This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 172

Chapter 172 - One Last Upgrade

Eve didn’t wait to fully catch up Alex and Preston. She didn’t pause for a moment to explain the fight with the Muffin Man nor the strange nefarious plot they’d interrupted. She didn’t even bother to loot the room, leaving that task to the others.

Eve dove straight into her notifications.

Unique Upgrade Available: Aspect of Rebellion
Unique Tier 5 Aspect
Requirements: The Defiant Unique class. Reject authority. Serve no master but your own will. Stand steadfast against great power from long before your time.
The Aspect of Rebellion embodies the indomitable spirit of all who have suffered under the rule of another. Whether working in the shadows to undermine a tyrant’s reign or organizing the masses under a banner of change, Rebellion leads the charge against oppression in all its forms.
+1000 Willpower
+100 Willpower/Level
Unlock The People’s Voice Aspect Ability
Unlock Immortal Ideology Aspect Ability

Eve blinked. “Hey guys?” she called to the open room. “What are aspects?”

“A myth,” Preston answered without looking up from the pile of muffins he searched. “Just another way to make the legendary heroes from those romanticized old stories sound even more powerful and important. The legends attribute all sorts of crazy abilities to them, but nobody’s ever proved any of it.”

“More like everyone’s kept them a secret,” Eve muttered.

“They’re real,” Alex spoke up, certainty in her voice. “Mila has one, Aspect of the Keeper. I’m not sure how she got it, but some of her most powerful abilities come from it.”

Preston paused, looking first at Alex then up at Eve. “You’ve got one, haven’t you?”

Eve quickly scrolled through her notifications. “From the looks of it, I have my choice of six.”

“Gods below,” Preston cursed. “So that’s what happens when you upgrade a Unique class.”

“Looks like it,” Eve said. “I guess in theory it’d be possible to have multiple aspects if you leveled up enough.”

“Good luck with that.” Alex shook her head. “Mila’s hundreds of years old and nowhere near the next tier. Exponential exp costs are a bitch. You only got as far as you did because your milestones are insanely broken, but that well’s gonna dry up sooner or later. You gotta finish your quest eventually.”

Eve nodded. “Unless I miss my guess, it’ll happen sooner rather than later. I can’t think of anything more worthy of a Legendary quest than saving humanity from extinction.” She reread the description on the Aspect of Rebellion. “How much as Mila told you about her aspect? It looks like they might be a way around the ability cap.”

Alex shrugged. “No idea.”

“Here’s hoping,” Eve sighed. “No matter how powerful these aspect abilities are, I’d hate to have to part with any of my class abilities.” She shook her head. “Anyway, back to reading.”

Alex and Preston returned to their looting as Eve pulled up the next notification.

Unique Upgrade Available: Aspect of the Unstoppable
Unique Tier 5 Aspect
Requirements: Unique class. Reach over ten million Strength. Overpower a suppression enchantment. Let nothing stand in your way.
The Aspect of the Unstoppable brings overwhelming force to bear against any and all that would seek to obstruct it.  There is no barrier too thick, no magic too ineffable, no defense too impenetrable to keep the Unstoppable down.
+1000 Willpower
+1000 Strength
+100 Willpower/Level
+100 Strength/Level
Unlock Overwhelming Force Aspect Ability

Eve raised an eyebrow. The Aspect of the Unstoppable came with twice as many stats as Rebellion, an absurd upside given the number. The trade-off, it seemed, came in the form of one fewer ability. Of course, without tooltips and copious amounts of testing, Eve had no way to judge if the extra ability was worth a thousand Strength and another hundred per level. She only had the descriptions themselves to go off of.

The good news—or bad news from an indecision standpoint—was that each aspect seemed to be tabled as Unique tier 5, unlike her various class upgrade options which had come in a variety of rarities. They should all be at roughly the same power level. Eve figured she should focus on a specialization that would help in her fight with the Man of the Mists, but in theory, none of the aspects would be a bad choice.

That theory proved wrong the moment she opened the next notification.

Unique Upgrade Available: Aspect of the Muffin
Unique Tier 5 Aspect
Requirements: Unique class. Eat over two thousand calories of muffins in a single day. Find and defeat the Muffin Man. Glimpse into the unknowable power of the perfect muffin.
The Aspect of the Muffin turns what seems at a glance to be a simple breakfast pastry into a weapon of strange and sugary power. While flawed, the Muffin Man’s research opens the door into a bizarre world of human-muffin hybridization, a place where all laws of physics give way to the eternal might of the muffin.
+1000 Willpower
+1000 Intelligence
+100 Willpower/Level
+100 Intelligence/Level
Unlock Muffin Manifestation Aspect Ability

“That’s gonna be a definite no,” Eve muttered, not even bothering to wonder how one might wield a muffin against a force so apocalyptic as the Man of the Mists. The only thing more disgusting, she thought, than the concept of human-muffin hybridization, was the realization she’d eaten over two thousand calories of muffins that day. Her stomach churned in anger at being filled with so much inferior pastry.

In an effort to distract herself from muffin-related thoughts, Eve pulled up the next notification.

Unique Upgrade Available: Aspect of Celerity
Unique Tier 5 Aspect
Requirements: Unique class. Run faster than the speed of sound. Travel faster than the speed of light.
The Aspect of Celerity embodies not just the ability to move quickly, but the concept of speed itself. At the highest level, there is no distinction between one’s speed of travel and one’s total mass. The Aspect of Celerity exploits that fundamental law to extreme ends.
+1000 Willpower
+100 Willpower/Level
Unlock Inertia Unbound Aspect Ability
Unlock Gravity Well Aspect Ability

Everything about the Aspect of Celerity sounded absurdly powerful. If Eve had to guess, she figured her trip through the leylines had fulfilled the condition for traveling faster than the speed of light, but truth be told she really didn’t understand what was so special about that.

Interestingly enough, Celerity’s description almost made it sound better from a raw force standpoint than the Unstoppable, though she was sure that comparison fell apart under the lightest of scrutiny. Celerity was a mystery. Everything about the tooltip hinted at a hitherto unknown level of brokenness, but it fell under the same tier and rarity as the Aspect of the Muffin.

She flagged it for further consideration. If she functioned under the belief that some aspects were stronger than others, Celerity made for an early front runner. On the other hand, if the made the dangerous assumption that any given aspect in a vacuum was comparable to any other, than the focus on raw force that Celerity seemed to have wouldn’t be much use against someone as incorporeal as mist.

By similar logic, Eve had speed and raw power to spare. Neither would help if the misty boy provided her nothing solid enough to hit.

The next option held a bit more promise on that front.

Unique Upgrade Available: Aspect of Magic
Unique Tier 5 Aspect
Requirements: Unique class. Gather over one billion Mana. Use an opponent’s spell against them. Survive direct contact with a leyline.
The Aspect of Magic governs the very Mana that ties reality together. Ever since the first mages learned to tug at those strings, reality itself has danced on the whims of mortals. You are no mere mortal. The Aspect of Magic reads the threads themselves, transcending beyond the limited nature of spells.
Unlock Free Cast Aspect Ability
Unlock Read the Threads Aspect Ability
Unlock Mana Prism Aspect Ability

“Now, that’s more like it,” Eve muttered. Missing out on the massive stat boost would be a shame, but three new abilities almost sounded too good to pass up. She wondered if aspect abilities could upgrade as she leveled up, or were somehow static, not that it would matter for her upcoming confrontation.

Either way, Eve got the impression her imminent fight would be fought with magic, not blades, and what better aspect could there be for such a battle?

In comparison, her final option felt lackluster.

Unique Upgrade Available: Aspect of Authority
Unique Tier 5 Aspect
Requirements: Unique class. Access to the Commanding Presence feature. The queen, executive, prime, or empress title. A crown.
The Aspect of Authority is the cornerstone of civilization. Wherever there are armies to be led, workers to be organized, people to be brought to one side or another, Authority rears its head. The Aspect of Authority is not a paragon of personal power, but of the collective. Only through its unity can the whole so surpass the sum of its parts.
+1000 Willpower
+100 Willpower/Level
Unlock Queen’s Command Aspect Ability
Unlock Might of the Masses Aspect Ability

Immediately, Eve thought of Emily. The Aspect of Authority would be perfect for her, the ideal way to empower the defenders of Pyrindel as their queen. For Eve, whose subjects included a few million long-decayed corpses, Authority held less promise. She did wonder if the abilities could apply to people she didn’t technically rule, but a risk like that seemed far too great to even consider given the circumstances.

Sure, buffing up all the adventurers who stood against the Man of the Mists felt like an exciting prospect, but uncertainty of it all made it a tough sell.

Eve stopped to reread the six options before her. Out of hand she could dismiss the Aspect of Authority and the Aspect of the Muffin, the former due to uncertainty in who it could buff and how useful an army of low-levels would be against the Man of the Mists, and the latter for obvious reasons. She’d already seen the madness that lay at the end of the path of the muffin.

That left The Unstoppable, Rebellion, Celerity, and Magic as contenders. Obviously from a rarity standpoint, they were all equal, but that didn’t stop Eve from comparing the relative difficulty of their requirements.

Rebellion was the only one that required her specific class, implying that Aspect was unique to her, but the other requirements seemed neither specific nor difficult.

The Unstoppable required hitting an absurd amount of Strength, which she’d accomplished several times using Mana Rush, an ability she’d had since tier 3. Magic similarly required a high stat, though Eve supposed one would need ten times as much Spirit to hit a billion Mana as one needed Strength to unlock The Unstoppable. She’d only managed that when she’d fallen into the leyline and had to remake her body entirely.

Celerity, in contrast, required breaking the speed of light, something she’d need ley travel to accomplish. However, ley travel had come as a feature of her Queen of Lost Burendia ability, which implied the historical rulers of Burendia could accomplish the same feat.

Of them all, Magic and Rebellion seemed the most difficult to unlock, or at the very least the most particular. Eve wasn’t sure if that counted for anything, but it felt like it should’ve.

Magic seemed the most relevant for any future confrontation with The Man of the Mists. Rebellion didn’t feel right for defending an existing power structure, while Unstoppable and Celerity both left her feeling like she’d be trying to punch fog.

In the end, Eve wound up making the sensible decision, and stopping to ask her friends what they thought. It was a luxury she hadn’t had when faced with her last class upgrade, and hearing the others come up with their own reasoning brought a level of comfort she hadn’t expected.

Alex and Lumy both agreed that the Aspect of Magic was the way to go, in part because it felt the most applicable to their coming fight and in part because it seemed fundamentally the most flexible. Preston, in contrast, felt that flexibility would come at the cost of raw power, and that the Aspect of Authority would be the strongest in the particular situation of standing at the helm of an army against their misty adversary.

As the party finally left the laboratory of the Muffin Man behind, Eve had already come to her conclusion. She had, as everyone agreed, raw power to spare. If anything, it would be finesse and flexibility that would make the difference.

She waited until they’d returned to the palace, holding her impatience at bay for long enough walk to her room, remove her sewer-stinking armor, and lay back in bed. Only once she’d reread every option for the umpteenth time, laid her head against the plush pillows, and taken a deep breath, that Eve finally hovered over the Aspect of Magic and hit accept.

——

Evelia Greene
Manaheart
Level 100 The Defiant
Unique Ability - Defy
Aspect of Magic
Aspect Ability - Free Cast
Aspect Ability - Read the Threads
Aspect Ability - Mana Prism
Exp: 12.662 Trillion /12.859 Trillion
Health: 0/0
Stamina: 0/0
Mana: 57,960/57,960

Constitution: 0
Willpower: 5791
Intelligence: 1772
Dexterity: 1848
Strength: 1801
Spirit: 0

Passive Ability - Queen of Lost Burendia
The queen of Burendia is the queen of magic itself, and as the culmination of the Great Work, you’re poised to be the greatest of them all. All Burendian remnants will recognize your authority. All enchantments, Burendian or otherwise, will bend to your will. Gain access to the Ley Travel feature. Wherever Mana can go, you can go. Gain access to the Commanding Presence feature. Gain access to the Overcharge feature. Gather up to five times your maximum Mana for a short period.

Passive Ability - Defiant Body
The will can only be as steadfast as the shell that houses it. You have cultivated both. Gain increased bone density and sinew strength, resistance to impact, explosive, thermal, and slashing damage. Gain massively increased resistance to fire. Maintain control of your every motion. Gain increased traction, resistance to uneven terrain, resistance to immobilizing and destabilizing effects. Gain [WPW/25] Dexterity. You run and swim [WPW/3]% faster.

Passive Ability - Defiant Mind
Wield the unmatched will of The Defiant. Your mind is your own. Gain immunity to fear, pacify, and loss of control effects. Gain increased reaction speed and [WPW/25] Intelligence. Unlock access to the Fatetorn Gaze general skill. Grants the Telepathic Communication feature.

Passive Ability - Ethereal Manifestation
Your body has become more, a manifestation of Mana itself given form by the might of your will. Draw Mana from food or from external sources to fortify yourself or power your abilities. Gain immunity to annihilation magic. Imbue your spells with annihilation Mana. Transcend beyond the limitations of flesh. Gain temporary control over elemental Mana you absorb. Gain the ability to make minor changes whenever you reform your body.

Active Ability - Defiant Charge
100 Mana
Face your foes head on. None shall stand in your way. Quintuple your Willpower and maximum running speed and jumping height for [WPW/5] seconds.

Active Ability - Mana Rush
X Mana/Sec
The strength of a manaheart is determined by the energy that runs through their veins. You’ve learned to use that to your advantage. Gain [X*WPW/15] Strength for the duration.

Active Ability - Mana Burst
X Mana
You don’t need to be a master spell caster to simply throw Mana at the problem. Unleash a short-range blast of concentrated Mana, dealing magic damage in an area in front of you. Can be cast with temporarily-controlled elemental Mana.

Active Ability - Jet
X Mana/Sec
Momentum is a tool just like any other, and you’ve learned to wield it. Massively increase or decrease your personal momentum or that of an individual body part or held item. Can be channeled for continuous control.

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