HH 5 - [Handyman] vs. [Hero]

[Eternal Handyman] gains the following attributes at each Level:

+9 Strength

+9 Agility

+9 Speed

+10 Fortitude

+7 Intelligence

+6 Wisdom

+5 Charisma

+4 Luck

If Castor had been given more time, he probably would have assigned the attributes differently. As it was, he was happy with his choices. After the wave of class advancements, Castor was getting fifty-nine attribute points per level. That was more than four times what the legendary class he’d passed up on was getting. A multi-millenia-aged [Underlord] might be even better off than his [Eternal Handyman] class, but he hadn’t been an [Underlord] for 2,000 years. He had no idea how many high-end class holders made it to the ninth tier, and how many people could progress even faster than he did, but he was betting it wasn’t many. 

His weakest attribute growth was equal to the second-highest bonus from the legendary [Underlord] class, and his bias towards physical stats was gratifying. Would mental stats have been better in the short term? Maybe, especially since Adhesive keyed off of Intelligence. But he didn’t care. He wanted to be strong and tough, so he made it happen. 

Once that was done, Castor discovered that Intrinsic Skills weren’t the only things to get specializations at certain Levels. Attributes did as well. Strength, Agility, Speed, and Fortitude were all glowing with a plus symbol. Castor ran a hand through his hair and started making rapid selections.

Gully was now looking at him with nervous impatience, so Castor gave each one the minimum amount of attention, picking things he liked without thinking too deeply on it. He increased his lifting capacity with Strength, got more Dodge–hoping it did what he thought–from Agility and Speed, and squeezed more health from Fortitude.

Strong and tough, like a nice, solid wrench. 

Of course, none of that changed the fact that the [Hero]s main stats would be ten times Castor’s own. The [Handyman] was still only Level 1, after all.

After that he went to his two Intrinsic Skills and quickly ran through the skill trees. He specialized Maintenance to give damage reduction to everything he made or fixed. Five skill points let him add DR against all five major categories–Physical, Spiritual, Divine, Mystical, and Dimensional.

For his Spiritual skill, the choices weren’t as alluring. Most dealt with things Castor wasn’t very interested in. Summoning, psychic attacks, soul manipulation; he didn’t see how any of that would help him to be as tough, strong, and handy as possible. He had no idea why it was his “attunement”.

He shrugged and went down a line of bonuses related to binding rituals and animation. That way, he could give life to his tools and have them work on his behalf. It was the same magic that formed the basis of necromancy and he’d had plenty of practice modifying animation spells on ghouls and skeletons. 

There was a dedicated necromancy tree, but Castor ignored it in favor of more generic bonuses. He had no desire to be up to his elbows in corpses all day.

This also netted him the Animate Object spell, which went into his second Active Skill slot. That let him bypass the basics of an animation ritual in exchange for reserving some of his mana. 

The results of his Spiritual spec were improved attributes for his animations, higher levels of precise control, bonus damage, five charges that he could use to significantly improve one check an animated entity made, with each charge having a one-hour cooldown, and the ability to designate commander-type animations to manage groups.

Castor was about to open his list of available Intrinsic Skills, when Gully interrupted him. “Finish up the rest while we’re walking,” said the demon. “My liver’s starting to tingle.”

Castor nodded, grabbed his toolbox, and then stood to follow Gul’thraxis, looking through the skills as he went. There were a lot he could choose from due to his vast experience, and most of them started at a Level way higher than was normal for the same reason. 

He spent the entire walk combing through them, hesitant to make any selections since his slots were limited. He had no idea if they could be changed, and most of them wouldn’t be immediately helpful. He had a few skills available that were combat-related–due to his time in the very arena they were heading towards–but those started at a much lower Level than the wealth of available crafting skills.

By the time they’d arrived at the arena, Castor suddenly realized he was unarmed. And, he was still naked.

“Shit, you got any clothes I can borrow, Gully?” Castor asked. “Or a weapon?” 

The Wrath Demon looked at Castor, glanced down at his thong, then back up at Castor. “Nope,” he said. “Maybe the [Hero] will let you borrow some.”

Gully placed his hand on the small of Castor’s back and shoved him forward. 

“Wait, you want me to win, right? Give me some fucking pants!”

“Sorry, bro. I can feel my heart palpitating. You should have worked it out earlier.”

Gully gave the human a grin as he stumbled forward, and Castor inwardly cursed the demon. Gully had money riding on the fight, but a hundred gold didn’t mean shit to him. The Wrath Demon probably thought it was worth the expense just to see Castor go up against a [Hero] while the [Handyman] had his dick out.

The next thing Castor knew, there were sharp, bloody shards of obsidian beneath his feet, hot light beating down on him, and thousands of demons shouting from towering stands of bleachers.

He focused on the opposite side of the arena’s wide fighting pit, finding a teenager wearing a fancy bathrobe. The kid looked like he’d moved out of his parent’s hut less than a week ago, but that was about right for a [Hero]. For whatever reason, half of them were barely adults. The other half were all in their mid-thirties and constantly made references to cultural media that no one understood. 

The kid had a golden sash tied around his waist, and was wearing a pair of sandals with socks underneath, which caused Castor to force down a shudder. He looked like he’d just crawled out of bed. Even his hair was messy, but in that unique, flamboyant way that was common amongst all Outworlders. 

The [Hero] drew a long, narrow blade with a slight curve to it, and looked at Castor with a mixture of confusion and disgust.

Castor started to walk forward, being careful not to cut his feet, until he realized the razor-edged obsidian might as well have been soft sand, for all his newly toughened skin cared. He kicked around in the volcanic glass for a moment, marvelling at the power in his legs and the lack of deep lacerations. A few seconds later, half the crowd was laughing at him, and the [Hero] was watching him with concern.

The [Hero] turned to look up at [Demon Lord] Bythraxomonius and shouted a few words at the slender, goat-like Lord. Lord Bythrax replied calmly, and it took Castor a long moment to realize they were speaking in Common, rather than Demontongue. 

Castor had barely stayed fluent in Common by conversing with the occasional human slave, but his life had been isolated. Castor had also found he related to the miserable souls less and less with each passing year, and couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d spoken with another human at all. ‘Fluent’ was probably the wrong word for Castor’s capacity with Common. He was fluent in the languages of the Dark Triad. His Common was teetering on incomprehensible. 

Beyond that, there’d been some linguistic drift since Castor last lived among the races of man, so his modern Common was even worse. When the teenager turned back to him and started shouting, he struggled to comprehend the kid. Castor furrowed his brow and had to spend a few seconds between each exchange with the [Hero].

“Where are your clothes?” asked the [Hero]. “Do you mean to disgust me into defeat?”

There was a loud “ooooh” from the crowd, who seemed to appreciate the shit-talk. Castor tried to find the right words to reply.

“Mine raiments hath been burnt,” said Castor. “Forsooth, within the dark, leeches cometh for thine gullet.”

The [Hero]’s look of disbelief grew. “Is this some kind of foul joke?” he asked. “You threaten to feed me to leeches?”

“Non!” said Castor, waving his hands. He swore in Demontongue under his breath. The [Hero] reacted poorly to the guttural noise. “Thouest [Hero] need not to… pummeling? Mine soul hath been given and it hath returneth. Whereupon this day vexes me, mind aflame with… uh, with hate?”

“Enough of your insults,” said the [Hero]. He began striding across the glassy field, boots crunching. He gave the sword in his hand a twirl, trying to pass it off as an adjustment to his grip. 

Castor scoffed. He’d spent enough time in this very pit to know that people only did the twirly-grip-adjust because they thought it made them look cool. It didn’t. It made them look like morons.

The [Hero] saw Castor’s critical look and interpreted it as contempt, which it was.

“A man who works with demons is more vile than the most detestable of hellspawn!” the [Hero] shouted, beginning to move faster. “I will take pleasure in ridding the world of you, betrayer!”

Castor frowned. The situation wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. 

“I guess we’re doing this,” he muttered as he dropped his toolbox and flipped it open. While the [Hero] charged, he hastily tossed out compartments, looking for his waterproofing supplies. By the time he was able to snag a tarp made of thick oilcloth, the [Hero] was upon him.

Castor juked to one side, narrowly avoiding being skewered through the heart. The thin blade caught his shoulder instead, cutting through the muscle down to the bone. Castor grunted and ignored the flaring pain, unfolding the tarp.

The [Hero] pivoted in a flash, bringing his blade up across Castor’s midsection. He leaped back, but still caught the tip of the sword through his abdomen and the side of his ribs. Castor felt two stutters in the blade and experience told him that a couple of ribs had just been cut clean through. 

Blood poured freely from both wounds while the crowd laughed and jeered, darkening Castor’s mood. His simmering fury toward the demons spread out from the deep hole where it spent most of its time buried, twisting Castor’s face into a hateful look. The [Hero] took a step back under Castor’s scowl, looking surprised that his enemy would view him with such vitriol. 

Seeing how green the kid was only made Castor’s anger burn hotter. What irresponsible fool gave this child a sword and let him out of his playpen? he wondered bitterly.

Castor didn’t care enough to try and correct the misunderstanding. The kid wasn’t his responsibility, and Castor had no compunctions over killing him in self-defense. 

The [Hero] watched Castor closely for some kind of trick, while Castor took advantage of the hesitation to finish unfolding the oilcloth. He held it up between his hands.

The [Hero] studied the cloth and–finding nothing special about it–charged Castor again. Castor had more than a foot of height on the young man, and rotated the cloth overhead so that the sword passed beneath it. He allowed the [Hero]’s blade to pierce through the left side of his chest and bisect his lung.

In return, Castor wrapped the thick, waterproofed cloth around the [Hero]’s head, having cast Adhesive on it twice at max stickiness.

Castor shoved back against the [Hero], grunting as half the blade slipped free, cutting down through another rib as it went. Having space, Castor raised his trunk-thick leg and landed a kick on the teenager’s chest. The [Hero] stumbled back, his blade pulling the rest of the way free from Castor’s chest with a blistering pain and a spray of blood. Castor let out a ragged cough, blood welling up into his mouth from his skewered lung, and he bent his will toward ignoring the discomfort. 

According to the System, Castor didn’t technically need to breathe, so there was no need to give into the urge to cough and clear the liquid. A lung full of blood should barely be an inconvenience. It hurt, but it wasn’t even the worst thing he’d gone through that day. Pulling an abyssal parasite from his back and losing a chunk of spine had been worse, so he had an easy enough time pushing his body’s protests to the back of his mind.

Castor checked his health, relying on that to gauge his wellness rather than his–admittedly–skewed sense of discomfort. Between his Immortality bonus and Fortitude specialization, he’d started with a pool of 660 HP. After the [Hero]’s three attacks, he was down to 288. A normal [Handyman] without Castor’s advantages would have started with 40 health, and been dead after the first attack.

Castor put some distance between himself and the [Hero]. The bathrobe-wearing teenager reached up to tear the cloth free from his head, but found that it wasn’t so easy. The kid panicked and began to swing his sword wildly from side to side to keep Castor at bay, unable to see through the cloth, which had fully enveloped his head.

Castor cast Animate Object on the tarp, and instructed it to keep wrapping itself around the [Hero]’s head. The loose ends of the oilcloth slithered up and bound the [Hero]’s skull tightly, beginning to twist and squeeze. Castor doubted it was strong enough to hurt the teenager, but it bought him some time.

Castor watched the [Hero] flail for a few seconds, waiting until the kid had stumbled several feet away from his toolbox. He crept over to it, trying to make as little noise as possible. The loud crunching of the [Hero]’s boots and cackling demons covered the sound of his bare feet on the obsidian gravel. 

Castor reached into the toolbox and pulled out his heaviest wrench, a three-foot-long, forty-pound behemoth of reinforced steel.