Crucible Aeternum: Ascending through Skill Trees

True Damage Resistance

This was a term that one would think only belonged in games, but Galeon thought otherwise. He understood what this meant, especially when the trait he obtained from it was Vibration.

Indeed, Vibration. He had been using vibration for quite a while now ever since he devoured that goat beetle earlier in the day. He had been using it for hours practically non-stop, especially in this battlefield. His new wings literally had around a hundred feathers, each vibrating to ridiculous frequencies that were enough to even cut through ground that had been mutated by Prisma.

All this while, he thought he was safe from it. He thought that since he was not feeling any adverse effects from it, it was completely harmless to him. He relished in the feeling of butchering his enemies using a combination of intense light and vibration. What he did not know was that it was slowly killing him.

It was likely the Prisma Core that was protecting him from it the whole time, but even then, some of the damages must have been passing through regardless and he was just not noticing it. It was only now that he had obtained True Damage Resistance that he felt relief all over his body, as though all this time he had been under a great amount of torture.

Adaptive Body must have not been able to resist it. There was a reason it was called True Damage Resistance. Regardless of any kind of defense, vibration at the highest frequencies could shatter anything. It could have shattered his bones, his blood vessels, his heart or his brain. He could have literally died without even knowing how it happened.

He had already experienced being injured by his own ability once before. His intense light had melted his arm even through the suit. Even with Adaptive Body, it still took him a while to recover before he got Heat Resistance. How could he not have thought that vibration would injure him too?

Galeon really wanted to slap himself in the face for that stupidity, but he was currently locked in battle in the middle of a beast tide. He could not afford to be distracted any more than he already was.

In that brief moment of his shock, the beasts had managed to overwhelm him slightly. It halted his dance as he was thrown against other beasts. He quickly refocused, his body suddenly trembling at great speeds as he pushed off the beasts that seemed intent on tackling him to death.

The vibrations of his body were stronger now, letting him cut through the beasts even with just his bare hands. But that also meant that he had to endure more damage from his own ability. As soon as he freed himself, Galeon jumped up, his wings spreading behind him as they began vibrating.

With True Damage Resistance, the damage dealt to him by the vibrations of his wings could be fully mitigated. He would not suffer any hidden injuries from it unlike before. But the same was not the case when he makes his body itself vibrate. In that brief moment that he did so, he already felt some of his internal organs about to burst.

It seems that his earlier conjecture was correct. The Prisma Core was indeed reducing the damage that vibrations were causing to his body. So from now on, he would only use Vibration on anything made of Prisma.

As Galeon was soaking in the changes to his body, Shine was also keeping track of the overall situation. She had just received reports that the beast tide had now reached the defense lines set up right outside Therion. In at most another hour or two, it would also reach the defense lines of Melchior.

The scale of this beast tide was a literal disaster. She wondered if this may perhaps be an other apocalyptic event similar to when Prisma rained down from the skies. She could already picture it, the whole world washed over by a deluge of beasts. Death and destruction were the only things that accompanied them as the world is reduced to ruin.

She shuddered at the thought. Her master, the Saintess, did not deserve to die in such a horrid a way. Shine would ensure that her last moments would be that of peace surrounded only by loving and caring friends and family.

Looming over the waves of beasts, she could now see the figures of the larger and more troublesome beasts. These were the ones she was meant to fight. She had been keeping her consumption of Prismana to as low as possible due to Galeon's words, but she knew she had to get a bit more serious for these ones.

If these larger beasts slipped past both her and Galeon, then it would surely decimate the defense lines set up in Vaulkeen's End. And when that happens, it does not matter how many beasts they killed here because these huge beasts alone could wreak havoc in the cities. And so, Shine moved.

She raised her giant lance to the sky and as though it had been waiting for it, the dark clouds above shot down a storm of golden lightning toward her. It crashed against the tip of her lance before erupting all around her in a supercharged field of electricity.

Shine waved her empowered lance as her wings unfolded behind her, unleashing a golden flare of holy flames as she shot toward the huge beasts, leaving the area around her a mess of burned corpses of beasts and still flickering golden electricity.

Although not as fast as Galeon, the Divine Lance of Radiance was fast. She arrived in front of an elephant whose hide was made of craggy rocks and whose tusks was made of Prisma. The golden lightning and flames she brought with her erupted in an aura pure devastation that burned the surrounding beasts to a crisp.

The elephant roared as its craggy hide was scorched. Even with its great defense, the power of Shine's lightning and flames were enough to pierce through it. It swung its trunk against her, but the flying knight easily evaded it by flying upward.

Once she was overhead, Shine swung her lance down as she brought all its weight crashing onto the elephant's head. It hit like a giant hammer pressing the elephant's head down and denting it, but that was not the end.

Upon hitting the beast, the lance erupted with golden lightning and flames that once more decimated the area around them. And from the corpses around her, streams of golden Prismana converged toward her, condensing into a golden crystal that floated silently around her.

This was the power of the Divine Lance of Radiance, the Radiant Knight who thrived in glorious battle and righteous war. Among all the current Divines, she was the most adept in large scale warfare not only because of her inherent talent for command, but because of her devastating ability that has one of the greatest areas of effect even among Divines. And this was all while she was still conserving most of her power for whatever Galeon had warned her about.

With Shine now seriously doing damage on the beast tide, the defense lines finally got a bit of breathing room. It was still not much, but it was better than nothing. Although they were all veterans of battle and were powerful in their own right, Divines were simply on another level altogether. One could not hope to become a Divine. They must be born to become one.

And at this moment, there was another person on this brutal battlefield that had decided to get more serious.

Galeon also noticed the appearance of the huge beasts. There were not many of them, but even just a few was already a great disaster. Shine had just swiftly taken care of one of them which allowed him to take a moment to reassess his position in the battlefield.

He was a few hundred meters away from Shine, but the consequence of her recent attack reached him fast. A huge lizard glowing with the light of Prisma immediately veered away from her the moment it saw the elephant get so easily killed. But that meant that it now headed toward Galeon who was already about to face another huge beasts, a giant snake.

It was a dangerous situation, not really for him, but for the ones behind him if he failed to stop these two huge beasts, especially when there were countless smaller beasts still swarming around him even now.

Finally, it was time for him to see if he could reach farther into his technique, something that he had been creating since his earliest years learning how to fight. It was incomplete mainly because he could not bring out the power he envisioned it contained, mainly because he himself had no power.

But he was no longer without power.

"Second Step: Transformation"