Hera still couldn't believe how lucky she was. Maybe this was [Silver Lining] doing something again. But the reward she gained from that one dungeon on this random low level room was something that she was sure most, if not all, Explorers would want. It was a legendary rare circlet.
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Glimpse of one's Heart - Hat - Legendary
Active Skills:
Shadowlight form:
For the duration of the skill, you are imbued with both light and shadows, a perfect balance of forces. Your offensive and defensive capabilities become one and the same, taking for the strongest of the two.
Duration: 1 minute.
Cooldown: 24 hours.
Glimpse of One's Heart:
The hat can mirror that which belong to the innermost part of oneself, taking a different appearance and effect depending on the role of the wearer.
Silver Circlet: The visage of an explorer, any skill focused on awareness or discovered becomes 20% more effective.
Feathered Cap: The visage of a hunter, repeated attacks aimed at the same target deal 1% more damage. This effect can compound on itself until each attack is dealing 50% more damage.
Hood & Scarf: The visage of an assassin, increase any stealth related ability by 40%
Protection Goggles: The visage of a researcher, reveals the presence of mana in the environment and allows you to analyze its behavior with more precision.
Welding mask: The visage of a crafter, reveals the weakness of materials that are being worked on.
Witch's Hat: The visage of a mage.
Horned Helmet: The visage of a fighter.
Surgical cap: The visage of a healer.
Jeweled Crow: The visage of a controller.
Cap & Bells: The visage of a performer.
Passive Skills:
Strength from the Heart
This item's scaling is equals to 50% of the wearer's attributes.
Eternal resolve:
Increase the effect of buffs, the more wearer struggles against something.
Maximum increase 20%
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Not only was the item absolutely incredible by itself, but there was that one particular skill that made Hera wildly interested in this accessory. Thanks to [Strength from the Heart], the scaling of the item would always match the Empress. Just like her title blades would.
And according to Daskka, if the hat was in its horned helmet form, it could be added to the legacy. The Herald also confirmed that the legacy shouldn't remove the power that came from the skill, nor the power to change form. Even more strange, and exciting, was the fact that Daskka was confident that if added to the court, the attributes would always be matching her attributes. In essence functioning as an extra titled blade without the benefits of having it have its own body.
The sheer possibility of this working made her extremely excited about the idea. But at the same time, Daskka could be wrong and adding it to the court could end up destroying the item.
The skill might not trigger, the effects of the transformations could go away, and she might lose all the benefits that came from having that hat. But on the off chance that it worked, on the chance that if she were to add this particular accessory to her court, she would never have to worry about changing their general ever again, it was too enticing of a possibility for her to pass up.
Which was why she talked with Twiggy and asked if she was okay being the first to join the graveyard. None of her blades would refuse to be sent away. They all understood that Hera needed the change.
At the same time, Twiggy didn't want to go, none of them did. But they understood that they were becoming issues for the Empress. Some more than others. Now that they were starting to explore the Deakoshara, Pyro specifically was getting very concerned about his role in the court.
He was the first tail weapon that Hera and Vulcan ever made. But now they were going to a place where people who actually used that type of weapon existed or existed in the past. Because of that, he felt that his presence could hold back Hera on the creation of better tail bikes or other weapons of the sword.
This was a sentiment that Vulcan shared, even if he refused to acknowledge. Hera, on the other hand, never once thought that any of her blades were holding her back. Not just because of their existence. The only thing that truly felt like something that was going against her was the influence that their feelings had on their street. Still, once Hera was done letting Twiggy go and thanking her for her service, she took the helmet in her hands, already in the shape of that would fit fighters, and added it to her court with the name Oberon.
She was thinking of naming the hat based on one of the Greek myths. Maybe Athena or Odysseus, but once she saw the crown and the way it could become a jester's hat with pinks and greens, she landed on the name of the fairy king who was known for his trickery and cunning. After she saw those two forms, she couldn't think of anything else.
The hat slowly turned into mist as it joined the court. It started swapping from one shape to another, from one of these shapes to another until it cycled through all of them before entering the legacy. For a moment, Hera was worried that it would mean the hat had multiple personalities or occupied various slots on her legacy, but that wasn't the case. However, before she summoned Oberon for the first time, Daskka quickly spoke up.
"Oh, we have a small problem."
Hera paused. "Why? What happened?" Her eyes were full of worry.
"Calm down," Daskka quickly reassured. "It will be fine and it works like we wanted."
"You mean that he will grow together with me and I won't have to swap him out anymore?"
"Yep. You can check the status screen of Oberon and you will see that the skills there. So, in theory, it will always be scaling to the attribute you currently have. But, even if you find another weapon or item that has them or some skill like that, it won't work."
"What? Why not?" Hera frowned. It sounded like a great way to solve one of the issues of her legacy. That way, she wouldn't need to be changing them over and over again. She would just be able to find a group of blades and keep and stay with them as long as she wanted. Eventually, she could even have a full court of legendary weapons.
"It's the first time that the legacy ever encountered something like that, and since the drawback of the legacy is that you have to keep changing your court and then they keep affecting you, the system kind of blocked that from happening again. It's changing the skill of the weapon to be a skill.
Hera looked even more confused. And so Daskka just sighed. "Yeah. That's cute. Check it out."
The notification appeared in front of her.
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Knight's Vow.
You are capable of assigning one single court member to be part of a revenue forever. They lose all of their scaling and instead gain 50% of your attributes as scaling. If a new court member would take the Knight's Vow, the previous court member who had a vow will be lost forever, unable to even join the Blade Graveyard.
Current Knight: Oberon - Hat
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After double checking everything, Hera smiled. That's a new skill that was just what she was hoping. In addition, she called Oberon for the first time. The hat quickly appeared around her head in form of the circlet, which was the default shape since having herself for the next floor. There was no extra skill or ability in that shape, but it was the most inconspicuous of them all.
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Oberon - Circlet - Heart
Scaling:
Strength X 9.15 Endurance X 9.15
Agility X 9.15 Charisma X 9.15
Intelligence X 9.15 Luck X 9.15
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All other skills were still the same. Which meant the result was absolutely perfect.
"Hello my darling Empress. It is an absolute pleasure to meet you."
Oberon's voice was silky and upbeat, with a type of accent that Hera couldn't quite put her finger around. It sounded a bit British, but there was some flare as if it was Spanish as well.
"Welcome to the team," Hera replied.
The hat looked around, taking a moment to truly see all the other court members, "You are all incredible pieces of art. I'm sure it will be amazing to work with all of you for as long as we stay together."
Oberon spoke up, and they could hear the smile in his voice. That's when Helena sent a message asking about when they were going to the dungeon. Hera sighed and said that she was about to head out to meet her friend, while at the same time giving Oberon the rundown of their operations.
Everybody was introducing themselves to the hat, and Hera explained what she was expecting of him. He was to be the commander of her blades. The person in charge of looking out for everybody while also telling them what to do. But at the same time, she didn't want him to be micromanaging everyone. Even though it had been a few years since her retail job, she still remembered how bad things got when a boss started to question every single action someone would take.
Oberon even asked his own questions to the court, such as the types of abilities they felt more comfortable with, the limitations of their movement, and if there was anything else that he needed to know about their fighting styles. There were even some questions that no one ever thought about asking, like if Clay could spin to change the direction that his strike was going towards, or if Nimbus was able to reinforce his tonfas using his barriers to make them pack a bit more punch.
Hearing all those conversations, Hera felt like she made the right choice. Even though she would miss Twiggy, the tiara was a bit too energetic for her part and never managed to be the commander that Empress wanted her to be. But Oberon felt more confident, more sure of his decisions, not to mention that the abilities he was offering could be very powerful.
Eventually, Hera met up with Helena and the members of her research team. The mage wasn't the only one who was interested in the dungeon. All other team members were excited to go there. Even Atlas was coming along despite having completed it and gained his own set of rewards. Which, instead of being a hat, was a bracelet. Although it was just a unique one, and not a legendary rated item, but it was too powerful enough as it increased his defenses and gave him some healing abilities which the man certainly needed.
The dungeon run was much more uneventful than Hera was expecting. Now that she didn't have the pressure of a Wendigo bearing down on her or the fear that the creature could escape and somehow get back out, she had more time to think things over. She realized that although there was darkness in the first part of the dungeon, she really didn't need to worry about not being able to see. The lights created by the monsters were powerful enough and would move at the steady enough phase that even without members, anyone could easily reach it and get rid of the monsters. Which they did in just a handful of minutes. And that was without Hera's help.
Helena herself was much more well equipped for the dungeon than anyone realized. Essentially, the shadow mage could control every single shadow in that room. Meaning that just about the time they entered, she only needed to approach the creatures a bit so they would be in the range of her more destructive spells to dispatch them and move on to the next. And going on the opposite route, she was able to control the light that was coming from the angler fish like skeletons to a certain extent, to allow people to see more of the rubric of the dungeon.
The hidden dungeon was a bit different. Even Helena struggled to see things properly at first. But after she cast a shadow spell, it became painfully obvious what was the gimmick of this place. It wasn't about to just seeing things or being able to use some sort of different sight as Hera did. But it was about shadows. As long as someone was using shadow spells, the surrounding area would absorb those shadows and reveal what was happening. The effect was temporary, but the stronger the spell, the more was revealed and the longer it would take for the shadows to be absorbed into the light.
In hindsight, that made complete sense. It was a shadow dungeon. The entire place surrounding it was shadowy. It was almost as if the room itself was telling people, "Hey, bring someone who can use shadows to the dungeon." And she couldn't believe that she failed to think about that possibility sooner.
Still, they arrived at the whale and Billie, the harpy who was working with Helena, took charge of healing the creature. It took just a few minutes, which was a much faster time than Filigree for the whale to jump back to life and start swimming away. Shadows were created once more, and the lighthouse appeared in the center. Everybody left, and they gained the first time rewards while Hera and Atlas gained the regular reward for the dungeon. Which were still rare items, but considering they just got, the reward didn't feel all that special.
And with that out of the way, namely Helena, happy with the results of her device and happy with the dungeon run, they just did. Which, by the way, seemed to have shown some things that Helena was struggling with, although the mage didn't expand on what that meant. Either way, Hera thanked everybody for the help and said their goodbyes before going back to Zaxalam. She was going to return to her exploration of the Deakoshara and now, with her new hat and the new commander, she was feeling more confident than ever. Especially since Shane, Bonnie, and the Royal Explorers that went to Spiral were also returning for a check-in. Maybe this time they could all go together to explore the Naga homeland.