The people nearby who hadn't simply collapsed in exhaustion were also checking loot. Excited chatter built, and it sounded like most people got at least 4 levels from fighting so many high-leveled monsters.

My team did a lot more fighting and were a lot better at it. One of the benefits of sending them alone against the first horde was that they only shared experience among themselves, so they each got around 7 levels, pushing all of them up over level 50.

"Remember, choose your next permanent spell carefully," I called out.

"We know," Tomas assured me from where he sat with his back to the crenelated parapet, a thoughtful look on his face. He'd better be careful. He'd second-guessed his class selection after we lost Steve in the Plateau dungeon. This would be the perfect time to screw up his class if he wasn't careful.

Jane dropped to the stones next to Tomas and said, "Don't worry, Lucas. We'll talk through it all before choosing our classes."

"Can't wait to hear what you choose." They were smart. They'd make good choices.

When I checked my notifications, the first one surprised me.

"Congratulations, Lucas! You have reached level 41. Stat points allocated, plus 6 free points."

Another level? When had that happened? I scanned my other notifications, and the level did make sense. I'd not only killed 2 mini-boss Deathwake Behemoths after I got the level for killing the Leviathan, but I also took out a bunch of Skyreavers and a few Stormpiercers.

All of them had levels over 60, although I probably hadn't gotten much experience from those last 2 groups. I definitely wouldn't be getting much in the future now that I'd wrecked them so easily.

No way I'd complain, though. Two levels from a single fight was fantastic. I considered my stats for a moment before choosing how to allocate my 12 free points. My Intelligence was actually falling behind. I automatically got 1 point with every level, but I'd managed to dump more into my other stats. Dexterity was my other lowest base stat, so I'd have to do something about that soon.

Both Strength and Dexterity fueled Agility, which also got a big boost from my Alpha title, so Agility was super high. I liked keeping my stats pretty even, but I'd found I needed more Constitution to help my durability and increase my Life Points, and I needed Strength to take on the ever-stronger monsters.

So I dumped 10 points into Constitution, bringing it up to an even 100, then I dumped the remaining 2 points into Strength to make it an even 90. Round numbers felt good. While I was in my menus, I noticed something else new.

The orange bar indicating how much kinetic energy my boots had collected now had a label: "Kinetic Energy Gathering Pool". As soon as I read the label, it shrank to KEG. If I focused on it long enough, the full name would appear again for a second.

I had to laugh. "I have KEG energy."

The other orange bar, which was empty and grayed out at the moment, indicated how much power was siphoned from recent magical attacks by my Magical Resistance. That power bar automatically unleashed any accumulated charge in my next spell so I didn't pay as much attention to it.

It too had a new label: "Magical Rebound Energy" which shrank to MRE. Not quite as funny as my KEG power, but MRE definitely provided a vital bit of extra energy every day.

Was Cyrus getting desperate for a way to joke with me? Hopefully he'd find more creative outlets, like giving me more loot boxes. Speaking of loot boxes, I got 2 other achievements of note.

"Congratulations, Lucas! For killing 3 mini bosses in less than 3 minutes, you receive an emeral Maximus loot box."

"Congratulations, Lucas! For coordinating a counter-attack and thus saving Port Royale from being overrun on the first official day of the stage-3 countdown, you receive a platinum Rohirrim loot box."

"As in when Gandalf led the riders of Rohan to save Helm's Deep from getting overrun in The Two Towers?"

This time, Cyrus didn't even respond to joke with me about the movie reference. Kind of overdoing the whole keeping distance thing. Why give me movie reference loot boxes, then not enjoy it when I understood?

His loss. I willed the loot boxes to appear and smiled, as always, at the sight of the large, softly glowing platinum box, followed by the huge, brightly glowing emerald box. Lots of other people had gold and platinum boxes, and I even saw one other emerald, so didn't feel bad opening my loot in front of folks. Most people were too distracted by their own loot to notice anyway.

The platinum Rohirrim loot box dropped 2 scrolls.

"Upgrade scroll. Plus 1 level to Knife Throwing. Plus 1 level to Heavy Weapons."

Excellent. Ability upgrades were always more than welcome.

"Spell scroll. The Dawn Riders. Rare. Unleashes 50 spectral heavy cavalry of armored knights and horses that will charge designated foes. 50% chance to trigger Panic Flight on your targets. Will trample enemies, dealing massive spiritual damage and intense, pure pain."

"Panic Flight. Overwhelm target's Fear Resistance, causing total panic, lack of rational thought, and an irresistible urge to throw down weapons and flee."

I whistled softly. That was a great scroll. Too bad it was only single use. With growing anticipation, I mentally ordered the emerald Maximus loot box to open. It exploded in a rainbow of bright light and a chorus of angelic voices.

"That's not distracting at all," one warrior grumbled from where he was opening a pair of gold loot boxes.

A woman seated next to him said, "What do you expect? He puts on the fireworks, he gets the fireworks."

"Pretty much," I said with a smile, happy she'd said it so I didn't have to. Would have sounded rather arrogant coming from me.

The loot box dropped a scroll and what looked like a shiny, silver pocket watch.

"Executioner's Timepiece. Rare. This pocket watch once belonged to the famous duelist Aldric Varesh from Velmora Prime. The hands are locked and will move only once per battle if a temporary spell is sacrificed. With the movement of the second hand, reset the cooldown of 1 spell or ability. Then next time that spell or ability is cast, it will gain plus 50% power for each of the remaining uses of the sacrificed spell."

I read the description a couple more times. That was . . . wild. My first instinct was to have Jeeves sell it. Wasting all the remaining uses of a temporary spell seemed a steep price. Then again, I had a couple long cooldown abilities and spells. Resetting their cooldown early with a big boost to power could prove game changing.

My class spell Divergent Strike was a prime example. Oh, and if I used the timepiece just a few seconds after casting the spell the first time, would my Squared Circuit ability then cut the cooldown in half again for the next use? Maybe.

Moving on, the scroll made me grin when I read it.

"Upgrade scroll. Upgrade Switchblade's Shattercore Ballista to Piercing Shattercore Ballista. Energy bolts now capped with an armor-piercing tip with the Piercing Strike ability."

"Piercing Strike. Penetrate all but the mightiest defenses, plunging deep into an enemy before detonating with twice the previous explosive power."

"That's amazing," I laughed. As much as I personally didn't want to get struck by an armor-piercing exploding round, I wouldn't hesitate to use it against monsters.

I loved Shattercore Ballista, but it had struggled against the stronger monsters we'd been fighting lately. Now it could hit with twice the explosive power and maybe penetrate into an enemy before exploding. I scanned the sky, silently wishing for another Deathwake Behemoth. I'd love to see what the new ballista could do against a giant flying killer whale.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Nothing. The sky was clear, other than the constantly pouring rain. I sighed. Something to test next time we headed out to hunt.

Those were really good loot boxes, and the fight had been fun and profitable. Already feeling good, I checked the loot I'd gotten from the monsters I'd killed.

The haul included 25 tier-7 mana crystals, which was respectable, plus 482 giant fish fillets, 79 Skyreaver teeth, 3 Stormpiercer sword snouts, excellent for crafting bone weapons, 55 rolls of whale hide with extra insulating properties against cold, 925 gears, 242 pistons, 197 sections of steam pipe, 38 clockwork cores, and 1 blast furnace, slightly damaged.

"Nigel, do you like fish?"

He leaped out of Lana's arms where he'd been enjoying a thorough scratching and landed on my lap. "I am a cat."

As I figured. I pulled out one of the fish fillets, and it really was giant. Way bigger than most of the big elephant stakes, the one fillet had to be 3 feet long, all pink and shiny and fresh. Nigel swelled to full mammoth lion size and swallowed half the fillet in a single chomp. Then he shrank back to murder kitty size and took more time gnawing down the rest.

I scratched behind his ears as he ate and scanned a few pieces of loot worth noting beyond the common stuff I'd already checked.

"Broadside Cannon. Uncommon. This basic siege weapon makes up for lack of imagination with sheer brute force. Fires both solid-core and explosive rounds at the rate of 1 round every 3 minutes. Autoloads. Once per hour, may charge up a shot to deliver 500% extra destructive power and 150% extra penetration, but cooldown increases to 1 hour. Current ammo stores: 50 solid core rounds. 25 explosive rounds."

I just had to pull it out of my inventory. The heavy cannon plopped down on the stones with a loud rattle of brass wheels. It was huge and looked a lot like one of those big cannons used in ships in the Pirates movies, only shiny brass instead of blued steel. It sat on a heavy, wooden platform with a hand-crank height adjustment. The mouth of the barrel had to be at least 18 inches wide.

"What the Sam Hill is that?" exclaimed Steve as he rushed over to inspect the cannon.

"Loot from the giant crab. Pretty cool, eh?"

"Yeah." When he finished reading the description, he whistled. "I love it! If you get another one, I've got dibbs."

"Sure."

His grin widened. "When we get our special orders back from Sythrak, imagine one of these babies up on my flying shooting platform."

I chuckled. That would be quite a sight. Steve, the first air pirate on Arasha. I could get behind that. The other special loot was pretty good too.

"Spell scroll. Temporary spell: Abyssal Requiem. Rare. Fire a beam of dense necrotic mana to disrupt targets' active spellcasting and mana use while delivering severe doses of necrotic poison. Uses remaining: 3"

"Due to your class perks, uses remaining updated to 6."

Ha! Didn't need to waste a use of Harvest after all. That was a good spell, and one of the very few times I got one of the ones I wanted in a loot box instead of through Harvest. My spells list was looking pretty good.

"Clockwork Navigator Hummingbird. Common. This miniature automaton hummingbird is used to lead damaged clockwork creatures back to their base of origin when they lose their navigation controls."

"So, does this mean . . ."

Cyrus didn't answer. That sucked. I was tempted to pull the item out of my inventory, but what if it started flying away immediately? I didn't want to go running pell-mell through Ruin to the home base of the clockwork insects yet. It might prove ideal for launching a raid soon, though.

"Ability scroll. Gain the new Ability Sport Fishing. Level 6. Uncommon. Plus 15% damage per level against aquatic monsters. Plus 20% quality and quantity of looted food items from fish per level."

Okay, that was random, but I guess it made sense. I did like fishing, but I'd never imagined fishing for monsters up in the sky. Still, if the new ability helped me defeat them faster, bring it on.

"Scroll of Water Flight, times 9. Fly through water or air with at least 50% water saturation. Duration: 5 minutes."

Now that could come in handy, and there were enough for my team to fly with me underwater. That made a really good haul for a really successful fight.

I rose and headed along the wall to the section above the shattered gate. There I studied the two buildings that had been connected by that sky bridge. Only then did I realize they were really part of the same building.

The Expanse club had gotten a lot bigger, and Elizabeth had assembled it right at the gate to force everyone to walk through. From the glimpses of brightly colored images in the rubble, somehow she'd added the equivalent of posters to the walls.

Well, that plan had kind of backfired. Magical repairs were a lot easier than back on Earth, but they weren't free. Walking farther along the wall, I studied the layout of the town. The high stone wall ran around the entire perimeter, just inside the rain-shielding dome, with gates on the north and south sides.

The large town castle lorded over the center of the space, with a small open square in front. The Heartstone Shard pedestal stood in the center of that square, surrounded by a pretty white picket fence to keep folks from bumping into it, or something.

Narrow streets ringed the rest of the central castle. The wooden shops of merchants lined the first 3 blocks all around the castle, packed tight together, with the exception of Sam's tavern. He'd joined his main tavern with the smaller satellite bar he'd built for Lake Town, making a much larger structure that commanded one corner of the square near the castle.

Most of the rest of the town was packed with narrow streets lined with Base Camp tents and other domiciles, with just a few exceptions. On the far, northwest side of town, the tall steeple of Gabriel Ortiz's white church rose among the sea of tents like a shepherd among sheep. On the northeast side, a large, blocky building rose above the others. Honestly, it looked a lot like my mini castle, only bigger and, well, blockier.

As I scanned the town, I spotted smaller divisions within the large clusters of tents. People had found creative ways to mark their group's territory. Some must have bought upgrades to change their Base Camp tents' colors, so clusters of green, orange, yellow, red, and blue dotted the town. Others had raised flags above their tents or attached symbols to the tent sides.

The groups made up only about a third of total tents, or at least the obvious groupings did. I spotted a wide array of symbols, declaring folks' allegiances. Not surprisingly, I easily spotted the Teamster's double horse-head and wheel, as well as a few groupings around nationalities, with replica flags that included US, UK, Russia, and China.

Some of the larger groups were united around religious symbols like the Christian cross and the Muslim crescent and star. A few other symbols had appeared around town, including rainbow peace symbols. That made me chuckle. Back on Earth, the peace movement was fine, but not on a death battle game world where our stated purpose was to fight and defeat Queen Marisara.

Others, I didn't recognize. Honestly, I didn't care how people motivated themselves, as long as they didn't start fighting each other. We had too many monsters to deal with to fracture ourselves over imaginary lines that only made sense back on Earth.

Ruby and Steve approached, followed by the rest of our team. The others who had joined us for the trek to town and helped in the raid were dispersing to their tents.

"Good to go?" I asked.

Ruby smiled. "Exciting welcome to town. Hopefully we'll get a little time to rest."

"First, let's set up that castle of yours and have a feast," Steve said.

I turned to Tomas and Jane. "With all this battle mess, might have to delay your wedding until later."

Tomas nodded, and Jane said, "We already agreed to push it out till tomorrow."

# # #

This is a quick review of Lucas's current stats. As usual, feel free to enjoy the stats or, if stats don't interest you, skip this chapter without missing anything.

Name: Lucas Altan

Race: Tier-1 Human

Class: Mystic Reaver

Level: 41

Life Points: 6,096 [100%]

Mana: 243 [100%]

Number of Followers: 10

BASE STATS:

Constitution: 115 [60%]

Intelligence: 63 [75%]

Strength: 95 [60%]

Dexterity: 63 [60%]

Wisdom: 145 [60%]

SECONDARY STATS:

Endurance: 232 [60%]

Agility: 280 [60%]

Perception: 251 [60%]

Magical Resistances 211 [60%]

Luck: 158 [60%]

CHA: 1872 [100%]

OTHER STATS:

Mental Resistance: 81 [100%]

Fear Resistance: 65 [100%]

Poison Resistance: 60 [100%]

Fire Resistance: 60 [100%]

Heat Resistance: 60 [100%]

Steam Resistance: 60 [100%]

Most Elemental Resistances: 55 [100%]

Other Resistances: 50 [100%]

PERMANENT SPELLS

1 Harvest Level 3

2 Tether Slide Level 2

3 Energy Ward Level 5

UTILITY SPELLS:

1 Mystic Looter Level 2

2 Linguasight. Level 7

3 Navigation Level 3

4 Soul Feed Level 4

CLASS SPELLS:

1 Elemental Harmony Level 2

2 Divergent Strike Level 3

3 Potential Hammer / Hammer Strike Level 1

TEMPORARY SPELLS:

1 Knock Knock

Uses Remaining: 3

2 Shadow Walk (Harvested Spell 1)

Uses Remaining: 2

3 Upper Cut

Uses Remaining: 2

4 Mana Desert

Uses Remaining: 2

5 Abyssal Requiem

Uses Remaining: 6

Tier-1 ABILITIES

Swordsman Uncommon Level 3

Mana Control Uncommon Level 4

Meditation Uncommon Level 4

Tier-0 Abilities

Hand-to-hand martial arts fighting. Common Level 13

Heavy Weapons Common Level 8

Dual Wield Epic Level 5

Knife Throwing Common Level 6

Spellseers Gaze Rare Level 4

Wolf Blood Uncommon Level 12

Wolf Sight Uncommon Level 4

Runesmith Uncomnmon Level 18

Mana Strings Uncommon Level 6

Mimic Rare Level 6

Crisis Management Uncommon Level 3

Fire Hand Rare Level 4

The Show Must Go On Rare Level 10

Iron Lung Rare Level 3

Visionary Resolve Rare Level 3

Sport Fishing Uncommon Level 3

Phantom Step Gear Ability Level 4

Force Weaver Class Ability Level 6

Squared Circuit Class Ability Level 4

EXISTING TITLES:

Inquisitive Mind

Trailblazer

David Copperfield

Lucky Stiff

Musketeer

Spartacus

Doctor Strange

Hercules

Alan Alan

Tiberius

Merlin

Beast master

Mephistoles

Alexander

Goliath

Alpha

Intergalactic Guardian

NEW TITLES:

The Greatest Showman

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.