Frostbound [LitRPG Apocalypse]

Chris

Glacier Bay

It's time.

I thought about the unassuming wooden box waiting for me back in Frostheim that had been with me for far too long. I had waited, and waited, and waited, trying to push for more, and the day had finally come. With the deal with Lakeshore coming to a close, and what felt like a new chapter turning in our Faction, I had waited long enough. It would happen this week. I only had a few things left to do.

Today was like any other day, really. The days leading up to it were similar as well. The Viscount upgrade was a few weeks ago, and all that time was dedicated solely to one thing and one thing only.

The only deviation was Annabeth's birthday, but that was one day in a sea of hundreds I'd spent on the task.

My evolution had finally come.

I only had two more things left to do.

And one of them wasn't more forging. That was well and truly over for at least a good long while. If I didn't carve a Rune for months, that would be okay with me. I was sick of it and ready to get back to fighting and gaining strength.

[Rune Carving], my level 100 skill choice, had been put through the ringer. Even though it had started at Rare, it was among the many Profession skill upgrades from my time focusing on it.

Only to Epic, but still a marvelous feat. My Create skills managed as well. With over two years of dedication, if they hadn't, I would have just cut my losses.

No, smithing, engraving, or any other Profession-related task was not among my tasks for the day. Not when the option I sought was already listed.

Profession Evolution Available

Journeyman Wardsmith(Rare)
Journeyman Armorsmith(Rare)
Journeyman Weaponsmith(Rare)
Journeyman Runecrafter(Rare)
Adept Runesmith(Epic)

All my efforts had paid off, and I could blessedly move on for a time.

No, what I still had to do was something else.

Something I had been planning for nearly as long as my delay began. At first, my preparations were mostly shots in the dark, trying to come up with a plan or experiment with different ideas, but that all changed when we gained access to the wider universe's knowledge base.

Vulwin had already come through by getting us the Mental Defense Skills and Techniques associated with the Undead. I still hadn't had the chance to study them too in depth yet, and it wasn't like they came in neat Skill Orbs, where all I had to do was touch them and the system did all the work.

No, that was too easy, apparently, and I'd get to those when I got the time.

Vulwin came through in a different way this time regarding passive, attribute-boosting skills. Ever since I got them, [Body of a Barbarian] and [Frozen Fortitude] were locked at where they were. The Uncommon rank. The only reason they were that high to begin with was because skills of their nature didn't exist in Common rarities.

I wanted to push that.

I had to admit, while a lot of my strength came from my Laws, Body Stage, Heart, Spirit Anchor, and Bloodline, I also couldn't ignore that all of that was boosted by the base level of my attributes.

My Bloodline boosted my Strength, and having 1800 points of it did more than only having 1000 points of it.

Attributes made up a large portion of why I was as strong as I was. Pushing myself for over two years to smith, engrave, and otherwise create was all to gain an Epic class so that I could gain more of them.

But that wasn't the only way I could do so.

My brother helped the most, actually. He had taken his fascination with Spells and Skills into something I had to admit was impressive. His insight, knowledge from Vulwin, and just plain hardheaded trial and error had finally worked out something that I felt confident would work.

There was a structure to skills. It wasn't something you had to know of to use them, as I was able to use [Power Strike] from the moment I gained it back in the white room. I had no idea how it worked, but after inputting mana and with the intent to use the skill, it just did.

Since then, I knew much more of the 'behind the scenes' workings.

They were similar to Runes in a way, but different enough that Gabriel proclaimed them separate. He just happened to be right, as that was also what the books from Vulwin concluded as well.

While Runes were meaning made into structure, Skills held a lot more give and spirituality than what the rigidness of Runes could provide. After learning that, it wasn't a surprise that the Skill's 'matrix', as Gabe dubbed them, resided in the Spirit.

What gave me the best clarity, for me at least, was comparing it to the Stars of Primordial Frost technique. The Technique held a different language of Runes that I'd never seen before, and while they weren't the same as Runes or Skill Matrixes as I knew them, they offered something else.

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A third perspective.

I could not only look upon the Technique Booklet and see what was described and written, I could also delve into my Mana Heart and see the Runes themselves carved upon my meta-physical Mana Heart.

And now, I was about to do something either monumentally stupid or something that could move my strength another step forward.

Stop being a chicken, you've studied this for months.

I was told this process would feel remarkably similar to self-mutilation, and that didn't fill me with warm and fuzzy feelings. I knew pain; any warrior knew pain, but inflicting it upon myself still gave me pause.

Start with [Body of a Barbarian].

[Body of a Barbarian] took every second point in Endurance and gave me a point of Strength. With 1097 points of Endurance, it gave me an extra 548 points of Strength. [Frozen Fortitude], on the other hand, boosted my Fortitude by 664 points. While my Strength sat at 1876, that was with the boost already. Only 1328 of it was 'natural', or subject to the skills workings.

They were similar, but I was still going to start with the lower one. Even if it would only be slightly easier.

Strictly speaking, I didn't have to be next to the Glacier Seed to do this. Well, after so long, it wasn't really a seed anymore, but the point was the same. The affinity of the mana didn't much matter; it was just what I found easier to control and manipulate. My connection to it would make this entire thing just a little bit easier, and that was good enough for me.

The energy mana contained and represented was the main goal. It could be fire mana for all the Skill cared for, but that would make it harder on me to channel and internalize.

Stop delaying.

I reached out to the dense mana around me. With my Arctic affinity, all of it fell under my preview, even if it all wasn't strictly Ice mana. I wrapped it up as best I could and smothered it with my will.

Then I began to channel it into my Spirit.

It was surprisingly similar to strengthening my Bloodline, and the practice of doing it helped with what came next.

Instead of sending all of that energy through the Blood Essence residing in my Spirit, I instead sent it funneling toward the Skill structure for [Body of a Barbarian]. I had mapped the structure out extensively over the years I'd had it, so I was still comfortable with the process so far.

The Skill, while normally passive and dormant, took the injection of energy just like any other skill. The structure drank it up and began to fill with power as more energy filled it, except that the only difference was that there was nowhere for it to go.

The skill had no active effect. It didn't add power to swings or create ice out of nothing. The skill had one job and one job only. To connect with the wellspring of essence in my flesh in the form of Endurance, and channel it into Strength.

As more energy filled the Skill, I could see its effects clearly. It had tendrils throughout my Spirit that connected all over my body. The Spirit was separate from my physical body, but it was also connected. The inner workings of how the Spirit, Body, and Mind worked weren't something I knew in depth, but I knew they were all connected.

I was feeling that connection now, more than ever.

I also felt this when I formed my Anchor. Only briefly, though.

The Seed had ample time to build up the mana in the area, especially with the Formation containing and funneling more of it in, and I drank it in greedily. I applied my experience not only from purifying and strengthening my bloodline, but also from how I formed my Mana Heart to begin with. It required a massive amount of mana to be under my control, not unlike what I was doing now.

But instead of creating a container to house mana and amplify its effects, I was funneling it into expanding a Skill.

As I did so, I recalled a passage from one of the books.

'After the Skill has settled into the Spirit, however long that takes for your species, when expanding it, the Skill will know what to do. The longer and more extensively you've used it, the easier it will expand.'

It wasn't exactly foolproof, but I could see what they were talking about. The Skill knowing what to do wasn't exactly true. It was sentient in any sense of the word and wasn't guiding the energy I was giving it consciously.

It was closer to watching a plant grow naturally. It required guidance, as some plants do, but most of the effort wasn't done by me at all. It had an instinct of how to do it all on its own.

The hardest part of the entire thing was the prep work involved. I had to know what growth was bad and what growth was good. Luckily, such books were widely spread and based on the attributes involved.

An Endurance into Strength Skill wasn't all that rare, apparently.

I felt the connections between my Spirit and Body flare up and start to tingle. It was the onset of the pain that would soon come. The essence invested in making me more enduring and stronger was about to be manipulated, and I wasn't under any anesthesia.

And then the pain came. It wasn't gentle at all, wracking my body like a tsunami.

With great effort, I pushed it out of my mind and continued feeding the skill with all I could give. Mana flowed from the air and ice around me and funneled into my spirit for what felt like hours.

The pain made it hard to tell, but I wasn't the least bit surprised when the sky started to dim from the sun setting. I'd started just after midday.

The books were right. I'd had [Body of a Barbarian] ever since the tutorial, since my G-rank Class Arctic Barbarian. That amount of time, and that amount of levels gained since, was more than enough to have the Skill expand on its own.

As the pain finally ebbed, I could feel the worn-out nature of my Spirit and Body. There was no way I'd be able to do [Frozen Fortitude] today without rest. It wasn't a tear like Jon had experienced, but just regular exhaustion from overworking it.

But I still smiled.

You have upgraded a skill:
Body of a Barbarian(Uncommon) -> Body of a Frostborn(Rare)

Body of a Frostborn(Rare) – Utilize the strength of your body to empower yourself further. Every fourth point in endurance results in three points in strength.

It went from a 2:1 ratio to 4:3. The upgrade itself didn't automatically give me the 275 attribute points I was due; that would take time to accumulate. Similar to leveling.

I was a bit miffed about that, but I knew it would be the case. At first, I had thought it would happen retroactively and automatically, like when I first gained the skill, but it didn't.

I first gained the Skill from the System, and it was the one who footed the bill for such actions, leaving me with a slower leveling speed to pay off my debt. This upgrade came from me personally, and would take some time to fill out with essence that I didn't yet have.

Now the only thing keeping me from D-rank was [Frozen Fortitude] and a few runs into the Dungeon. The attribute points would come quickly, as the System wasn't involved at all, and there was no tax to pay.

Whatever essence I got from killing Dungeon monsters would funnel straight into my new skill.

Tomorrow, I would do [Frozen Fortitude], and then it would be a few days of filling them out with essence, and then it would be time.