Beastborne- Mark of the Founder

by James T Callum

  At any point outside of combat, you may allocate your stored experience within the discordant stone to any Class you currently have acquired. Doing so will initiate a Level Up. Each subsequent Level Up administered in this way will have its healing potency reduced by half.

  You have unlocked Focused Class.

  A Focused Class is capable of being set once per day. All experience earned is automatically applied to that Class and Level Ups occur whenever a threshold is breached. Experience gained cannot be used for any other Class but there is no downside to multiple Level Ups on the same day.

  You have unlocked Classes.

  Upon fulfilling the prerequisites and attaining 100% Class Affinity, you may become another Class.

  Hal saw no way to make the change to a Focused Class, but he supposed that made sense as he couldn’t raise Novice any higher. He made a mental note to ask Elora about it later.

  As a native, she would have a better understanding and with any luck could provide some valuable insight.

  Holding true to his previous priority, Hal brought CHR up to 5. His remaining 11 points, he mulled over. His magic had proved invaluable more than once. And Beast Magic, in particular, felt quite powerful.

  He could not ignore the allure of gaining new spells, not by studying in a boring tower but by going out into the wilds and fighting different types of monsters.

  If he found a dragon, could he fight it and get dragon breath powers? Flight? The potential seemed limitless and full of adventure.

  The strain mechanic was worrying but aside from a slight sensation of nausea while he cast Beast Magic, it didn’t seem to cause an issue. Glancing at his newly acquired resource bar, it was already at 0.

  Raising his INT 5 points had increased Bomb Toss’ damage about 9 points. And with Beast Magic’s potency growth, it seemed like the path of the mage was beckoning him.

  In the short time since he gained Beast Magic, Hal managed to get it to the same Level as Stealth. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to skulk around in the shadows. While it was fun - and undeniably effective - at first, it felt limiting.

  Every attack had to be done from a place of ambush or surprise. If he was caught out, his Sneak Attack would be useless. Which meant to be effective, he would have to invest progressively more time and stats into improving his Sneak Attack.

  At a minimum that seemed to be increasing his Stealth, and three stats; DEX, AGI, STR. DEX for the obvious boost to Sneak Attack, AGI so he had more stamina to Sneak longer and for the speed boost, and STR to raise his base damage.

  On the other hand, he had magic. It only required INT and MND to be raised along with the relevant skill.

  Hal dropped a point into MND, bringing it to a nice round 10. Then he took it out as he noticed a strange shift in his MP regeneration rate. Instead of going up a point or two, it jumped from 22.1 to 26.

  So maybe a base of 10 is better than a base of 5… or there are tiers and every 10 or so Levels the boost is larger?

  Shaking his head, Hal put his MND back up to 10.

  With 3 spells at his disposal now, he would need all the MP he could get his hands on. At 155 MP he could cast 3 bomb tosses and 1 goblin rush.

  Each point of MND gave 5 MP, which meant for every additional cast of either spell he would need to assign 7 or 8 points to MND to get another. His MP regen would go up as well, reducing the time he needed to wait between spells.

  But with the careful allotment of attribute points, he could significantly increase the power of his spells. And by doing so, need to cast them less. Which meant more MP to spare and less Strain accumulated.

  He had a choice to make. Either he could dedicate himself to magic and the amazing potential Beast Magic offered, or he could hold himself back. Assess his options one by one… and let his whole life pass him by while he thought out each potential path.

  That was the old Hal, he insisted.

  The last of his attribute points went into INT, raising it to 22. He wasn’t going to second-guess himself. Not anymore.

  The familiar voice of Buffrix drew Hal’s attention to the left where the koblin was making his way through his fellows. “Savior man-thing need-calls Buffrix, scuttle-feet aside!”

  Once the koblin got to him, Hal looked over where Elora laid Lurklox. The koblin nodded and immediately fell into his spellcasting. “Lurklox has lives of cat,” he said to Hal. “Will be back to sneaksies tricks near-soon!”

  Purple-blue light washed over the little Thief and Hal could see the way the koblin’s chest rose more fully. Her HP filled up, only to half but it was enough.

  Buffrix’s healing magic would be in high demand before they could leave the cave. Hal breathed a sigh of relief.

  When Hal looked up from Buffrix and Lurklox, he noticed well over a hundred of the gathered koblins, children, and the few surviving adults were looking at him. Even Elora watched him. Were they expecting him to have some sort of speech?

  He caught a glimmer of amusement in Elora’s eyes.

  <“You saved them. They’re your responsibility now. What will you do with them?”> she asked.

  Hal had to admit he hadn’t really thought of that. His focus had always been one immediate problem after the next. Freeing everybody and surviving hadn’t – if he was being honest with himself – actually seemed like a feasible outcome.

  Not one he’d live to see at least.

  Looking around at all the gaunt children, most of them wearing rags not too dissimilar from his own, Hal realized what they needed to do first and foremost.

  They needed food.

  Scanning the crowd, he found the soot-covered koblin he had been looking for. “Sparkspox, you seem to know your way around here. Did the goblins….” Hal let his words trail off as a horrifying realization hit him.

  What if the reason there were hardly any adults was because the goblins were eating them?

  Switching tack, Hal cleared his throat and said, “Can you come take a look at the exit with me, Sparkspox?” To the rest of the crowd, he said, “Stay here a moment while we scout out the exit. I don’t want to be here any longer than you do but we need to make sure the way is safe.”

  Your Persuasion has risen to Level 2.

  +1% Persuasion success (2%).

  +0.5% Antagonistic persuasion success (1.0%).

  A feeble voice called out. “Lurklox… will go. Check for hold-fast sneak-harms.”

  Hal fell into a deep squat beside her and smiled at the koblin. “I’ll be fine, Lurklox. Just rest for now. You’ve done well.”

  With that, Hal took off through the parted sea of rubble and wreckage. He spotted several clusters of goblin armor and twisted remnants of weapons and metallic plate wrecked beyond use.

  “Psshkoh, Savior give true tongue-flaps to Sparkspox. Why go to exit?”

  “Observant, aren’t you, Sparkspox?”

  “Koblin woman always see-true.”

  Hal gave her a sidelong glance. Nothing about Sparkspox seemed feminine as far as he could tell. Then again she was covered up in the equivalent of a leather hazmat suit. Let’s add that to the list of things I’ll need to revisit later. A list that’s nearly a mile long at this point.

  For a moment his shoulders sagged under the weight of all that he still didn’t know and all that was yet to be done. He still remembered the discussion he had recently with Elora about saving the prisoners from Fallwreath.

  He had to hope that they were far enough away from Fallwreath to avoid further pursuit because with so many people – nearly a full quarter of them malnourished, half-starved children – they weren’t going anywhere at speed.

  Just finding food and proper shelter was going to be hard enough.

  “I wanted to ask you about… food,” he finally said to Sparkspox once they had passed through half of the blackened trail that carved through the jumble of cells.

  Sparkspox nodded sagely. She put a mitt to her mask and stroked it thoughtfully. “Sparkspox thought so. Savior quick-think to
stop tongue-flaps near small ones.”

  Hal forced the words out. “The goblins were using the parents for food, weren’t they?”

  The koblin nodded. “Some. Not all. Gobbies lazy. Took from koblin foodstuffs first. Kobbies no eat man-things,” she pointed out, giving Hal a direct look.

  “Can you show me where the other food is?” As they walked he glanced over his shoulder at the gathered group. Most of their eyes followed him. It made Hal deeply uncomfortable. He was no leader.

  So, of course, he received a prompt telling him the opposite.

  Your Leadership has risen to Level 4.

  +1% Party Damage (4%).

  +2% Leadership Efficacy (8%).

  He followed Sparkspox into a side chamber off the entrance hall that had luckily been cleared out by Elora’s devastating ultimate.

  They had to shift some broken planks out of the small carved entryway but getting in was easy enough after that. Once enough room was cleared, Sparkspox simply ducked and weaved through the wreckage while Hal was forced to haul and pull the rest free.

  “Much foodstuffs, no man-thing meat here,” she called from inside the low lit room. A few of those bowls of cubic stones, like glowing bismuth, were spaced evenly through the low chamber. Sparkspox meandered over to one and grabbed a stone, chafing it again in her mitts and brightening it considerably.

  Hal’s head scraped against the lowest parts of the ceilings that rounded towards the walls, forcing him to stay in the central area. He reached for another sconce full of those stones and rubbed it between his palms.

  They were smooth as glass but with more rounded edges than he could count. The stone pulsed to a nearly blinding light in his hands and he quickly replaced it in the sconce.

  The room was lit with the equivalent of bright daylight. Sparkspox gave Hal a look but said nothing of it as she went over to the array of crude shelves and baskets piled high with fruits and vegetables.

  Thankfully there didn’t seem to be much meat. Not that Hal would have said no to a steak or burger. Even with the food the Rangers had, he had been craving something more substantial than their rations of flatbread, cheese, and jerky.

  But at that moment, he wouldn’t have trusted a fresh juicy burger if it came in a McDonald’s wrapper.

  Not that those were either fresh or juicy.

  Any meat could be tainted and he told Sparkspox as much, telling her to get rid of any meat she found. They would only bring back any vegetables, grains, or fruits they could find.

  Without at least a single hearty meal, he doubted the children – or the koblins for that matter – would have to strength to march with the Rangers.

  The adjoining room’s roof was even lower, forcing Hal to crouch. But it held a veritable feast of fresh fruits and vegetables. They were stacked up along the walls in stolen crates and spilling out of pilfered sacks.

  Massive pots and cauldrons – large enough to stuff a person or two into, Hal noticed – were hung up on hooks and pegs driven deep into the stone walls.

  Several sacks the size of Sparkspox were filled with a grain that looked a great deal like rice. There was more than enough food to feed everybody several times over. But it was all too much to bring with them. Before they left he would see how much he could take with them.

  Between his inventory and Elora’s, they might be able to take a considerable amount.

  “Sparkspox, do the goblins have wagons or carts?”

  The little koblin had her back to him with her mask lifted up. She was snacking - quite loudly - on something from a sack against the far wall. She let out a squeak and pulled it back down, then turned and faced him. “Cart?”

  Hal did his best to explain what a cart was, halfway through the explanation the koblin cut him off. “Oh! Trundle-rumble! No, gobbies here have no trundle-rumbles.”

  There goes that idea.

  “All right, let’s go back. Grab a few sacks of something that’s ready to eat right now and I’ll get a cauldron so we can cook up something more substantial.”

  It didn’t take them long. A warm campfire greeted them when they returned with sacks full of simple fruits and vegetables that could tide them over until a proper meal was cooked.

  Every person received some food, and Hal kept an eye out for anybody hoarding or stealing. In the end, he was worried for nothing. With plenty to go around, everybody had something to eat without issue. Even the slightly wilted vegetables were happily eaten by the smallest child.

  The koblins, on the other hand, were almost snobbish toward the standard fare offered to them. Thankfully, they didn’t openly voice their displeasure. Once Hal and Sparkspox brought back the food, several more koblins came to help ferry more back to the group.

  Elora sat and ate something that looked a great deal like an apple, only it was the size of her head and she held it in two hands as she bit into it. Hal’s stomach grumbled for his attention and he promised it he’d get some food in a moment.

  One moment turned into five minutes, which turned into ten, and then ultimately into an hour as one thing or another demanded his attention. As was the way of things.

  By the time Hal ate, he had delegated groups of koblins to retrieve usable equipment from the wreckage that they could safely reach and to loot any rooms the goblins had for supplies.

  He organized a couple of additional fires to be made from the wooden wreckage that filled most of the cavern and soon had a few black iron cauldrons resting on their own blazing cookfires.

  A few adventurous koblins gathered water from a stream outside and together everybody ate and drank. Free from their cells and of their tormentors.

  Even while he ate, Hal had to go around stopping people from overindulging. He erred on the side of caution, assuming the koblins had similar biology to humans.

  The last thing he wanted was for any of them to die from the shock of eating too much after starving for so long. He recalled reading about that happening to some of the Holocaust survivors. It was hard to tell them to stop, but the children and koblins obeyed him without complaint.

  It was a little unnerving. He still wasn’t used to people listening to him.

  Hal walked around, passing out stone bowls of boiled grains and bits of roasted vegetables in small portions to each of the prisoners. Between the recently freed koblins and the malnourished children, they had used up all the bowls available. Many people were forced to share a bowl.

  Rather than wait his turn for a bowl to become free, Hal bit into the golden fruit Sparkspox had given him earlier. It was surprisingly delicious and juicy. Like a cross between a kiwi and an apple.

  You eat a [Persiskos].

  +5% HP | +5% SP | +10% MP .

  +3 VIT.

  Duration: 2hrs.

  Hal couldn’t contain the smile that spread across his face. Food buffs were so interesting to him.

  He was eager to discover more. What might a full course meal might provide? Did spices make a difference?

  So many questions.

  Inevitably he found his thoughts turning back to the others in the cavern with him. There were so many more people than he thought.

  All told there were nearly two hundred souls under his care now. That thought nearly bowed his shoulders with unwanted responsibility. But he resisted and refused to give in to the worries and doubts.

  One step at a time. He vowed as he got up to make his rounds again.

  20

  As he walked about the people in the cavern, he looked at his stats again. Particularly his Class Affinities and the newest addition to the list, Oathforger.

  Unlike Chimera Knight, he had no Quest for that Class.

  Oathforger

  In ages long lost, these battlefield commanders held sway over whole nations with a single word. Their Oaths held insurmountable power to break and reforge the bonds of all people. With an Oath, they could inspire the cowardly to action, give strength to the weak, and even ward off the cold embrace of death itself.

&
nbsp; That sounds different. He couldn’t get any more information about what oaths were. They sounded like magic but at the same time… not.

  At the moment it didn’t concern him greatly. Oathforger was sitting at 20% whereas he Chimera Knight was at 70% affinity.

  He glanced back at the Chimera Knight Quest, one of two flashing Quest prompts that demanded his attention.

  Quest Updated: Chimeric Attunement.

  Your dedication to becoming a Chimera Knight is clear. Having achieved over 100% in a single monster affinity, you have gone above and beyond. Collect 100% essence in another monster family to complete the quest. Go forth and consume.

  Objectives

  Achieve 100% monster affinity in at least 1 more monster family.

  Additional rewards available based on unknown parameters.

  Attain over 200% monster affinity with 1 monster family (Complete).

  Reward

  Varies based on actions taken.

  Chimera Knight Level +1.

  Fabled Evolution Available.

  Quest Complete: Repay Buffrix!

  All of Buffrix’s immediate clan are freed. You’ve completely annihilated the goblin force occupying and threatening the region. You have gone above and beyond in not only freeing Buffrix’s immediate clan but the surrounding clansmen of the koblins in the region as well. Return to Buffrix for your well-earned reward.

  Objectives

  Break Buffrix’s clan out of the goblin prison(Complete).

  Destroy the goblin cave(Complete).

  Additional objectives available.

  Rescue Sparkspox (Complete).

  Rescue Jabkix (Complete).

  Kaboom(Complete).

  Do not let more than 10 koblins die in their cells (0/10)(Complete).

  Rewards