He remembered the times when he’d been so poor that a few copper coins had been a fortune.
The spear hummed in his grip, and oddly enough, Morgan found himself cracking a smile. It seemed that he and Sarah were technically heading out on a mission all their own.
“Just two weeks,” he said to himself.
He squared his shoulders and used his teleportation, vanishing from the area in a streak of violet.
***
Four hundred and fifty feet below, a veil lifted, and Gold stepped out, looking up to the sky where Morgan had been just seconds before. It was getting harder and harder to hide from him now, and once Morgan finally advanced, it would be impossible.
He’d stayed just to make sure Morgan would make the right decision – meaning the one that benefitted him – and he hadn’t been disappointed.
With Morgan heading for Faeland and everyone believing he was dead, he’d be able to move undetected. Morgan would finally reach his full potential and become the ultimate weapon Samuel had so desperately wanted to control.
Gold grinned to himself, already envisioning the might that would be unleashed once Morgan truly reached the Pinnacle. True, he’d still have some way to go before reaching the near-omniscient state that supermages could achieve, a
nd since Sammy had screwed with this system, he would never truly get there until it was fixed. But still, the massive influx of power would make the entire world tremble. Gold knew he needed to get moving now to ensure that everything was in place when it did.
He looked to the North, then the South, seeing all of the pieces moving as predicted, and felt a small sense of giddiness – something he hadn’t felt in eons. He was so close. There were just a few steps more. And, when they were completed, his plan would finally come to fruition. It had taken him far too long and cost him much, but in the end, it would all be worth it.
He looked up to the sky then, peering out into space, back to his own world where someone else had taken up arms while he’d been gone. He didn’t mind at all, as it had been thousands of years since he’d been to the world he was supposed to watch. That was fine, though. He’d have plenty of time to put it to rights once he was done here.
When he was finished, Somerset could rot for all he cared. But until his plans were complete, he needed to keep going, to keep pushing and manipulating, and he had to do it all without breaking a single rule. And now that all of the pieces were heading in the right direction, he needed to head to Faeland himself to make sure everything was ready.
After all, what good would it do him if Morgan reached the Pinnacle, only to grab the wrong attention at the worst possible moment? More than that, advancing in the way he needed to would be a messy process, which meant he’d need a very specific place in which to do it.
Reaching into his pocket, Gold produced an ordinary portal scroll, one that would take him back to Faeland. He detested using such mundane means of travel, but if he wanted to be undetected, he didn’t dare use his normal methods.
The tear opened in space, showing him the side of a massive tree. Grinning to himself, Gold stepped through, leaving only the remains of the burned scroll in his wake as evidence that anyone had been there before.
