Accidental Healer-Chapter 129 - 43 - Layton gets an upgrade

Without warning the decision locked into place.

A second later I was on my feet.

My spirit robes shined like a beacon from atop the waterfall, so bright I needed to use my hands to shield my eyes. I could tell that something was changing, pieces moved and shifted across my body—starting at my chest and expanding from there.

At the risk of being blinded, I cautiously peeked through my fingers to find that the light had dimmed considerably and was now at a point where it was a dull golden glow. At a glance there didn't seem to be all that much that changed, besides maybe the golden embroidery crawling further into the grey fabric.

But the surface wasn't where I felt the changes.

I pressed a hand against my chest and felt the soft touch of the delicate fabric, and something solid…

"That's not my chest—"

Fingers worked to loosen the drawstrings across my chest, and I pulled the top portion open to expose my torso underneath. More golden light spilled free revealing that the fabric was never the main source of the light.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust and I blinked a few times to clear the stars in my vision. Gradually, the glow dimmed like a dying bulb and I was left holding my robes open until my eyes readjusted to the darkness of the night.

Slowly but surely, my vision returned and I was finally able to see the changes clearly.

I let the fabric drop and ran my fingers across the dark grey steel that now covered my chest completely.

"Well I'll be…" I mused following the steel towards my shoulder, where it dropped off, replaced by fine twined chain mail that extended to my shoulder where the steel plate started again. Excitedly I began prodding my body all over pleased to find steel plates covering all but my head and joints.

Even more impressive, with my robe closed, the armor vanished beneath it. To a stranger, I'd look like any other healer. Wondering what else might've changed or if maybe there were some details on the new upgrade to my spirit robe, I pulled up my screen and found the description of the item.

As I opened the description there was a sound similar to metal wind chimes and a small message appeared.

Healer's Cloak (Spirit Item) has evolved to Plated Healers Robes (Spirit Item)

I read the updated description.

Plated Healer's Robes:

Absorbs ambient mana and grows with the owner, inheriting traits from skills and titles. Enhances potency of healer class spells while reducing mana consumption. Equipped with uncommon grade mana plates. Mana plates will upgrade as the user levels.

Auto-equips and self-repairs.

My complaints about the passive abilities of my new Knight of Tranquility class vanished in a second. The upgrade couldn't have come sooner. Time and time again I'd been shown new and unique ways by my enemies to counter barrier abilities, and each of those times I'd been left without an answer.

Whether it was Aggard's dagger, the soccer mom witch, or even Trasnik's mana leaching armor each time someone countered my skills it left me painfully exposed.

This new upgrade was an immediate and impressive fix to that problem. Of course, there was always Damon and his armory. If I was patient, sooner or later full sets of armor would be easy enough to come by, but this just felt so much more natural. Plus, if I was reading the description correctly, it seemed like there would be more upgrades to the armor in my future. Assuming we lived through the scourge trial of course.

So far the scourge trial was more an inconvenience then anything.

I scratched my chin, and toggled to my other spirit item.

Tranquility (Level 36 Spirit weapon)

Spirit weapons absorb ambient mana and grow with the owner, inheriting traits from skills and titles. This spirit sword has gained traits that enhance the quality of summoned barriers. Shielding spells cast by the user will consume less mana while also creating more powerful shields. Enhancements scale with both wisdom and Intelligence stats of the user.

Tranquility has begun to feel. She recognizes those judged by her wielder. When the wielder of this blade deems an enemy worthy of death Tranquility hungers to enact judgement. Her blade will grow blue and add enhanced piercing damage to all armor and magical shields.

Wielder Skill: Phantom blade - Can summon a second blade that acts autonomously to parry incoming attacks on the wielder. Phantom blade slowly consumes mana to maintain its form.

And just like that my class gained a third ability. A toothy smile spread across my face and with a slight "shhink" I pulled Tranquility free holding the pommel and laying the cool blade across my palm.

I noticed the change immediately, in the form of a light green crystal about the size of a dime set just beneath the pommel in the soft blue steel. By channeling mana I was able to sense the skill in my mind and instinctively knew just how to cast it, which I did.

A thin line of emerald green smoke puffed from the gem forming quickly into an exact ethereal replica of Tranquility floating an arms length away suspended in the air. Step by step I circled the floating green sword admiring the impressive detail.

I frowned. It was too bad nothing was here to attack me. I'd really like to see how the skill worked in live combat.

There was always the chaos spawn attacking at intervals. But I had a feeling this skill would be a tad overkill for those little buggers. We still had the third anomaly though that needed clearing, that seemed like a nice place to start. Besides it would be good to get it closed and evolve some more of the catkin, they had an entire territory to protect and would need to be strong enough to fend for themselves against bigger waves of chaos spawn.

Before I did that though I wanted to take a quick peek at my gains.

Layton Shepard

HUMAN

Humans are well-rounded and adaptable. Receives +5 free points per level.

CLASS

Warden of Judgement (Level 36)

Constitution: +2, Strength: +3, Agility: +2, Wisdom: +9, Intelligence: +10, Sense: +3

Knight of Tranquility (Founder) (Level 25)

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Constitution: +8, Strength: +8, Agility: +8, Wisdom: +4, Intelligence: +4, Sense: +2

STATS

HP: 178/178

MP: 301/301

Constitution: 168

Strength: 266

Agility: 269

Wisdom: 288

Intelligence: 291

Sense: 109

FOUNDER

The order of tranquility - An order dedicated to the pursuit of true tranquility. Its members believe calm is not the absence of chaos, but mastery over it.

ABILITIES

Swooping blade - Extends a sword's range in a swooping strike. Scales with Str.

Piercing lunge – Extends a sword's piercing range. Scales with Str/Agi.

Dash – Boosts user's speed over short distances. Scales with Agi.

Battle sense - Passive skill that enhances awareness in combat, while also improving effectiveness of skill-books. Scales with sense.

Alignment of will: (Passive) When allies align with your ideals they receive a buff based on level of conviction.

Bond of trust: (Passive) Your spirit tools develop more intimately with your needs.

SPELLS

Defender's Aura – Creates a field of energy that enhances the shield integrity for everyone within its radius judged as allies. Note even spells not cast by the user. Area size is adjustable; the larger the area, the higher the mana cost. Scales with Wisdom and Intelligence.

Dome of Protection – Projects a barrier shielding against all ranged attacks. This shield will only repel ranged attacks outside its casted radius, any attack from within the shields radius will not be repelled. Strength and size scale with Intelligence.

Heal – Minor healing, scales with Wis/Int.

Regenerate Health – Heals small amounts every 5 mins for 60 mins; duration + strength scale with Wis.

Barrier – A protective shield that breaks after a damage threshold or 30 mins, whichever comes first. Scales with Int.

Healing Wave - Projects a wave of health to perceived allies. The larger the wave the greater the man consumption. Scales with wisdom.

OBJECTIVES

Grow your faction to 25,000 occupants.

Grow your faction to five regions and hold them for three months.

TITLES

Forerunner – First to set foot on the new world (+5% exp).

Man or a Mouse – Forgo a full tutorial and remove fail-safes (+10 to every stat, +10% each stat). Requirements: Survive the first trial. (Met)

Follow the Leader – Be the first human to slay a monster after induction (+2 to each stat).

A Path Paved in Blood – Slay 1,000 monsters first (+5 to each stat).

Dungeon Savant - Be the first human to have a perfect dungeon run on a newly inducted planet. +3 to all stats +3% to all stats.

Pencil or Sword -

Be the first human on a newly inducted world to reach 100 in intelligence. +10 int. +1 int per level.

You can't teach speed - be the first human in a newly inducted world to reach 100 in Agility. +10 AG +1 AG per level.

Evolution underdog - Defeat a foe with an evolved class while still unevolved. +5 to all stats.

Slave liberator - Defeating a faction and inheriting their slave property you have chosen to grant freedom as opposed to maintaining ownership. + 15 wisdom

Arbiter of Judgement - You have taken the first step in accepting your role as a warden of judgement. (+5 to each stat, +5% to each stat)

What's the big Ideal? - Establish the first ideal for your faction. (+15 strength, +15 Wisdom)

Living up to the name - You have truly embraced your name "Shepard" herding new members under your banner, even the black sheep. +25 to wisdom, +25 to strength.

A merciful end - Sometimes in the cosmos, existence is worse than death. + 25 wisdom.

***

It stung a little to see how far that my senses stat was lagging behind all the rest. Mischief might've had a point when he suggested that I started taking it more seriously. The more stats I gained the more I was able to understand how some supported others, and I was starting to feel like my lagging sense was hampering my much higher agility numbers.

To test the theory, I dumped every +5 human stat bonus from the last four levels into senses. I nodded satisfied when a blinking section caught my eye.

Order of Tranquility

The name itself was a bit dramatic. It reminded me of something from an old medieval novel but I toggled onto the tab anyway.

A wire chart filled my vision.

When I was in college I had a business class and we'd discussed mapping an organization and the structure and responsibilities of each of the roles within the company. The teacher described it as something called an org chart.

That is essentially what was in my face now. Empty squares with titles next to them like treasurer, speaker, squire and so on. With each title came a brief description of the responsibilities within the order. My face and name were in the corner of the chart, not attached but floating separately.

I grimaced. The picture the system had somehow acquired of me was with my mouth half open and one eyed closed. The title next to the name was, of course, founder.

"Not cool." I said to no one in particular.

Above the chart was a brief description.

An order is a special social circle dedicated to a specific cause. Other people and factions can request aid from an order, and assign missions at a cost. Complete missions to gain acclaim and spread your influence across the universe.

In the top right corner of the screen was the word ACCLAIM followed by a score of 0.

How in the world did we gain acclaim if we had a score of 0? More importantly, were people able to see the org chart? How was I supposed to change this head shot?

After a few seconds of clicking the headshot over and over in different ways, I finally gave up. In spite of the terrible picture I was pretty excited about the concept. It sort of reminded me of a guild or even the knights of the round table. I was already running through who the members of our order might be.

The obvious names came to mind, and some not so obvious. What would happen if I pulled someone like Norso into the order? Would it give him a purpose? Did that look like rewarding someone who plotted against me?

There was a lot to think about.

The rushing roar of the waterfall several dozen feet below acted as the perfect white noise to accompany my thoughts around the new order and my armor. After all that had happened tonight it felt good to not be in a hurry.

And I closed my eyes allowing my thoughts to drift into daydreams of arriving to find my parents happy and healthy with incredible classes of their own to show off. My dad and I would compare stats and share war stories while my mom teased that we were such nerds. Somehow it felt both good and bad to let my imagination work. Like a bitter sweet of what might be.

Suddenly, I was drawn from my thoughts when there was a tug at my arm and my eyes popped open. Glancing to the source of the disturbance, two beady little red eyes stared right back.

A chaos spawn was latched onto my forearm.

"Ahhh, what the heck!" I exclaimed, stumbling to my feet waving my arm. To its credit, the little demon held on tight its body flailing wildly at me trying to shake it free. I stopped swinging my arm and realized that although the chaos spawn was latched to my arm, there was no pain at all.

Awesome.

My armor was solid enough to withstand a bite from a level one chaos spawn. I raised my arm up in front of my face, chaos spawn dangling at eye level. Drool dripped from the sides of its mouth and for several seconds we just looked at each other.

Three months ago this monster along with a bunch of its friends nearly killed me.

Now, it was almost laughable hanging there looking like a starved little furry baby. Not that I would laugh at a starving baby of course, but I mean, you get it.

I reached out with my free hand wrapping my fingers around the emaciated torso and pulled softly. Teeth scraped against metal and fabric ripped as I peeled the monster slowly from my arm. Its teeth slipped free and snapped shut, then it lost its mind and flailed helplessly in my grip prying and gnashing at my fingers. I couldn't even feel its effort.

"I'm not really sure what you things are. But you interrupted a nice evening." I told it, before cocking back my arm and launching it screeching into the night.