Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Drew woke up several hours later and felt much better than he had when he passed out. That fight with the horde of goblins had taken a lot out of him. Both from a mana perspective, but also from mental exhaustion perspective as well. Sitting in bed and just relaxing he reflected on the battle, and his shortcomings during it. Without his friends and family there, the property would have been overrun. The walls and fences would have held the greenskins for a while, but against that quantity of monsters... it would have been bad. He needed to go outside and heal his minions up, he wasn't sure if they had natural regeneration at all, but as they were undead, from a logical standpoint, he didn't believe that to be the case. Also...he had notifications waiting for him.

*DING!*

You have slain [Wild Goblin (Grade - F) - lvl 7] x93
You have slain [Wild Goblin (Grade - F) - lvl 6] x38
You have slain [Wild Goblin (Grade - F) - lvl 5] x104
You have slain [Hobgoblin Taskmaster (Grade - F) - lvl 9] x1
Experience earned

Title Earned [Monster Slayer I]
Title Earned [Monster Slayer II]
Title Earned [Monster Slayer III]

Class: [Caster] has reached level 7
Class: [Caster] has reached level 8
Class: [Caster] has reached level 9
Class: [Caster] has reached level 10
Class: [Caster] has reached level 11
Class: [Caster] has reached level 12

Race: [Dhampir (Grade - F)] has reached level 4
Race: [Dhampir (Grade - F)] has reached level 5
Race: [Dhampir (Grade - F)] has reached level 6

Attribute points allocated - You have 54 Free points available

[Caster] class skill available

Holy shit. He'd killed two hundred and thirty-six of those blighted things?! He knew it was a horde, but there's no way he could have killed so many, he didn't use that much ammo or spells...oh. His minions. Right. He gained fifty percent of the experience they gained, and his minions counted as an extension of himself. Shit. Plus, a Hobgoblin... was that the big fucker that he took out? It'd have to be, but with a name like that, he'd expected it to be much bigger than the other goblins. It was big, sure, but it wasn't like it was double the size of the others or anything, and it was level nine. That horde was no joke.

Plus, all those free points... where did he get so many? Was it the titles he'd earned?

[Monster Slayer III]
Kill 150 Monsters. Grants 24 Free points

Sooooo, if each title before that one granted half of the free points of each other... that would be forty-two free points, then he'd gotten twelve from his class level ups...yeah, that would be fifty-four free points. Still, that was ton of points to play around with, more than double even his highest stat before the level ups had come into play. What did his Status look like now?

Status

Name: Drew Wright

Race: Dhampir (Grade - F) - lvl 6

Class: [Caster] – lvl 12

Profession: None

Health Points (HP): 260/260

Mana Points (MP): 270/270

Stamina: 260/260

Stats (Attributes)

Strength: 24

Vitality: 26

Endurance: 26

Toughness: 26

Agility: 23

Perception: 30

Intelligence: 27

Wisdom: 30

Willpower: 29

Free Points: 54

Titles
[Progenitor], [Forebearer of The Descent], [The First Necromancer], [Curiosity of the Divine], [Hunter II], [Monster Slayer III]

That was a nice solid boost to all his stats for sure, but how the hell should he divvy up all the free points? He needed to focus on his strengths right now as a class. He needed more intelligence, badly. That was a major limiting factor to his small mana pool. Wisdom would boost his mana regeneration, which he also needed, especially as his mana pool continued to increase. Willpower he still wasn't sure of yet, he knew it was important for something, but he just couldn't place its exact effects just yet.

Perception already felt like it was in a good space, so he didn't really want to waste points on that when other issues were more pressing. No, he'd just stick with intelligence and wisdom right now, those would drastically improve his staying power in longer fights, especially with giant hordes like they'd already faced. Hmmm, yeah, he'd put thirty-three of the free points into intelligence, twenty into wisdom, and throw the remaining point into willpower, and hopefully figure out what it did. After allocating his points, Drew was left smiling when he looked at his new status.

Status

Name: Drew Wright

Race: Dhampir (Grade - F) - lvl 6

Class: [Caster] – lvl 12

Profession: None

Health Points (HP): 260/260

Mana Points (MP): 600/600

Stamina: 260/260

Stats (Attributes)

Strength: 24

Vitality: 26

Endurance: 26

Toughness: 26

Agility: 23

Perception: 30

Intelligence: 60

Wisdom: 50

Willpower: 30

Free Points: 0

Titles
[Progenitor], [Forebearer of The Descent], [The First Necromancer], [Curiosity of the Divine], [Hunter II], [Monster Slayer III]

Ohhhhh, now that was interesting. He'd increased his intelligence and thus his mana points, and he was at maximum capacity prior to assigning his free points, with two hundred and seventy mana points, but after he added them, he remained maxed out on mana. This was despite the fact that he'd gone from the max of two hundred and seventy, to the now six hundred. To put it simply, if he boosted his intelligence when his mana was maxed out, it would stay maxed out at the new value. Why did it function like that? Huh, that was a problem for future Drew to figure out. Right now, he should focus on that new class skill he'd gotten

When he opened up the skill selection menu, some things had changed. Drastically. If he scrolled for a while, he could still find most of the previous options, but at the very top of the list were skills he hadn't seen before. After he'd browsed through them, he came to a conclusion. This was what Spock had spoken about, his records or whatever had influenced his skill selection, and not by a small margin. These new options were very clearly based on his actions and his choices recently, and all of them were powerful, far more powerful than the inferior grade stuff he had available last time he'd gotten a new skill.

Resilient Minions (Grade - Common)
All minions you control receive a moderate boost in their toughness attribute immediately. As your minions gain experience, each level up they earn will provide a minor boost to their toughness as well.

Bone Armor (Grade - Common)
A direct upgrade of the mana shield skill. Allows the caster to manipulate their mana to create and adhere toughened bones to their person as a form of personal protection. This upgrade is far more effective than the starting skill it evolved from, however attacks made with blunted weapons will cause slightly increased damage to the armor itself.

Undying Horde (Grade - Uncommon)
This is a passive skill that grants a moderate natural regeneration to your undead minions. Additionally, maintaining more minions becomes slightly easier.

Corrupting Contagion (Grade - Rare)
A direct upgrade of the Corruption skill. The mana point cost of the new spell is moderately less than its original form. Additionally, when a target expires while afflicted by this skill, the Corrupting Contagion's effects will spread to a maximum of two nearby enemy targets.

Fuckkkkkk. He wanted them all! The worst part was any one of these skills would be immensely helpful, especially right now. The resilient minion skill would lower all the damage his minions took from any source, and would help keep them alive...eh, undead. That would be a huge help, so he didn't have to keep raising minions all the time, and it would give them a higher chance of surviving to level up. The bone armor skill was the most 'mediocre' of the choices, as he wanted to avoid melee at all costs, and it wouldn't boost his damage output or help his mana costs at all. If he was going for a solo build, and didn't have allies to rely on, then it would be a real contender, but right now it was just meh compared to the other choices.

It was still an excellent skill, yeah. But it just wouldn't help him right this second. The undying horde on the other hand would help... a lot. The natural regeneration would save his mana spent on death tolls that he'd usually cast to heal his minions. However, he currently wasn't under any mental strain from having the quantity of minions he did. Maybe that would change in the future, as his army grew, but right now, the second half of that skill wasn't really needed.

That last skill though... that was so, so powerful. It was exactly what he needed during waves of enemies like the horde of goblins they'd just faced. As long as a target died while under the effects of the skill, it would spread to another two bad guys nearby. He wasn't sure on the range of that spread, but that was some serious crowd control capability. It would also save a ton of his mana. He could cast the spell on several lower-level enemies, and when they died to it, it would spread to other ones nearby, even if they were stronger. The amount of damage he would be able to do against hordes of weaker enemies was crazy. Plus, it just had a flat bonus to mana point reduction, which meant he could afford to spam it out, especially as he gained even more mana from level ups.

As much as he wanted to boost his minion’s toughness, or give them natural regeneration, the ability to cause massive damage over time in an area with a lot of targets pulled him toward selecting corrupting contagion. The minion skills would hopefully be there in the future, so he could buy them then, but that corruption upgrade was just too good to pass up. With the huge horde they'd faced previously, it was clear that something like that happening again would be a major issue for their small community of people. Beefcake had the ability to take out several monsters at once, but he was the only one. Everyone else was lacking in the area of effect damage prospects. Drew went ahead and selected the corruption upgrade.

His notifications finally sorted out, Drew threw on some new clothes, and put the old ones in his hamper before heading outside in the backyard. It was clearly early morning now, but no one was around in the community areas inside his home, nor were they outside in the backyard. Maybe everyone went back to sleep after the attack? Amber hadn't been in their bedroom when he woke up, so she was probably around somewhere. His beat-up minions were hanging out around the edge of the residential fence, and he needed to fix them. He knew they weren't alive, nor did they seem to have feelings, but he still felt guilty about not fixing them prior to his nap, but he had run out of mana, and he had been exhausted.

Still, whether it was logical or not, he felt bad about leaving them looking so fucked up. Bones were missing, cracks were present in ribs and skulls. Hell, he wasn't even sure how some of them had still managed to walk as they were missing bones in the legs that seemed extremely important to locomotion. He sent several death tolls in their direction and watched as the cracks sealed, and new bones just magically grew to replace the missing ones. Several minions needed more than one cast to fully heal, but he needed them in tip-top shape. When he checked their levels, he was surprised to see most of them were level five or six. Hopefully they would be a lot more powerful and tough now.

When he focused on them through his mental connection, he felt that they could be upgraded. It seemed they received something similar to a class skill, but it was related to their race. Unlike the menu that Drew had access to for his skills, there were no words related to the upgrades, rather he just had gotten a general sense of what each upgrade would do for his pets. Each upgrade felt like a small stat boost in a specific attribute, and a minor increase in that stat per level that they went up.

As they were all the hog skeletons, he selected the boost to their toughness. If he couldn't get the passive skill from his own selection, he owed it to them to at least try and keep them alive...or undead, for as long as possible. He was tempted to give them more intelligence or wisdom so he wouldn't need to babysit them with commands all the time, but that would only be a minor convenience to him, and wouldn't help them survive any longer to grow and protect his family and friends. With his boar minions sorted out, he led them to them to the gate in the ten-foot fence and let several out to patrol around the outskirts with their kin.

After that, he took the time to raise the other human skeletons and gave them all bows and arrows to practice with. He walked around the property to the watchtowers to find his original three human minions. Each watchtower minion he found was alert and scanning the surrounding areas for any movement. At each tower he dropped off an additional twenty arrows. Thirty total arrows weren't much in the grand scheme of things, especially if another horde rolled through the area, but it should be enough to hold them off for a minute or two. After he finished up the rounds at the towers, he made his way back to the area with the new houses.

Lacy and her family were doing okay, but they hadn't really done anything yet as they were still unpacking their belongings and organizing them in their new house. Apparently his two nieces weren't able to receive a class until they were twelve years old, which wasn't that far away, but they were not happy about it currently. Lacy hadn't been able to change her race, and it didn't seem like she cared too much about the classes. She had ended up picking warrior, but told Drew that she had no interest in combat. Cody on the other hand, had gone with the Heavy Warrior class. Drew had to remind them that professions were a thing they should look into, and consider.

Honestly, Drew felt like Cody might become an asset to the community, but he didn't think his Sister-in-Law would ever amount to anything. She wasn't the type of person to do something she didn't like, and she really didn't like a lot of things. That situation had added a bit to his stress levels, thinking that he'd have a drain on their limited resources, and no real output on her side of things. He really hoped his nieces didn't turn out similar, but sometimes the apple didn't fall far from the tree. Not that he wanted to be some ruthless dictator or anything, he just wanted folks to be productive and add value to the community. He felt like if someone was being purposely unproductive...well, he just felt like it was wrong. Especially with everyone putting their lives on the line to help protect the property from monsters. Irritating would be an apt way to describe his feelings on the matter.

He checked the outbuilding that Robert had been living in, but found it empty. He was wondering where everyone was, so he went back to his home to check it out. He found his mom, predictably in front of the new demon TV, watching a hallmark movie. The irony there was very funny to him, as the TV even had little devil horns as antennas, and she was using it to watch hallmark of all things. She hadn't heard from, nor seen anyone since the early morning, so Drew moved on to other areas.

Spock's room was empty, and he double-checked his own bedroom as well. No sign of life. Where the hell was everyone? He poked his head out the front door and found Spock and Robert sparring. He thought it was sparring anyway. Spock had his armor on, and had a sword at his side as he held a long spear in his hands while exchanging blows with Robert. The spear itself... well the blade was bigger than an average spear, so Drew questioned whether it was technically a different weapon at this point. Robert on the other hand stood out big time. He was equipped with shining plate armor, and held a massive mace in one hand, and a large shield in the other. It looked like he went with the heavy warrior option. Drew approached them to gather some information.