Wild Era, Ch 24: Rewards

Congratulations on completing the Shieldrun Forest Dungeon.

You’ve earned bonus experience and rewards for completing the hardest run to date.

Kelin shoved the notifications from the Path out of the way, since they were a distraction from staying alive. 

He’d deal with them in a minute.

“Get back from the drake.” His voice was rough as he spoke. The words bubbled in his mouth as his ruptured lung burned. “Its poison will keep coming out for a while.”

He followed his own advice as he backed up, putting some distance between him and the monster. 

Stone fell away from his body, shedding rivers of poison that the drake’s jaws had left behind, but a lot had gotten through. As his skin was revealed, it was covered in a mix of blood and poison, and a dozen open wounds covered him from the beast’s bite.

Streams of green poison hissed through his veins, leaving him dizzy.

Maro and Galin didn’t look any better. 

They were bloody wrecks.

Maro’s arm was completely torn off and his flames had sealed the wound closed in a dark scar. He had half a dozen other wounds across his body as well, but they had also been cauterized.

Flames were dimly flickering around him, trying to fight the poison that was turning his body green, but he was still on his feet.

Galin would have looked better, except that his stomach was a nightmare of red and green. A bracing of stone and earthen mana was all that held his guts in. Threads of green poison were crawling across his abdomen around the wound, visible through the massive rents in his armor.

Next to them, Serai was as pale as a sheet and a thick tracery of green veins was running across her body too. She was swaying on her feet and it looked as if she would fall over at any moment.

“Stay awake,” Kelin coughed at her. Then he repeated his words, since they had gone right past them. “Move back from it.” 

They stared at the drake as if they almost couldn’t believe it was dead, but Kelin’s words woke them up.

“Healing potions,” Kelin coughed, as he pulled out the last two he had. He assessed their wounds and then he shoved one into Serai’s hands and one into Galin’s.

Restoring Maro’s arm would have to wait. 

Unless those two were treated soon, the injuries and poison would kill them.

With his mana empty, he couldn’t heal quickly, so he let Gaius carry him about twenty feet away from the drake and he collapsed into a sitting position, trying to meditate.

He could feel the poison burning through him. Its intensity was even higher than when he’d eaten the wraith shards, but it was warring with the resistance he’d built up.

Without that, the intensity would have killed him.

Even with it, it felt like the poison was washing his entire body in acid and he had to struggle to keep a clear head.

He could feel threads of soulfire igniting throughout his body to fight it, and there was still a small reserve of the antidote that he’d stored away, which was keeping it from overwhelming him, but it was already almost gone.

He was walking on a thin line to heal while suppressing it.

The Soulfire Sigil he’d started earlier was still burning, so he had Gaius recover it from across the arena and bring it over to where he was sitting. 

They were lucky that its duration was long enough.

“Sit by me,” he coughed out. “Let the sigil help.”

He closed his eyes as he focused on the problem, targeting the worst areas of the poison as he directed the tiny flickers of mana he was recovering to fight against it.

The poison washed across his body. There was so much it was a flood that threatened to sweep through his organs and dissolve his heart, but the waves crashed against his resistance and fell back.

It left corrosive wounds throughout his body, but it was unable to gain complete purchase.

In that back and forth that resembled an ocean tide, surges of soulfire broke the waves apart. 

“Drink this,” Maro growled as he came to sit by Kelin, shoving a healing potion into his hand. “Stupid, self-sacrificing mage. It’s my last one, but I always carry a bunch. Otherwise, I’d be dead by now.”

Maro’s wounds were all cauterized and he wasn’t as strong as he was trying to sound, but the attempt made a smile appear on Kelin’s lips as he opened his eyes.

He gave Maro and the others a searching glance, comparing their wounds to his, and he saw Galin and Seria both had brought out a second potion too. They’d already drunk the first he’d given them.

They didn’t look good, but they were alive.

Maro wasn’t in immediate danger of dying except from the poison that was making him wobble on his feet, but he should have drunk the potion himself.

Kelin took in the stubbornness on the berserker’s face, which didn’t look like it would take no for an answer, so he took the potion. He cracked the seal, drank half of it, and pushed the remainder back to Maro.

Maro grumbled, but not much. He just downed the other half of the potion and collapsed to the ground nearby, closing his eyes as he worked on his own battle.

Kelin checked on him and nodded.

It would be enough.

He felt the surge of healing energy from the potion flood outward. It sealed some of his wounds and boosted his vitality to fight against the poison, pushing it back.

He redirected some of his healing into soulfire and let it blaze through his bones. Without his body refining ability, his recovery would have been questionable, but since he had it, he was confident.

He let the sigil bolster his regeneration and then turned his attention to the notifications from the Path, since there might be some things there that would help.

The notifications rang in his mind and this time he let them all appear.

Congratulations on completing the Shieldrun Forest Dungeon.

You’ve earned bonus experience and rewards for completing the hardest run to date.

Your completion rate for the dungeon is 100%.

You have earned bonus experience for completing the dungeon at lower than the average level and for facing challenges that were not intended as part of this dungeon’s nature.

You have gained 4 Levels, plus 2 Bonus Levels.

Your Soul Bonded Elemental has also gained 6 Levels.

Congratulations, Lord of Wildfire.

You are now Level 52.

You gain 6 Wisdom, 18 Intelligence, and have 30 free attribute points to assign. 

There were more notifications, but Kelin made them pause for a moment as he dealt with the first ones.

The 100% clear was surprising. The drake must have killed everything else in the dungeon. 

Kelin must have entered near the end of its seizure of power, while it was still converting the last few monsters into wraiths. It had killed probably two hundred Hesen overall, along with all of the other monsters here.

The attribute gains brought his Wisdom to 162 and his Intelligence to 420. He immediately added the 30 free points to Intelligence as well, which took it up to 450.

That added 48 mana to his pool, which he began to convert to healing energy as he targeted the wounds across his body and the major concentrations of poison.

He didn’t use all of the mana, however.

He opened his eyes and assessed Galin and Serai’s conditions again, and then he placed a hand on both of them, sending a wave of soulfire to support their healing.

When his mana hit zero, he closed his eyes again and went back to the notifications.

For stressing your capabilities in battle and increasing your resistance to poison, you have gained 4 Constitution, 2 Agility, 2 Wisdom, 3 Intelligence, 3 Aura, and 2 Charisma.

It was almost every attribute, and more than one point in each, which showed just how much he’d stressed himself in that fight.

He glanced at his status sheet to see the changes.

Attributes:

Strength: 87.

Constitution: 77.

Agility: 70.

Wisdom: 164.

Intelligence: 453

Aura:  199.

Charisma: 82.

All the exposure to the poison had helped bolster his Constitution, as had being hit by the drake.

Humans in the Wild Era were a bit like raw elemental ore. If you got hit just hard enough, it was a process of refinement. It forced you to rebuild your body with new elemental energy from your affinity and that made you stronger.

The physical gains were helpful, but they reminded him that his body was still malnourished and his stomach was rumbling with hunger. He looked at the drake some distance away and decided that he was going to make steaks out of it after he healed up.

There were many ways to celebrate a victory, but eating a monster that had almost killed him always felt like a good revenge.

Also, drakes made for pretty good steaks. He’d just have to let the poison dissipate a bit more, unless he wanted to stress his resistance.

He was feeling optimistic as he went back to the Path’s notifications.

The experience notifications were done, but the other rewards remained, including those that came from the battle.

It started with a series of tier increases for all the class abilities he’d used. A lot of them had been building up during that fight.

Your Class Ability: Soulfire Bolt has gained a tier and reached Expert.

Your Class Ability: Soulfire Shield has gained a tier and reached Expert.

Your Class Ability: Elemental Ward has gained a tier and reached Advanced.

Your Class Ability: Touch of Soulfire has gained a tier and reached Advanced.

Using abilities in dungeons and in life and death battles was good for their progress. It sped things up a lot.

The list didn’t stop there. It moved on to the other skills and abilities he’d relied on.

Your Spell: Soul Arrow has gained a tier and reached Expert.

Your Skill: Mana Control has gained a tier and reached Expert.

Your Skill: Intensify Spell has gained a tier and reached Expert.

Your Skill: Soul Ignition has gained a tier and reached Expert.

Your Skill: Empower Soul Magic has gained a tier and reached Advanced.

Your Innate Ability: Meditation has gained a tier and reached Expert.

Your Innate Ability: Analyze has gained a tier and reached Expert.

Basically everything he’d used in the battle had made improvements, which was what it should be. His conscious control stressed the abilities to their limits, so they improved as soon as his body was able to adjust to them.

The Path continued.

You have earned additional rewards for a perfect clear and for completing the dungeon at a High mana density and High danger rating.

You may choose two Abilities to upgrade by a tier, to a maximum of Expert.

Make your choices now.

That reward was common, so he’d expected it. The limitation to the Expert tier meant that it was intended to raise his overall strength, giving him a chance to improve abilities that he hadn’t used as much.

He glanced over his status sheet and then made his choices.

A wave of power from the Path gathered around him, swirling in a golden whirlwind as it settled into his body. He felt it sharpening his mind, improving the dexterity of his hands, and reinforcing his meridians.

Your Subclass Ability: Runic Engraving has gained a tier and reached Advanced.

[Runic Engraving allows you to shape your innate mana into a blade and to engrave runes on objects. The complexity of the runes is based on your level and understanding. 

This ability grants bonuses to the effects of the runes you engrave, with up to 15% at the Advanced tier.]

Your Subclass Ability: Arcane Refinement has gained a tier and reached Advanced.

[Arcane Refinement is the gift to improve what you work on. With your Sight as the foundation, this ability allows you to use your mana to refine and repair magical items. 

At the Advanced tier, it is limited to items twice the size of your hand and no higher than Level 50.]

It was tempting to boost Soulfire Inferno or Explosive Sigil, or one of his other combat abilities, but the improvements to his Subclass were more important. 

He hadn’t used the abilities much yet, but he was already past the level limit for gear on Arcane Refinement, even though it had jumped by 20 for the Advanced tier.

If he wanted it to stay useful, he had to give it some attention. Once he got back to town, he’d work on rebuilding his equipment.

After the ability improvements settled in, the Path continued to speak.

You have earned a treasure reward for killing the Final Boss: Hesen Chieftain.

As the majority of the loot rewards in this dungeon were destroyed by the Poison Drake, the remaining rewards will be improved to match the value.

The reward will be customized to match your Class.

A glowing bar of light shimmered as it appeared in the air in front of Kelin. It resolved into a staff made of a rich golden wood with a rippled grain that looked like leaping flames.

Runes were carved along its length, but despite their presence, the surface was smooth. They were only visible from the glow of soulfire inside.

Staff of Soulfire (Soulbound).

Artifact.

Material: Soulflame Spirit Wood.

Grade: Rare.

Quality: Superior.

Soulbound to Kelin of Highmist.

This staff has been carved from a rare Soul-affinity wood that was grown in an environment rich in elemental Fire, allowing it to absorb both affinities. When spells of a matching alignment are channeled through it, they receive a 10% reduction in their energy cost (both mana and soul energy), as well as a 10% improvement in their strength.

The current enchantment on this staff has been placed as a foundation. Further improvements may be made in the future.

Kelin took the staff from the air with a nod of approval. He’d made good use of the dungeon’s acid staff here. It looked like the Path had noticed and decided to give him a replacement.

The Rare grade was the same as the Ring of Everlasting Flame, which meant the base material was incredible. The Superior quality was one step below the ring, but the fact that he could improve it in the future with his own rune engravings meant that it could be upgraded.

It would be a while before he had that ability himself, since his subclass was lagging behind, but it was nice to see. If he found someone good at enchanting in the guild, they might be able to do it for him.

Like the ring, the fact that it was soulbound was helpful to him. It couldn’t be stolen or used by anyone else and if it was lost, he would be able to find it.

As he channeled a thread of soulfire through it, he felt the connection to it snap into place. With a thought, he knew he could resize the staff or make it invisible.

He tucked it away in his storage belt.

There were still a couple of notifications left.

You have earned a Unique Reward for killing the Special Boss: Poison Drake.

The reward will be based on Abilities you used during the battle.

You may choose one of the following Innate Abilities:

Durable Ward (Basic).

[Your wards and mana shield will receive a 10% improvement to their durability and efficiency. This ability is innate to you and will apply to all of your other abilities, spells, and skills that it can affect. As the tier of the ability improves, the bonus will increase.]

Chain Casting (Basic).

[Your ability to cast spells in sequence will improve, reducing the time between them to the minimum. As the ability improves, the delay between casts will drop to almost nothing.]

Persistent Spells (Basic).

[Your spells will endure longer than they would naturally. At the basic tier, they will receive a 10% improvement to their duration and cohesion. This effect will apply to all of your spells that can receive the benefit.]

Poison Resistance (Elite).

[Your Poison Resistance will be upgraded to Elite, to match the tier of the Poison Drake’s ability.]

Kelin studied each of the abilities on offer carefully, assessing their value.

Each of them came from something he’d done in the battle, whether it was blocking damage with his wards or casting Soulfire Bolts in sequence as fast as possible. 

Persistent Spells was due to how he’d channeled energy into the soul arrows that killed the drake, intensifying their duration and effect.

All of them were good, and he would have happily taken them all, but he had to choose one.

He crossed the improvement to Poison Resistance off immediately, since he was capable of improving that himself. It was only there as a default if there was nothing better.

That left the other three.

Durable Ward would improve the defensive nature of his class more and help the mana efficiency of his shielding spells. 

It was worthwhile.

Chain Casting would speed up his offensive ability, letting him cast faster. With his current limit to two spells at a time, it would be valuable, but it wasn’t at the top of his list. 

He could continue to improve his ability to handle multiple spells at once and either get the ability on his own or something similar, like Dual Casting.

Persistent Spells was possibly even better than Durable Ward. It didn’t sound like much at first, but the improvements to duration and cohesion were impressive and they would apply to all of his spells, not just defensive wards. 

The effect would make Soul Arrow and Soul Ignition burn for longer against difficult targets, which would reduce his overall energy costs, Wildfire would spread farther before it burned out, and his defensive spells would also last longer and be more efficient.

If it had just been duration, he might have chosen Durable Ward instead, but the cohesion effect on Persistent Spells was critical.

It meant that he could overcharge the mana in his spells more before they fell apart, which would allow him to do a lot more damage.

His Soulfire Bolts would fly farther and stay together better, which meant that if he could hit two wraiths in a row right now before the spell dissolved, it might eventually go through three or four instead, once the ability tiered up. 

The duration of Soulfire Sigil would benefit, as would that of Soul Paralysis, which was a short duration spell. Even another second there was worth a lot when it came to stunning an enemy.

The two abilities were a choice between pure defense and a mix of offense and defense, but he was leaning toward Persistent Spells.

What threw it over the edge was that Persistent Spells would apply to everything, whether it was direct attacks like arrows and bolts, the duration of Soulfire Inferno, or utility spells like Air Purification and Soul Shroud.

It should also improve the duration of runes he formed, both temporary and permanent ones, making them last longer and endure repeated use, which meant temporary spell forms would be more persistent and the artifacts he crafted would be better.

As he made his choice, another wave of golden energy from the Path gathered and poured into his body. He felt the flame of a new ability form in his spirit.

Congratulations, Lord of Wildfire.

You have gained the Innate Ability: Persistent Spells (Basic).

With that, the last of the major rewards from the dungeon were complete, but there were still a few minor ones.

You have earned treasure rewards for completing the dungeon.

You are awarded 12 gold and 17 silver coins in the local currency.

You are awarded an additional 10 gold coins as a bonus for the dungeon’s High difficulty and mana density.

The coins appeared in a pouch inside of Kelin’s storage space, all of them in the local Celadon style. 

It was a fairly standard amount of coins for a dungeon at this level, and one of the reasons that adventurers were willing to run them. 

Although it wasn’t a lot compared to the price of a single spatial bag, the 10 gold bonus was enough to cover most of the potions they’d used, which was something.

If the dungeon run had gone better, it would have been better, but even with a poison drake to deal with, the Path wasn’t going to rain endless amounts of gold down on them.

It was too bad that the drake had killed all the other monsters in the dungeon, since their cores and materials would have been worth a lot, but there were over a hundred wraith shards scattered across the arena, as well as some Hesen cores and the drake itself to harvest.

That would be worth a bit.

He’d only had a few silver to his name when he entered the dungeon, and the staff he’d earned was worth several hundred gold at a minimum, so he couldn’t complain. 

The last notification from the Path was about the guild.

Your guild badge has recorded your accomplishments, which will be acknowledged by the Stars Alliance when you return to a guild hall.

140 Guild Credits have been added to your badge.

Guild credits were roughly worth a silver each. They could be traded in at a guild hall for almost anything except coins. 

They could be used to rent rooms, buy equipment or potions, and more. 

It was one of the ways the guild rewarded adventurers for being a part of it and completing a dungeon. As long as you kept at it, the guild would support you.

A dungeon at this level would normally have rewarded about 70 credits, roughly equivalent to the level of the boss, but this one had given them double that.

140 credits was equivalent to seven gold.

With the notifications complete, he checked on the others. 

They would all receive similar rewards.

It looked like they were in the process of working through their notifications too, since their levels had increased.

It was a common adventurer’s habit to do it as soon as possible, especially if you were injured, since gaining new levels could help to promote healing, both from new abilities and from Constitution gains. 

At some point, he would have to devote points to Constitution, since it would strengthen his body and natural defenses, but for now it was more important to focus on magic.

He took stock of the team’s changes.

Maro had gained 4 levels and reached 59, while Serai and Galin had gained 5 levels each. She had reached 55 and he was at 58 now.

Since Kelin was a lower level, he’d gained more overall levels than them, but the numbers were reduced since he was splitting it with Gaius. He probably would have reached 54 or 55 otherwise and been close to Serai. 

With that, he closed his eyes and went back to meditating and working on the poison.

Now that he was getting some mana back, he slowed down the fight against the poison, letting it break on his resistance instead of destroying it directly.

Time passed and he had to divert some mana to renew the Soulfire Sigil as it began to flicker.

With his Wisdom a bit higher and the boost from Soulfire Sigil, he was regenerating around 53% of his mana every hour, or roughly 242 points. 

His wounds slowly closed and his main struggle was against the poison, but now that he had the reserves to deal with it if necessary, he let it rage unchecked.

About a tenth of his blood had been polluted with the drake’s poison and its tier was higher than his resistance, so the struggle was intense. 

About an hour later, he finally got the notification he was waiting for.

Your Poison Resistance has improved by a tier and reached Elite.

A trace of a smile flickered across his lips. 

Poison resistance was a critical skill, useful for everything from saving your stomach after you ate bad food to fighting poison drakes, and now it was his highest-tier ability.

The other ones would have to catch up.

Now that his resistance matched the tier of the drake’s poison, the pain began to disappear and his body started clearing the remnants on its own. Before long, the last of it would be gone.

He checked on the team and channeled some healing toward them until his mana dropped to 10%, and then he went back to meditating.

The cycle of healing and meditating continued for the next several hours until everyone was more or less recovered. Galin’s guts were back in place and Serai had purged the poison and reached the Advanced tier, while the other two had reached Expert.

Everyone was looking better with the exception of Maro’s arm.

Rebuilding that was beyond the tier of Kelin’s healing skill, so it would have to wait for them to return to the guild.

He didn’t ask what their rewards were in detail, but he was confident that they’d received just as much as he had, including a unique item and ability upgrades.

Instead, he looked across the field at the drake’s corpse and the remains of the wraiths and Hesen. Then he sighed as he climbed to his feet.

The others chuckled in agreement, but they stood up as well to join him. None of them wanted to do the work, but it was gold lying on the ground, so there was no way they were going to leave it here.

A mana blade appeared in Kelin’s hand as he walked toward the drake.

It took a couple of hours, but between his blade that could slice through the scales and everyone’s help, they divided the drake into sections, from its scales to its bones, and everyone filled their spatial bags with as much as they could carry.

They didn’t have unlimited storage, so there was a lot left over.

Kelin used some of the bowls and vials from the assassin to bottle up the drake’s blood and venom from the sacs near its fangs, and the others did the same with what they had on hand.

The guild would buy it for their alchemist shops, so it was all worth taking. It would eventually be turned into poisons or antidote potions, or perhaps rarer things.

He ended up getting a good amount of drake meat that hadn’t been ripped apart by their attacks and there was no way he could carry it all, so he set up a fire to roast it as they worked. 

A little while later, they all had drake steaks to eat.

It was a juicy and flavorful steak that was just a little dense to chew, and it tasted nothing at all like the beast it had come from. 

Galin brought out bottles of dwarven ale from his storage and passed them around, and Serai added some sylvan dessert of crystalline spun sugar and fruit, and they had a good meal.

After that, they cleared off the rest of the field and divided up the wraith shards and cores, as well as a few items from the Hesen that had survived the battle.

There were a couple more staves and jewelry from the Hesen casters, including two more Necklaces of Warding that the lizards had never had time to use.

Kelin and Serai both ended up with one, as well as another staff. One held acid bolts, while the other was pure mana, and he let Serai have the choice.

She took the pure mana one, so he stuck the Staff of Acid Bolt into his storage. This one was fresh with 25 charges.

The Necklace of Warding had 3 charges again and he hung it around his neck to replace the old one that had disintegrated.

He added forty more wraith shards to his storage, which brought him up to 62 after the ones he’d used for their resistance training, as well as three Hesen cores. 

One of them was the chieftain’s core and the other two were from a bodyguard and an officer. The others had insisted he take all of the Hesen cores since he’d killed them by himself, but he shook his head and split the rest with them.

Maro and Galin got a good part of the remaining loot, including the chieftain’s axe to split, since Kelin and Serai already had the items from the casters.

It was a fair trade, mostly due to the Necklaces of Warding. They were expensive artifacts and not easily found. The fact that the first one had blocked three attacks from the drake, or nearly so, showed their value.

They were a good backup defense for a mage.

By the time they were done, they were all carrying oversized backpacks full of extra loot that didn’t fit in their storage.

Kelin's spatial pocket and belt were both stuffed with the most valuable things, while he had a towering backpack of his own with the less valuable materials.

One thing young adventurers always carried on them was a giant bag for that exact reason. If you wanted to make the most of a dungeon run, you couldn’t leave things behind.

It made them look a little ridiculous, but the reality of what they’d accomplished was enough to ignore it.

As for the poison drake's core, which was slightly better than the chieftain's, he let them take it as proof of the problem that the dungeon faced. They could turn it in at the guild when they demanded something be done about the assassin that had followed them.

There was a dungeon portal that had appeared at the center of the arena, which was the quick way out of the dungeon, but the other three shook their heads as they saw it.

They still had to go back for Sarella. 

Kelin walked with them as they returned up the road and found the spot where they’d left the coffin. Maro insisted on carrying her body even though it was awkward with his missing arm, and the four of them headed back to the dungeon entrance.

The portal was still in the same place as before and the soul mark Kelin had left on it was strong.

As he stepped through the portal, it shimmered with starlight on top of an endless black expanse of the Void, washing over him like celestial water as he walked between realms.

The Shieldrun Forest was filled with sunlight as he walked out on the other side.