Frostbitten Wayfarer

The next few weeks Zoe spent getting her skills back up to a respectable level. When she made it back up to level eighty and had her Seasoned Cinders skills in the low thirties, Zoe put three hundred of her points into Wisdom to bring it up to five hundred, and then with the remaining points she brought Strength and Endurance both up to one hundred. The last one hundred ninety, Zoe pushed into Vitality.

Now that she had so many stat points to spend on things, and had gotten over her aversion to resetting her classes to respec her points, there was little reason to not put many more points into her health. And with all of her mana regeneration bonuses, there was little reason to put points into her mana stats at this point regardless, other than class bonuses and magic power.

With five hundred wisdom, her classes’ regeneration multipliers and her Endless feat, she had no idea what her mana regeneration was at now. Not to mention her Meditation. But it was uncountable for her. The memories of sitting and charging mana orbs for hours on end seemed so insubstantial now. Almost regardless of what she did, mana was never the bottleneck. Aside from a few enchantments — like her Scorched Echo maintaining a constant cloud behind it or a powerful Wind enchantment, she had an effective endless well of mana to spend. A fitting name for the feat, she thought.

The dividing line between the zones was even less substantial this time. At this point, the sign that divided the two sections was damaged and worn from the years it was left there. Zoe thought about spending a few minutes building a new sign to replace it, but the lines being less clear as she climbed the mountain felt fitting somehow.

As though not even the ones who maintained the mountain dared climb this high. It gave the mountain a sense of age and power. And if Zoe was being honest, she was too excited to find what was next to bother spending time fixing up a sign that most people who climbed this high weren’t going to need.

And there were very few who did climb this high, as far as Zoe could tell. She saw a few people throughout her time in the magic zone, but they were few and far between. Most continued up further, and the ones who did stick around to fight the mages were never there for as long as Zoe had been.

The longest was a younger man with bright red hair who ran through the forests laughing as he smashed through the zombies with his large black sledge hammer. He stuck around for a few months at one point, but then Zoe never saw him again. Maybe he went up, or maybe he got whatever he needed.

But the rest were never around for more than a week or two at most. They came, usually in groups, set up their camps and hunted the zombies with an almost methodical approach for a while. And then they went back down and that was it.

Zoe had stopped by a few of their camps at times and tried to chat, but they never seemed interested in making friends. Snobby, higher than thou types of people. She gave up trying after the first couple groups and just stuck to herself as she wandered through the magic zone.

Her first steps into the next zone were nerve-wracking. This was the first time that Zoe had no idea what to expect. When she first came to Moaning Point she knew there were zombies to fight, and as she travelled up she even had a good understanding of what was to come. The second zone had tools and weapons, sometimes even armour. The next zone had magic.

But the fourth zone? The one she was just stepping into for the first time? Zoe had no clue what was waiting for her. Maybe there would be undead dragons, liches summoning hordes of zombies. Maybe it would just be armoured mages or undead dogs. She had no clue, and she walked up the path with a careful gait.

Though, calling it a path at this point was rather generous she thought. Down in the lower stages, the path was well worn from all the people who travelled it. But at this point, without all of her skills showing her where people travelled Zoe doubted she would even be able to notice the route up the mountain.

It wasn’t long before she saw the first zombie, or rather zombies. Not far up from the magic zone was a small group of five rotting corpses wandering through the forest. All in the low dark red seventies to her Identify.

Zoe had seen groups of zombies in the past — in particular when she angered one of the armoured zombies or otherwise made a lot of noise that lured in groups. But this wasn’t a horde lured to a particular sound, it was just a group of them wandering together.

Was that what the next zone was? Groups of them? Zoe summoned her sword and shield from ice and covered herself in her Scorched Arsenal armour. A nice side effect of the Scorched Arsenal compared to the Frozen Arsenal was that it applied her Adaptive Cinders on contact.

The effect wasn’t strong enough to outweigh her much higher level Frozen Arsenal when used as a weapon, but for her armour it was a nice bonus. If she needed defense, she could cover herself in ice. But if she needed offense like she felt she’d more be in need of here, she could cover herself in Cinders and sneak in some extra damage with her armour while she fought.

Another benefit of Scorched Arsenal was that it was far superior for explosive projectiles. The cloud of ash and soot burned into her opponents and tore through them with her Adaptive Cinders skill. Zoe summoned a cone of ice and fired it off at one of the zombies with a simple archery enchantment.

The group turned to face her and as soon as they saw her rushed down through the trees towards her. They seemed so slow to Zoe, though. They were higher level than any zombie that she’d fought before but so unimpressive.

She stepped into the group when they approached and ducked under a wild swing from the forward zombie. The zombie to her left slammed its fists down at her, and she let its claws scrape along her shield as she drew her sword across its chest. The dungeon’s magic reached up and pulled away its flesh and bones to reclaim.

Another zombie slammed its rotted hands towards her from behind. Zoe let it smash into her back and felt the meaningless drain on her mana as her armour held against the impact. The smell of burnt, rotting flesh flooded her nose as Adaptive Cinders seeped into its body. She stepped back to avoid another zombie’s sad attempt at grappling her, and shoved the last zombie to the ground with her shield then stabbed through its chest with her sword and let the dungeon claim its body.

Two down, three to go. The first zombie staggered towards her and swiped at her with its hands while another was jumping at her from behind. The third was still recoiling from the cinders coursing through its body.

Zoe slammed into the first zombie with her shield and formed a shield of rock behind her that the second slammed into. She stabbed her sword into the one she tackled then dragged it across the zombie’s chest, and it fell to the ground in a clump to be reclaimed by the dungeon.

The last two zombies were behind the shield of rock she created, and Zoe let it dissolve away as she drew the mana back into herself. Both the zombies leapt at her, and Zoe stepped back from their charge then smashed into one with her shield while she slashed into the other with her sword.

She pushed the zombie clawing at her shield to the ground and stabbed through its chest. The fight took seconds, and even the one hit Zoe did take was she wanted to take. Adaptive Cinders was powerful, and she almost wished she could take Adaptive Frost after getting used to it. The slowing effect would be incredible she knew, but there wasn’t anything she could sacrifice.

Maybe Frozen Arsenal now that she had Scorched Arsenal to replace it, but it was almost at level ninety, compared to Scorched Cinders’ mere level thirty. The difference in power was very noticeable, and her armour only barely won out for offense thanks to its synergy with Adaptive Cinders providing extra damage her icy armour couldn’t do.

Zoe shrugged and carried on. There was no point worrying about it now, her current skillset was doing wonders for her. Maybe it could be slightly better, but aside from her Seasoned Frost class they were all temporary anyway. She’d replace them one day when she had all the feats, resistances and skills she could ever hope for.

She fought a few more of the groups, and none were much more difficult. With her frozen projectiles she was able to take them out before they even noticed her. She carried on up the mountain towards the next zone which was marked with a carving in a massive boulder that towered over Zoe. Somebody had carved out a skull in it and that was as good as any sign that she was continuing on to the next zone.

The next two zones were rather boring for her, and Zoe found herself rushing through them. The first of the two was more groups of zombies, but this time with tools and armour. She found a group of five armoured zombies near the next border, but even they proved hardly a challenge for her.

Even when she was lower levelled and less experienced, without all of her new feats she had taken out two of them with ease. Even if they were higher levelled — up in the mid eighties to low nineties at this point, they were just too slow for her.

She weaved through their attacks and dismantled them one after the other, and they fell with not a scratch on Zoe.

The next zone was not at all surprising to her. Groups of mages, and the first non humans that she found over level one hundred. They were still only dark red, but Zoe suspected the next stage might have zombies with their next class. That would be the first time she’d fought something with more classes than her — if she chose to continue ascending before making it to her next class selection.

Which she thought she would. Even if the zombies had a whole entire class above her, she had so many feats and skills bolstering her that it might just even the playing field a little. And fighting something so much higher level than her would get her to that next threshold far faster than things at the same level or even lower than her.

In just a few days, she had climbed up through three new sections of Moaning Point. The fastest progression she’d had yet, and if the books she read were to be believed then the highest level undead at the top of the mountain would be only just reaching one fifty. There weren’t many more stages left for her to climb, unless they started to have much smaller jumps in levels.

The mages were easy, even easier than the groups of armoured zombies to her. She had spent so much time fighting them, growing accustomed to their movements and techniques while she gathered her new feats. Even if they were much stronger now, even if they were much quicker and their magic smashed through the air with so much more power, Zoe was stronger too and made quick work of them.

The next zone was marked with another large boulder — a theme this high up it seemed, and Zoe walked past it. Her heart pounded with each step, and seconds after passing the boulder she heard a rumbling from higher up. It sounded like the Okiu’s steps, a deep quaking sound that echoed through the mountain.

She was stunned that she hadn’t been able to hear it moments prior and took a few steps back down. As soon as she did, the rumbling stopped and all she could hear was the wind through the trees and distant zombies wandering through the forests.

Was the dungeon blocking out the sound from higher up? To keep people from being lured up towards it, or to stop them from being scared of it perhaps? Whatever the reason was, there was an imperceptible barrier that the rumbling couldn’t pass through not far from the marked boulder. On one side, it was almost peaceful.

But on the other, reality quaked from the power of whatever was causing the rumbling. It almost scared her how close it had been all along. What horrors walked past her over her years on Abyllan without her notice, what terrible creatures lurked mere moments away from her, hidden by some magic she couldn’t notice?

Zoe shivered, and continued upwards. There had never been a spike in difficulty so large that one zone was simple and the next was deadly. Moaning Point was a lodestone dungeon, if she could handle the groups of mages she could at least escape from whatever was next.

The terrain shifted as she continued up the mountain. The steady, comfortable climb through a relaxing forest that she’d grown accustomed to was gradually replaced with jagged rocks and black sand that clung to her clothes. The gentle hike turned to a challenging climb as she clambered up steep cliffs with poor handholds and across shaky wooden bridges over deep crevices in the mountain.

Even her Vampyric Senses struggled to find the path that people were taking through the mountain, and at times she found herself off track and had to head back to where she last saw the path.

The deep rumbling echoed through the rocky mountain, but Zoe never saw what was causing it even by the time she found the next boulder marking the end of the zone. It made sense, if she assumed that the zombies at this stage were more powerful but smaller in numbers.

Most of the people at this stage were likely trying to get further up, and would take a path through the mountain that wouldn’t lead them to conflict. She sighed and turned back down the mountain. It was time to track down the source of the rumbling on her own.