This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 134

Chapter 134 - We Return to Your Regularly Scheduled Silliness

The passing of months eased the sting of Alex’s betrayal.

The trek back from Avendreth Manor took twice as long as their journey there, mostly owing to the regular stops to while away afternoons taking turns riding Reginald as he flew through the air on his new phantom wings. Despite the relative discomfort of the road and the dependence on dried rations, Eve considered the journey a much-needed vacation.

Under Art’s watchful telepathy, the party even began starting campfires again, though only in short spurts when fully necessary. Even if the trellac could keep Wes under control, the process was uncomfortable for all parties, and thus avoided if possible.

By the time the party did finally make it back to Dragonwrought Hold, they’d come to some semblance of a consensus regarding the two outstanding dilemmas they faced.

The Ring of the Eldritch Plaguebearer, and the secondary quest that came with it, would remain safely stored on Preston’s person. Lacking any leads on how to hide or destroy the phenomenally cursed item, the best they could do is carry it with them until something came up in their unrelated adventures.

The Man of the Mists and his proxy war with whatever entity had turned Alex against them were another matter. As far as Eve was concerned, working with him was the fastest way back to Alex, even if deepening their relationship would make any future conversation with the Defender that much harder.

Preston, still unsure if the Man of the Mists was evil or just a bit of a dick, remained hesitant to work for the strange high-level until Wes reminded him that they’d never cared who sent the commissions they took before.

The relationship they built was simple. Eve, Wes, Preston, Art, and Reginald would remain freelance adventurers under the umbrella of the Dragonwrought, while the Man of the Mists was free to commission them in the same way anybody else might commission an adventuring team.

The arrangement did mean the Dragonwrought got a cut of any given payout, but Eve happily made that sacrifice to keep everything above board. This way, at least officially, they weren’t members of some secret cabal enacting whatever bullshit plots the Man of the Mists so whimmed, but simple adventurers taking commissions as adventurers were wont to do.

Days turned to weeks and weeks to months as the jobs came and went. Every time the party returned to Dragonwrought Hold, they found a new commission there waiting for them, either from the Man of the Mists or a regular citizen who’d heard the legendary guild was up and running again.

Try as she might, Eve couldn’t for the life of her see a connection between the jobs. Whether it be recovering a lost amulet for the queen frog of a local pond, tracking down the source of a strangely-rhythmic belching deep in the northern woods, or teaching a family of fifty-foot spiders how to tap-dance, none of the commissions seemed to have anything to do with each other, let alone some higher purpose. Eve was happy enough to be helping people and getting paid for it, even if she couldn’t fathom the end goal.

Preston provided the most likely theory. If those playing the black pieces in this convoluted game of chess knew Eve and the gang were taking jobs for the Man of the Mists, it was entirely possible he was purposefully sending them all over the place to mask his true intentions. How could the party possibly give away their goals if they themselves couldn’t figure them out?

The thought did leave Eve wondering how many—if any—of the commissions had some purpose behind them. For the most part, she was perfectly happy chasing busywork as long as the contribution points and sweet, sweet exp kept rolling in, but her entire purpose in working for the Man of the Mists was to find Alex and perhaps even take down the people who had turned her against them. Doing arts and crafts with an ice elemental didn’t get her any closer to her friend.

It did get her closer to tier 5.

Even as her exp costs skyrocketed, so too did her milestone rewards, which came consistently as she completed the constant stream of jobs both silly and perilous. Over eleven months of assorted commissions, Eve leveled up a grand total of thirty times, earning fifteen ability upgrades and fifteen boosts to her statistic growth.

Mana Burst and Ethereal Manifestation remained unchanged, governed by her status as a Manaheart rather than the progression of her class. Defiant Charge, Jet, and Mana Rush all got significant boosts to their effectiveness and Mana costs. While better scaling on Mana Rush or faster move-speed with Defiant Charge were all well and good, the changes to Jet garnered the most attention.

Flight was finally on the table.

It was a clumsy affair, lurching wildly about, unable to control her movement in the precious seconds between Jets, and indeed her series of directed launches held no candle to grace and maneuverability with which Reginald soared through the air, but Eve would take what she could get. She’d like as not never match anything with wings for air superiority, but awkward as it might’ve been, flying through the air entirely of one’s own power was undeniably awesome.

Other upgrades included an Intelligence boost on Defiant Mind, which originally scaled with a pitiful one percent of her Willpower before upgrading twice more to reach four percent, as well as a similar boost to dexterity on Defiant Body.

As ability upgrades went, the far and away most exciting change came at level seventy-five, the exact half way point between tiers 4 and 5.

Abilities Combined!
Haste and Defiant Body have combined!

Ability Upgraded!
Passive Ability - Defiant Body
Now grants [WPW/3]% faster run and swim speed!

While Eve certainly welcomed the scaling upgrade, the combination of abilities filled her with previously unprecedented quantities of hype. For the first time since level fifty, she had space for a new ability.

She found it then puzzling, when as the months crawled on and she leveled up yet more, no new passive skill presented itself. She continued to earn upgrades to her other abilities and increases to her stat growth, but for some reason that last skill slot stood vacant.

But gods below did her stats grow.

At every even numbered level, Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, and Willpower took turns adding five to their per-level growth, on top of an extra twenty-five per-level divided between them when she hit seventy, eighty, and ninety. The end result was her stats skyrocketed almost as much as her exp costs did, reaffirming to the Defiant that Unique classes were well and truly broken.

By level ninety, she was gaining 310 stat points per level, almost half of which went into her all-important Willpower, and though levels grew progressively more difficult to attain, Eve practically salivated at her ever-increasing rewards.

Of course, the absolutely bonkers stat gain wasn’t the only advantage of a Unique class, as Eve had learned in her confrontation with Alex.

Active Ability - Defy

Her Unique ability still had no description, but in her months of commissions she’d managed to figure out a few things about it. The first was that it was remarkably powerful. In all her adventuring, she’d yet to find anything that would overcome her Defying it. From spells to traps to walls, there seemed to be no limits as far as what she could Defy.

There were, however, limits to actually using the damn skill.

In eleven months, she only managed to actually activate it a handful of times, all in situations where she genuinely feared for the lives of her or her companions. Each time, the ability left her ragged, heaving for breath and hardly able to stand, let alone fight, once the adrenaline of the moment had drained away.

In all, Defy made for a useful last resort in a tight spot if she could end the battle and rest immediately after, but its uses beyond that were remarkably limited, and she had no effective way of training with the ability to find more. That said, Eve considered any fight in which she didn’t have to Defy anything a good fight.

Her companions leveled up along with her, though the comparatively low milestone rewards their own quests offered meant they lagged behind her now more than ever. Wes and Preston both had yet to reach level seventy-five by the time Eve hit ninety, further widening the level gap between them. At least given everything that had happened to him, Wes had stopped complaining about Eve outpacing him.

In a purely physical sense, Reginald grew the most.

While not quite fully-grown, the drake stretched fifteen feet from tail to tip by his second birthday, large enough that if they squeezed, Preston, Art, and Wes could all fit onto his back at once. Of course, he could fly neither as deftly or as long while carrying such a load, but the three traveling on drakeback while Eve either ran below or Jetted alongside them made for much faster travel than anything the adventurers had access to.

As he leveled up, Preston slowly filled out his robes, his newly-unlocked Strength scaling making all the difference in the former Priestess’s ability to build muscle. Wes, in contrast, seemed to shrink.

The Vessel of the Devouring Flame still stood a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier than any other party member, but with every level his face seemed to grow more gaunt, his eyes sunken further into his head. He remained his usual punny and bantering self, but it didn’t take Art to see the uncertainty of his situation getting to him.

For his part, Art grew three inches in the year that passed. It wasn’t quite the several feet Reginald had gained, but the young trellac was proud nonetheless.

Even Lumy, the three floating lights Preston had adopted as the newest member of his pack, had grown some. The phantasmal remnant didn’t eat or gain exp, but she did seem to glow somewhat brighter than she had before. She’d even helped the party out by serving as a distraction in a few fights, flaring brighter or flashing in an enemy’s eyes at a key moment.

Preston felt certain Lumy would eventually develop further abilities, but what or when were anybody’s guess. In the meantime, she made herself useful as much as three floating lights could, and according to Art she had an absolutely scathing wit that none of the party’s telepaths deemed relay to Eve, presumably because she was so often its target.

All in all, those eleven months made for a profitable status quo, a comfortable status quo. They adventured, they looted, they leveled up, they rested. But as the time passed and questions about the eldritch ring, about the devouring flame, about Alex all went unanswered, one by one the party grew impatient with their wacky hijinks. Much as they grew, they didn’t get anywhere.

It was Eve who first decided to change things up.

Whatever reasons the Man of the Mists had for sending them on the jobs he did, they repeatedly proved unable to lead Eve back to Alex. It was thus the idea burrowed itself into the back of her head. If this high level proxy war wouldn’t get her where she wanted to be, Eve knew of at least one quest that might.

Almost two years ago now, she’d accidentally splashed a volatile compound across her chest, thus beginning the secondary quest that changed her into the world’s only Manaheart. But one step still remained in that quest line, and Eve hadn’t been the only person splashed with that serum.

Somewhere out there, Alexandra Reeve’s right hand glowed with jagged white lines, lines that would someday take her to the same fallen city on which Eve set her sights.

It was time to chase the Crown of Lost Burendia.

——

Evelia Greene
Manaheart
Level 90 The Defiant
Unique Ability - Defy

Exp: 23 Billion/445 Billion

Health: 0/0
Stamina: 0/0
Mana: 43,860/43,860

Constitution: 0
Willpower: 4386
Intelligence: 1332
Dexterity: 1423
Strength: 1206
Spirit: 0

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.

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.

Active Ability - Defiant Charge
100 Mana
Face your foes head on. None shall stand in your way. Quintuple your Willpower and maximum running speed 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.

Active Ability - Jet
X Mana
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.

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