Spiteful Healer

When Aegis wiped away his initial few notifications, he found another large one flashing in front of his face in his peripheral vision, separating his view from the approaching Baffo and Uggard.

[WORLD NOTIFICATION]

The player [Aegis - Level 150] has become the first player in the world to reach [Advanced Shield Mastery].

“Good stuff!” Baffo cheered with a big smile as Aegis waved the notification away.

“That was incredible. Your reaction speed to those attacks was insane. And the way you used the monsters against each other…” Uggard’s voice trailed off as he and Baffo watched Aegis’ expression twist, and he looked upwards towards the roof of the training hall looking somewhat disappointed. “What’s wrong?” He asked as he saw it, Baffo looking at him with confusion.

“Nothing…” Aegis sighed with a shrug.

“C’mon, that aint nothin. You just completed a world first clear of one of the, if not thee hardest mastery quest.” Baffo replied with an inquisitive squint.

“Feels like I cheated.” Aegis shrugged as he finally met their eyes. “I brute forced it. I feel like the quest wanted me to stop Kilyak from hurting himself. That, or take him out with shield bash faster, so he couldn’t utilize the lures. I just think I could’ve done it better.” Aegis said while scratching his hair, looking somewhat frustrated.

Uggard shook his head dismissively at this and rolled his eyes, while Baffo went into thought and began scratching his chin, his eyes wandering curiously as he pondered.

“Yeah, maybe. I mean, it did seem a bit extreme to have to go into the void for a bit there.” Baffo nodded in agreement, and then with a spring in his step, he began walking around Aegis towards the quest archway. “I’ll try it out, using what I learned from watching you.”

“Alright. Same. I’ll try something with that Kilyak guy.” Uggard joined in, not wanting to be left behind by Baffo. Aegis turned and watched as the two of them disappeared inside the archway to begin their own attempts at completing the quest, leaving Aegis alone with a slight smirk. He took this time to open up his skill menu and take a look at the new abilities he’d gained from reaching Advanced Shield Mastery.

[Greater Shieldwall] - Shield Mastery(Advanced)

Activate by slamming the bottom of your shield into the ground in front of yourself. The shield will expand in size based on your level of Shield Mastery. Anyone standing behind the shield will be protected from incoming attacks and status effects.

Cost: 20% of Maximum Stamina

Duration: 5s

Cooldown: 1 minute

[Greater Guard] - Shield Mastery(Advanced)

Project your shield at a desired location that you can see within 15 meters. Any attacks that hit the front of the shield will be redirected to you as if you had blocked it with your shield. Attacks taken by the projection will benefit from 50% of the brace effect. A maximum of two shield projections can exist simultaneously.

Cost:15 Stamina

Duration:2s

[Shield Slam] - Shield Mastery(Advanced)

Deals more damage than Shield Bash. Attacking with shield slam is guaranteed to interrupt channeled spells.

Damage: 5330-5352 [904(Str x 8) + 1,510(ShldMstry x 10) + ) 2927(ShieldAC x 0.4)]

[Reflect] - Shield Mastery(Advanced)

Properly bracing certain projectile attacks will bounce them back with momentum equal to that of which they hit your shield. The angle of their return path will be based on how they are hit with your shield. Only attacks that are properly braced can be reflected. Does not reflect status effects. Stamina cost for brace on attacks that are reflected is increased. The damage dealt by projectiles you reflect is reduced.

Cost Increase: 10 Stamina

Damage Reduction: 54.7% [100% - (ShldMstry x .3)]

“Hm.” Aegis mumbled to himself as he eyed the Reflect skill. He swung his shield around in front of his face before turning the frontside upwards to look at it more carefully, eying the curved front. “Probably gotta change how I craft shields to utilize that skill.” He thought out loud before pulling his shield back and quickly scrolling back into his interface. This time, he navigated his way to his quest menu where he could check the list of skills he was still missing for the next step. Everything was now checked off except two skills.

“Riding, and Holy Mastery…” Aegis said as he read them out loud. It took him a moment of brainstorming before he came up with an idea on how to handle each of them, and once he’d come up with it, he made for the staircase leading up out of the basement of the training hall.

The first was riding. Aegis stopped by the stables of Kordas on the outskirts of the western gate and asked to rent three horses. Then, he rented a wagon and hooked up two of the horses to its front, and mounted the other. He got a few strange looks from passerbyers as he took off westward from Kordas along the road, in the direction of Orm. He carefully held the reins of the horses on the wagon while simultaneously riding the horse he rode on, hoping that if he controlled three at once he’d gain experience faster.

Initially, his plan worked, and he was able to gain quite a few skill levels. He reached Orm quickly, then doubled back towards Kordas, doing his best to increase the speed of the horses to gain more experience. Unfortunately, though, the experience gains started slowing down drastically on the return trip, leading Aegis to return the rented beasts and go back to the drawing board.

He’d recalled back to when he’d first entered Hrath’mir, how he gained massive leaps in riding skill experience when he’d started on a new creature, but it slowed down the more he got comfortable on the beast and understood it. This led him to conclude that he’d be able to level up riding more quickly if he tried riding different animals, other than gryphons, Lagnoks, and horses.

Unfortunately, no such variety of beasts were available at the Kordas stables, but the prospect of riding more exotic creatures gave Aegis an idea on how to knock out two birds with one stone.

After paying for a portal from Yorgi, who he tracked down within the Wizard Tower of Kordas, Aegis found himself back in the Underrealm village of Pakro’Vielle. There, he was taught by the Plashrim how to ride the spiky-shelled giant snails that the Plashrim utilized for their small farms and gardens within the village. There were a couple of skilled elite NPCs that were willing to teach him, and he was surprised just how difficult they were to control compared to a standard horse.

Worse yet, was that if you mistreated the snails or aggravated them, they’d expand boney spikes out of their shells like a puffer fish, which was painful and dealt a not insignificant amount of damage to Aegis. Luckily, he was able to heal through it and continue his progress with the snails.

Level Up! Riding has reached Level 125!

It was a long few hours of riding the snails and learning all there was to learn about controlling them, but after reaching this level, the experience he was gaining from riding them once again slowed down to a standstill, and it was time for Aegis to move on to another creature.

With his new gear and his higher level, he felt comfortable heading out of Pakro’Vielle into the underrealm on his own, and did exactly that. He navigated his way through the glowing mushroom forest of Reltrak, avoiding the trappers that were hiding on the floor to the best of his ability, and making sure not to walk underneath any mushrooms with giant fisher worms hiding in their underside.

Without Darkshot to guide him through the forest, he accidentally stepped into several trappers, but was able to take them out on his own relatively easily using his claws and powerful shield slam ability. His destination was the hole in the forest floor that led deeper into the under realm - the Red River.

When he got to the familiar hole, he descended down the winding ramp into the heated tunnel and traveled down it towards the glowing red light visible at the end. The familiar wafts of heat began barraging him, and he consumed some salamander meat to gain a stamina recovery buff just as he passed through the end of the tunnel and stepped out onto the obsidian shores of the red magma river.

The familiar deep rumble of the slow flowing molten lava filled his ears, and he wasted no time in navigating to one of the nearest crudely carved caverns on the sides of the cavern wall. He went inside and sure enough found a sleeping salamander who was awoken by the sound of Aegis’ footsteps as he entered the cave.

As the level 135 Salamander opened its fanged mouth and released small bursts of flame to intimidate Aegis, Aegis pulled out a void silk rope that’d been tied into a lasso, and began spinning it around anxiously, a nervous grin growing on his face. He then engaged in the most uncomfortable game of cat and mouse that he’d ever played.

He failed to wrangle the salamander countless times, taking large amounts of painful fire damage. Luckily, through all his time spent leveling down in the red river previously, he had plenty of fire resistance. He wasn’t at risk of dying, but he ended up wasting a lot of time before he was finally able to successfully lasso the robe around the Salamander’s neck.

The next challenge was getting on its back and staying on. The salamander did not like being ridden, at all. The moment that he finally managed to get onto its back, the bucking battle began. Unlike a horse who relied solely on kicking forward and backward, the Salamander made full use of its flaming tail and its ability to climb along the walls and ceiling of the cavern to desperately fling Aegis off of its back.

It wasn’t long into it, after having been knocked off the Salamander’s back dozens of times, that Aegis began considering the fact that this wasn’t exactly the most optimal creature to try and level his riding skill with. But his stubbornness and determination egged him on, and after having already invested so much time to wrangle it he had no intention of backing down.

The amount of flame breaths, burning tail strikes, and bite attacks he had taken from the beast unwillingly quickly shot up into the hundreds. The amount of time he’d been flung off of its back as it jumped between the floor, to the walls, to the roof the cave also made its way into the triple digits. But Aegis kept going, for several hours, refusing to give up. Hae-won, as his broadcaster, had turned the stream into a comedy show for Aegis’ viewers.

Despite all the failures, though, Aegis was gaining riding experience extremely fast for the few moments that he was able to stay on the salamander’s back, and slowly the length of time in which he was able to hang on was growing. Until eventually, after 8 long hours, Aegis had an attempt where he stayed on the creature's back and didn’t let go despite its best efforts, tiring it out.

The salamander appeared exhausted as well, having had to use its stamina to defend itself for such a long time, and eventually, it gave up and stopped trying to knock him off. Instead, it dropped onto its belly and panted with its red tongue out in defeat.

“Good.” Aegis breathed heavily, also exhausted. He gently stroked the neck of the red-scaled beast. “Good boy.” He said to it sarcastically, causing it to burp out flames in annoyance. He let it and himself catch breath and recover stamina for a long 5 minutes before using the void silk leash around its neck to get it to stand back up, which it reluctantly complied.

“Now, the hard part. I’ve got to level riding AND holy mastery, so, let's go for a ride.” Aegis said to the non-elite salamander, which clearly had no idea what he was saying. He then used what he’d learned in the last few hours to direct the salamander with the rope and his legs on its sides, getting it to walk out of the cavern back out onto the obsidian shores of the red river.

“Giddyup!” Aegis cheered, whipping the rope to get the Salamander to sprint along the shore eastward. The creature moved incredibly fast, beyond the speed of the horses he’d been riding just half a day prior, and it wasn’t long before they made it around the bend in the river cavern that separated them from seeing the nearest Flame Giant that patrolled the magma. It was the same one that Aegis and his party had slain for the eternal flame - it had long since respawned and was currently resting waist-deep in the river.

As Aegis and his new salamander mount came into view, the Flame Giant followed them with his eyes, and eventually stirred, stomping forward towards them from across the other side of the river with a loud rumbling roar from his molten rock mouth.

“Okay, lets do it.” Aegis smirked before holding his hand out in the direction of the giant and firing multiple smites with his Holy Mastery skill. The salamander was visibly unhappy with this arrangement and started trying to run away from the giant in fear, but Aegis did his best to keep it under control and angle it so it ran up the walls of the cavern instead, avoiding a slash of manga that the giant flung at them by dragging his giant fists through the lava.

Aegis continued to barrage the giant with smites using one hand, while holding the rope and steering the salamander with the other, and eventually found himself crawling along the roof of the cavern upside down, desperately clinging onto the salamander using his legs.

It took awhile, but eventually the Salamander realized that as long as it did what Aegis instructed it to do, the flame giant’s attacks would never hit them. The salamander was extremely fast and nimble. The giant was fast as well, but with careful maneuvers, Aegis and his mount were able to avoid the swipes, flings, and punches from the molten giant that repeatedly crashed into the cavern around them leaving large dents and destruction in the obsidian rock.

The giant had a massive amount of health, but this was perfect for Aegis. It allowed him all the time in the world that he needed to max out his holy mastery by bombarding the giant with multiple smites at once. It was slow and tedious, but thanks to Aegis’ experience bonuses, eventually after several hours of fighting the giant on Salamander-back, he was able to achieve his goal.

Level Up! Holy Mastery has reached Level 150!

Level Up! Riding has reached Level 150!

Quest Complete!

“Alright,” Aegis said to his Salamander after steering it back down off the walls of the cavern and onto the flat obsidian shore nearest the giant. “Let’s finish you off, you oughta be close to being done.” Aegis declared while drawing out his claws and mithral shield. He engaged with the giant, bracing attacks and retaliating against the giant’s fist with his claws after each braced attack. He needed to heal himself quite a bit, but it wasn’t long before the beast went down.

Level Up! Shield Mastery has reached Level 152!

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Strength.

Attribute Up!: You’ve gained +1 Constitution.

As the body of the giant collapsed and disintegrated, Aegis retrieved another flame giant heart and added it to his inventory. He dusted himself off, let out a huge sigh of relief and stretched his arms up to the roof of the cavern.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve done some solo grinding. I forgot how long stuff takes to kill on my own…” Aegis mumbled to himself as he walked over to the salamander and began untying the void silk lasso from its neck. “Well, I guess I didn’t really kill stuff on my own. I had pacifism before, so…” He shrugged before adding the rope to his inventory, then heading back towards the exit of the cavern. To his surprise, though, the Salamander obediently followed behind him.

“You can go now, go now, shoo.” Aegis waved the creature away, but it didn’t listen and continued to follow. He let out an anxious sigh and tried walking more quickly, but the Salamander easily kept up with him. It wasn’t until he got to the tunnel leading out of the river and stepped beyond its threshold that the Salamander stopped, and looked longingly at Aegis as he traveled away from the beast. Aegis turned back to see its sad stare.

“Oh come on, seriously? You’re not elite, don’t try to pull that on me.” Aegis grumbled at it, but it continued to stare at him. He let out an annoyed sigh and shook his head at the beast. “Look, I don’t think you can survive in cold places. You gotta live here, okay? Maybe I’ll come back and visit you though. That sound good?” Aegis said to the creature. It continued to stare curiously, not understanding a word he said. “Whatever.” Aegis waved dismissively and kept walking away, but as he turned his back he heard a build up of flames coming from the salamander’s mouth.

“Yeah, that’s more like it.” Aegis sighed as he was blasted with a salamander flame breath from his back, and nonchalantly healed through the damage while simultaneously he continued to walk away. He eventually got out of range of the breath and found that the Salamander hadn’t been following him, leaving him to travel up the ramp back into Reltrak by himself.

Once there, he excitedly rubbed his hands together and smiled.

“Alright. Time to continue my advanced class quest… but first I gotta remember how to get out here.” He said excitedly, panning his eyes around at the endless mushroom forest that surrounded him on all sides.

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