Chapter 73 (Book 2 Epilogue) (Patreon)

“Alright,” Rob said, cracking his knuckles. “Time for the moment of truth.”

With a sense of building anticipation, he put his 15 unspent stat points into Vitality, bringing his total up to 105.

Do Not Go Gently Level Increased! 3 → 4

Lifesurge Level Increased! 9 → 12

Not A Scratch Level Increased! 9 → 12

Regeneration Level Increased! 12 → 15

100 Vitality Milestone Achieved!

Active Skill Learned!
Name: Imbue Vitality
Prerequisite: Vitality 100
Description: The best defense is a good offense. Sacrifice 10% of your max HP to empower your next weapon strike, fist strike, or offensive spell, causing its damage to be tripled.
Cooldown: 30 Seconds

“Niiiiice,” Rob said, grinning wide. “That’s the good shit right there.”

Keira leaned forward in her chair, eyes sparkling with excitement. “May I presume that your standard practice of overstuffing Vitality with stat points bore fruit?”

“Sure did,” Rob answered. “I can use Lifesurge and Not A Scratch every 15 minutes, Do Not Go Gently every 7 minutes, and Regeneration heals at a rate of 100% of my max HP every 40 minutes.”

He held up a finger as the crowd’s eyebrows started to raise. “But wait, there’s more! I also got a Skill that lets me turn HP into lots of extra damage. It’s a bit risky, but I’ve got HP to spare; what I’m really lacking in is ways to kill things before they wear me down.”

Imbue Vitality synergized well with Lifesteal, too. If he used it on the right target, he’d heal back most of the HP he sacrificed. I wonder if the system would count a crate of Firebombs as a ‘weapon strike’? Probably not, but I’m totally testing that first chance I get.

“The final cherry on top is that my HP reached four digits,” Rob said, letting out a slightly maniacal laugh. “I was already damn hard to kill. Now?”

Rob spread his arms. “I’m going to be motherfucking invincible.”

“No, you are not,” a stern-faced Healer firmly stated. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here.”

Rob let his arms fall. “Come on, guys. Let me have this moment before we fry my brain.”

A cascade of frowns, winces, and ashamed expressions spread among the crowd. Nearly twenty people had arrived to bear witness; in a few minutes, Rob would attempt to Attune with Esternard City’s Locus of Power. Riardin’s Rangers were here, as were Meyneth and Taleya – who were basically honorary members, although mostly Meyneth – as well as every spellcaster in the Deserters, Elders included. The Locus had turned out to be located smack-dab in the middle of a random street, same as the Locus in The Village had, so they’d taken the initiative to haul over the comfiest bed in Esternard for him to rest on while his noggin tore itself apart.

Honestly, after multiple instances of passing out anywhere at any time, the bed actually made him feel kind of ritzy. If he was going to fall unconscious and potentially suffer massive brain damage, he was going to do it in style.

“Rob,” Elder Duran said, his voice full of worry. “Please reconsider. Our survival isn’t contingent on unearthing the secrets of Attunement, and until we discover why it is that I lost my composure while guiding the Mana Link, I will be unable to help you to the best of my ability. You’re putting yourself at great risk for little reward.”

Duran’s words warmed Rob’s heart like a space heater with kind words and no beard. “Thanks for caring,” he said. “Seriously. I know I’m being mildly unreasonable here, and the fact that everyone showed up anyway means a lot.”

The Elder wasn’t the only one who had advised Rob against Attuning with the Locus of Power. Actually, pretty much everyone had; each of his friends having already tried to talk him out of it with varying degrees of forcefulness. To no surprise, his conversation with Keira had been the low point, ending with her venting her aggression on a poor innocent house until it was dust and rubble. For a moment, he thought she might actually pick him up and put him in a corner somewhere until he changed his mind. Watching anger, worry, and frustration play out across her face in rapid succession had stabbed him in the heart with a spear of guilt, and the sight almost made him crack. He didn’t, but it was a near thing.

“Leveling up Attunement is a swanky consolation prize,” Rob began. “And the vague feeling I’m doing something Elatra doesn’t want me to is fun in a petty sort of way.”

He sat up straight and put a stronger degree of severity into his tone. “But those aren’t the reasons I’m going through with this. The last time I Attuned with a Locus of Power and went to that place of white light, I met...someone. Everything about that trip is more than a bit fuzzy, and I still have no idea what’s going on with all that nonsense, but I’m at least certain enough of one thing. Whoever I met is trapped in that place.” He grimaced. “I could’ve guessed as much, considering there didn’t seem to be a way in or out, but the request it gave me was a dead giveaway.”

Rob swept his eyes across the room, meeting as many gazes as he could to give his next statement a bit more oomph. “It asked me to set it free. Can’t ignore that. Wouldn’t like myself very much if I did.”

The crowd didn’t know what to say. Outside of Keira muttering something about a softhearted fool, and Orn’tol’s hiss of disapproval, silence reigned.

“I’ll be fiiiiine,” Rob said, giving everyone two thumbs up. “That’s what the extra points in Vitality were for. Plus, Attunement Level 1 reduces the damage I take while Attuning by 50%. This is the safest that passing out has ever been for me.”

“The degree of damage you suffer during your incidents is inconsistent,” Elder Alessia stated. “What if the boons you illustrated aren’t enough?”

“We’ve got Healers on standby,” Rob said.

“And what if they aren’t enough?”

A bit of his stomach coiled into itself. “They will be.”

“I’m trusting you,” Meyneth blurted out, her voice wavering. “If you break that trust...”

She trailed off, averting her gaze. Rob’s stomach twisted itself into more knots. Please no more guilt trips, he thought. This is hard enough as it is.

His request was denied. One by one, his friends gave him truncated versions of the speeches that were clearly brewing in their minds. Keira, Orn’tol, Zamira, Vul’to, Malika, Meyneth – even Taleya grunted in disapproval and told him to be safe.

“You know,” Rob said, slouching under the weight of everyone’s affection. “I passed out at the end of the Dungeon Crawl and was totally fine.”

“There wasn’t any brain damage,” Keira said, eyes narrowed slightly. “I doubt you’ll be so fortunate on this occasion.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

They advanced down the street, moving the bed closer towards the Locus of Power. Each step intensified the growing tingling in Rob’s head, like brain freeze without the corresponding pain. Something beyond perception was calling him once more. His muscles strained as he fought against the sudden urge to run ahead and dunk his arm straight into the unseeable gap in reality. Despite having known what to expect, he almost lost that battle, and it took both physical and mental willpower to resist the invisible strings tugging at his limbs. It took effort, but it was worth it.

If he was doing this, he would be doing it on his terms.

You ready? Rob asked Diplomacy.

<As I’ll ever be,> it replied. <Let’s see what awaits us, good or ill.>

Keira and Meyneth set the bed next to the Locus of Power. Rob hopped on, made himself comfortable, and turned to address everyone before the call of blue could overwhelm him.

“You guys are awesome.” Warm fondness spread across his expression. “Be back before you know it.”

He reached out his hand.

This time, there was no delay. Rob’s consciousness was stretched, twisted, compressed, and then pushed through an ephemeral opening the size of a bendy straw. Blue saturated his senses – blue and life and mass and motion and sky and air and everything and nothing. An understanding of the universe flooded into his senses and was shunted outwards, rejected lest it pop his brain like an overfilled balloon.

It was indescribable. The English language was insufficient to express the sensations of an individual’s mind being treated as the ball in a game of cosmic ping-pong, of slipping along the threads of reality like skimming over stormy waters, of pain coursing through the nerve endings etched into your soul. No person was meant to experience something like this. The idea that anyone would willingly undergo what Rob had freely volunteered for was a testament to the hubris of man.

But it was less soul-crushingly oppressive than last time, so hey, he had that going for him.

Rob had expected voices, and at the end, a white room. He found neither. When the otherworldly forces assaulting his senses finally subsided, he opened his ‘eyes’ to discover that he was in a...place. The white room had not truly been a place – that was just the only way he could think to comprehend a prison of light encompassing a slice of nothingness. Where he was now was an actual, physical place. His feet were touching solid ground, although he didn’t have feet, or a body. Rob was here, but Rob wasn’t here, but there was a here.

It was still easier to parse than the trip getting there had been.

His vision was obscured by a miasma composed of fog, mist, darkness, and light. Its consistency changed whenever he blinked, the one constant being that he couldn’t see more than half a foot in front of his face. Rob slowly turned in a circle, finding more of the same, and no discernible landmarks to use as a positional anchor.

Lacking any other options, he picked a direction and started to walk, feet gliding past the floor with soundless steps. Without a body to get fatigued or a heartbeat to count the seconds, time quickly lost its purpose. Maybe he walked for five minutes. Maybe he walked for five years. It would have felt the same either way. All he knew for certain was that he started somewhere, and after however many steps, ended up somewhere else. Rob knew that progress had been made, because while the shifting miasma obscuring his vision remained the same, eventually, he heard a sound. A muted ting, followed by a muted tap.

It was the guiding point he needed. Rob walked faster, excitement welling up inside him like he’d discovered an oasis in a desert. Ting. Tap. Ting. Tap.

Ting.

Figures emerged. He could see them.

Tap.

There was a chair, a table, and a thing.

The thing was, charitably speaking, humanoid. A head, a torso, two arms, and two legs that were sitting down, slouched forward. What else there was to say about it, Rob couldn’t say, because it was null. A refutation of matter in the vague shape of a person. If Rob had eyes, they would have melted out of their sockets after laying eye contact upon the unnameable figure. Small mercies that he didn’t.

A bigger mercy was that the thing hadn’t yet noticed him. It leaned forward onto its table, idly drumming fingers of negative space onto sleek marble stone. The palm of its other hand opened up, revealing a glinting silver coin. Its thumb flicked, and formless eyes watched as shining metal arced through the air. With an infinitesimal tink that echoed like a gunshot through the void, the coin hit the table, bounced once, and landed on its side.

The thing spoke.

“#!($*@&)_%!%&)%(&!%)_)_%&!)_*%@*__!+)!_#(%!”

If Rob had eardrums, they would have burst.

Every atom and molecule of his being screamed at him to run. This place, this thing, they were all above him. He was a speck. An ant. And if he made the wrong move, drew the thing’s ire, he would be put under a magnifying glass and cooked by the sun. The pervasive sense of helplessness he’d experienced when encountering The Village’s Blight was nothing compared to the crushing sense of unimportance he felt just by being in the thing’s presence.

He wanted to run.

He should have run.

He didn’t.

Fear suffused his being, but a stronger, louder emotion overrode it.

Hatred.

Hatred of what had been done to him. Hatred of the suffering he’d witnessed others subjected to. Hatred of the world, and those who had created it to be this way.

An overwhelming hatred, vibrant and pure.

Then he heard a buzzing. It grew louder and louder, scratching the inside of his psyche, until it reached a crescendo and popped. A second existence entered his mind, one that had been absent since the moment Rob stuck his hand in the Locus of Power.

Diplomacy looked through Rob’s eyes, saw the thing, and hated. Hated. Hated. If Rob’s hatred was a single incandescent sun, then Diplomacy’s hatred was worth all the stars in the sky. Their loathing grasped hands and walked forward, guiding Rob’s feet closer towards eternity manifest. Another buzzing and another crescendo rose when they’d closed the distance by half, and suddenly the static of Leveling High was there as well, asking if there was room for a third. It saw the thing and was struck by a desire that was deep and eternal, wondering how much power would be gained if the thing was slain, how much joy there would be had if the endless was brought low.

Together, they walked.

The thing didn’t notice they were there until Rob was inches away. It paused mid-coin flip, slowly turning to face him. In lieu of having a face with which to express confusion, it tilted its ‘head’.

“@)(%*?”

Rob reached out his hand, wrapped it around the thing’s neck, and squeezed.

His efforts did nothing. He might as well have tried to choke out a black hole. Fire seared his nonexistent nerves where the impression of his hand was. The only reason he was still alive was because the audacity of his maneuver had frozen the thing into inaction.

But it felt fucking good.

Rob bared his teeth, and spoke as three.

“I’ll kill you.”

Everything shifted.

He fell through the floor, and kept falling.

--

Rob awoke on top of soft sheets and a softer pillow.

Yeah, this was a good idea, he thought, stretching his limbs. He cracked open his eyes and failed to stifle a yawn that alerted the well-wishers surrounding him. Realizing that he had seconds before he was mobbed by a gaggle of worried friends and allies, he quickly opened up his message log, scrolled past the distressingly long list of damage numbers, and skipped to the fun part.

Your degree of Attunement has been empowered!

Name: Attunement
Prerequisite: Attune to a Locus of Power
Description: Grants you the ability to Attune to Loci of Power. Each Attunement will advance this Skill to greater heights. Attune to a sufficient number of Loci, and you may be able to (*#(!)@)#$&#)!
1 Attunement: Take 50% less damage when Attuning to a Locus of Power.
2 Attunements: Take 100% less damage when Attuning to a Locus of Power. Can sense nearby Corruption.
3 Attunements: ???

Passive Skill Learned!
Name: Almighty Resistance ($^$#)
Prerequisite: /
Description: \

He wasn’t surprised.

Then the mob descended upon him. Included in the sea of relieved faces was Riardin’s Rangers celebrating gleefully, the Elders and Taleya sighing with relief, and two Healers poking and prodding as they checked Rob’s vitals. They showered him with fevered tales of how they’d kept his brain damage under control, describing how it had acted slow, steady, and manageable until the minutes preceding his awakening, when it spiked precipitously and sent them all into a panic. Without the first rank of Attunement, he’d probably be dead. Without the ministrations of the Healers and numerous HP Potions prepared by the Artificer, he’d definitely be dead.

Rob thanked them profusely and tried to give them a thumbs-up with his right hand. Tried, at least, because it was numb and unmoving. The lack of sensation spread about halfway down his upper arm, meaning he could move the limb itself around, but his right hand and fingers might as well have been dead weight.

It said something that that discovery wasn’t even remotely the biggest thing he had to worry about.

“I must ask,” Keira said, eyes wide. “What did you see?”

Rob considered his words with exceptional care, before giving an internal shrug and deciding that honesty was the best policy.

“So, I may have kinda sorta strangled a god.”

Dead silence.

“Oops?”

--

Changes, Character Sheet, and Skills List 

To cap off the end of Book 2, it's AMA time! Ask me anything you feel like about the writing process or the story or whatever's on your mind, although I reserve the right not to answer if there's spoilers involved, ect. People coming in from the $3 and $5 after-the-fact can feel free to ask questions as well; I'll get to them if you do.