CWD: OE ~ Thirty-Five

Nacho lifted Jennifer in a Princess carry, clasping her hand and trying to reassure her—even though he knew there was a chance, however small, that she would be nothing more than a burned-out husk in the next few minutes. “It always feels like death when you upgrade your Character Class a Tier higher. You’ll get through this.”

She gasped, gagged, and nearly convulsed out of his arms onto the countertop. His reflexes were enough to make sure she stayed safe, but it was a close call. A strange secondary effect caught his attention as well, though he would likely never be able to tell her directly to her face: As the energy changed her body, she became significantly heavier. Her bones gained density, as did her muscles. If he had to guess, her nerves underwent a process that moved them further from normal human fleshy nerves and more into something like fiber optics.

As the process began to slow down, Nacho huffed out a long sigh of relief. The conversation regarding some people not being able to reach Tier two could wait a little bit longer.

Jennifer blinked a few times, then motioned that she wanted to walk. Nacho stuck close, ready in case she stumbled, and he watched her test out her new limits, as well as upgrading her Skills at the same time. She finally grinned at him as she adjusted to her new features. “That’s… so cool. I had Purify before, but boosting my skill gave me a Tier two Enhancement: Corrupt. Here, read it for yourself. Let me bold this… there. I hid most of it, since I only really want you to see these two upgrades.”

Jennifer Ales

Class: Soda Pop Priestess

Level: 20

Skill Slots (5/5)

• Boot Camp Brewmeister (Passive) Level 29: Can use any Satiation Player item as a weapon, adds bonus damage of one point/per skill level (currently 29 HP) to base weapon damage.
  • Tier 1 Enhancement: Hurl any Satiation Player Item at your enemies!
  • Tier 2 Enhancement: Triple Strike. When attacking with a Satiation Player item, you can attack with three of the same item at the same time. Must have the items in your possession!
• Purify/Corrupt (Active) Level 29: Remove Putrid Mana from all sources of water everywhere! Make one gallon of delicious water per level (currently 29 gallons).
  • Tier 1 Enhancement: Process water from 15 feet away!
  • Tier 2 Enhancement: Corrupt! Use your new Corrupt skill to add Putrid Mana back into people’s drinks and spoil their food. Note: Consuming corrupted drinks will add on a hidden Putrid Mana debuff!

“Huh. Didn’t know you could intentionally bold things,” Nacho muttered as he read over the abilities. “You know, this practically makes you a frontline fighter if I let you hold on to the Sewer Skewers. With that bonus of twenty damage to an item, that allows a single one of them to land for forty-five damage by itself. Then, if that stacks as well? Abyss… this is awesome.”

“Before I forget, Reuben transferred his entire two million to me.” Jennifer brightened up and flashed Nacho a dazzling smile. ‘Let me give you everything that I didn’t use. That is… are you going to upgrade to the next Tier?”

“I…” Nacho paused to really consider it. If he did, he’d have more Health and be stronger. Still, there was a good chance he’d lose his armor. It wouldn’t stop him from using it to cook, but it would leave him more vulnerable than he would be otherwise. There was one major issue with keeping his armor: Arriod’s first strike when they entered the starvation dungeon had flat out ignored the protections that he had in place. When it came down to it, his armor needed to be stored away so that he could be as mobile as possible. There was no stopping attacks at that level, apparently. There was only dodging them.

That line of thinking was more than enough to set his decision in stone. Nacho caught up with his friends and called out, “I’m going to level, and then see if it’s possible to bring my Sunday Brunch Armor up to Tier two.”

Brie shot Jennifer an inquisitive look. ‘Did you manage to upgrade your magic items?”

Jennifer’s smile didn’t waver a bit. “Yeah, I did! I’m carbonating at Tier two.”

The Berserker let out a frustrated grunt. “I'm happy for you, but for some reason you seem to be a darling of the Patrons. Not to sound mean, Nacho, but it looks like they really want your head on a silver platter.”

Nacho bought the remaining Experience Points to bring himself from level nineteen to level twenty, mentally firming his will and preparing for the agony. He had experienced this once before, and understood exactly what it was going to take to survive as well as succeed. Moments later, his joints felt like they were full of broken glass. His blood flow slowed, as it had seemingly turned into condensed tomato soup on the verge of boiling. He cried out and staggered forward blindly as hands reached out to hold him.

His thoughts swam back into focus an indefinite amount of time later, and he found himself swaying gently back and forth as Reuben carried him across the butcher block countertop. Various System messages flashed through his brain, sending bright red warnings about everything from his HungerCry Knives, to his Sunday Brunch Armor.

He tapped his friend on the side and was gently eased to the ground. Nacho glanced at his feet and noticed that his metal boots had gained an extra piece of metal—a square-shaped tube up the side of his leg. Opening his mouth to tell his people what he had learned, the words caught in his mouth as the world went quiet. His eyes swept the area, homing in on where the constant white noise had been coming from. That was when he realized: the garbage disposal had shut off.

The faucet continued to gush, meaning there was a good chance that they’d soon be seeing Scratch-Bite leveraging his way out of the sink. “You guys keep going; I’ll boost my skills real quick, then catch up. I shouldn’t have to say this out loud, but going up Tiers is the worst.”

Reuben stubbornly stayed right next to him as Nacho watched the rest of his team hurry across the countertop toward the stove in the distance, which was rising like a mountain to meet them. He hurriedly dumped credits into his upgrades, then took a look at the portions that mattered to him.

Eli ‘Nacho’ Naches

Class: Subpar Sous Chef

Level: 20

Build Type: Balanced, Delayed

Body:

• Fitness: 30
• Metabolic Efficiency: 30

Mind:

• Mental Energy: 30
• Circuit: 30

Satiation:

• Hunger: 100
• Thirst: 100

Total Health Points: 70

Bonus Physical Damage: 15%

Health Regen: 30% Health Regen/minute

Total Mana Pool: 55

Bonus Spell Damage: 15%

Mana Pool Regen: 30% Mana Regen/minute

Skill Slots (5/5)

• Small Blades (Passive) Level 29: 58% bonus damage on all knife attacks.
  • Tier 1 Enhancement: Your blades can slice from up to 6 inches away from their edge!
  • Tier 2 Enhancement: Razor-Sharp Wit! With your Razor-Sharp Wit Skill, you can permanently increase the sharpness of one of your knives! Adds your skill level in HP damage (Currently 29). Can only be recast if the current blade is lost, sold, or stolen.
• Ingredient Processing (Active) Level 29: Remove Putrid Mana from monsters up to Level 31.
  • Tier 1 Ranged Attack Enhancement: Process ingredients from 15 feet away.
  • Tier 2 Enhancement: Prep Work! With your Prep Work skill, start processing monster meat before the monster is even dead! Removing Putrid Mana from a living monster will inflict this skill level in damage (Currently 29).
• Cooking Magic (Active) Level 29: Create food that enhances a single stat by 145% of max.
  • Tier 1 Enhancement: Tier 1 Enhancement: Throw magic into a food item you cooked from 15 feet away!
  • Tier 2 Enhancement—Make your dishes irresistible! Increase the pleasure and power of what you cook by enhancing taste and perfecting texture by 29%!
• Feasting Feats (Active) Level 19: Cook 29 times the food you’re currently preparing!
  • Tier 1 Enhancement: you can choose up to five locations which people can use like a vending machine! At the low, low cost of 15% of the sale price, people no longer need to come bother you directly for their food. It’ll just appear in front of them, in whatever location you specify, within 500 feet of the food source.
    • Caution! As this is meant as a feast for many, and not for one, only a single portion of each meal created through the use of this skill can be eaten by each person!
  • Tier 2 Lure Enhancement—All Feasting Feats-created food can act as a lure for creatures up to level: 31. All resulting food odors and aesthetics improved by 58%.
• Baby Bird(ing) (Active) Level 29: You eat the food, and one person of your choice within 15 feet gets 58% of the Hunger Points consumed.
  • Tier 1 Enhancement: Three people of your choice within 30 feet regain 58% of the Hunger Points you consume.
  • Tier 2 Enhancement: Speed Eating! Speed Eating allows you to down a full portion of food in the same time it takes others to finish a quarter portion. Impress your friends! Eat more of their food faster!

Nacho wasn’t sure about his new Tier two Enhancements, even if two of them really got him excited.

“Those upgrades are awesome!” Reuben exploded with unbridled excitement. “Your Tier two Small Blades enhancement is giving you more bang for your buck; which knife are you going to choose to bless with supernatural sharpness?”

“My cleaver,” Nacho decided instantly. “It’s the easier weapon to use in combat. Nice, simple, chopping motion.”

Hey, there, Cookie! Welcome to Level 20! You are Tier 2 wonderful! Your mana is still adjusting, so we’ll let you know when it settles into a nice, new, aura effect. In the meantime, would you like to upgrade all of your equipment?

Yes / No

Note: Items might explode. There are no guarantees. Upgrade costs fluctuate via market rates.

Nacho chose the ‘no’ option, as that was a trap. At least… something inside him was telling him to wait. Reuben laughed and tiredly called to the others, “Did you know that we thought he was insane when he first started obsessing over knives? To be fair, we didn’t know the world was about to end. Look at him now, using knives and making them as strong as a claymore!”

The cook was focused on his other boosts. Frankly… the Tier two Cooking Magic enhancement was disappointing. He did care that his food wasn’t always tasty. The important part was that it helped people, and he’d hoped that he would’ve been able to find something that would allow him to more easily stack three foods together, so he could increase people’s stats by an utterly massive amount.

Now he would need to put in effort to learn how to properly cook, in order to make higher rarity foods with less effort.

At least his Baby Birding would allow him to eat more, faster, but how much could he shove down his gullet? There was no way to test that skill, given that they were in the Starvation Dungeon. Third, and most exciting to him, was that Ingredient Processing had taken on a distinct combat-oriented aspect. He could remove Putrid Mana from live monsters, and that would cause them damage? Nacho loved the idea of starting to prepare the meat while the monsters were alive. It would speed up killing them, draining them, and once they were dead: cooking them.

Dead last, both in order and in value as far as he was concerned: the Feasting Feats enhancement. Smell? Aesthetics? Who cared about that when you were trying to stay alive?

“Look at it like this.” Reuben had a different opinion, and he wasn’t going to leave it alone until he had his say. “You add a little bit of allure to your feasts, I turn up my Marketing Skill, and we can really attract people to our guild. We’ll be able to bring them in from hundreds of miles around, and you’ll be able to feed all of them with a flick of the wrist.”

Nacho could only force a smile and a nod, then finally looked away to upgrade his HungerCry Knives. All that mattered right now was his damage output, and the last fight had proven that he didn’t have nearly enough.

Wow, Cookie! You’ve come so far, and so have your HungerCry Knives. As you know, they are special objects; they can be upgraded for money, with no risk!

Let’s review what these special knives can do!

• Get 50% more of everything you chop!
• Chop things twice as fast! You use this in Active Combat, and it’s why you get four attacks. You should use it more during Active Cooking. You are a cook, after all.
• Cut through the Mana barrier of any monster one Tier higher than your current level.
• The Tier 1 WarCry enchantment doubles your base damage, so your knives hit like swords.

With that nice little reminder, here’s a list of the Tier 2 abilities that can be yours if the price is right. Note: You can only choose from this list:

Silent Cut (500 credits)—Chop things 75% quieter.

Bountiful Beauty (500 credits)—Improve your Increased Yield to 75%

Hunger Dance (1000 credits)—You know those Japanese restaurants where you can watch the chef cook? This is like that, only when people watch you use your knives during Active Combat or Active Cooking, they become ravenous. This will make onlookers very hungry, directly reducing their Hunger Points by a certain percentage.

Knife Blind (1000 credits)—33% chance of blinding your opponents for 30 seconds because of the beauty of your knifework. If you have chopped an onion in the last hour, this improves to 66% for 60 seconds upon activation.

Garlic Crusher (1000 credits)—Peel 100% of your garlic bulbs in seconds by using the ‘crush’ method. Never run out of garlic. Ever.

Forever Sharp (2000 credits)—The HungerCry knives will automatically sharpen any knives around them to match their degree of sharpness.

Nacho immediately knew which one he’d try. It was a long shot, but he figured he’d give it a try. Most of the time, the Patrons hated anyone trying to mess with the rules in their favor, but in this case, the cook thought he might have a chance.