Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

“All aboard!” Karalti stretched a wing down, standing head and shoulders over Ru Waat’s city wall.

“We’re going to have to build a gantry to get up on your back soon,” I teased her, leaping from the ground to the edge of the saddle, then pulling myself up. “Suri has to climb you like a mountain.”

“Kinda like how she does you, huh?” Karalti replied sweetly.

“My little Tidbit is all grown up.” I feigned a sniffle. “You were so innocent, once. So pure.”

“Blow me.” She threw her head back and mimicked a human laugh—albeit much deeper and louder.

When Suri and Rin were up, I helped Rin with her harness. Once they were secure, I took my position between Karalti’s shoulders and looked down to see Gar standing in the gateway of the city, a complex expression on his face. I gave him a flippant salute as Karalti pivoted and stalked toward the road, building up into a fast walk before bunching and launching herself into the air. The downdraft of her wings rocked the palm trees below as we powered over them, gaining altitude at a speed that took my breath away and left a mad grin plastered on my face. There would never be a day in my life when I didn’t get a high from that feeling.

“Oh god.” Suri said in the party chat. “She’s even faster now.”

“Yeah...” Rin craned her head to look back. “Seeing you without tie-down straps makes me so nervous, Hector.”

“Why? Never worn one before.” I gripped the handhold on the front of the saddle with one hand, resting my other arm across my knee.

“I guess. Never mind.” Rin sighed and reached up to clutch her harness straps.

Karalti let out a joyous bellow as she built into flight, turning the jungle into a rushing green carpet as she angled for the origin of the plague of maddened and undead animals: Devana’s Dragon Gate. As she flew, I brought up my character sheet, and got to work assigning ability points. At Level 33, I had two new abilities to choose from.

  Blink Strike

You attack an enemy from the front with a normal strike, but then teleport through or around them in the blink of an eye to strike them again from behind and inflict an Elemental Darkness strike. You may activate Blink Strike following any successful hit that deals damage to an enemy. Night Falls

Chained from Jump. You are a master of aerial combat: as you descend from Jump, you deal a powerful Area of Effect strike that knocks down up to five enemies and deals elemental Darkness damage. If you land on an enemy while activating Night Falls, you also deal your Jump damage to that enemy. If you have already dealt damage with Jump before chaining this ability, you only deal the AoE effect damage.

Both these abilities made me wish I had a lot more points, because they were both really fucking awesome.

“Hmm. I wonder if Night Falls has a height limit?” I muttered to myself, cuing Navigail to read it out again. The AoE dealt 500 points of Dark elemental damage, plus my base weapon attack, but there was no mention of a height limit. I would have to play with that a bit... because I was suddenly struck by images of jumping off Karalti and landing on someone from a thousand feet like a human bomb.

I dropped three of my points into Night’s Fall and one into Blink Strike. With Night’s Fall III, I could knock down fifteen enemies and deal 1000 damage to all of them, plus the Spear’s base damage. If those enemies happened to be undead or otherwise weak to Darkness, that went up to 2000—it was a crowd control power bomb. The other two points went into Jump VI and Master of Blades VI. They were two of my biggest power moves.

  Jump VI

Spring up to 60ft into the air in any direction and deal x4 damage on landing, with +10% knockdown resistance while in the air.

  Master of Blades VI

Chain combo from Jump. Before you hit the ground, leap backwards into the air and manifest a rain of shadow lances onto your foes, dealing massive damage to enemies (1632 per lance, 4 lances per level, maximum 4 lances per enemy).

As I grew into my Path, I was starting to understand how it was really meant to work—especially in synergy with the Nasaku Half-Blood abilities. While it sucked to have to drink blood once a week—pun intended—I couldn’t deny the sheer power of the Shadowlord ability. Shadows weren’t particularly strong, but they allowed me to maximize my crowd control potential. As far as I could tell, Dark Dragoon had two battle modes. Battle mode #1 was a style I’d nicknamed the Team Player, in which I utilized high-damage moves to hit enemies fast and hard, softening them up for Suri and Karalti. Both of them had more armor, defense and HP than I did, but I had half again as much DPS. By relying on her and Suri to soak, as we’d done with the T-rex, I could deploy the nukes at my disposal.

The second mode was the Death from Above school of spear fighting. This was my current solo-build focus: mastering my aerial abilities and enhancing them with the Stealth skill to deal as much damage as possible, as fast as possible. All players benefited from attacks made from concealment. Black Lotus, Jump, Spider Climb, Dancing Fly, and my AoE moves all got a 1.5x bonus from surprise attacks. And you know what made surprises easy? Shadow minions, who could encircle an opponent and distract them to grant me that sweet flanking bonus. With Jump VI, I could tear an undead opponent or anyone weak to Darkness to shreds—2,730 base damage, plus the 1.5x stealth