Yuki’s heart was pounding. Her lips were dry and cracked, her mouth tasting of iron and despair. Senren whimpered along with half a dozen other students, and Richard was pleading with someone or something with feverish intensity and all Yuki could do was stare as Headmaster Wyrmwood’s voice roared with desperate urgency.
“Retrieve the Paladins and retreat! Your Grace, Queen Elonia, we must retreat! We’re about to be breached!”
The words meant nothing as their disk, much to the horrified dismay of near everyone trembling on their too fragile force-rafts, lowered. Yuki’s exquisite Perception making it all too clear, the terror she saw on even the Paladin’s eyes as the barrier between territories flashed with a boom of utter silence that abruptly became the shriek of steel ripping and sparking against granite and bone and the locusts had broken through.
The sea of giant bronze-tier locusts was now FLOODING New Arcadia’s skies and washing over the strip of cleared land like a tidal wave that would leave only polished bones and desiccated fields behind.
Yuki was captivated as she caught sight of the panicked fury in her queen’s eyes in the adjoining disk. Flashing like blazing emeralds as the massive shrieking mile-wide whirlwind of retribution finally touched down and began to feed.
Sucking up scores, hundreds of bugs as the air howled with a storm fit for the end times, which Yuki increasingly feared this was.
It was then that Richard stiffened, gazing Elonia’s way with horror.
“Aim the spout back into Black!” He screamed, for all he was worth. “This is important, Elonia! You MUST aim them back from whence they came!”
It was ridiculous to think that his voice could possibly be heard over the storm.
But the look in Elonia’s eyes, and much to Yuki’s amazement, or perhaps a Contenders wild gifts… she had. And the way her eyes widened… Yuki immediately understood. There was a world of difference between an oversized giant or any humanoid mortal getting sucked up by those gale-force winds spinning well over a hundred miles per hour without being shredded to pieces. But a giant bug that was nothing but as massive, compressed, tightly compact 100th level locust? Those same winds could whip scores of ravenous bugs deep into Elonia’s territory. And even if half… even if 90% perished… the ten percent that survived would feast to their hearts content, and soon it would be two floods of ravenous locusts washing over them front and back. Not to mention devouring New Arcadia from within.
Elonia’s face grew pale with effort as Wyrmwood himself pointed his hand at her massive Doomtwister, embracing arts primal and powerful to help direct the flow of deadly currents back from whence the invader came.
“Brace yourselves! They’re swarming!” Roared the paladins that had managed to hurtle themselves onto their now much enlarged force disks, Yuki now understanding the reason why they had descended so close to the ground and more than a bit relieved that these half-step sentinels were now here beside them, with plenty of room, thanks to Wyrmwood’s foresight. For the ground where they had stood so confidently such a short time ago was about to be flooded with a carpet of devouring horrors.
Even worse, the flyers had already arrived.
“Now, Students! Fire NOW!” Wyrmwood roared.
And the look on Jack’s face was so comical that Yuki would have laughed had she seen it in a Wyrding Wizard movie with his freckles and bright red hair. Yet now all Yuki could do was brace herself with her enchanted naginata vibrating with killing intent as a full dozen giant flying locusts veered straight for their disk, no matter that they were retreating as fast as they had ever ridden their levimobile.
Yuki’s breath turned ragged as she shifted her balance, naginata in high guard as the air blazed with shockingly bright beams of plasma from Paladins that struck the locusts as one.
“Fuck yeah!” Jack hooted, even as his own stream of fire blazed from ruby tip to scatter harmlessly across the shell of the nearest locust.
Perception check made! Even though you really .wish you hadn’t!
But Yuki had. Even as the blinding white light of retribution washed over the locusts, beams that successfully blew out the mandibles and what she refused to call anything but their heads… she sensed the foul blackened wards that had deflected half the strikes of the paladins, and every last one of their own strikes with elemental jewel-tipped wands.
“Impossible!” A truly panicked Senren screamed. “These abominations aren’t just flooding New Arcadia in the thousands, they’re actually protected by infernal wards!”
Surprisingly, Wyrmwood took her words at face value. “That would explain how they slipped past both territorial blessings and Silver-tier scrying.” His eyes glared with the wrath of something ancient. Primeval. “No anomaly of a world’s ascension caused this catastrophe!”
“Of course not! I told you that a Deep Silver’s curse was in play!” Richard roared, who now seemed to glow to Yuki’s eyes in ways that had nothing to do with magic… and everything to do with magic, quietly said, even as a pair of the giant Bronze-tier bugs crashed against the silvery ward that protected their disk. And of course their perch, directed by their own headmaster, was far better protected than Yuki had first feared. No Silver-Tier Archmage would knowingly risk—the fuckers were breaking through!
“The fuckers are burrowing through your wards!” Yuki screamed.
A heartbeat before the air rang with Richard’s roar and he dared to strike at that creature now flashing sickeningly sharp oversized mandibles that looked so horrifying on a seven-foot locust and Yuki feared for Richard’s life and limb and screamed warning when the creature opened its maw as if to accept the offering of flesh a foolish boy was thrusting before it… and the air rang with the crack of shattered carapace and instantly disrupted wards of blackness as the broken body was sent hurtling free of the levitating disk with no hindrance from Wyrmwood’s forcefield at all.
“The infernal ward has limits!” Richard screamed. “It won’t do shit against cultivation attacks, and I’m betting physical blows will hit it just fine. It has to interact with the environment without hindrance, if it’s going to consume everything and grow!”
His words washed over Yuki as a fresh mantis fluttered right for a now desperately screaming Senren whose fiery bolt scattered off liquid darkness and no matter that the girl was a hundred year old jaded veteran, her desperate cry was no different from anyone shrieking for salvation as death promised only oblivion.
Before stopping abruptly, when Yuki’s naginata blasted right through its compound eye.
Piercing strike has critically struck Rank 1 Bronze Mantis! (Infernal Blessings FAIL to counter your Queen’s Blessing in melee combat!)
You have successfully slain Bronze-Tier opponent!
You have leveled up!
Yuki gasped and shuddered, eyes bulging with furious exultation as she felt herself become faster, stronger, and deadlier than she had been… more REAL. More her true, idealized self, than she had been, just moments before.
The Mana she had expended instantly crashed back into her. And it was Mana she dared to think with a fierce surge of momentary pride, not too easily depleted Soul Reserves or a Warrior’s limit of three power strikes per battle, if they were at least moderately competent with their weapons. And it was all thanks to her Class-linked nodal power that allowed her to channel any number of Weapon Feats from any weapon directly from her Mana pool, thus allowing her to chain far more weapon-feat attacks than would otherwise be the case. At three pounds, her weapon was far lighter than any massive war hammer of thick steel she knew half a dozen sixty strength adventurers used… but with her ko-naginata having a very shallow curve, being nearly straight as a spear, she could chain multiple feat-enhanced Piercing-Strikes for less than 2 Mana points per blow. And it was still damn effective when it came to slashing strikes, or feat-enhanced Cleaving Blows.
Which mean that when a second and third curse-protected bug slipped past the now furiously striking paladins who were lancing their retributive strikes like lasers into what was now a veritable swarm of locusts… Yuki was ready, the air ringing with the crack of her polearm shattering the carapace of a second horror about to pounce on another screaming student with curly brown air and terror-filled eyes as the locust collapsed, momentarily stunned, Yuki’s weapon nearly bouncing out of her hands.
Skill check successful! You manage to keep your weapon! Your weapon has resisted damage! 2 Mana spent!
Yuki winced at the sounds of screams and desperate shouts and the flare of fire over her shoulder. Now that combat had been joined, she embraced the fury of battle, appreciating it for what it was.
The dance of life and death from which one would either perish, or go stronger.
You have dodged Sheering Strike!
You have successfully pierced brain-case! Bronze-tier opponent falls before you!
You have gained one additional level.
You have gained one additional level!
You have dodged Mantis Swarm!
Piercing Strike ruptures enemy carapace! You have obliterated brain stem!
Bronze-tier mantis has perished!
You have leveled-up!
“Clip their wings!” Marci of all people screamed, aiming not for the shell but the wing, and much to Yuki’s relief, cutting through, and did half a dozen other would-be Primal Arcane Apprentices, their streaks of fire and in some cases ice, slipping through their headmaster’s wards and tearing through the absolute sea of wings, sending numerous buzzing locusts swirling back to the ground. And perhaps it did make a difference in just how many mantises from the furiously buzzing and screeching cloud were able to latch onto the barrier at one time, and just how many were able to slip through. Yet those that did push past a grimacing Wyrmwood’s wards were more than enough to push Yuki to her utmost as she desperately did her part alongside the paladins to keep her screaming, panicked, or wildly hooting and laughing classmates from getting killed.
Yuki heaved for breath, never having felt so exhilarated, or close to death as she did right then, her vision sharper and her hearing clearer than it had ever been before as her sense of the battlefield exploded, shivering with insight and epiphany as she crested another class milestone, her seventh and final node opening before her.
And all her disciplined forbearance, all the intricate plans she had mapped over in countless sessions with her friends—when did this happen? I never did any such thing!—meant nothing. The three other nodes she had left free of any enhancement in the hopes of a truly miraculous ascension, one day, even when she and her friends had known nothing… was irrelevant. All that mattered was the perk suddenly before her.
The choice she knew she was destined to make as time froze to a sudden crawl.
Requirements met! You have defeated MULTIPLE Bronze-Tier opponents in the crucible of combat and fight even now against overwhelming odds!
All Perk limitations and prerequisites have been superseded as Evelyn Death herself judges you WORTHY!
You have been deemed eligible for Thousand Spears Perk enhancement!
Thousand Spears will allow you to wield any and every polearm you have achieved Adept tier or better mastery of with a Penetration and Damage Bonus equal to your level, multiplicative with all other boons!
You have been infused with the mastery of your ancestors!
Naginata proficiency has just been raised to Adept Tier!
Additionally, You will enjoy both might and Battletime enhancements that increase for every level your opponent exceeds your own and a fraction of the cubed root of all opponents within sight of you as you claim their potency in the crucible of battle!
Let the world know of your presence, and let your enemies tremble before you!
Do you wish to accept this LEGENDARY curated node perk?
Warning! Doing so you will set your footsteps along the path of a HYBRID Cultivating Classer, mastering a class forged by Evelyn Death herself!
Accepting Thousand Spears Perk will additionally ignite the fires of your soul and elevate your status to that of: CONTENDER!
Do you wish to accept Thousand Spears Perk Enhancement and ASCEND as a legendary DEATHBLADE?
Yuki gazed at the System notification with wide-eyed wonder. Even as time froze, her thoughts raced. Feeling the weight of those ancient eyes that Headmaster Wyrmwood had somehow caused to look his way. Richard Li’s way. Richard, who was somehow gazing at her even in that moment of frozen time, their Silver-Tier and all too easily pierced floating globe, a soap bubble in a sea of destruction, surrounded on all sides by literally tens of thousands of Bronze-Tier monsters eager for her death.
And he actually had the gall to wink.
And in that moment, Yuki knew.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Whoever this Evelyn Death was…
She had just given Yuki the key to change her fate and embrace the wildest of paths in the depths of her final hour.
Of course she would take the class!
Even if it meant she would never walk Mistridge’s Vaunted halls again… all that mattered was surviving this night of ultimate peril, while saving as many lives as she could.
Surviving, and maybe becoming a hero as well.
She braced herself, heart pounding with a dread that Richard’s confident nod did NOTHING to mitigate, and pressed accept.
And the world flashed with brilliant blinding light and the cries of her classmates and the screams of countless burning bugs that, apparently, their tainted wards did nothing to deflect the brilliant light of her ascension as her scream stretched out endless hours in the blink of an eye and she endured pain beyond measure as the crucible of a thousand desperate battles where she both ascended and died horribly each time… reforged her anew.
You have accepted the Hybrid Cultivating class: DEATHBLADE!
Your chosen weapon for White-Tier evolution: ko-naginata!
Your chosen weapon is now INDESTRUCTIBLE!
Your chosen weapon is now SOULBOUND!
All damage inflicted with ko-naginata is increased by a percentage equal to your level, multiplicative with all other modifiers, including Thousand-Spears!
You have accepted a HYBRID LEGENDARY Class forged by a GOLD TIER CONTENDER!
(Maximum Known Potential is Silver – But since when do Terran Contenders follow pesky things like precedent or the constraints of reality?)
Conceptio is EAGER to see you put this class to best effect during a BRONZE-TIER APOCALYPSE!
In light of your EXTREME DIFFICULTY Trial – you have been retroactively granted FULL Stat allotment! 13 (System class) +12 (cultivation) = 25 Attribute points x 70 Levels = 1750 Points!
Yuki only allowed herself a single instant of horrified wonder, somehow feeling the full weight of Richard Li’s reality-warping Contender’s Blessing infusing every cell of both their bodies. Understanding in that moment why she was being granted such an incredible boon by a Gold-Tier monster.
Because she was fighting by Richard Li’s side. A sweet, beautiful boy who’s gaze perfectly matched that of the monster that had glimpsed down upon her world for the blink of an eye.
If she had ever had any doubt about just how convoluted the strings binding the fate of her world had been before…
She wasted no time, only now recalling a certain sarcastic boy’s comments in the middle of a Delve that had nearly ended in their death, in a life she was suddenly certain was far more than a barely recalled dream. The importance of balance. And above all else, in the heart of battle, the absolute necessity of Speed. And the stats that supported it.
You have increased Quickness to 450! Because in the chaos of battle, speed is everything!
You have increased Perception & Finesse to 300! Because speed is nothing if you lack the Perception to process and the grace to master your weapon and your environment!
She wanted to scream with the surge of fiery potency flowing through her soul as all seven of her meridian gates blazed open at once to flood her with a churning stream of Spiritual Energy as her Mana channels, and the way she had once used all of her abilities, were changed forevermore.
But that was okay.
Even if it meant the death of certain dreams, the 250 points worth of Spiritual Energy, perfectly matching her newly blossoming Strength and Vitality coursing through her veins made it clear that this was a GOOD choice, and she had never been so in touch with her own path, her own potential, as she was at that moment.
THIS! This was how she was supposed to channel her gifts, her abilities, her destiny.
She screamed as her body and soul burned from within. Years worth of training, struggle, sacrifice, and cultivation techniques that were a perfect blend of System methodology and a Cultivator’s passion imprinted themselves into her mind as if she had always known the seven golden principals and fourteen martial disciplines of the Deathblade that she had INDEED known from the moment she had been reforged into being.
A single breath ago as time crashed into being once more as she spun around to catch Richard’s fierce, congratulatory smile. Right before he was buried under the flood of locusts that had shattered the Silver tier barrier with their corrosive auras as Wyrmwood crumpled with a groan, clearly fighting to regain control of his barrier as dozens of locusts now reached for desperately struggling Paladins and screaming classmates and the young scion who, Yuki instantly understood, was the only reason why she had been granted the favor of what was the closest thing to a divinity that most would ever encounter, in the living world at least.
She howled with a fury that shuddered through the entire platform as she struck.
Her weapon windmilled forth with the deadly grace she had striven to master over a thousand hours of disciplined practice, never having tasted exquisite perfection as she did at that moment, generating power so many times greater than what she ever had before, with no weapon feet or perk play at all.
You have CRITICALLY STRUCK Bronze-tier locust!
Locust has been obliterated!
Finesse check made!
You have avoided striking your friends!
“Yuki!”
Marci, a fragile powerless classer, was just a heartbeat from being decapitated by—
Find Weakness skillcheck: Critical Success!
Piercing Strike INSTANTLY destroys locust brain stem! You have successfully slain your target!
Marci screamed, her head fully intact, even if now spattered by hot gore.
Even before the cheerful messages finished flashing before her mind’s eye, Yuki, drowning in currents of righteous fury and terror, embraced the battle for survival like never before.
Never having felt so overwhelmed, and simultaneously, even as the air filled with the screams of dying men being dismembered, disemboweled, or outright eaten alive, never had she felt such furious vindication as she did right at that very moment!
Roaring and lashing out and tearing her thrumming weapon through EACH and EVERY locust faster and more gracefully than she had the one before.
Each blow a lightning-fast calculation that sometimes spared her shrieking classmates and desperately fellow paladins beside her a horrific death.
Yet even so, it was a horrible calculus of sacrifice and survival, Senren’s desperate scream as her wand and right hand was snipped off so casually by a giant monster that Yuki instantly EVISCERATED before flicking the creature OFF the platform with what she had just boosted to 300 Strength…
“Marci! Stop screaming and bandage her fucking wrist! I know you know how!”
Before reaching out to grab a stunned Richard Li’s very much intact hand, the boy actually gasping as he righted himself from the pile of insectile corpses he had been half-buried under, gazing at her with an exhausted smile.
“I’m fine. Let’s save the Paladins!”
Said as fast as thought, the pair of them linked in an instantly formed party as they fought and acted as one. Yuki understanding, somehow, that the boy beside her had just had his head chopped clean off from a stealthing bug from behind! - But somehow that had been mitigated to a desperate Qi-depleting twist and he was very much ALIVE and reality was far more fluid than she had ever thought possible and if she hadn’t been reforged by what was effectively a god in the blink of an eye they would all be very very dead, and there was no point thinking about that when the Paladins were gazing their way, Mana pools depleted, mithril halberds torn free from their hands as scores of roach-like locusts snipped and tore at men screaming as the monsters used their monstrous strength to try to force open the mithril plate before—
Piercing Strike! You have destroyed brain stem!
DECAPITATION! You have cleaved the head from your foe!
You have gained a level.
You have gained a level.
…
You have Slain an additional 15 Bronze-Tier locusts! You are now Level 85!
Yuki wanted to scream as she wove and danced about the gore-spattered disk, slipping on Senren’s missing hand, kicking free a massive carapace that slid right off the now slowly ascending disc as her nose crinkled at the stench of ruptured bug, countless tons of ruptured bug, and her ears buzzed with the drone of literal thousands of locusts filling the air in all directions, only in that moment fully appreciating how damn hard Headmaster Wyrmwood was working, having recovered from his faint and covered in a silvery-blue sweat, to block so many of those warded pests from breaking through as every fiber of Yuki’s being BLAZED with an infusion of power so utter, so pristine, that she knew with absolute certainty that the Yuki of before would already be DEAD. Unable to handle so much potency even after a hundred years. That her strength was already far greater than the half-step Bronze her former class would have allowed her to achieve, and no more.
Only now, she had been reforged with the soul of a Contender and still she howled and burned as she slammed an additional 325 points where they needed to go. 50 in Vitality to match what was now 300 in Strength, 25 more in Spiritual Energy and another 100 in Quickness and 75 more in Finesse and Perception because speed was EVERYTHING right here and now and Richard had once more overcommitted with his Whirlwind Fist that was nowhere near as absurdly efficient as her 2 Qi Point Weapon Feat usages, which was why Evelyn Death had chosen her to chaperon her beloved descendant... Her baby boy?
FUCK! It does’t matter! She thought as the air continued to blare with the endless drone of locusts now slamming against this disk, louder than ever with her enhanced Perception, so fucking many of them that Elonia’s Doom Twister didn’t even seem to matter. FUCK!
“Conserve your Strength, Richard! You need to hit Rank 10 in what, punching? And pick a perk that will boost the efficiency of your strike dirt cheap! Or your power, or whatever lets you attack a fuck ton without depleting yourself in the middle of a battle!”
“I know,” Rich whispered, wheezing for breath as Yuki roared and struck, her naginata flicking out with exquisitely timed lunges to pierce right through carapaces as tough as tank armor before obliterating what passed for the brains of one, two, three locusts pinning yet another Paladin who gave Yuki a single grateful nod before reclaiming his mithril halberd and striking yet another one of the ungodly horrors that was forcing itself inside a groaning Wyrmwood’s protective field.
The mithril-covered Paladins no longer lashed out with their holy attacks, choosing to strike with their halberds and poleaxes only, saving their magic to heal the shrieking, sobbing students and each other.
And still… no matter how brilliantly Yuki now fought, feeling a deeper connection to her weapon than she ever had before, no matter how quickly she darted upon what was now a sixty foot diameter force disk, no matter how much her muscles REVELED in the sheer joy of lashing out and cleaving mantis head from carapace-covered necks, they had still lost five of Elonia’s priceless, irreplaceable Paladins that had fallen screaming to the ugliest of deaths.
One was still shrieking even now on the ground far below, as a sea of locusts struggled to tear their prize free of his mithril, one agonizing inch at a time.
“Don’t, you can’t help! You’ll only get yourself killed!” Richard sobbed when Yuki glared through the force field that was all that was keeping them from being literally buried alive in the horrific swarm.
“I know!” She glared, eyes darting around the gore-spattered disk, catching sight of an abandoned mithril poleaxe and a dozen anxious-looking Paladins, one nodding her way as if immediately understanding her need and silent request.
She needed no further signal, darting forward on lightning fast limbs to scoop the weapon and hand it off to a blinking Richard. “I saw how skilled your 700 proteges were. Don’t you dare tell me you don’t at least know the basics or how to use that weapon crack open locust shells with your Strength and Quickness in the hundreds, without tapping into your too damn depleted pool.”
“My build would have been perfect! Should have been perfect!” Richard sobbed, eyes wild with dismay and regret. Expressions Yuki had never expected to see on his face. Not before tonight.
“I held off on everything, waiting for Bronze, for everything to open up! Trusting my instincts, my cultivation manuals, my intuition. I was prepared. I was ready! Ready for anything except…” he gestured at the massive skies filled with swarming Bronze-Tier locusts. An apocalyptic backdrop to the panting paladins, the straining headmaster, their sobbing, wild-eyed classmates, even the most jaded reborn Bronze now covered in gore and fear. And even if a handful had crumpled into panicked balls, Yuki was filled with fierce pride in the handful of students whose wands now blazed with a golden fiery light, their beams actually piercing the once indestructible-seeming carapaces.
It appeared as if she wasn’t the only one force-blooming her soul. Even if the cost was horrific, and their survival by no means—
“Another wave is breaking through. Come on, Yuki!” Richard said, eyes blazing with fresh determination. “Let me show you just how well I can use this fangtian ji knockoff!”
Yuki smirked when Richard charged and struck, 300 or so in Strength and Quickness while wielding a mithril poleaxe with a blade as sharp as surgical steel proving more than sufficient to cleave the head right off the locust that had just manage to stick its thorax through, before collapsing in a heap. Even if she doubted Richard Li’s skill was higher than Journeyman on the galactic scale. That still made him far more skilled than nearly any mortal martial artist who had ever lived here on Earth.
Of course that begged the question as to how Evelyn Death infusing her with the insights of her ancestors had pushed her ko-naginata skill mastery all the way up to Rank 20…
“No time. I’ll worry about it later!”
She dashed to Richard’s side, even sharing a satisfied smirk when she showed him up, her naginata blasting through multiple carapaces in showers of gore in the time it took him to decapitate a single bug as the now exhausted Paladins cheered them both on.
Yet still, it wasn’t enough.
Even as she continued to shudder with the glorious pressure of one level after another throbbing through meridians blazing with such sweet agony, reinforced by a potent presence that had dared to invest so much in her… even as Yuki strove with every fiber of her being to prove worthy…
It wasn’t enough.
Not even when the rested Paladins rejoined their cleaving ranks, even forcing her to rest for a precious thirty seconds, long enough to down a whole water flask and piss right through her armor because there was no TIME to find a potty when a million fucking insects were trying to kill you and she could laugh off the itch and the stench was NOTHING compared to the horror of viscera and gore she had been showered with…
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE ACHIEVED LEVEL 100 AS A HYBRID DEATHBLADE CULTIVATOR!
__________________________-
Yuki Summers - Level 100 Deathblade Hybrid Cultivator.
No need for Core Saturation! You are already perfect.
Key Attributes:
Strength – 350
Vitality – 350
Finesse – 450
Quickness – 600
Perception – 450
Spiritual Energy – 300
Qi Pool – 2100
Key Skill: Polearms – Rank 23! (Piercing Strike / Cleave /(2x Class level % damage bonus with soul-bound ko-naginata! That’s TRIPLE damage AND penetration power at Level 100!)
Key Nodes: Soul Point to Qi Pool Weapon Feat Conversion (Epic Tier)
Class Perk: Thousand Spears (Legendary-Tier)
The rest: Who cares! Survive the night with your sacred charge and be worthy of Evelyn Death’s Gifts!
YOU MAY NOW PROCEED STRAIGHT TO BRONZE!
YOU WILL EARN 7(nodes) X25(legendary hybrid class) = 175 POINTS PER BRONZE RANK!
JOY!!!!
DO DEATH PROUD AND KILL ON, CHAMPION!
____________________-
