The Guardian System: The strongest Summoner's quest to save his family-Chapter 396: The Last Stop (1)

Reidar invested his new perk points into the perks he'd chosen, and he got five new ones.

Generous Soul was the most important. It was the perk he'd just invested in after killing the Ignis and that he unlocked when he passed Level 500. The perk had been sitting in his available perks list ever since.

The perk was simply unexpected because it changed his trait. Before, Skill Sharing only worked if his proficiency in a skill was above 50%. That meant he had to practice a skill before he could share it with his summons or any other person. It was a slow process, and it limited what he could do in a fight.

Generous Soul removed that restriction.

Now he could share any skill with anyone, regardless of proficiency. It didn't matter if he'd just learned the skill or if he'd been using it for years. That actually made Reidar wonder what traits really were, or even the perks. He expected perks to only work with skills, but apparently this wasn't the case.

The cost was higher, though. Sharing a skill below 50% proficiency required his Health in addition to Mana. The System description said it was "taxing," and that was accurate.

He'd tested it once, sharing a low-proficiency skill with his Undying Legion, and the Health drain had been noticeable. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make him think twice about spamming it, especially since he would need to share skills with thousands of creatures.

The perk was worth it, though, because it meant he could use his trait without restriction. No matter what skill he needed to share, he could do it, which gave him a level of flexibility that was insane. It turned every new skill he learned into a tool his entire army could use immediately.

Master's Aegis was the second perk he'd invested in. He'd maxed it out at 7/7, and the effect was simple but powerful. For every 1000 summons he had active, he gained a 2% bonus to his personal damage resistance, which was insanely useful in this damn inferno.

At max investment, that was 14% damage resistance for every 1000 summons.

Reidar could easily spawn 10,000 summons at once, which meant 140% damage resistance. It didn't make him invincible, but it made him harder to kill, especially considering how low his health was. A hit that would have taken half his Health bar before now took barely a quarter.

The perk worked best when he was surrounded by his army, which was almost always, given how he chose to build his power. So the stronger and more many his horde got, the tougher he became. It was a feedback loop, and he liked feedback loops the most.

Reidar did the math again, just to reassure himself.

When he went all out—using Summon Archon Rift-Lords with the Boundless Legion perk and the recursive summoning capability of the Archons themselves—he could flood the battlefield with over 14,000 summons.

And that was just with the Archons. If he added the Undying Legion, the Apex Menagerie, and the Shadow Sovereigns, the number ticked higher.

His army had become his armor. As long as he had the mana to keep them on the field, he was physically tougher, and that was necessary because the monsters here hit hard enough to bypass his standard armor rating, which meant he needed percentage-based mitigation to survive a direct hit.

Enduring Summons was the third perk. He'd put 5 points into it, maxing it out at 5/5. The perk made his summons 40% more resistant to environmental hazards like fire, acid, poison gas, and extreme heat, which was absolutely incredible considering that this planet was filled with stuff like that.

That had saved his life more times than he could count.

In the first week, he had lost hundreds of summons, not to enemies, but to the terrain. They would step into a puddle and dissolve, or walk through a cloud of gas and have a similar fate.

Enduring Summons resolved that problem. It protected his summons from the dangerous environment itself. This meant he spent less mana overall because he didn't have to keep summoning new creatures to replace the ones that died from the harsh surroundings.

Speaking of upkeep.

Mana-Efficient Minions was the fourth perk he'd invested in, maxing it out at 4/4, and the effect was straightforward: a 20% reduction in the mana upkeep cost for sustained summons.

A 20% reduction. That didn't sound like much, but it added up fast.

Reidar's army was expensive. Even with his Mana Siphon perk feeding some of it back, he was always burning through his reserves.

A 20% reduction in upkeep meant he could keep his army active for longer, summon more creatures during a fight, and recover his mana faster between battles.

It was a quality-of-life improvement more than a combat perk, but quality of life mattered when you were fighting for your life every day.

And finally, mobility.

Anchor Point: You can designate one active summon as an "Anchor." You can cast teleport to that summon's location.

He could send a Sky-Hunter deep into enemy territory, designate it as his Anchor, and teleport directly to it. He could plant a Shadow Sovereign in a safe location and use it as an escape route. He could split his army, send half of them to one battlefield and the other half to another, and then jump between them at will.

The tactical possibilities were endless. He'd bought the perk as an investment in the future, and he didn't regret it.

This was his escape hatch.

It was paranoia. But on a planet where everything wanted to kill him, paranoia was just good strategy.

Reidar closed the perk list and looked at the dead Ignis again.

The creature had been faster than the ones he'd killed in the outer cities, and its attacks had hit harder, with its blade-arms nearly taking his head off twice.

It had taken ten minutes, but he'd won. And this was the tenth Ignis he'd killed in the last month.