Chapter 513

“Stop doing that!” Arthur snapped, exasperated at Rick. He watched the falling buzzards, monsters that had been sniped out of the air by his fellow Clan mate with his rifle with exasperation. “The quest only needs two dozen killed.”

“I told you, you should learn how to shoot too,” Rick said, letting out a shrill whistle. The pair of bound beast loped forward, the monsters closer to scaled wolves than hunting dogs. They started gathering the creatures with water tendrils that emerged from their back, running back moments later to deposit the beast by Rick’s feet before heading back for more. “Wish we could take these with us.”

“Uh huh.” Arthur pointed a finger at Rick. “Go finish the quest and head on. You can oversee the building if you’re going so fast.”

“Oh, come on. That’s Mel’s job,” Rick whined.

“Is that why you’re not shooting hers?” Uswah said, slipping up right behind him causing Rick to startle and jump. His rifle half-rose before it stopped and he shot her a dirty glare.

“Don’t do that!”

“Mmmm… bad. You go. She needs more time to train,” Uswah said.

“That’s right!” Arthur said, triumphantly.

“You too. So slow,” Uswah said, with a roll of her eyes.

Arthur growled, but had to admit, she was not wrong. His Energy Darts were slow. He was so used to making them interesting or powerful, to adding new aspects like their explosive strength or penetrating power or poison that he had grown out of practice at forming the darts themselves normally.

All of which meant that by the time he managed to form and release an energy dart, Rick had shot his target and Rick’s own out of the air. The only good thing was that if you waited around long enough, the weird scaled-buzzard creatures that made up this floor returned.

With Rick being chivied away by the others and Uswah taking over the role of watching over him as he stood, unguarded on a shooting platform, Arthur focused upon speeding up the production and release of attacks. It was – a little – dangerous to just stand around, since anyone from any of the other shooting platforms could hit him.

However, it was – sadly – an unavoidable risk. Also, it would take a proper sniper to hit him, since the platforms were all placed a few hundred meters apart. The usual pistols and shotguns that most used would be insufficient. And even the hunting rifles that most people wielded would need a decent shot to hit him; never mind the headshot that would be necessary to kill him.

Theoretically. For obvious reasons, Arthur was uncertain if he would die from a headshot. His body had toughened over and above a normal human’s, though he had never purchased a tougher skin based trait. Perhaps he would look into that, the next time. And his Skill technique was an active one, though some minor benefits did make their way along the passive use of such skills.

Perhaps he might look into acquiring a passive toughness skill later on, though it would not be in this particular Tower. Not only was the plan to speedrun it as much as possible after sucking whatever lessons it offered dry, but the techniques for sale mostly were variations of ranged attacks, accuracy enhancing techniques and a couple of speed ones.

Nothing particularly useful for him.

For now, he focused on the way the energy built up, the way he wove his energy together. He had altered some of his traits since he had first learnt how to build the energy darts and for the first time in a long while, he went over the base form.

It was at this point that he realised how badly he had mismanaged the earliest creation of it, comparing it to the notes and memories of what it should have been. There was an ideal form and he was about sixty five percent of the way there, which was fine and it made the darts and they did their job. However, there was significant improvements to be made.

For now, though, he focused on the improvements in how it came together, smoothing out the flows of energy as it built in his hand, watching how energy pooled. He studied how to speed up the movement of energy within his own body first and then, how it wove together.

Each time, he aimed and loosed the energy bolt, he noted how some grew faster, some slower. Practicing it over and over again till it became faster than ever, improving his speed. Fractions of a second only, since he had been able to form one within a second…

But that was if he was only making one. Then he started forming two at a time and watched his speed of formation and his efficiency drop again. Arthur snarled, got to work again as the dogs, hired for this specific period ran back and forth, picking up the raptors that flew high above.

At some point, he ran out of energy and Arthur was forced to utilize the stones from the monsters he killed. Simultaneous Flow worked here, helping him drawn from the stones on one hand and fire with the other, switching them out over and over again.

His meridians burned, his eyes grew grimy but Arthur found himself in the zone; grinding away at the efficiencies over and over again. Two darts became three, and they came out just as fast as before. Then, satisfied at last he started working on the penetrative power, the way they moved as he finished forming them, their shape and the way they exploded forth.

Improvements there were difficult at first, as he dropped down to forming only a single energy dart at a time. The base ‘shell’ had to be refined, their shapes reworked to be tighter and more streamlined. The explosion from his hand was more powerful, his ability to keep them moving and even adjust their movement nin flight better.

On and on, till the sun had set and night had come and new flying monsters arrived. At some point, the dogs had disappeared, and new ones had been brought over and still he practiced. New creatures, similar to the earlier raptors but darkened in skin flew through the air, targeting him.

For Arthur, it just meant more targets. He formed and loosed, even as the monsters dived and struck; the number of Climbers willing to work late into the night few and far between. Without more targets, the danger increased significantly and more than once, Arthur had to block or sway aside from a diving attack.

It mattered little, because it just meant a target rich environment. In the shadows, occasional tendrils formed in the air to snatch raptors and crush them, Uswah staying by his side and guarding his back. As the monsters kept increasing in number, he switched over to the exploding variant of his attacks, the rippling explosions of multiple darts in the air causing flashes of blue lightning to appear, over and over again.

Night in this realm was short, barely four hours before the sun began to rise again and the monsters fled back to their caverns. By this point, Arthur was bloody and swaying on his feet, his meridians burning from overuse. A mound of monsters by his feet, yet to be harvested for their beast cores. It did not matter, because in the end; the real victory for Arthur was a single notification.

 

Refined Exploding Energy Dart (268.9%)

Project a dart of compressed and refined energy, to strike an opponent at range.

Cost: 0.8 Refined Energy