Chapter 91

The Angel Express, Atlanta - 9:28 AM

The Warmind class wasn’t exclusive to me. Throughout the world, Books of the Warmongering Mystic were tucked away in various nooks and crannies just waiting to be discovered. Some were guarded by boss battles, like the one in Etson, while others sat quietly waiting for someone to discover them. Few get a handle on psychic powers quickly enough to be of use, and fewer still excel at it.

Alfred “Alfie” Cheng was someone who I felt would have excelled if it weren’t for the tragedy that befell him and his neighborhood.

He was a bright mind thrust into the wrong situations. Placed between a rock and a hard place, he was the only one equipped to fight a monster called a Nightmare Schemer. They came from the Sandman family of monsters and put people to sleep to feed on their bad dreams. Psychic powers disrupted its hold, and only those with a defensive mental stat would have been able to stay awake to fight it. That meant a Warmind’s Wisdom or Double Agent’s Moxie stat was needed.

Even so, the fight was hard and Alfie ended up having to sacrifice himself to get the job done. Not in vain, as thousands would have died before I had a chance to get up to Atlanta to take it out. In the event that I had sent him messages to wait it out, much like my letter campaign earlier in this run, he heeded my advice but never recovered from the fact that he could have stopped their deaths.

The choice boiled down to saving almost ten thousand civilians or save a soon broken Alfie Cheng, and the decision to let things play out here as they should be practically made itself.

Loretta Cheng, his wife, put all of his gear in the Player’s Market. That included the Gloves of the Warmongering Mystic, which dropped upon the Nightmare Schemer’s death. It was utterly worthless to anyone who wasn’t a Warmind, but Loretta took a chance that someone would be around to use it eventually.

I looked down at the gloves in my hand. They were rosewood red, much darker than the Ringmaster’s Hoodie. Golden strands were embroidered in swooping waves across the back, palm, and fingers in one continuous line. On the palms, surrounded by the bright threads, were symbols. It looked like an hourglass turned on its side with lines trailing towards the bottom of the glove. This was the Nordic rune for Mannaz, a symbol denoting several aspects of the mind.

Flexing my fingers, I pulled on the comfortable gloves, watching as it resized itself before pulling up the item description.

[[Equipped]]

Gloves of the Warmongering Mystic

(Set Item 1/6; Growth Item, kill 5 bosses to upgrade; +50 Mental Points, +8 Wisdom, +8 Willpower, Weight Increase ability augment acquired, Distance Increase ability augment acquired)

[[Ability Augment]]

Weight Increase

When using Push, Pull, Lift, or Drop, increase the weight of objects you can affect by 10%.

[[Ability Augment]]

Distance Increase

When using Push, Pull, Lift, or Drop, increase the distance at which you can affect objects by 10%.

I nodded appreciatively as I read over the ability augments. While the circumstances surrounding the gloves weren’t great, they would be incredibly useful over the coming months. Especially as I collected more pieces.

The Warmongering Mystic set contained a tunic, cowl, breeches, belt, boots, and gloves. Each of them were growth items that worked specifically to enhance various parts of the Warmind’s abilities. However, they only drop after you have already learned the abilities that they augmented and only by certain psychic creatures. At this stage, I had the gloves and there was a chance to find the breeches soon, but the others were locked out by scenario limits.

“And then there’s scenario limits,” I muttered to myself as I did the math in my head. Pulling up my status screen, I looked at my points. “3,202. But should I? Or should I bet some of it off, first?”

Crossing my arms, I thought it over. Leaving the points to bet would make things a lot more lucrative for me, but my gains were going to be fast anyway. Increasing my abilities was a foregone conclusion since increasing stats would take a lot more points, but a part of me knew that a storm I had never encountered before would soon blow in.

There was no way Pustibule would stay dead. The demon had been smart and patient, and didn’t put his eggs all in one basket. It would have been easy to have Jeremiah nearby during the siege of the Vespae hive just for an extra chance to kill me, but he wasn’t. At least, he didn’t take a shot at me. Time was on Pustibule’s side. Failure was just a temporary setback for him, while I only had to die once for him to get what he wanted.

And I had no doubts that Pustibule and Jeremiah would show up here. The real question was when. Not in the next day or so, but I was sure it would be soon. Jeremiah would have had more time to transform and have his body acclimate to the demonification process, so someone like John probably wouldn’t distract him anymore.

“Think it’s for the best that I update everything,” I said slowly as I worked my jaw, almost chewing on the words. “Should also visit Boss Anchor and upgrade the Golden Bowling Ball sometime today.”

[[Patron Message]]

That’s one of the Filbins, right?

And I think you should upgrade your abilities, but your stats are already very high. Better to save points for betting so you can get more out of it. I can give you quests to get more points, but the more you have now the more you can bet.

Sincerely,

Sara

“Thanks, Sara, I appreciate the advice,” I responded, smiling at the message. What she said made sense, and I figured it was advice to be heeded.

After cracking my knuckles, I snapped open the menu, producing a crisp sound despite the gloves covering my hands. It had been a long time since I had opened the Warmind menu. The abilities were so ingrained in my mind that I didn’t need to check them to make sure I was forgetting something. Aside from Bend, which had few niche uses, and Spin, I used my kit fairly often.

[[Notice]]

Would you like to spend 560 points in order to upgrade the following abilities?

Push level 3 -> level 4

Pull level 3 -> level 4

Lift level 3 -> level 4

Shield level 3 -> level 4

Spin level 3 -> level 4

Drop level 3 -> level 4

Bend level 3 -> level 4

Yes

No

I clicked Yes, causing a huge notification screen to replace the last one.

[[Notice]]

Your abilities have been upgraded.

Abilities

Push (Willpower) lvl 4: Push an inanimate object no more than Willpower*8 lbs. away from you. The weight of the object determines the distance and speed at which it is pushed.

Pull (Willpower) lvl 4: Pull an inanimate object no more than Willpower*8 lbs. towards you. The weight of the object determines the distance and speed at which it is pulled.

Lift (Willpower) lvl 4: Lift an inanimate object no more than Willpower*16 lbs. away from you. The weight of the object determines the height and speed at which it is lifted.

Shield (Wisdom) lvl 4: Block incoming attacks up to an amount of damage equal to or less than Wisdom*4.5. Shield can be activated, sustained, or deactivated at will and recharges at a rate of Wisdom*1.3 hit points per second after 5 seconds of not taking damage. Broken shields cannot be reactivated for 30 seconds.

Spin (Augment) lvl 4: When using Push, Pull, Lift, or Drop, you may reduce the power of the ability by 22% in order to turn the object affected by the ability in any direction as long as the point of origin is inside of the object itself.

Drop (Willpower) lvl 4: Accelerate the fall of an object no more than Willpower*16 lbs. towards the ground. The weight of the object determines the speed at which it is accelerated.

Bend (Augment) lvl 4: When using Push or Pull, you may reduce the power of the ability by 50% in order to apply a second Push or Pull at up to 50% power at another point on the object, causing it to bend or possibly break. You may reduce the power of the first by up to 6% to increase the power of the second by the same amount.

By raising your Warmind abilities, you have learned the following abilities.

Shield level 4 = Force Field

Spin level 4 + Bend level 4 = Orbit

Push level 4 + Pull level 4 + Lift level 4 + Drop level 4 = Split

I smiled to myself, nodding as I ran through my abilities. My Willpower was monstrous now. Not my highest stat, that still went to Dexterity and Constitution due to the items I had, but that wouldn’t be the case for long. Wisdom and Willpower were going to be the first stats I increased after I got my winnings from the first batch of bets.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed as I reached the bottom of the notifications. “I got Split this early?”

It dawned on me that I had a similar reaction when I saw that Shield was on my list of abilities right out of the gate. The Medallion of Uuska, which was feeding off of the Book of the Warmongering Mystic, hadn’t had enough time to suck away its power. In past runs, I had always been late even if I ran there first thing. Thanks to Esaraphelscion’s Kiss allowing me to return prior to the system drop, I had started with Shield and now I’m getting Split a whole scenario early. It was exciting.

But I reigned that feeling in. There was still a lot of work to do, and I still had to upgrade them. Dismissing the notifications, I went through the process of increasing my abilities once again.

[[Notice]]

Would you like to spend 280 points in order to upgrade the following abilities?

Force Field level 1 -> level 4

Orbit level 1 -> level 4

Yes

No

I hit Yes.

[[Notice]]

Your abilities have been upgraded.

Abilities

Force Field (Wisdom, Willpower) lvl 4: Create an invisible sheet of force no further away than a number of feet equal to your Willpower/2 and no larger than Willpower*1 inch2 . This sheet blocks upcoming attacks up to an amount of damage equal to or less than Wisdom*3. Force Field can be activated, sustained, or deactivated at will and recharges at a rate of Wisdom*1.2 hit points per second after 5 seconds of not taking damage. Broken force fields cannot be reactivated for 30 seconds.

Orbit (Willpower) lvl 4: Using a point inside your body as the barycenter, cause an object no heavier than Willpower*8 lbs. to circle around you. The weight of the satellite determines the distance at which it can orbit and the rate it gains speed. If used prior to Push, Pull, Lift, or Drop, increase the speed and force behind the secondary ability by 4% per rotation to a maximum of 20%.

“Looks good, looks good,” I said to myself before navigating to Split.

[[Ability]]

Split

Focus Level 1

You may affect two different objects instead of only one.

This ability may only be upgraded by leveling up Push, Pull, Lift, and Drop.

Unlike the other abilities, I couldn’t upgrade Split on its own. Only by leveling up my main four telekinetic abilities would it increase, meaning that it was constrained by the scenario limits put upon me. While I would have liked to increase it all the way to level 4 and throw around five different objects, it wasn’t going to happen.

Other Warminds would get this ability and rejoice only to figure out how hard it was to split your concentration between two different items. That would only get worse when it got to three, four, even five. It took a lot of practice, and there were some Warminds out there that never got good enough to do it in combat.

Not something that I needed to worry about, of course. Through decades of practice I had gotten used to several psychic based classes and controlling Split was no different. I Pulled open one of the dining car’s cupboards and Pulled a mug towards me. When it was only inches away from my arm, I switched to Orbit.

The mug began to circle around me, picking up speed every time it finished a revolution. Due to its small size and light weight, it started off fast and only got faster. Soon, it was zooming past my eyes at speeds almost quick enough to become blurry. Almost. I lifted one of my hands and conjured a Force Field. Invisible to everyone else, I could see the Force Field as plain as day. It wasn’t very large nor did it obstruct my vision, but it did its job well enough.

Right now, that job was to stop the Orbiting mug. I had placed it directly inside the cup’s flight path, and it didn’t stand a chance. Porcelain flew all over the room as both it and the Force Field shattered, some of which grazed my mask and clothes. Nothing caused any serious damage, though.

With that little test out of the way, I gripped the Writhing Belt Whip in my hand and finally opened my status sheet to see how big my numbers had gotten.

[[Status]]

Avatar Anthony Franklin

Class: Warmind

Race: Half-Angel (Dormant)

Patron: (Hidden)

Points: 2,362

Stats:

Hit Points: 744/744

Mental Points: 547/560 (100/100)

Strength: 25; Dexterity: 50; Constitution: 55; Wisdom: 41; Willpower: 46

Considering the old scenario limit was 20 and I hadn’t knocked those numbers up to meet the new limit, everything except Strength was stellar. A rush of adrenaline passed through me as I looked through the status screen.

I coiled the Writhing Belt Whip as tightly as I could before putting it into one of my hoodies’ large pockets.  I wouldn’t get the bonus to Strength, Constitution, or Willpower when it wasn’t in hand, but that was fine enough when I could grab it near instantly. The handle dangled out, too large to fit comfortably, and I considered getting a whip holster or something close enough to be used as one.

Once the whip was properly put away, I moved to see my reflection in one of the tinted windows. My pocket was completely full now, but not distractingly so. Taking off the Kingtin’s Foil mask, I looked myself up and down. Everything looked pretty good. Almost like I was wearing a mostly coordinated outfit, something I hadn’t been able to get away with for a while. I slung on the Second Inventory, the small extradimensional backpack I had the Dealer purchase for me during the tutorial, and nodded to myself.

[[Item]]

Second Inventory

(This backpack provides you with a secondary inventory that can hold half of the weight of your primary inventory.)

“Looking good, Ant,” I muttered to myself as I zipped up the Ringmaster’s Hoodie, replaced the mask, and pulled up my hood.

[[Patron’s Message]]

I agree. You do look pretty good.

Now that you’re geared up, what’s next for Anthony Franklin?

Sincerely,

Sara

“Now that I’ve got a good fit, I’m ready to go and retrieve my manager from a gang of hooligans,” I explained as I headed towards the door. “Let’s go save us a coward.”