Frostbound

Chapter 286 - Not Just Survivor’s Guilt

Chris

My mind was elsewhere as I worked. It was nearly autonomous to pick up the fallen and carry them back. My hands once again dripped with blood but this time it wasn't from fighting. Those with stomachs brave enough joined in my efforts, pulling corpses from under Orcs or out of mud.

I didn't encase them yet. They needed to be washed first. It was disrespectful to those who had paid the ultimate sacrifice to sully them like that, enshrining them when they were at their worst.

Instead, they were laid out respectfully, or as respectfully as we could. Some... some were too much. Smashed beyond a person should.

It was tireless work that I spent even more time completing. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, it felt like the entire day had been lost in my head. Hours spent fighting flew by followed by hours still sitting and... coping. If what I did could really be called coping.

Then, hours were spent gathering the dead. So many hours.

The first aid tents stayed busy long after the last Orc fell. Healers and helpers alike buzzed around with an urgency nothing I'd seen could ever match. Nothing surpassed the efforts they put in to save as many as they could as they acted like angry bees defending a nest.

Admirable work. Righteous work. Bloody work.

They were calling for blood donors. Blood could be encouraged to replenish faster using Healing Skills and mana, but it still took something from the body to make. It wasn't conjured from mana alone. Those with serious wounds couldn't afford any wastage in terms of healing.

Plus, mana was a precious commodity that many Healers had already long run out of. Any mana potion that could be spared was sent their way but even that wasn't enough. Only so many potions could be imbibed in such a short time.

To save as much as possible in both mana and healing, donated blood was used instead.

I wasn't sure how donation worked after the Change, but there was someone cleansing it of foreign influence before they shoved it into a body. Or at least I hoped so. I assumed they knew what they were doing. I wasn't even sure I had the same blood type.

My blood carried my mana and was tainted with my spirit, so I couldn't donate but many could and sat at the ready to give it. There weren't that many people with Mana Hearts, let alone Spirit Anchors, and mine were intrinsic to my blood and not so easily separated.

There was also my Heart to consider. It wasn't exactly au naturel. I suspected I would be able to donate eventually, but none of the Healers knew how to separate my blood from the rest of what it was mixed with.

As my trips to and from the battlefield grew, so to did my time to think, even though I wished I hadn't. Think about everything. What had happened, what hadn't happened.

What I did right. What I could've done better.

I poured my all into defending as many as I could, and I wasn't punishing myself for not doing enough. My body nearly tore apart at the seams, there wasn't much more I could've done.

It was in planning and leadership that I felt at fault. It wasn't the first time either.

Unhelpful ideas of what I could have insisted upon at meetings surfaced. If I could've made everyone listen, maybe it would have turned out better?

If coordination between the Factions had been better, would more still be alive?

I knew the thoughts were useless. It wouldn't have done anything. I could have tried, sure, but it wouldn't have ended any differently. Hell, it could have ended worse than it had, but the ideas surfaced anyway.

It also gave me time to review other notifications. Those that had happened during the fight that I had dismissed to look at later.

Skill Upgrades.

Six of them to be exact. Nearly more than I'd ever upgraded, all in one fight. I hadn't looked at them earlier because it made me feel bad. Like a worse version of survivor's guilt as not only did I survive while others didn't, I received something from it.

Most of the skills were obvious. One of the first to upgrade happened early on in the fight when I was still adjusting to fighting against those wielding weapons.

You have upgraded a skill:

Heavy Armor Proficiency(Journeyman) -> Heavy Armor Proficiency(Adept)

Adept rank was something even my Heavy Weapon Proficiency hadn't reached yet. I'd felt it when it happened too. My urge to position correctly to have axes and clubs deflect instead of land square pushed it over the edge. My movement in my armor had become smoother and less restricted after the upgrade.

Usually, such an upgrade would constitute making an entirely new suit of armor but that was already something I needed to do. It had slowly gotten destroyed through the fight.

Other than Armor Proficiency, another that upgraded early was a skill I'd had for nearly the same amount of time as Armor Proficiency.

You have upgraded a skill:

Ice Manipulation(Uncommon) -> Ice Manipulation(Rare)

Surprisingly, this upgrade happened differently than how I'd done it before. Upgrading it to Uncommon took skillful and precise manipulation of Ice itself.

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This upgrade came from my efforts to keep my hammer from getting destroyed. Freezing the Blight and ripping it from my weapon forced me to bend the skill further and wider than it once was.

I had been close already, but the new application had pushed it over the edge.

You have upgraded a skill:

Frost Armor(Rare) -> Glacial Heavy Plate(Epic)

Frost Armor was the next to upgrade. Trying to keep it active through the corrosive properties of the blood was mind-breaking work. I'd poured my Law and Spirit into the layer of Ice trying to keep it from dissolving and I'd pushed the skill up a rank.

While Adept was at the same rank as Epic, this felt different. This was the first time I'd personally upgraded a skill to Epic. Based on the text, it took my efforts to make it more durable to heart.

Glacial Heavy Plate(Epic)– Creates heavy, thick plates of Ice armor wrought from glaciers themselves. Durability is determined by fortitude and gains an increased benefit from all Heavy Armor related skills.

It wasn't the last to reach epic as the other three were also skills going from Rare to Epic as well. The next was the skill I'd had for the longest. It was also one I'd personally upgraded all the way from Common without any shortcuts.

You have upgraded a skill:

Mighty Blow(Rare) -> Meteor Strike(Epic)

Meteor Strike(Epic) –Strike with the weight of a meteor behind your blows. Can use a combination of Mana, Stamina, or Spirit to enhance strikes past their natural limit in strength and heaviness.

Its text left a lot to be desired, but every upgrade of that skill only had a line or two of text. Hell, [Power Strike] only had one! Still, the upgrade expanded what could be used as fuel for the skill and how hard it hit.

The upgrade had come when I'd sort of... lost myself. There wasn't a better way to put it. By that point in the fight, I'd lost my armor and my hammer, resorting to punching anything that came close. It was using [Mighty Blow] on my bare fists and punching with my full fury that pushed it over the edge.

Or at least I thought so. I wasn't exactly in the right state of mind.

The last two happened at the same time near the end of the fight and they had similar effects. I'd used them in nearly every fight. They were staples to my strength, and having them upgrade may have been the only reason I'd been able to fight on.

You have upgraded a skill:

Righteous Fury(Rare) -> Battle Fury(Epic)

Momentum of the Avalanche(Rare) -> Weight of the Arctic(Epic)

I'd been near dead at the end. Barely on my feet and ready to fall from a strong breeze. Then the War Leader had come. I was spent. Mana sputtering, Spirit wrung dry, Laws nearly shot.

And a massive Orc War Leader had roared in my face. Challenged me. It was something I couldn't leave unanswered and thankfully, my skills, already pushed to the limit, gave way and upgraded allowing me to push on.

Battle Fury(Epic): Harness the Fury of Battle to obliterate your enemies. Righteous or otherwise, all Fury is fuel for the heat of battle. Temporarily increase the effect of all stats by 35% at the cost of increased stamina and spirit consumption. Once the effect wears off, your body enters a state of weakness based on the duration of the boost.

Weight of the Arctic(Epic) –The weight of Arctic Winds and Frigid Cold builds slowly. What may not be immediately threatening gathers over time relentlessly, leaving no room for reprieve. Harness that Weight and express it in Battle. Percentage boost to all physical attributes the longer you are in battle, capping at 125% after 3 hours.

Both upgrades worked to push my stats even further. [Fury] went from a 22.5% boost to 35%, increasing by 12.5%. [Avalanche] went from a 100% boost over 2 hours to a 125% over 3.

During the fight, [Weight of the Arctic] didn't activate retroactively. It didn't instantly boost my stats by 25% even though I had been fighting for over three hours. Unfortunate, but if it had happened that way, my body may have given out.

I was already threading the needle with how much boost I was applying. [Fury]'s upgrade did activate instantly, which was already a 12% bump, another 25% may have broke me rather than helped me.

Of the six, I wasn't sure which I liked best.

Armor Proficiency was a rather subtle increase in my overall strength. It allowed me to wear even heavier and thicker armor while still moving like it was light. [Ice Manipulation] had been a long time coming and I was grateful for the final push. I hadn't tested it extensively, but I knew my range and skill had improved.

[Frost Armor] kept me safe through a number of difficult battles. [Jotun's Resistance] outshined it somewhat in recent bouts, but the additional layer of protection was welcome.

[Mighty Blow] was a staple. Both [Shattering Hammer] and [Frozen Rift] were more powerful, but as I just learned, relied on my hammer. Without it, [Mighty Blow] was all I was left with.

Plus, it didn't have the tremendous cost as those two did. Its effect was most likely better in terms of cost alone.

[Fury]. Starting out as the Common ranked [Barbarian's Rage], and it had come a long way. I still remembered first activating it and feeling my vision turn red in rage. It took practice in order to use the skill without losing myself mentally.

It was that same practice that I recently ignored and allowed myself to let that Fury back in. Maybe that was what pushed it further?

Still, it was another that I'd upgraded all the way from Common. From [Barbarian's Rage] to [Barbarian's Fury]. Then, [Righteous Fury], and now, to Epic, [Battle Fury].

That skill had milestones in my life I didn't like to remember. My Grandfather's death and the anger I stewed in was the initial inspiration to push it to Uncommon. Then it was my father's death that pushed it to Rare. Then... it was better left alone. The memories were still raw.

[Avalanche] lacked those milestones and the novelty of starting from Common rank. I received the skill at Rare and it had been stuck there ever since. I'd lost count of the number of times I'd maxed it out fighting for well longer than two hours.

When I first picked the skill, I thought two hours of fighting was an obscenely long time. Now it was rather common to fight long drawn out battles.

For pure enjoyment and remembering the journey, [Meteor Strike] was probably my favorite. It didn't have the inherent sadness of [Fury] but was still with me from all the way back then. It was the first Skill I'd picked.

Bringing my thoughts back to the present was difficult. I wanted to stay in the past. I wasn't ready to deal with everything yet, but I had to.

Now wasn't the time to languish in my head.

I picked up yet another fallen Order Member and made my way back.

The bodies were thinning out and I was nearly done.

I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. While the job of retrieving the dead was grim, it kept my hands busy.