Pathbreakers: Multiclassing For Fun And Profit

6/19/24

Las Vegas, Nevada

10:06 AM

I already introduced myself to the national guard team in place to handle the dungeon break. They have a hundred soldiers here, with another two hundred stationed nearby to switch out every eight hours. There's another two hundred support staff, making the 25-hour dungeon break cost the taxpayers close to a million bucks a week. And so far each week the national guard here in Las Vegas has lost between 3 and 14 troops each week, with dozens more getting injured every Wednesday.

But not this Wednesday. I'm out front. And I'm prepared. The Luxor dungeon produces three kinds of monsters. There's mummies and Egyptian stuff, there's ogre gangsters, and there's some dinosaurs made of wax. They come out in waves, and each wave has a random number (between 2 and 50) and type of monster. I have no doubt that I can trounce everything this place throws at me.

The Luxor Pyramid looks perfectly normal, except for the red light glowing from the thousands of windows. It's a dungeon now, so it exists slightly out of spacetime, or whatever scientists call it. That means the pyramid itself is invulnerable and it's bigger on the inside. Local law enforcement has charted through floor nine, but nobody has returned from floor ten. Which is bad. I'm putting this place on my short list of dungeons to tackle next.

An alarm blares, sounding like an air raid or tornado siren, depending on what decade you're from. It's time. I'm standing out front in my crisp, white uniform. To my left are two tanks and an armored personnel carrier fitted for urban warfare. To my right is a watchtower made of scaffolding, filled with snipers. Further right are concrete road dividers, behind which are a couple squads of soldiers.

“You really think you're some hotshot, don't cha?” comes a gruff voice from behind my back. My system-enhanced senses mean that I don't have to turn to see the Colonel there.

“Nah,” I say over my shoulder. “I just think I can help.” It's true. Faced with this arsenal, almost anything coming out of the dungeon is going to be shredded instantly. But I can heal. I can use shields to protect. I can make a difference.

“One wave per hour, hotshot,” he says to me. “That's 25 hours straight of fighting. You gonna make it, mister dungeon breaker?”

I don't respond. I don't need to think about R-32. Either visit. I already know I'm capable of doing this.

My spells got restructured into four “Astral” elements, Solar, Lunar, Atmos and Void. I've found that I can use up to two of those at once, and I think that's mostly due to my two sub-minds. Each can concentrate on one element or they can combine to focus on a single element, which makes those spells stronger.

Brian, our litRPG expert, says this has something to do with my mana channels being changed when I got my 6th step class, Astral Pathbreaker. He talked on and on about “meridians” and “mana threads” and “when my core spins.” I kinda glazed over when he was talking so I'm not sure why everything inside me got restructured. I just know that it did. The net result is fewer spells but they're each more powerful, and often more versatile.

I shout, “Solar Mind!” and orange flames spiral around my arms. I don't technically have to say that out loud, it just sort of feels right.

I got a new ability for hitting 250 Arcana, and I put it to use.

The New Passives - Spells with an AP cost that is less than your regeneration rate can be set as passive effects.

What this ability actually does is let me activate a certain amount of low cost spells at once. Since my AP regen is currently 500 per hour, I can set 8.33 worth of spells as passive. The ‘passive cost’ is what one minute of the spell would cost. So Solar Barrier, which costs 5 AP over 10 minutes, has a passive cost of 0.5. Which means I can have sixteen shields up at once. And that's my plan.

Using Solar Barrier multiple times, sixteen circular shields of light appear all around me, each one three feet across and emblazoned with the Pathbreakers emblem. I'm ready.

The 1st Wave

Dozens of giant, blue skinned humanoids in business suits materialize. They're each at least ten feet tall and are wielding a combination of baseball bats, brass knuckles and ogre-sized Tommy guns.

Made Men/Ogres. Tier 4. These ogres fought against prohibition, and now they're fighting against you!

Possible Loot: Illegal goods, weapons too big for you.

Everyone opens fire at once. Each ogre takes dozens of body shots or several head shots to take down. The ones with melee weapons get mowed down before they can get into range with the troops. The problem is the Tommy Gun guys. Their guns are twice the normal size, making the .45 caliber machine guns .90 caliber. That's a big bullet. The large guns open fire but I send shields directly towards the four gun toting ogres, blocking most of their fire. Once the shields are within ten feet of the ogres, they're blocking all of their shots. The ogres roar with anger, only to be met with National Guard rifle fire to the face.

The battle takes just moments, but the remains are a bloody mess. Luckily system monster bodies and their gore all dissappear after 30 minutes. One of the ogres already faded into loot, the corpse taking enough damage to pop into treasure. They seem to drop casino tokens as money.

I look around for the injured and spot a soldier missing an ear and side of her face. I rush over and use Restoration Palm on her as another soldier keeps her calm. Her wounds close and the ear starts to grow back. Seeing flesh move like that is disgusting, but I know it's for the best. I hear another man moan in the distance and dash towards the voice as soon as I'm done with her. I find a man with concrete shrapnel buried in his leg. The ogre Tommy Guns are so powerful that they can chew through the concrete barricades? Damn. A Medic is there already, pulling out debris. I assure them both I can help, and begin healing the cleaned out wounds. They both thank me and I head back to my position in the center.

“I was expecting big flashy attacks,” says the Colonel. “Yer a lousy hotshot without those.”

“You guys have the firepower covered,” I say to him. “I'll run support and keep your guys alive.”

“Hrmpf!”

The 2nd Wave

The mummies are immune to regular attacks, so incendiary grenades are typically used. Bullets won't hurt them, but do slow them down. Incendiary grenades decimate 22 of the 30 mummies, and I use a Solar longsword to sweep the rest with Prominence Burn.

Solar Arms, which creates flaming weapons, seems to only conjure medieval European weapons and sports equipment. So no solar wakizashis, but yes rapiers and hockey sticks.

Of course my Magus class lets me cast spells through weapons, letting me slide that stream of fire horizontally across the pyramid and toast everything.

The 3rd Wave

More ogres. This time I react faster and push all my barriers forward to block the gunners, rather than just one per ogre. With that we manage to escape the wave with no casualties.

Afterwards I leap up the side of the sniper tower and talk to a private who'd made a few really good shots. “Hey, lady, come here a minute.” I can just barely tell she's a she. The heavy, desert camo body armor everyone is wearing makes people largely ungendered.

“It's Deacon,” she says flatly. Her eyes are grey and flat. She doesn't seem surprised at all that a dude just jumped 30 feet and is hanging on the side of the tower.

“Right, Deacon. So I'm gonna do a thing that's going to boost your shots. You okay with that?”

She just shrugs. “Got nothing better to do until the next wave.” I think she was probably a cool jaded goth in high school.

I hold my hand out towards her and say, “Constellation Orion.” A small glowing representation of the constellation appears in my palm, then flies over to Deacon and lands on her forehead, glowing once before fading away. “Just say Orion when the next wave starts and you'll get boosted shots for 60 seconds. At the end your last shot will be super strong, so make it count.”

She shrugs. “Cool.” Seriously I might make it my mission to try and get any kind of reaction from this woman.

The 4th Wave

This wave is mummies. I don't hear Deacon say “Orion,” I just see the effects. Each shot she fires from her sniper rifle is trailed by a sparkling blue-white line. Each line takes about three seconds to fade, and successive shots that cross a line are empowered, landing with much more force than normal. Normal bullets don't hurt the mummies, but these magically empowered shots rip through the undead. At the end of the minute four small stars circle around and center on her gun barrel. She shoots and the four stars fire off like bullets, making that one shot hit with 5x normal force, and simply exploding a mummy into very dead chunks.

“Nice shot, Deacon!” I yell up over the din of grenades and other weapons fire.

The 6th Wave

This is the first time I'm seeing the wax dinosaurs. They absorb bullets (literally, the bullets sink into the wax) but are weak to heat, so more incendiary grenades are called for. The dinos themselves thankfully aren't life size, but instead a smaller “wax museum display” size. The T-Rex is only about 10 feet tall.

The 9th Wave

Another goddamn ogre wave. By now I've got these things down and we're able to clear this wave without a problem.

“Hey, where's Deacon?” I ask the sniper tower at large.

One of the grunts answers. “She's off duty. She'll be back for the last seven waves.”

They tell me that's how they do it, 1st team does eight waves, second team does ten waves, then first team comes back for the last seven waves. They switch who's on first and second team every week.

These guys are treating this like a job. Like it's no big deal. Just another day on the frontlines, fighting monsters. It's the kind of blue-collar attitude that's emblematic of military forces across the world, and probably throughout history. Now, having one foot out of that mindset, I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's probably just the kind of thing that happens when you're a soldier: you do whatever it takes to survive, both physically and mentally.

Maybe I never had that last part down.

The 15th Wave

Ogres. That's fine- oh fuck! They all have Tommy Guns! Shit! Thirty ogres open fire and I can only stop the bullets of 16 of them. I hear screams and cries of anguish from my right. The tanks finally take action and blast massive shells into the side of the building, blowing apart half of the ogres. The remaining half split their fire between the troops and the tanks. The tank immediately to my left takes dozens of rounds before firing another shell into the line of ogres. There's few enough ogres now that I can deflect all their bullets, but it's tough to hold my shields steady. As each shield takes damage I can repair it by spending Arcana Points equal to the cost of the spell. In this wave I'm spending dozens of AP per second to keep the shields up.

The last ogre goes down and I rush to the wounded. By now everyone knows what I'm capable of so they slide one wounded soldier next to another and I spread my arms to heal both at once. I don't think I'd be able to handle this without my sub-minds to give me true multitasking.

We lost three people. Shit.

The 19th Wave

“Deacon! Good to see you!” I greet the beyond-jaded young woman while hanging off the side of the sniper tower again. “So, how ya been?”

She just shrugs. Ha. She's as droll as ever.

“Well, we've missed you soooo much. The monsters said they didn't like dying at anyone else's hands.”

She doesn't even smirk.

“I mean, they still died, but they were very unhappy about it.”

Still nothing.

“Have I mentioned that I have ghost pants?”

“Liar.” She finally said something! “There's no such thing as ghost pants.”

I pull out a crate from my inventory, search through it and hand her the translucent pants I got from the Ellis Island adventure. “Ghost pants. We don't actually use them because they're translucent so if you wear them everyone sees your undies. If you're Leveled and have an inventory you can have them.”

She cocks her head, considering the ghost pants, then takes them. They disappear into her inventory. “Nice,” she says, then raises her rifle. It's time for the next wave.

The 21st Wave

It's just one guy. Except he's 30 feet tall, has a white beard and is wearing a blue toga, and oh, he's got lightning coming out of his hands and eyes.

Jupiter. Tier 6. A roman god of storms and lightning. King of the gods. Known man-whore. Also kinda immortal. Good luck!

Possible Loot: Electric Stones, ambrosia, illegitimate children

The tanks open fire on the colossus and deafening explosions ring out. With a loud slam Jupiter falls back onto the incline of the Luxor pyramid, but as the smoke clears he looks undamaged. Lightning crackles within the smoke and bolts shoot out in every direction, striking the tanks, the sniper tower and slamming against the concrete barriers. I block a bolt aimed at me with all of my solar shields and the shields explode from the force. This can't continue.

Gunfire blazes towards the god with no effect. I concentrate on the galaxy within my soul. The only operating tank opens fire again and Jupiter sends lightning to intercept the shell, detonating it just feet from the tank barrel, blowing the barrel apart. I close my eyes and see the option inside my menu. My 6th Step, Astral Pathbreaker, Exotic rank Power:

Star Swarm

Exotic

Create one star for every class you have levels in.

Duration: 10 seconds

Cost: 50 Will Points

Proficiency: 4%

A cloud of over a hundred stars bursts from my back and I form them into a long bladed scythe, dashing towards Jupiter. The god sees me and sends a lightning bolt down to the ground where it snakes towards me. My superhuman Reflexes let me track its course and my Intelligence lets me predict its path. As it approaches me I slide right underneath it as the bolt briefly arcs over a bit of rubble. I roll back to my feet and leap up, my Agility giving me the airtime to bring the star scythe down around Jupiter's neck and dig it in. Once inside the god, the four-pointed stars making up the blade spin and, like a chainsaw, begin to cleave through the Roman god's clavicle. There's a fountain of golden blood. Jupiter punches me with a fist the size of my torso and I go flying, my stars trailing behind me.

I flip in the air and land in a crouch, skidding to a stop against the concrete barrier. I launch myself back at the big guy as he takes another tank shell. He's charging up electricity in his hand so I aim there, turning my Star Swarm into a bat. My upward swing knocks his left hand into the air and a bolt fires from it, lighting up the early morning sky.

He swings a fist at me again, this time charged with lightning, but I'm already preparing my counter. My stars combine into a circular shield, block the blow, and then spiral around my right fist as I crouch to charge a heavy uppercut. Bullets fly in clouds of lead, but neither Jupiter nor I are fazed by them. My Toughness is effectively around 300, thanks to certain abilities. I leap up and deliver a massive punch, all 104 stars landing into Roman Zeus's jaw. Time seems to stop for a split second as the punch lands and then my Star Swarm Punch continues through Jupiter's jaw and stars shoot straight up through his head, which explodes upwards in golden blood.

The god falls and I turn away and immediately let my stars fade so I can switch to healing people. I hear someone say that everyone in the tank is dead so I leap up to the sniper tower again. I hope Deacon's alright.

There's two bodies lying still, and the three other snipers are around them. Everyone looks the same in their body armor so I can't tell who-

I see the ghost pants lying on the ground. People drop everything in their inventory when they die.

The 25th Wave

Mummies. I burn them like I had to burn the last mummy wave because the troops ran out of incendiary grenades. It's anticlimactic, but everyone is okay with that. An easy wave is a good wave.

“You are a hotshot after all,” the Colonel says to me with a grimace.

“Don't feel like one,” I say, sitting down on a blood stained concrete barrier. I have a technique, Ki Cloth Weaving, which cleans my clothes, so I look tired but not disgusting.

“I talked it over with my advisors. That big guy, you said Jupiter, right? Yeah, I'm pretty sure you did good there.”

I shake my head. “We lost seven in that fight.”

“Can't think like that if you're a leader. You count your losses and your wins. The big badass, well...” The Colonel pauses before he says quietly, “probably would have killed everyone here and half the city.”

I look up at that. He's squinting. No, is he crying? He's trying not to, at any rate.

“Every one of my men and women would be gone if you weren't here today. So thank you, Mr. Han.” He extends a hand and I see one single tear roll down his face.

What the crap am I supposed to say to that? I shake his hand and just nod, then walk away. Then, once I'm clear of the military outpost, I run. I run flat out, over a hundred miles an hour. I run until I'm in the middle of the desert.

I can see the city in the distance. The desert, tan and sandy, surrounds me. There's a couple of cacti nearby. A hot breeze blows through, swirling dust around me. Tears stream down my cheeks as I finally let myself cry, let myself grieve.

Deacon is dead. Franco is dead.

It takes a few minutes for me to calm down. I'm supposed to count the losses and the wins? I can't accept being thanked. I can't have someone say to me that I saved half a city. That's not who I am. That's not me, right?

Ten soldiers died. Deacon died. And humans are to blame. Humans are responsible for this happening every fucking week. Human masterminds responsible for the deaths of ten soldiers here today. God knows how many more died in dungeon breaks across the country. How many across the world? How many places needed someone like me to handle a monster, and didn't have someone like me around?

Fuck this. Whatever they did, I'm going to undo. This system, the Dracosys, means the death of good people every day, every week. So I'll smash it.

I'm going to break the system.