The Forgotten Legacy

Rounding up all of the Hobbits had been easy enough, once he freed the first group they helped to free the second and third. They also ransacked the entire outpost, grabbing anything that may be of use during the trip back. The Hobbits didn’t really have much of a personality, they took his orders without question and generally stayed huddled together in groups, even though they didn’t have too.

The walk back to the village was not as simple as he had hoped though, now that he had the Hobbits with him the forest would send out actual monsters to attack the group of 300. If it hadn’t been for his echo skill he would have lost a lot of the Hobbits to these monsters, but as he was able to locate them the moment they spawned in the forest, it made it easy to protect the group. He had been right about one thing though, the Hobbits were slow. They ended up taking breaks nearly every hour so that they could recuperate, pushing them any harder would risk their health and lead to potentially losing some of them during the journey. For an entire day he was forced to go without sleep or rest, continually keeping lookout for monsters and ensuring none of the Hobbits wondered off.

By the time they made it back to the village Shaun was beyond irritable, the fighting he could deal with, playing Shepard to Hobbits, not so much. When the Hobbits were safely deposited in the village he was approached by the original Hobbit that had spoken to him when he first arrived. He was told that all 300 of the Hobbits had made it back alive and apologised that he wished he could give Shaun something to thank him but there was nothing left to give. When the Hobbit finished talking and wished him luck at the next outpost he finally got the notifications from killing the Corrupted.

**You have defeated a (Corrupted Ghoul – Level 71). Experience gained.**

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**You have defeated a (Corrupted Ghoul – Level 80). Bonus experience for killing an opponent above your level gained.**

**Class: Elemental Blade Slinger has levelled up by +1 levels. [Advanced] Elemental Blade Slinger has reached Level 93. +3 Str, +2 Dex, +3 End, +3 Vit, +4 Soul gained**

He had killed 100 Corrupted and only gotten a single level. About half, if not a bit more than that had been lower level than him but still, only one level was a kick to the balls. He spent some time resting on the outskirt of the village, needing to not only get a rest but also to regain all of the mana he had used in summoning his creatures. It was a lot of mana, summoning three at once, but it had been worth it to be able to strike out at all three of the buildings at once.

He repeated the process of infiltrating and clearing the outposts twice more with varying success. By the time he had gotten to the second outpost 15 Hobbits had already been killed. The Corrupted had all been stronger, their level being in the 80’s and there was 150 of them rather than just the 100 from before. The walk back had also taken twice as long as the outpost was further away than the first. The third outpost jumped in difficulty again, this time he had lost 32 Hobbits most before he arrived but some were lost during the fighting and the walk back. All of the corrupted had been in the 90’s in this outpost which meant his summons were not able to do the same amount of damage or hold back as many Corrupted as the first outpost. The only upside to the entire experience was that his level was growing at a good rate. He gained 3 full levels from the second outpost and now that the Hobbit had finished giving him the overview of how many of them he had managed to bring back from the third outpost he was ready to see how many levels he got from killing so many higher levelled monsters.

**You have defeated a (Corrupted Ghoul – Level 94). Bonus experience for killing an opponent above your level gained.**

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**You have defeated a (Corrupted Ghoul – Level 100). Bonus experience for killing an opponent above your level gained.**

**Class: Elemental Blade Slinger has levelled up by +4 levels. [Advanced] Elemental Blade Slinger has reached Level 100. +12 Str, +8 Dex, +12 End, +12 Vit, +16 Soul gained**

**Race: Human has levelled up by +2 levels. Human (E) has reached Level 79. +32 Ap gained**

By gaining these 4 levels in his class he had hit another milestone, this was his last chance to pick a new skill before he reached level 125 and he would get the chance to evolve his class. The downside to this was that none of his skills were anywhere near the level they needed to be for him to cap out their level. Compared to his class level his skill levels were abysmal, he had been told as much by the Commander Alserio. This was the downside of being overpowered with affinity, he relied on it more than a lot of his skills to fight, not that he had much of a choice when fighting monsters at the peak of E grade. His highest class skill as at level 59, Enhanced Mind, and that was because he used it pretty much all the time, but realistically his skills should all be sitting at around level 100 like his class.

He had promised to train his skill while he was here on Earth, Commander Alserio and stressed the need to do so, and he had a feeling that upgrading his class with his skills so low would have an adverse effect on the options he would be given when upgrading it. He could delay the upgrade at level 125, but doing so would impact his ability to fight, especially in the D grade dungeon. He also couldn’t place any of the training items he was given until he claimed the D grade dungeon. It was a situation he was going to have to deal with, just not right now. His priority was still on claiming the E grade dungeons and after that he would figure out what to do.

**New Class Skill Available: Please choose from one of the following options:**

**[Advanced] Mirrored Elemental Blade – Using one of the elements to create a mirror image of a blade you hold, forming a copy of it made completely from one of your bonded elements. The blade will be independent from its physical copy, capable to attacking and defending using your mind as the controlling factor. The number of blades able to be formed is dependent on skill level, for each 10 levels one extra blade can be created.**

This was now the third time he had been offered this skill and each time before he had been temped to pick it. Depending on what other choices he got this may be the one this time around.

**[Advanced] Elemental Field – The skill allows you to fully transform the area around you to temporarily terraform the surrounding area to an element of your choosing. Using the element in this field will exponentially increase the power of that element when used.**

Like last time, this was a good skill but just didn’t have the same impact as other skills he had been given before. He still saw the benefit of it but compared to the Mirrored Elemental Blade skill it gave less information. How big would the field be? Was it a metre, a kilometre? If he was to guess it would start out small and grow as its level did. It was a risk to choose it without the ability to actually spend a lot of time training it, time he didn’t have at the moment.

**[Advanced] Blade Syphon – When landing an attack with Blade Syphon skill active you are able to Syphon off a portion of the damage dealt into the blade used, converting the health taken from your opponent into an element and using this in your next attack.**

The skill was unique and rather powerful. He could literally use the health of an opponent against them, the more damage he dealt the more powerful the follow up attack. This would help him fight continuously without the need to worry about mana, although that wasn’t a huge issue most of the time. If he was in a fight that was drawn out it would help him a lot, especially against higher level opponents. The downside if he was right was that he would need to rely on using a physical blade, which although he did a good amount of the time, it wasn’t something he always did.

After looking over his options a few times he made his decision, hoping that he wouldn’t end up regretting passing up on the other options, especially as it was his last chance to pick a skill before his upgrade. His only hope was that he would be able to create skills like he had before when he had the time.

**Skill Gained**: [Advanced] Mirrored Elemental Blade (Level 1)**

Shaun didn’t delay at the village much longer, the only thing left for him to do in this dungeon was to travel to the Corrupted leader, save around 50 more Hobbits, including their elder, and then bring them back alive. Probably kill a lot of corrupted as well.

As he travelled to the final area he trained up his new skill both to get used to how it worked and also test its current limits. At first using the mirrored blade, regardless of what element he used, was disorientating, he needed to portion of a part of his mind in controlling it while also focusing on his own sword. He tested putting some of his AP into Willpower, and after finding that it made using the skill easier, he dumped the rest of his AP into the stat.

When the village came into view he travelled around the outer edge, looping around it to get a better idea of what he was going to need to deal with. To his surprise there were less Corrupted here than in any of the outposts, maybe 100 in total, but from what he saw they were all in the 110’s and were much more active. He concluded pretty quickly that there was going to be no way for him to repeat his previous method, the Corrupted were just too spread out and alert. The Hobbits were also not as bunched together as previously, although still in groups ranging from 5 to 10. If he was right he also managed to locate the Elder in what he assumed to be the main residence of the Corrupted leader if the information from his echo was anything to go by.

Even after spending some time trying to come up with a good plan, the thing he always came back to was to hit them from several directions all at once with as much power as he could manage. That meant using three summons, all going into the village form different directions with the focus of both distracting the Corrupted so that they didn’t kill the Hobbits and killing as many as they could without sacrificing their own lives. He needed time as his job was going to be going straight to the leader and doing everything he could to make sure that the Elder didn’t die.

Moving further from the village he summoned his Golem with Earth, his Zapian Eagle with Lightning and his Arctic Tiger with ice. His directions were clear, on his call they would rush the village form different sides, protect the Hobbits, cause a distraction and buy him time. Kill Corrupted if they could.

While his summons got into position he did the same, sneaking to the village wasn’t the most difficult thing he had ever done, every time he nearly got caught he would either shift into the air or simply teleport to a different location. He moved as close as he could to the residence that held the Elder and when the only thing left for him to do was enter the building, he gave the order for his summons to attack.

It took only a second before he witnessed the impact of his summons entering the village, blasts of lightning went off in one direction, cold first started spreading from another and finally the rumbling of the earth from his golem. He waited a few seconds while he felt the Corrupted all move in on his summons, leaving only two beings in the building, the leader of the Corrupted and the Elder.

Entering through the door and into the building, he moved quickly through the different rooms until he found himself before another set of doors. Pushing them open he came face to face with the real boss of this dungeon, the leader was different to the other Corrupted. Taller, more muscular but still with long limbs and piercing red eyes.

**Corrupted Fiend – Level 124**

As expected, the fiend was at the peak of E grade. He liked his odds of winning the fight but that wasn’t his primary objective here, he needed to save the Elder, who, currently was on the ground by the fiend’s feet. Step 1, get the Elder away from the Corrupted. You got this.

“Here I thought the others were ugly, but you really take the prize for that, don’t you.” Taunting the boss was the only thing he could come up with to get its attention on him rather than the Elder, he just hoped I worked. “You’re so gangly looking, have you not heard of having limbs in proportion to your body? And the red eyes? Yikes!” The more he insulted the fiend the angrier it got. He felt power build from the boss he spoke and its eyes were solely on him.

“Your life is mine human!” The moment it spoke it lunged at him, completely leaving behind the Elder in the process. Having predicted the reaction Shaun shifted further away and when he solidified again he sent a blast of air, not at the fiend but at the Elder, pushing the Hobbit into the corner of the room near a door which he hoped it had enough sense to go through and hide.

There was nothing else he could really do for the Elder without drawing the fiend’s attention to it, his focus now had to be on finishing this fight and doing it as quickly as possible. His summons wouldn’t last forever and the longer this took the higher the chance that too many Hobbits would die and he would need to do this dungeon all over again.