The Rifleman - Bk1 - Ch.35 (Patreon)

Chapter Thirty-Five

Tiering Up

Wesley leaned back in the chair and groaned, knowing there was no chance he had managed to avoid getting an excess of essence, which meant he was going to be forced to Temper yet again.

Tier 4 (873%)

Wesley’s eyes bugged out of his head the moment he saw that. If he had to Temper that many times…

Skill choice voided due to unique skill creation.

Title: Corporal Gained!

Corporal:

The first step on the ladder of leadership!

Grants the passive ability Tactical Awareness: 10% boost to proprioception for you and those you command.

Boosts to 30% when in combat.

That sounded good—if only he had any idea what proprioception was. He didn’t really have much time to consider it, as the next line was already scrolling across the table.

Tempering…

Tempering…

Tempering…

Wesley passed out a couple of times, he was sure, but the writing was waiting for him when the pain finally began to fade.

Tempered x8

+50% Vitality

+50% Toughness

+ 20% All stats

+15% Agility

+15% Control

“Fuck, that’s—” Wesley cut off. “Control?” He had never played a game that had a control stat, which meant there were now two buffs he had no idea about, but before he could focus on that…

Tier 5(200%)

“No, no, no, no, no,” Wesley muttered over and over again, but there was nothing he could do to stop it, the relentless writing scrolling by without a care as he felt the pain begin to build once again.

Tier 6 Attained!

Tempering…

Tempering…

Wesley simply stopped thinking as he toppled from the chair, his body not yet recovered from the previous pain and unable to stay upright. He writhed on the floor as his vision went white. 

By the time it passed, he wiped his eyes, his hand coming back with blood on his hand. That was new.

Tempering x10

+55% Vitality

+55% Toughness

+ 25% All stats

+15% Agility

+15% Control

+10% Strength

Title Gained! - Battle Hardened:

Fought in every stage of a Zone Invasion.

+5% Essence gathered.

Title Gained! - Battle Healer:

Functioned as a healer during a major battle.

Grants: Lesser Regenerate

Lesser Regenerate: 

Heal 1% of Vitality every second for twenty seconds

Charges: 4

NOTE: Can be cast on self or others, but always uses your own Vitality for percentage calculation.

Wesley felt a new tattoo burning itself into his bicep, just below the one for Emergency Heal, and didn’t hesitate to cast two charges immediately to try to remove the total body cramp that was lingering after the Tempering. The spell itself felt like a cooling cloth placed against his body, eliciting a sigh of contentment as the seconds ticked past.

Class Skill choice - pick one.

No Tier 6 skills for Rifleman exist… 

Generating…

Please choose one of the following general skills to be converted.

Power Shot:

Empower an arrow, doubling the damage.

Charges:5

Curved Shot: 

Fire an arrow that will curve to strike a target.

Charges:4

Bouncing Shot:

Enable your arrow to bounce up to twice before hitting its target. 

Charges:3

Heartseeker:

Strike with your dagger: guaranteed critical hit.

Charges:5

Steel Skin:

Increase your toughness by 200% for 15 seconds.

Charges: 2

Troll Blood:

Increase natural regeneration by 25%.

Charges: N/A.

Wesley looked over the choices, immediately discarding the bouncing and curved versions. The last thing he needed was to get hit with his own ricochet, and if you had to curve the shot… you needed a better line of sight. Taking a skill to avoid moving a little to the left or right seemed short-sighted.

Similarly, Wesley discarded the Troll Blood option. Now that he had his own regen spell, it would be redundant. Sure, a stacking effect would be good in the worst moments, but he already had Emergency Heal for those. 

The remaining options were a different story. The Steel Skin one looked particularly good, but so did Heartseeker, his bayonet being his weakest attack option by far. 

After going back and forth for a while, Wesley ultimately went with what Split had told him a few days ago. He needed something to boost his rifle’s stopping power. It might well be possible to upgrade it, and he would definitely look into that, but right now, a Skill was his best option. It was something that would continually scale as he got his rifle upgraded as well. 

Power Shot — Armor Piercing Round.

Armor Piercing Round:

Fire an empowered bullet. Does double damage to unarmored areas.

Damage versus armor quadrupled. 

Charges: 2

Comparing the two skills, Wesley initially felt cheated at the loss of three whole charges, but the added damage versus any armor made him feel a lot better. If he had that when those bloody Rock Eater Gerbils had rushed the lines…

His hand burned slightly when a new tattoo, showing a bullet wreathed in smoke, appeared on the back of his hand. 

Tier 6 (54%)

New Titles Available!

Sergeant:

Essence gathered increased by 10%

Enable’s use of Command Tables.

Strength +15%

Next report in 4 Days!

Wesley lay on the floor of his safe room and tried to breathe as the last of the changes passed through him. It was a hell of an increase, with two new spells, new titles, and massive changes to his body through tempering. 

His new Lesser Regenerate was working miracles on his sore body, even clearing up much of the headache from such massive changes, but there was one thing that would do a lot more to help.

“I need a long, hot bath,” Wesley sighed and was delighted to see his two sims get to work immediately, grabbing one of the copper tubs and filling it from the fountain. 

They didn’t seem to have the power to heat the water as quickly as he did, but Wes was happy to chip in, getting the water to a nice simmer before slipping into the warmth and feeling his whole body relax as it worked its miracles. 

How was a bath just so much better than a shower?

Whatever it was, he wasn’t complaining. 

Once he was done with his bath Wesley noticed several of the supplies loaded during the siege were still present, and he shamelessly decided to keep them. No one had asked for them back, and he needed to eat.

The best part was that they didn’t seem to have spoiled in the meantime. At a guess, that meant that no time passed when he unsummoned the safe room. It also apparently kept any additions but discarded any damage, which didn’t make much sense, but since it worked for him, he wasn’t complaining. 

Wes cooked himself a veritable feast, his body crying out for nutrients after the horrific Tier Up he had just endured. 

He moved on from there, doing as he had before: stripping his gear off, washing, drying, and repairing it. Next, he did the same for his rifle and bayonet, marveling as they ate resources to be left gleaming and new. 

It was when he was staring at the replacement Bayonet, made by the two blacksmiths, that he remembered the Orb he had gotten from the dungeon run. It was supposedly like an upgrade token, and if so… maybe he would be able to put his Bayonet to use for a while to come. 

He immediately started to unpack his backpack, surprised to still see the leather he had gathered from the gerbil on the way into the city. He had completely forgotten it existed. Wesley put it aside and dug around until he finally found the last two items at the bottom of the bag.

The first was the glass shards that were all that remained of the Potentia Orb, and the other… was his folding spade. A guilty little thought reminded him of the tinkle of broken glass when he shoved his spade in the bag days ago. 

Wesley pulled out the folding spade and examined it critically.

Folding Spade: Unique

Deform terrain with a single swing of this spade.

Can remember and recreate up to 4 different designs.

Current designs: 0 of 4

“What the fuck?” Wesley dispelled the shields forming the door and walked outside, looking critically at the land around him.

He hesitated a couple of times, sure the ground would explode if he touched the weird item to it, but eventually did, gently, place the spade in the ground….

A half-hour later, Wesley walked back into the safe room with a massive grin on his face and 4 designs saved on his new toy. 

It had taken some experimentation, which was why the area around his safe room looked like a curious mix of a playground and the second day on a building site.

In short, the shovel could dig up about three cubic feet of earth in a single go, and it even worked to shape the removed dirt if he wanted. It was almost like a building tool, but it only worked in the ground rather than above it. 

It could shape soil and rock it removed, but not create anything. 

Still, he was able to save a basic trench setup, a really deep pit, a small earth wall made from displaced soil, and finally, a decent snowman made out of dirt.

Okay, so that was not exactly mature, but let’s see someone give you a magic shovel and see what you do with it.

Personally, Wesley considered the whole exercise a worthwhile use of that silly Orb, even if it would have been of more use on his Bayonet. 

As a bonus, you could ignore the presets and just dig masses of dirt and soil that, given his massive stat boosts, meant he probably outpaced an earthmover or something back on Earth.

It had also finally let him figure out what was so strange about the system he was stuck in.

The classes and such had thrown him for a loop for a while, but he had finally seen the world for what it was. Wes had first seen the classes and immediately thought it must be some kind of RPG game, but a lot of things just didn’t fit. The changing zones, the weird separation of NPCs from Player Characters, the whole Player Faction thing. None of it fit with any Role Playing Game he had ever heard of.

But a small group of players fighting and arguing over the control of terrain? A game where players controlled whole factions rather than individual characters?

This flea-bitten, nightmare-filled shit hole of a game was a bloody Real Time Strategy game or something similar. Hell, it could be some kind of 4x strategy game for all he knew. 

That was why it had Tiers, not levels, charges instead of mana bars, and so on. It was designed with a focus on civilization-level play, not individual character play. That also explained why the damn boosts were all percentage multipliers. They were percentages on top of base stats to show the progress of the character in person rather than the detailed stat numbers of an RPG.

The worst thing about the realization was that the NPCs had a purpose in an RPG game. They gave flavor and life to the world. In a strategy game? They were set dressing at best and essence pinatas at worst.

They were only here to give the Players something to fight beside each other, a place to train their troops.

“What a bunch of fucking Todds,” Wesley muttered as he once more sealed the door and crawled into a bunk, telling his two sims to watch the door and wake him if anything approached.