Chương 11: Time to multiclass

Cassandra wouldn't leave my mind all the way to my place. I reached my building and walked straight in. Astarielle sat cross-legged in the center of the bed, surrounded by a fortress of handwritten pages. Her pink quill moved across the notepad with a rhythmic scratching. She looked up. Her eyes immediately dropped to my crotch.

"I see your errand has been rather exciting."

"It was productive. I almost got you a new item for the next time we go into the tower."

"The shopkeeper sure has left an impression on you." She looked up at my face.

"And I suppose she forcefully took my bracelet from you, didn't she?"

"I had to submit it for examination." I sat down on the bed.

"What do you have from the builds?" She snaked to me, catching an arm over my shoulder, leaning on my back.

"You're all heated up. This must have been some really hard shopping and walking home."

"You have no idea. The builds. Now."

"But of course." She clicked her tongue, not letting go. She did grab two papers from behind her and put them in my lap.

"No matter how I look at it, that level thirty-five node that gives stats to all summons is just overpowered. No matter what build variation I come up with, it's never even close to a build focused on this node. Mostly because the tree has summon damage and other combat stats in the necromancer class, but that one has skills focused on undead, which I'm not." And I was never getting any undead summons, because I wasn't switching my entire school of magic. I looked over the sheets.

All had the shortest path to the level thirty-five Soulcarver passive. That took sixteen points. The System effectively forced one to multiclass, as progressing ten levels in terms of major nodes took either three pathing nodes going straight, or four pathing nodes while picking the skill between them on the way. So, even if I took everything from one specialization, I was going to have skill points left over.

There were system skills, but looking at the first one, the level scanner, I wasn't sure I could use those for the tower.

"Okay," I said.

"That's sixteen points. Nineteen left if we're making the build around level thirty-five. What's useful that you found in other classes?"

"Multiple things. The main power node is at level thirty-five in most classes, but some have really strong stuff earlier. Also, specializations aren't exactly symmetrical?" I raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

"Some classes have two level one skills, one on themselves, another on the specialization. Some don't have a level ten skill at all. The trees also become an absolute mess after level fifty, where some specializations simply path to another one. Some have tons of nodes in there, and others have one narrow path." I conjured up the skill tree. Yeah, I could see what she was talking about. The start was mostly uniform. After level fifty, the skills were an absolute jungle.

Well, I was going to worry about that when I got there. Also, the system skill wheel had a lot of empty space, so there were going to be hidden skills there, most likely. No use planning for things I didn't know about. The node level requirement is also capped at level seventy-five, so I shouldn't plan on having too many skill points.

"What did you find?" I asked.

"There are two approaches to it. Either focus on stacking the main stat or on getting more support nodes for summons. There're a few really nice nodes for stat-stacking. Every stat has a plus one hundred to that stat at some class at level thirty. Strength at juggernaut, endurance at berserker, dexterity at blade dancer, intelligence at evoker, willpower at shaman, and charisma at negotiator. All the classes have nothing for summons, though.

Every skill can, instead, be turned into a stat passive that scales with the node's level, but still, it doesn't feel efficient."

"And level thirty is deep."

"Very. There's a nice node at Void Mage that gives plus fifty percent to the user's main stat. That's nine points deep, but it's the strongest scaling node on the tree." I nodded, a node at the necromancer catching my eye. Endless Horde. Passive. Negates the maintenance penalty for having multiple minions.

"Do you count as a minion, in terms of a keyword?"

"Probably." She glanced at me, eyes narrowed.

"Why?"

"There's an insanely overpowered node at Necromancer class, Skelemancer specialization, level five." She shuffled through the papers. She stooped at one.

"That doesn't look like that big of a deal. Maintenance costs are pretty low, so even with five summons and all of them costing five times more, it's fine for a fight." Oh, she was thinking far too small. This was an absolute must-have. I focused on the tree, allocated the skills, choosing stats instead of the first necromancer skill, which was summon skeleton, and confirmed it. My vision shifted. I saw an army of skeletons walking out of a forest, surrounding a camp of soldiers.

Everything real, the wind, the smell of forest and blood, as if I floated there myself. A man stood next to me, observing the skeletons. His skeletons. His voice spoke into my mind,'Many believe that quality supersedes quantity. They do have a point, in the way.' The ground shifted underneath us. We flew up, standing on a massive, skeletal dragon. Stolen novel; please report.

'But they forget that you can have both.' My vision shifted to normal. Right, so if things didn't work out with demons, I was going to fully spec into necromancer.

"Anyway," she said, as to her, I was spacing out.

"Spiritmancer has a lot of stuff about mana costs. I don't know how expensive summoning spirits is, but half of its trees are all about it. The third summoner specialization, golemancer, has the main mechanic of, you would never guess, making a golem, designating it as your main summon, and then giving boosts to it."

"Forget about that one. I'm taking the Endless Horde passive. From the main stats, is there anything specific to willpower? I'm most likely picking it as the main stat."

"In barrier mage, there's a lot of it. It also has a plus fifty to a stat node early." Now, that sounded interesting. I looked over the Soulcarver tree. A side node at level thirty caught my eye. Natural Commander. Passive. When using charisma for a stat keyword, count as having thirty percent more charisma." Oh, boy. That one was going to combo really damn well. I looked up the Soulcarver tree.

At level fifty, there was a node that let me put an extra engraving on each summon for every hundred points in my main stat. All right. That was going to be fun. Especially with the node at level twenty-five that unlocked specialized engravings, whatever that was. For the way I used summons, a small number of extremely strong summons, the Soulcarver was the perfect class.

"I've got the build. Thanks." With a focused thought, I unsummoned her. She vanished in a burst of crimson flame. I had twelve levels. Twelve times five stat points, sixty total. All into charisma. My stat screen updated. Next up, summoner and Soulcarver specialization. First-level summoner skill, summon an elemental spirit. What would I do with that? I chose the alternative stats, plus ten to two stats. Then three pathing nodes, and the level ten skill. This skill taught one to do summon engravings.

Yeah, I knew that already. I chose stats instead, plus twenty to two stats and plus ten to the third stat. Okay, fine, I could get some speed. I chose charisma, willpower, and speed. I took the next three pathing nodes. At all the pathing nodes, I chose charisma. I locked it all in. No vision, since I chose no skill.

My stats updated: Level: 12 Strength: 10 Dexterity: 10 Endurance: 10 Intelligence: 10 Willpower: 50 Speed: 20 Charisma: 150 Damn, the stats went up nicely when one took stat alternatives instead of skills. They didn't do much now, but it was going to be crazy when I got free engravings on all summons. I focused, turning my consciousness inwards. The world around me blurred, and I moved to my soul chamber. The old house looked the same as always. I even smelled my mum baking something.

Trick of the mind, but still, nostalgia was a bitch. I headed to the summoning circle. The two circles awaited. I knelt into the searching one and materialized the Lantern of Endless Suffering. With a nicely shining flame, it shone with eerie, teal light. I put it down in the circle's center. All right. So, this was more of an abstract concept. I had a bunch of souls, and I needed to fish some demons. Could I do a ten-pull? That should be possible. The spider boss had a lot of moths, thus a lot of tiny souls.

Those all melted into the same energy. I focused, reached with my power into the lantern, pulled out all the soul energy, split it into ten equal parts, and reached out for Hell. As one stream, they pierced through the nothingness that separated Hell from Earth, and fished in. The energy is split into ten strings, each with souls, searching for someone to catch them. One string pulled. Nice. First hit. Second. Third. All ten. I pulled them in. This better not be more tentacle worms. I drew it all in.

Ten figures appeared like holograms above the actual summoning circle. Each even had a text under it, including tier. They all looked human-like. Hell yeah! I scrolled through them. While I could toss tentacle worms into storage, anything higher tier required a binding contract. I could only do so many of those, especially since they weren't easy to set up. All right, ten summons. The first one was a succubus with electric blue skin and silver hair. Pretty, obviously.

Grade indicator flickered beside her, marking her as C-tier. Meh. Astarielle was an A-tier, so I was hoping for someone of that power level. The second pull. Another succubus, this one with four arms and green skin. She winked. C-tier. Third. Succubus, amber skin, coiled ram-like horns, lounging on nothing. C-tier. Fourth. Succubus. Pink. Absurdly long tail. C-tier. Fifth. Succubus. Pale lavender, butterfly wings. C-tier. Sixth. Succubus with copper skin and six eyes, three on each side of her face.

Interesting look. C-tier. Seventh. Succubus, dark grey, muscular, warrior build. C-tier. Eighth pull. Succubus, gold skin, intricate horn patterns. C-tier. I exhaled. Eight C-tiers in a row. All hot. All succubi. All absolutely not what I needed. Ninth pull. A male demon materialized. Tall, angular, armored in twisted samurai armor, with a serrated spear over his back and a katana by his belt. B-tier. Hmph. Not bad. He even had a skill, Weaponmaster. Master of using all types of melee weapons. Not terrible.

The tenth pull. A succubus is in a bit of a ridiculous pose with a raised, bent leg, arched back, one arm raised up, looking upward. Black hair in twin tails, dark red skin like Astarielle, huge pink eyes, and a smile so wide it took up half her face. Extremely pretty, youthful face, short, curved horns, and a razor-thin figure. She wore what looked like a white crop top, a skirt that had no business being that short, and needlessly tall heels. B-tier. The skill description floated beside her.

Weapon Transformation: Sword. Can turn herself into a sword and fly around by herself in that form. All right. All of these were terrible. But I wasn't taking nobody. With a sigh, I summoned Astarielle. As she started appearing next to me, I arranged the potential summons so that the b-tiers were in front. Astarielle appeared, quickly glancing around to interpret the situation.

"So," I said.

"I'm picking a teammate. Do you know either of those two?" She looked over them.

"No, I usually don't mingle with trash-tier demons. I don't see how either of those two could possibly be useful for anything." Ooh, that sounded cold. She didn't like the idea at all.

"You struggle with smaller targets, so I need another demon to keep that type of enemy away from you." That made her look softer. I wasn't even lying. I had shields, and I didn't care much about having to tank Astarielle's area spells. But last dive, I had to emergency detonate her because of a few moths. She had no defense when casting.

"Well," she said.

"The samurai is obviously the better option for that. But you're asking the wrong question." She walked between the demons, spreading her arms over both of them.

"The crucial matter is, would you rather have a threesome with me and him or with me and her?" Right. That was the key deciding metric. Nevertheless, my minions did need to be able to work together. Having to constantly micromanage them, so they don't blast each other by accident, would be extremely impractical. Still…

"Are you pushing for the succubus because she's a succubus?" I asked.

"Obviously. We need to look out for each other." Fair enough. I dismissed the other summons and locked in the B-rank succubus. A name popped up above her head. Ashy. The spell also listed the binding statue requirements. Had to be carved from one piece of something of organic nature, decorated with thirteen gems, with a base made of at least twenty pounds of pure steel. I left it at that, and unsummoned Astarielle. Tomorrow, during the dive, I was going to have to get all the materials.

Even though I was about to climb with a team.