Frostbound

I reached level 8 not long after the first kill and Austin soon followed. For my new skill, I picked Penetrating Strike(Common).

Penetrating Strike(Common) –Enhances the next strike with mana, increasing the ability to penetrate thick hide and armor.

I needed something that could get through armor and this skill was perfect. I didn't know the exact difference between this one and Piercing Strike but I figured either would work. Piercing sounded more like a spear skill and penetrating more like a blunt weapon skill and that was what my axe effectively was now, but it didn't much matter to me.

I tested it throughout the day and it worked like a charm. Where my axe only sank a couple of inches into the skin of a boar, this skill would bury the axe head deep into muscle. It worked great and I knew my damaged axe wasn't helping matters.

After the hunt, I also finally passed the threshold of 1000 points and I could now purchase a skill from the pylon. This would be the first skill I got not from a class upgrade and I was nervous to see how many I could hold. There had to be some way to tell how full my spirit was right?

Austin and I finished our hunt without any injuries this time and made it back to camp with only light exhaustion. It may have been because we didn't fight anything above level 9, but who's to say?

I washed myself in the river, got a quick heal from Abigail, and after stuffing down breakfast, was off to the trench. The pylon upgrade kind of threw off our predictions of what direction the wave would come from, but we were still confident it would come from the south this time, so that's where we focused our energy.

Penetrating Strike worked wonders while digging and made getting through the hard dirt a breeze. I worked much faster than without the skill and only had problems when I reached large rocks in the way. A discreet use of Heavy Blow was all it took to make those go away. Usually, it would take time to dig the rock out before hauling it out of the trench but amazingly I never ran into any rocks today, just a bunch of little ones.

I focused more on my skills today than on the physical side of the exercise and tried to maximize my usage of my new skill. I wanted to learn it as quickly as possible and get familiarized with it before the wave tomorrow.

Austin had the Piercing Strike skill and we compared the difference between the two and it was hard to tell. They both did the same thing and the dirt we used to test it on probably wasn't the best choice.

Work flew by as my mind was elsewhere and soon it was over and we had time to do whatever we wanted. I spent the whole time thinking about which new skill that I wanted and there were just so many options.

There were generic skills like Meditation that I could grab or the more utility option of Cleanse so I could help keep the camp clean along with the food. There were resistance skills that looked like they would come in handy like Poison Resistance and Fire Resistance. Being at the common rarity they probably wouldn't do much but I would never know unless I got one.