He only had six minutes and change to check his notifications, so he concentrated on that and let the party handle reloading and anything else they needed. There were no Essence or item drops, as expected, but his antics had improved one stat and some Skills.

  Congratulations! You have gained +2 to Willpower! You have learned a new Skill: Pain Tolerance (Uncommon, Passive, Beginner 1).

  Reaper’s Dash has improved to Beginner 10! You have gained +3 to Dexterity.

  Reaper’s Dash has Evolved! Due to your actions, the Skill has become Reaper’s Dance (Legendary, Toggle-Action Hybrid, Beginner 3). Special Evolution: Due to the extensive changes in your Skill, your Feat selection has been folded into the Evolution. New Feats will be available at Beginner 5 and Beginner 10.

  Uncanny Dodge has improved to Beginner 10! You have gained +2 to Dexterity. You can select a new Feat! You may Evolve the Skill (1 Evolution available).

  Gun Proficiency Skill has improved to Beginner 5! You have gained +1 to Perception. Feats available!

  Naginatajutsu has improved to Beginner 5! New Feat available.

  You have gained 3 Achievements (Achievement rewards are locked until the Challenge is completed).

  You have gained 1 Title! (Title rewards are locked until the Challenge is completed).

  Roland immediately went to his new and evolved Skills. Time to see what his pain and suffering had earned him.

  * Reaper’s Dance (Spirit, Death) (Legendary, Toggle-Action Hybrid, Beginner 3): Stand on the threshold between the land of the living and the land of fleeing souls, using your in-between state to drain the life of your enemies.

  While this Skill is toggled on, you become a spirit entity that is intangible and visible only as a translucent, ghostly shape. In that state, you suffer no damage from mundane physical attacks, half damage from Uncommon or better weapons and physical Mana effects, and full damage from Concept-based attacks. Any Skill or Technique infused by Life or similar Concepts will inflict double damage to the spiritual form.

  While engaging Reaper’s Dance, you inflict (Aura Rating + Skill level) points of Death-attuned damage to any hostile living or Undead beings (but not constructs) within 1 inch per (Aura Rating + Skill level). This damage will ‘tick’ every second the victim is in range. Members of your Party or Raid are immune to this effect.

  You can move normally while in spirit form, but gravity only has half its normal effect, doubling your jumping height and eliminating falling damage. You can pass through mundane solid objects with a maximum thickness of 1 inch per (Willpower + Skill level); anything thicker (including solid ground) will repel your form.

  Suspending the Skill while moving through a solid object will cause severe damage (anything from 25% to 100% of your Health depending on circumstances). You can perform dashes as per the original Reaper’s Dash Skill, at the cost of 12 Mana per dash. The Dash’s maximum range is (22 + Skill level) yards.

  This is an Active/Toggle Skill; activating it will drain 12 Mana per second until toggled off.

  Roland was feeling pretty hyped about the evolution until he got to the end and discovered that the drain remained just as massive as when he first forced the Skill to behave the way he wanted. The only way he could use it for more than a few seconds was to do it in a crowd of enemies or just after he’d accumulated a few hundred points of Vital Energy.

  On the other hand, if he faced even a couple of enemies he could drain, the new Skill was overpowered as eff, which made sense given its Legendary tier. The automatic evolution had kept him from the Beginner 10 Feat he would have gained, but he thought it was a good exchange.

  More importantly, the new Skill was perfect for his current circumstances. It would serve as a temp replacement for the gone and lamented Reaper’s Nimbus, locked away inside his now-forbidden Art.

  Next, he turned to Uncanny Dodge to see which Feats and Evolutions were on the menu:

  * I’m the Juggernaut! (Feat, Replaces Uncanny Charge): You generate tremendous force when you charge a target, inflicting (Strength + Dexterity) points of physical damage on impact. While this ability is active, you gain 50 points of Damage Resistance against physical damage. Uncanny Charge’s other effects remain the same. Activating this Feat costs 20 Endurance.

  * Uncanny Riposte (Feat): You can dodge and counterattack in one swift movement. Activating this Feat costs 15 Endurance. The next close quarter attack on you will have a 50% increased chance to be dodged, and the counterattack will be 50% more likely to hit and inflict 100% additional damage. Once used, Uncanny Riposte has a cooldown of 3 seconds.

  * You Always See Them Coming (Feat): Uncanny Dodge will trigger automatically whenever an attack is about to hit you while unaware, as long as you have the Endurance to activate the Skill. The move will send you to a random clear location, moving you up to 5 yards plus 1 yard per Skill level.

  * Walk Between the Raindrops (Evolution) (Epic, Passive-Action Hybrid, Beginner 1): You can sense and react to all forms of attack with incredible speed. All defensive moves against any danger your senses (physical or supernatural) can perceive will be (50 + Skill level)% more effective than would be normal for someone with the same Dexterity and combat Skills.

  Uncanny Dodge and Uncanny Charge are treated as Feats of the new Skill and can be used at their normal cost, with a Skill bonus of +10.

  I’m the Juggernaut sounded like a lot of fun, not to mention being an old meme come to life, so he picked it up. The Evolution was better than the similar Feat (Uncanny Riposte), otherwise it would have been a tougher choice. After choosing the Feat, he evolved the Skill to Walk Between the Raindrops. The new Skill would work with Danse Macabre amazingly well, and he could see a future evolution allowing him to fold the two Skills together, or maybe even mix them with the Subtle Sidestep Technique to turn Roland into the ultimate dodge tank.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  His Naginatajutsu had gotten a good workout, and the Feats available reflected it:

  * Area Denial (Feat): You can whirl a naginata at such speed that any who enter its range will be struck by its blade. You need to have enough clear space around you to freely swing your weapon to activate this Feat. When activated, every enemy who comes into reach of the weapon will be automatically struck for normal weapon damage. Cost: 5 Endurance per second.

  * Descending Righteous Wrath (Feat): Leap into the air and swing your blade as you descend, gaining far more momentum and striking power than either gravity or the strength of your limbs could account for. The leap and descent will happen with unnatural speed as well, making the attack no easier to dodge or defend against than a regular one.

  On a successful hit, Descending Righteous Wrath inflicts (Strength x Skill level) physical damage in addition to the weapon’s normal damage. Cost: 30 Endurance. Cooldown: 10 seconds.

  The leap attack was a sweet move if life were like an anime. The damage was great, just the kind of boss-killing move that he needed if Coup de Grace wasn’t enough.

  Roland wasn’t crazy about hanging in the air, effectively becoming an easy target, but he decided to go for it and pick the Jumping Jack (er, Descending Righteous Wrath) Feat.

  Pain Tolerance was next. The new Skill, unfortunately, wasn’t as impressive as he’d hoped, and it was something Roland had been expecting for a while; better late than never, he figured.

  Pain Tolerance (Uncommon, Passive, Beginner 1): You have been exposed to many – far too many – different sources of pain and suffering. This Skill is only awarded to people who have endured excruciating agony through multiple distinct and prolonged ordeals. Few F-Grade or Tin Rank Ascendants gain this Skill, as such levels of pain usually result in death.

  Which makes you very lucky or someone with rather unusual proclivities. The System does not judge.

  Pain Tolerance helps to reduce the loss of focus, or instinctive reactions to damaged or stimulated nerve receptors, increasing your effective Willpower to overcome them by 10% per Skill level. Having this Skill reduces any Willpower increases from resisting pain by 20% per Skill level; after Beginner 5, you will no longer gain Willpower from overcoming painful situations or events.

  The Skill was kind of a mixed bag for Roland, but since he anticipated a lot of ‘painful situations and events’ in the near to distant future, it was a good one to have. From the description, it sounded like it took a lot of variety, not just quantity, to get it. Just his luck to be exposed to years’ worth of suffering in under a month.

  Finally, he had a Gun Proficiency Feat to pick:

  * Deadshot: By spending 10 Endurance, you can cause the next shot that strikes a target to be an automatic critical hit, inflicting x 2 to x 5 damage to the target, determined by hit location.

  * Weapon of Choice: You can select a specific firearm category (such as semi-automatic pistols, revolvers, selective-fire rifles, and so on), gaining a +5% bonus per Skill level to damage and accuracy while using it. If you narrow the weapon of choice to a specific weapon design (a Colt .45 or AR-15, for example), the bonus increases to +10% per Skill level.

  Roland went for Deadshot. Guaranteed criticals could be very useful when it came to fighting Bosses – and anything else for that matter – and he didn’t want to be limited to a particular weapon, not even his Executioner’s Gun.

  The bookkeeping took him about five minutes, which left him with two minutes to kill before the next wave. He checked on the party. A couple of Endurance potions had helped everyone freshen up and recover from adrenaline overdosing. Nobody had gotten hurt or even spent much ammo; Roland had killed the vast majority of the bugs. Now that he had an active area-effect ability that was almost as good as his locked Art, he hoped that would be the norm moving forward.

  He left the Kel-Tec with Josh; if worse came to worst, an extra shotgun might make the difference should any stragglers get too close for comfort. After making sure everyone had plenty of ammo, he turned to the non-shooters and found Dahlia giving him a fangirl look that he wished he didn’t enjoy as much as he did. It was nice to feel appreciated, even by someone who was a little too edgy-nutty for his tastes.

  “Am I ever going to be able to do that sort of thing?” she asked him, gesturing at the gate where he had wiped out dozens of bugs.

  “Absolutely. You have performed magic without the System. The Dungeon’s high Mana concentration probably helped a lot, but you’re still getting great achievements and titles. If you don’t get an Epic Class out of that, you can use my helmet as a cooking pot.”

  “I hope you are right. It’d make all this crap worth it,” she said, waving her arms to encompass the landfill. “And you still won’t give me a gun, uh?”

  “Think about it. Critters are getting close, you panic and start pulling the trigger as fast as you can, and the gun gets away from you. Spray and pray is how you kill a buddy. Negligent discharges are not a joke.”

  “They all have body armor.”

  “Chest and head only, and that’s only three of them. A nine-mill will go through Barton’s medieval armor like a hot knife through butter. Thin steel will only contribute metal fragments to the wound cavity.”

  “I love it when you talk dirty.”

  “Heh.”

  “Okay, no guns, I guess.”

  “Wait,” Roland said, remembering something. “I might have something you can use.”

  He retrieved the wand he had earned from his first fight last Saturday night, or almost four weeks ago, depending on your viewpoint.

  * Mana Wand (F-Grade, Rare): Drains the user of 1 point of Mana to fire a short-ranged energy beam. Damage: 5 (Pure Mana). Range: 60 feet. The weapon can be overcharged: spending extra Mana increases the damage by 5 points of damage for every extra two points of Mana.

  “This doesn’t have recoil, it’s pure point-and-shoot. Safer than a gun, but you still have to be careful where you aim it. It’s better than the taser, even with your Bloodykee ritual.”

  “Love it,” she said after reading the description. “Why didn’t you hand it out before?”

  “I wasn’t sure any of you could use it. You’re the first one in the group who has manipulated Mana.”

  “I guess I’m just that special, uh?” Dahlia said, holding the wand with both hands. “I wonder if I can stick a MiniFiend card on it and enhance it.”

  “Maybe save that for later,” Roland warned her. “Messing with a regular item is one thing. Playing with a System item... you could make it explode or something.”

  “Why don’t I get a wand?” Barton whined; he was sitting down with the spear in his lap. “I’m gonna get stuck with a warrior class thanks to this damn pointy stick.”

  “I only have the one, and she can use it. Don’t worry, you can select your basic role. Pick Caster and you’ll be offered nothing but magic user classes.”

  “Okay,” Barton said, still looking unhappy. At least he wasn’t on the verge of a panic attack anymore.

  “Here, you can have my Bloodykee-enhanced Taser,” Dahlia told him. “Just remember to pray to the great Bloodykee when you shoot.”

  He took it after a second’s hesitation. “Sure, why not? What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “You never ask that question, dumbass,” Dahlia said, her kindness evaporating.

  “Thirty-second warning,” Bob announced. He’d been keeping track of the timer. “Get ready.”

  Roland grabbed the SFAR again but instead of hanging out on the mound, he climbed up the rusty crane nearby and took up a position on top of the driver’s cabin, which gave him a better view of the road. From there, he’d see whatever was coming before the rest of the party. Something he should have done before, but he’d been distracted by all the weirdness.

  I was expecting Close Quarters Battle and instead got something out of the movie Zulu. I could have bought concertina wire, some obstacles, and we’d be golden. Gotta stop thinking it’s all going to be narrow corridors and trapped doors, he told himself as he watched the counter tick down to zero.

  Wave four has begun!

  He saw the figures materialize right at the spot where his party had entered the Dungeon and cursed under his breath.

  Ratling Champions. Nothing but Ratling Champions, dozens and dozens of them.