Ch 207 – Warrior’s Blessing
Item Name:Warrior Statue
Type: Class Statue
Rarity: Artifact
Effect: Upon touch, grants the Warrior's Blessing Achievement.
Description: A three-meter-tall statue depicting a bearded man clad in fur armor, standing atop a carved stone base shaped like a cliff edge. He holds a bearded axe in one hand and a round shield in the other, posed as if facing an oncoming battle. The statue carries a lingering presence that resonates with those who walk the path of a warrior. Requirement: Warrior-based Class.
Deacon remained frozen in complete disbelief even as Bonehead reached into his Spatial Satchel and produced a transparent gel orb roughly the size of a large marble before quickly lowering Deacon’s mask and placing the gel orb into Deacon's mouth before raising the mask back up. At the same time, Deacon continued to stare at the Warrior Statue with wide eyes.
Deacon was pulled from his shocked stupor as the gel orb in his mouth began sliding down his throat. Bonehead forced his jaws shut and clamped a skeletal hand firmly over both his mouth and nose, ensuring he swallowed it and couldn’t panic and exhale the wonderful and valuable air a living, redblooded being would need in order to not suffocate without.
Just as the sphere reached halfway down his esophagus, it suddenly popped, flooding his lungs with air.
An Air Ball, Deacon identified succinctly as he felt his lungs fill back up with oxygen and he was no longer at immediate risk of drowning after having accidentally expelled almost all of the air previously held in his lungs when he'd dorked out in excitement at finding the Class Statue that he and practically every Warrior within the entire Tower had been desperately searching for since the first Class Statue was in front of him.
Giving Bonehead a quick nod of thanks for the intervention, Deacon immediately dove deeper toward the curtain of kelp concealing most of the statue from view, completely unbothered by the corpse of the aquatic mutant he'd killed seconds ago that was still floating nearby with Echoform Reliquary's blade still embedded in its skull.
Though with a mana string, Echoform Reliquary ended back up in his hands.
Upon reaching the thick curtain of swaying kelp, Deacon shifted the Echoform Reliquary out of its Ulfberht form and back into its dual short sword form before sheathing both blades on his back.
He then drew one of his throwing daggers and began carefully slicing through the dense ribbons of kelp that obscured most of the Warrior Statue from sight, working methodically to avoid damaging it.
Nearby, Bonehead caught the severed strands of kelp as they drifted free, storing them away for later alchemical research.
After approximately two and a half dozen cuts later, Deacon had cleared away enough of the kelp that he was finally able to reach forward and place his right hand directly on top of the round shield the warrior statue was holding.
The moment his palm made contact with the cold stone surface of the shield, a System Notification appeared floating in front of his face.
Achievement Gained: [Warrior's Blessing]
Warrior's Blessing:
You have touched a Warrior Statue, one of the twenty-six Class Statues scattered throughout the Tower of Earth. Receiving this blessing has permanently granted you a substantial boost to your Records as a Warrior, significantly enhancing your ability to learn Warrior Skills more quickly and master combat techniques with greater efficiency. As the first person to touch the Warrior Statue since its creation, you are also granted a permanent increase to your physical attributes. Grants: +15% Vitality, +15% Strength, +15% Endurance.
Holy System, Deacon thought to himself in disbelief as he stared at the blessing notification floating before his eyes, his mind struggling to fully process what he'd just received.
It had been approximately three hundred years or so since the discovery of the very first Class Statue had been officially reported to the public, though given that according to his uncle Bjorn the Floor Fifteen Mage Tower Floor had been cleared and fully explored decades before that official discovery date, the actual timeline of Class Statue discoveries was most definitely incorrect and filled with misinformation spread by those who wanted to keep the true history of the Tower hidden.
What was publicly known was that certain Class Statues had already been discovered and claimed by specific organizations: the Mage Statue, located in the central hub of Floor Fifteen; the Rogue Statue, controlled by the Hao Clan and accessible only upon payment of 200,000 Credits; and the Alchemist Statue, believed to be hidden somewhere within the dungeons of the Alchemist Tower, also on Floor Fifteen.
Several others were scattered across various Floors throughout the Tower, hidden from the public by the top Guilds, so that if they wished to receive the Statue’s Blessing, they would have to form a contract with the Guild.
However, out of the twenty-six total Class Statues that theoretically existed within the Tower based on the number of base Classes the System offered, more than half of them had yet to be publicly reported as found.
The Warrior Statue had been one of the thirteen Class Statues that had genuinely never been found by anyone, or at least had never been reported to the public if someone had discovered it, and now it was floating right in front of both Deacon and Bonehead in this random pond they found on Floor Twelve.
Deacon found himself completely stunned at the sight of it; he and Jass had talked about, in jest mostly, that they would be the ones to eventually discover the Warrior Statue, just like practically every other Warrior and Warrior aspirant throughout the entire Tower dreamed about.
Not only would the passive effects granted by touching the statue be incredibly beneficial to their own individual growth, but more importantly, it would dramatically raise the overall status and power level of all Warriors and Warrior aspirants within the Tower.
As over the past two hundred years or so, ever since the supposed discovery of the Mage Statue and the whole mana craze time where magic bloodlines were more valuable that gold, most people opt out of heading down the path of a Warrior and instead into the Mage as not only was there a guaranteed boon you could get once reaching Floor Fifteen, but being a mage also opened a lot of doors for you when Tiering up.
Putting more strength into his grip on the statue's shield and carefully lifting the entire three-meter-tall stone figure upward to pull it free from where it had been embedded in the ground beneath it, Deacon carefully moved the Warrior Statue into his Spatial Sling Bag.
Turning around to look back at Bonehead after successfully storing the statue, Deacon saw that his friend was already pointing upward toward the surface and shaking his skull from side to side, and Deacon found himself nodding in complete agreement with the unspoken message.
The Warrior Statue was far too dangerous and valuable for them to let it become publicly known that it was currently in their possession, not only because it was one of the Main Four Classes that were offered as the primary Combat Archetype options when climbers first entered the Tower, which meant that literally thousands of Warriors and combat-focused climbers would do absolutely anything to gain access to its blessing, and Non-Warriors would do just as much to grab ahold of the Class Statue to sell it.
An easy solution to get it off their hands would be to give it to some Association or Guild.
But… there was no organization or institution currently existing within the Tower that either Deacon or Bonehead could genuinely trust to safeguard the Warrior Statue without them hoarding it for their own exclusive use and abusing the power advantage it would provide to their members while denying access to everyone else.
Even the Academy of Beginnings didn’t feel trustworthy enough.
Not to mention that with the Great War that Deacon had been told was supposedly only months away from fully breaking out between the various major factions throughout the Tower, allowing any of the competing sides to gain access to the Warrior Statue and use it to significantly strengthen their combat forces would be a massive detriment to Deacon, Bonehead, and Esmerelda's ability to remain independent and protect themselves from both sides.
While it was undeniably hypocritical to hoard the Warrior Statue and keep it hidden from the rest of the Tower, especially when so many Warriors deserved access to it, Deacon recognized that it was the most pragmatic decision.
Doing so would bolster their personal strength while also creating a powerful incentive to recruit talented individuals into the guild he and Bonehead would eventually create. In turn, this would allow them to build enough strength and influence within the Tower to deter more powerful factions from targeting them or putting them under their thumb.
And more importantly, Deacon thought to himself as he gave Bonehead a firm nod of understanding and began swimming upward toward the surface, where he could see the dark silhouettes of Leon and Valorie standing at the shoreline and searching the water, trying to locate where he and Bonehead had gone. We need to become strong enough and gather enough power so that we can stand tall once we reach Floor 50, leave the Tower, and enter the Multiverse.
Just inches away from breaching the water's surface, Deacon's hand shot up and grabbed hold of Leon's outstretched arm that he had extended into the pond, while simultaneously, Bonehead grabbed onto Valorie's offered hand, and both of them were helped and pulled out of the murky water and onto the rocky shore.
Deacon immediately pulled up his mask and let out several harsh coughs as he crawled further onto the shoreline on his hands and knees, expelling greyish-green water that he'd inadvertently inhaled, and that was still lodged in his throat from his surprise reaction at seeing the Warrior Statue.
Known to only him and Bonehead, he had accidentally inhaled water from his mask prior to Bonehead shoving the air orb into his mouth.
"What happened down there?" Valorie asked with obvious concern as she watched Deacon continuing to clear his throat while struggling to get back to his feet, and Bonehead was similarly getting up while simultaneously taking off his waterlogged alchemist robes to wring out the water that had seeped into the fabric.
"I got pulled underwater by some kind of aquatic mutant that was lurking in the pond," Bonehead answered as Deacon finally hacked up the last remnants of the contaminated water that had gone down his throat, and while recovering, he took the opportunity to look through his dozens of accumulated System Notifications to find the actual name of the creature he'd killed.
*[Bloatcrawler Lv 26] has been slain – XP has been given.*
***
*[Cecaelia Lv 24] has been slain – XP has been given.*
*Your Class has reached Lv 26 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point.*
*Your Race has reached Lv 26 – Points allocated, +1 Free Point.*
"It was a Cecaelia," Deacon filled in the details as he cast Cleanse on himself to remove the remaining water clinging to his skin and clothes before placing his palm on Bonehead's shoulder and casting the same cleaning spell on him to dry them both off completely. "Some kind of mutant creature that looked like it was half squid and half humanoid, based on the brief glimpse I got of it."
"Are there more of them down there that we need to worry about?" Leon asked with his hand moving to rest on his warhammer's handle in preparation.
Deacon shook his head. "Not that I could detect with my spell, but I honestly couldn't see very much while I was underwater – there's something in that water that was actively preventing me from being able to see things clearly with the spell I had cast."
Which was the complete truth, as when he had dived into the water immediately after Bonehead had been pulled under by the cecaelia, Blood Sense had done absolutely nothing to help him locate or identify the creature and had, in fact, actively hindered his vision.
This was why it had taken him considerably longer than it should have to reach his friend.
With Blood Sense active while underwater, it had been like trying to see through complete pitch darkness with absolutely no light sources available, while when he'd deactivated the ability, his normal vision had felt like he was looking through an extremely heavy grain filter that distorted and obscured everything beyond a few feet.
It was only thanks to Bonehead’s frantic moving that he was able to feel the rushing water current and follow it to find Bonehead strangling the Cecaelia.
"But I think we've successfully accomplished what we originally came down here to do, right?" Deacon said, deliberately changing the subject as his gaze moved to look at each member of the group while he leaned over to pick up the now-full Azure Water Reservoir that he'd hastily tossed aside when he'd dove into the water after Bonehead.
"Yeah," Leon confirmed while simultaneously raising one hand to cover his twin sister's mouth before she could say anything, doing so both for his own safety and for everyone else's protection from whatever potentially jinxing statement she was about to make.
Leon was forced to quickly back away and dodge as a Stamina-enhanced elbow jab from Valorie came dangerously close to striking him in his ribs.
"Not everything I say is going to somehow screw us over and summon more problems!" Valorie hissed at her brother with obvious annoyance.
"I was just going to suggest that we should explore this area a bit more before heading back to return the water, since we're already down here, we might as well try to find at least a couple of valuable items while we have the opportunity to do so before the Hoarder takes them all," Valorie continued.
The moment those words finished leaving her mouth, the sound of screaming and desperate shouting began echoing from one of the many tunnel entrances located behind where Valorie was standing.