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Chapter 96 - Austin's Bloodline
🕑 Added 2024-07-31 20:00:07 +0000 UTCThe Mindbreaker
Shit. All of it had gone to shit.
Everything was fine until that one piece of shit chased him halfway across the tutorial.
His plan was working and he was mowing through everything in his way until that one camp. He had thought it was going to be easy. They didn't even have a lot of people either!
He had conquered camps with double their number.
But they were different. Their skills decimated his army and the one of stone made it so his superior numbers couldn't be used effectively. He couldn't blow through the gate and swarm them from inside.
His plan worked perfectly all up until the last one holding the gate.
The monsters with the explosives went and died in the perfect spot. The explosion blew the gate away like it had with all the others.
The only thing he had to do was breach the gate with his army and it would have been fine. But NO.
The man with glowing shields held it off for nearly an hour! Just thinking about it made him grit his teeth in anger.
The two strongest people had left but another monster was in their camp. He held off droves of thralls Craig sent at the wall and it seemed he could have held on for a while more.
Fire ravaged most of his army but that wouldn't have been a problem if they had broken through. The fire mage wouldn't have been able to hold off nearly as many if she was surrounded.
She would have fallen to the pressure of being surrounded like all the rest had.
He even went personally to control the army after it didn't break through initially. He was as close to the battle as he ever had and they still lost!
Numbers had always worked before and this was the first time that it hadn't. It was vexing in a way that made him want to explode in anger.
His army was so large now it was hard to keep control of all of them with his skills and he stopped leveling up a while ago. He sat perpetually at level 50 without any hope of getting any higher.
It only added to his growing frustrations.
He did everything he could to level up but it just wouldn't happen. He killed monsters and men alike in the hopes it would work. He personally slaughtered his own army trying to level up to no avail.
At first, he thought it was a bloodline issue. He had seen the option to buy them from the store but didn't waste the points on them. They were extremely expensive and there was no need for them. He wasn't fighting personally.
After stalling at level 50, he reconsidered. If humans were too weak to evolve, he would gain the bloodline of something that could. He used a lot of points on a suitable one and it boosted his abilities tremendously, but didn't let him level.
He was still stuck at 50.
With no way to level, Craig funneled all of the points his thralls brought into his camp. The fewer monsters he had to leave behind to defend it, the more he could have out conquering pylons.
He went around to all the other camps and brought death through the rest of the tutorial. The only camps left were the ones he couldn't beat.
His camp was the most upgraded he had seen in the tutorial. Massive stone walls ran along the edge of his camp in a circle, over 25 feet in the air. Battlements ran along the top providing cover from ranged attacks and the gate had kill holes for anything too close.
It was a marvel of magic and engineering.
He had spent a massive amount of points on it. From the 9 pylons he used to have, he funneled all of the points into one camp. After the waves, the armies defending other pylons would march back here to give up their points.
All until only 8 arrived one day.
One of his camps had fallen. At the time he didn't think much of it. He couldn't feel the connections he instilled in his thralls so he couldn't keep track of them instantaneously and had assumed they fell to the wave.
The camp that fell wasn't that strong to begin with. He conquered it from some jackass who thought he was some god. Kept saying this was his chance to rise above others and grasp his destiny.
He now ambled along with the others of his camp doing what Craig told him to do.
So much for destiny.
After the camp failed to bring back his points, he went to investigate. He didn't like wasting time on things like this but he wanted to confirm what he already knew.
After reaching the camp, he saw a different scene.
It didn't fall to the monsters but to men. It was clearly an attack raised against the camp and it wasn't monsters. There were no monsters left over from the battle around the pylon to signify it falling.
The bodies weren't eaten and the place was looted. It was clear what happened and he knew who did it too.
It was the same bastard that chased him for over 4 hours. He had to run all the way back to his capital after the failed attack, wasting a significant amount of time.
After seeing who camp fell to, he had to reevaluate his plan. There were 5 waves left and they would only get stronger. From his scouting reports, there were only 3 camps left.
The obnoxious trapper in the jungle, the man of ice in the north, and the desert coalition in the south. All three had held out for the 73 days the tutorial had gone on.
It was more like 2 camps now that the northern one merged with the trapper.
The rest were gone, either swallowed by monsters, joined him in his mission, or abandoned to join one of the others. All the other camps fell. Either to him or the monsters.
There were no more camps to conquer. No more revenge to have. The only camps left were too strong for him to beat. They had massive amounts of warriors and walls nearly as good as his.
They both saw the threat of the tutorial for what it was early on and took massive steps to survive.
Both had taken firm hold of the points earned and fed them into defenses and that was one of the only reasons they were still alive. All other camps that tried other methods fell.
Except for one, but they gave up. If they had stayed they would have died like all the rest.
Two camps.
Two more and his quest would be complete. There was no need to keep his army stationed everywhere else. He would pull them all back here, to his capital.
There were still strings he could pull on and things he could do, but he would save those for later when their use would be most effective.
He would wait them out and attack after the last wave. When they were weakest and when they thought it was over.
He had to go around to all the pylons he owned personally to retrieve his armies stationed there but it was worth it.
His steadfast castle would be bursting at the seams with his army and he would wait out the pitiful humans who remained.
All to finish his mission.
~~
Chris
Day 75
Austin and I spent every waking moment fighting and doing battle all in the attempt to gain points.
After the first day of fighting pylons, something unsettling happened. The fallen pylons on their way were all normal except for when they reached the first camp that should have held thralls.
They were gone.
The whole camp had been abandoned. No people, monsters, or anything in between. It was a ghost town.
It frustrated me to no end. I wanted to whittle down the camps until killing the man responsible but my plans had been dashed.
All it took was flagging down one of the birds perpetually following us to get a response.
The Beastmaster could see through the eyes of the birds, or so I was told, and I wrote down my question.
The Beast lady read it and gave her answer to Abigail, who had returned down south after healing me, and she would message me with the answer.
I wasn't sure if there was a character limit on her skill but all of her messages were short and to the point.
"Abandoned camps. Concentrated on one. All but his 'capital' are gone."
It was not good news. The so-called 'capital' was the strongest camp he had and it wasn't something they could smash through.
They could do that to the weak camps because their walls and gates were weak. The scouting report on the camp in question told them the last camp was anything but weak.
I wouldn't be able to kill the man if he stayed in his capital. The thought of being unable to do anything rankled me.
I wanted to kill him, to be done with the looming threat, but I couldn't.
Tracy outright refused to help attack it and the only help I could get was from my family.
The camp gave me a bad feeling and something told me ignoring it was a problem. I wanted it dealt with and soon.
Leaving the problem to fester was a recipe for disaster.
I wanted it gone.
~~
"Is that enough for you?" I asked out of breath.
It was late into the night and there would be a wave tomorrow. I wanted to go home and rest but Austin asked for one more pylon.
After finding out my foe turtled up, Austin and I turned to the fallen pylons for points.
We went through them as fast as we could for their points.
In the three days we had been fighting we had racked up quite the sum. We could fight 4 pylons a day depending on how strong they were.
Any more and we risked serious injury. My stamina was bottomed out and so was my mana. My endurance was high but hours of fighting took their toll.
Each pylon gave anywhere from 150k to 200k points. We were getting almost 1 million a day.
For three days we did this. Day 73 after the wave, Day 74, and today, Day 75.
I was tired.
We spent nearly every waking moment fighting or resting so we could fight again. My body was spent.
The thought of turning on the Rune and a good night's rest was the only thing keeping me going. The cold would wash all the exhaustion away and get me ready for the wave tomorrow.
I wanted to take today off but Austin said he was so close, so I acquiesced.
"Yep! I can finally get it!" Even as tired as I knew he was, excitement pepped him up.
"Good, because I'm going to sleep." We had stayed at our camp, rather than Tracy's, and it was a good trek away.
My bed was calling me.
After getting back and turning the Rune on, my eyes closed as soon as I laid down. Austin complained about the cold but I didn't care. I spent all day helping him, he could deal with a little cold.
Points: 4,023,923
The points were worth it. We had to spend a generous amount on healing potions and stamina potions to keep up our pace but even I couldn't continue at the pace we were going.
I was close to the one I wanted myself.
Austin was acting like a kid on Christmas morning when we woke up.
He had everything he needed to evolve. He didn't care about grinding every possible advantage out as he could and the only thing he was waiting on was his bloodline.
He had enough points to finally buy the bloodline. He planned out getting used to it for a few days then evolving when he got enough points for the material needed.
Tracy's camp was a higher level than ours and it had more options revealed than ours. It had more, higher-tiered options for bloodlines than ours did and it made me finally make a decision. I picked one that I thought would be best. It was strong, had an Arctic affinity, and could evolve into something great.
It was the whole package.
The cost was over 5 million but it was well worth it in my opinion and I would be getting it soon. The wave today should put me most of the way there.
Austin's choice was 3.8 million and he just got enough from the last pylon. Even seeing the new options Tracy's camp had, he stuck with his original choice. Since our pylon was high enough level to buy it, he wasted no time in doing so.
I had barely been able to convince him to wait for morning last night.
Not knowing what to expect, I just sat and watched. Austin went over and rested his hand on the pylon for a bit before a vial appeared in his hand.
I already knew which one he picked but threw an [Identify] at it anyway.
[Bloodline essence of the Golden Sun Eagle]
It was a higher-tier bloodline and the one that Austin wanted. He was fixated on bird bloodlines in hopes of eventually evolving it into some kind of phoenix.
There were hosts of solar affinity bloodlines he skipped over to focus on birds: Radiant Lions, Sun Leopards, Solar Wolves.
It would give him a boost to his solar affinity, his agility, and perception. At least that was what the description said in the store.
What it would really do when called upon it was still unknown.
Austin wasted no time and gulped the whole thing down. After swallowing, his whole body began to light up and he even started to melt the ice around him.
Steam wafted off of his body as the light intensified before it vanished as suddenly as it came.
I looked at him expectantly and he only had a stupid grin on his face.
"Well?" I asked.
"It's perfect!"
"What does it feel like?"
"It hurt a bit at first but it wasn't anything too bad. It settled over my entire body like a warm glove. It was like basking in the intense sun for too long. Not entirely painful but not entirely pleasant."
He started to hop around testing his arms and legs to feel the difference before looking back up at me.
"Wanna test it!"
I most certainly did.
Our fight was tame but we still pushed ourselves a little. I had to be ready for the wave and Austin was still getting used to it.
He said that it made him faster and more precise with his spear and I could attest to that. His stabs took on a new form from the boost. He could see openings and weaknesses better and his eyes could see and evaluate the fight better.
When he called on it, his body began to glow and the boosts got even stronger. The bird of prey was a good choice and he became even more deadly because of it.
With the boost from both perception and agility, he could perceive openings and exploit them with lethal efficiency.
It was startling to fight against.
If he got that much stronger from his, what would mine do?
Comments
Demonlord
Thanks for the chapter 😊 Can't wait for the next chapter and his fight against the wave. Maybe he'll get enough points to buy his bloodline and then attack the mindbreaker 😁 I wonder if he can use his ice fortress to form a stairway over the walls of the mindbreaker castle
