Chapter 534 - Choices (Patreon)

“You don’t have to choose right this second,” Eveline pointed out.  “You can give it another couple of days.”

“Do you think that’ll change anything?” Zeke asked, already looking at his choices. 

“You can devote your full attention to it, rather than just whatever is leftover after you burned out on runecrafting,” she answered.  “You’ve been burning the candle at both ends, Ezekiel.  It might be beneficial to take a step back and relax for a few days.  Maybe do something with that orc girl.”

“Half-orc,” he said.

“Quarter-orc, technically,” she corrected him.  “Not that it matters, of course.  Someone out there likely finds orcs quite attractive.  Maybe that’s what you like about her.”

“Stop.”

“What?  I’m just saying that you’ve had plenty of other opportunities with humans and elves.  Even kobolds, if that’s your thing.  But you latched onto the girl with orc blood running through her veins.  Given your proclivities concerning battle, it kind of fits,” she said.  “That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Zeke sighed, then shook his head.  He knew it was just Eveline’s way of relieving tension, but sometimes, she took her teasing a little too far.  Distilling Adara down to her ancestry felt at least mildly offensive, and he had no intention of putting up with it.  So, he said, “If you keep going like that, we’re going to have issues, Eveline.  I know you don’t mean it like that, but I won’t have you talking like that, even if it’s only in my head.  Are we clear?”

“But –”

“No buts,” he said.  “I love you, Eveline.  You’re like the big sister I never had.  But that doesn’t mean I’ll let you badmouth Adara with mildly racist comments about her parentage.”

“Calling orcs warlike brutes is not racist.  It’s the truth,” Eveline argued. “But okay.  I get it.  I won’t say anything else about it.  Besides, I don’t mean to imply that I don’t approve of the girl.  She’s good for you.  Keeps you grounded and relieves stress.”

Zeke wanted to say that his relationship with Adara was more than that, but the reality was that it hadn’t progressed far enough for him to make that claim with any reasonable honesty.  He cared for her, but he wasn’t ready to call it anything approaching love.  Perhaps that sort of thing just wasn’t in the cards for him, given his promised future full of battle and death. 

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she said.  “Nobody likes that kind of thing.”

“I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself.”

“I was being charitable by not calling it whining,” she pointed out.  “I think you love every second of battle.  It’s the times in between when you struggle with everything.”

“That…isn’t untrue,” Zeke admitted. 

“I think it would be better if you just went on with your skill choice,” Eveline said. “We’re coming dangerously close to self-realization here.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Not for you.”

He rolled his eyes and, after moving away from the nest of gribbles he’d just killed, he settled down to go over his choices.  He’d been through them dozens of times already, and he thought he knew which choice he would make.  However, he knew just how important the decision was, and he’d vowed not to shortchange it.  So, he would go through the process one more time before making his final choice.

To that end, he looked at the first offered skill:

[Unstoppable Charge] (B) – You are an undeniable juggernaut.  Charge forth, obliterating all that stand before you.  Upgradeable. 

It was the one that drew Zeke’s eye more than either of the other two, and for good reason.  After all, during the war with the giants, he’d made a habit of turning himself into a siege engine, and that had worked out very well for him.  However, he got the impression that [Unstoppable Charge] was a little more complicated than the description implied.  He didn’t know how, but as a B-Grade skill, it clearly wasn’t weak. 

The same could be said for the second option, which was the same grade:

[Totem of Wrath] (B) – You are a creature of boundless fury and vengeance.  Summon a totem that will devour your enemies. 

That one sounded an awful lot like [Wrath of Annihilation], which meant that it probably filled the same niche. 

“Is that what we’re calling it now?  Total destruction of everything within a three-mile radius is a niche?”

Zeke ignored her, though he wanted to point out that she was exaggerating.  After the first mile, it was only partial destruction.  In any case, as powerful as [Totem of Wrath] seemed – and as a B-Grade skill, it certainly was strong – Zeke had trouble envisioning a situation where he needed two world-ending skills.  So, as much as he believed that it was the most destructive of the offered skills, he chose to forego it. 

Finally, he moved on to the last option:

[Eye of Reckoning] (B) – You have judged and been judged.  Channel your divine spark through your eyes, rendering judgement on everything within the bounds of your gaze. 

“I’m noticing a theme here,” Eveline said.

“Yeah.  Me too,” he responded.  This was where he had hit a speedbump.  He had no issues discarding [Totem of Wrath].  It was too similar to [Wrath of Annihilation].  And in truth, so was [Eye of Reckoning], save for one major difference.  The wording of the skill’s description implied that he could aim it.  Compared to [Wrath of Annihilation] and [Totem of Wrath], it seemed like a precision weapon. 

And that was precisely what he needed, wasn’t it?  He’d spent weeks trying to regulate the damage output of [Wrath of Annihilation], and to no avail.  It was a broad skill meant to obliterate entire armies.  So was [Totem of Wrath], at least according to the impressions he got from the description.  But [Eye of Reckoning] sounded far more focused.  At the very least, he could aim it in a specific direction, which gave it a leg up on his other skills.

“That’s what makes it a tough choice,” Eveline said, her input entirely unhelpful.  “Glad I’m not the one who has to choose.”

Zeke just shook his head. 

“But then again, there’s a chance that one of them will give you eye lasers.  That has to count for something,” Eveline pointed out. 

“Eye lasers?”

“Or eye death rays, maybe?  I don’t know.  On a side note, your culture had some interesting ideas about what the future might hold.  I wonder if any of it actually came true?  Like, did they travel to other galaxies?  Did they carry ray-guns that could disintegrate an enemy with a single shot?  Were there giant cyborgs dressed all in black and wielding laser swords?”

Zeke said, “That last one was supposed to be in the distant past.”

“It seemed futuristic.”

“Not my story, so I don’t know what to say other than that it was right there in the beginning of the movie,” Zeke pointed out.  “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

“Regardless, I think you should take the eye lasers of death.  That’s a lot cooler than being able to charge like an out-of-control herd animal.”

“Bull.”

“What?”

“An out-of-control bull.”

“That’s what I said.”

Zeke was about to extend the argument, but then he thought better of it.  Eveline gave a petulant roll of her eyes – mentally, of course – then went silent, giving Zeke all the room he needed to make the appropriate choice.  However, even though he’d already made the choice a hundred times in his head, he kept going back to Eveline’s description.  Could he really pass up laser eyes?

Of course, there was no guarantee that that was how [Eye of Reckoning] would manifest.  For all he knew, it would simply explode his enemies.  Or do something entirely unexpected.  The reality of skill choices was that it came down more to feelings than the actual descriptions provided by the Framework. 

And Zeke wasn’t sure how he felt.

“Oh, come on.  You’ve had weeks to make this choice,” Eveline said.  “Just pick one.  I can guarantee you won’t be disappointed in either of them.  And if you are, you can always just change it like you have with all the other skills you weren’t happy with.”

That much was certainly true.  Zeke had originally made some bad choices when it came to skills, and he’d worked tirelessly to rectify those decisions.  And while it would be just one more thing to add to his to-do list, there was nothing to keep him from tinkering with whatever he chose. 

So, when it came down to it, he went with his gut and picked [Eye of Reckoning].  Instantly, a rune far more complex than any he’d seen before branded itself on his forehead.  The smell of charred metal filled the air, and a moment later, Eveline manifested beside him. 

“Ouch,” she said.  “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“You choose.”

“Okay, so you now have a glyph on your forehead.  It looks like the cracks on your shoulders and chest,” she said. 

“And the good news?”

“It looks kind of cool,” she said with a shrug.

Zeke let out a breath in frustration, then dragged a mirror from his spatial storage.  Indeed, the rune was right there on his forehead, glowing with red-and-black fire as if someone had taken a branding iron to his face.  Yet, as Eveline had said, it didn’t look horrible, especially with the rest of his titanic body covered in a molten web of cracks. 

He let [Titan] go, and to his relief, the skill’s rune disappeared right alongside his metallic body and the rest of his scars.

“Well, that’s good,” he said.  He hadn’t liked the notion of walking around with a giant symbol burned into his forehead.  As a titan, it was fine, but in his more natural form, it was a bit much. 

“Try it out,” she said. 

Zeke once again used [Titan], just to make sure his own skill didn’t kill him.  The huge, metallic form had saved him a few times in the past, and he knew it could prove the difference between life and death.

Once he felt safely ensconced in his titanic form, Zeke focused on a point a few hundred yards away, then used [Eye of Reckoning].  Fire, dense and hot and teeming with demonic corruption, lanced across the plains, and when it hit his target – a low rise of a hill – it disintegrated the terrain.  There was no explosion.  No eruption of earth and fire.  One second, there was a hill, and the next, nothing.

But there was more to the skill.  He could feel the ability to control the beam of fire to a degree he couldn’t with any of his other skills.  He narrowed the flame to no wider than a finger, and when it hit his next target, the damage was no less severe.  However, it was far less widespread, only shaving a bit off the top of the next hill. 

Then, he widened it as far as it would go, which turned out to be about the width of a football field.  And predictably, the damage was as extensive as that implied.  His control was instinctive, and  he could adjust on the fly.  The only downside to the skill was that it consumed a fair bit of his mana pool. 

But that was fine.  He rarely used expensive skills, so he always had plenty to spare. 

“We happy?” Eveline asked as he let the beam dissipate.

“Oh, we’re happy,” Zeke said with a grin. 

“Are you ready to move on to the last skill?  I know you’ve been working on it,” she stated. 

Zeke shook his head.  “I don’t know.  The army needs me,” he said.  “We need to end this war so we can move on to what’s important.  Like finding Micayne and destroying his phylactery.”

“Or looking for a portal to Hell.”

“Yeah.  That too,” Zeke said.

“Do you want my advice?  Or are you just going to tell me to shut up again?”

“What do you suggest?”

“Get as much done now as you can,” she answered.  “You never know when you’ll have another chance.”

“Fine,” he said.  But he definitely wasn’t looking forward to secluding himself in meditation as he put the finishing touches on the penultimate skill that he’d get in the Eternal Realm.