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The Gamer Chapter 1054 – Christmas Back 4 – Perks and breaking through the Surface
🕑 Added 2021-08-21 06:20:26 +0000 UTC
The room had just returned to their regular conversations and now they were all tangled up in the usual Perk selection council. “Obviously Gaia was going to start with some identity clarification,” John said, scratching his head. “I originally intended for you to be a support, but you kind of veered more in the mage direction and the mix is awkward… what do you prefer?”
“I honestly hate and love all three,” Momo answered, getting off Rave and finally sitting normally on the Couch. “All that hard work for the mana colours shouldn’t go to waste, but if we’re being serious, as another mage I would just be a worse damage dealer than Sylph or Salamander. Also, I’d like these little guys to stick around.” She pointed at one of the fireflies that now crawled out of her poncho. They had stayed hidden while they were cruising the mundane, but now they came out and scattered through the room. Courtesy of their red, blue, green, and white colours, they meshed well with the Christmas decoration. The Firefly jumped over to her finger and she playfully drew letters into the air in front of her with its glowing green butt.
“So should we go with the compromise class?” John asked, since that was essentially what Monochrome Firefly was. It cut away things that were a bit too powerful or didn’t fit and tried to marry the spellcasting to the Firefly spawning by making it another builder-spender model.
“We would lose Gift of Mana though,” Momo hummed.
Gift of Mana was a passive that had come out of Mana Battery, her first ever Passive that allowed John to draw her mana out of her and use it as his or distribute it further among the elementals. While not quite as powerful as that, Gift of Mana still made it so that every time she buffed someone they recovered a flat amount of mana (500 as a quick test proved, diminishing by 50 for every repeated use in five minutes, stacking until a full five minutes had passed between two instances). There was a lot of potential mana in that, especially with how easy she could dish out quick and frequent buffs through the fireflies.
“That’s going to hurt, yeah, but fundamentally, the classes are designed with equal power in mind. Honestly, we don’t have many mana problems nowadays anyway. I’d rather have the defensive barriers, that’s something we definitely lack. We only have heals and environment adjustments, no reliable pre-emptive damage mitigation. Aside from Aclysia’s Fortitude, but that just helps her.”
“Monochrome Firefly then,” Momo agreed.
John scratched his head and pondered the choices. “Isn’t 1% Max Mana… absolutely useless as a choice?” he wondered out loud.
“Yeah,” Momo agreed.
“Yup,” Lee echoed.
“No doubt,” Scarlett added.
“Why is that even there?” Undine wondered.
“I… don’t get it?” Gnome asked. “Why would it be useless? 1% mana is good to have, or not?”
“Absolutely useless may be putting it a bit harshly,” John conceded. “It could be worthwhile as the third choice. The thing is it’s in direct competition with 1% Intellect or Wisdom. Intellect already increases mana supply and the mana that comes from each point of Intellect is doubled by Momo’s Arcane Talent Attribute. Same for her mana regeneration and Wisdom. In other words, the 1% Max Mana will always give less Max Mana than the 1% Intellect, making it an obsolete option.”
“Anyway, I would take the Intellect buff. My mana regeneration has been… lacking, usually,” Momo pointed out.
This was true. For some obscure reason, Momo’s MP regeneration scaling had always been rather bad, while her Max Mana had always been pretty absurd. In all honesty, the ‘obscure reason’ was probably ‘Gaia keeping things from getting absurd’. Because of Mana Battery, Momo’s mana bar had essentially been a second one for John. Giving her great regeneration on top of a big mana bar would have made John’s mana even more inexhaustible than it was, even at the time.
With that in mind, he said, “May very well be that your next Stat milestone in Wisdom bumps the regeneration up considerably.”
“I’d rather not bet on it when Intellect works perfectly fine anyway,” Momo told him, and so the choice was made. They continued with the first of the three bonus Skill or Passive choices.
“Alright, before we make any decision, let’s gather what we know,” John said. “You have up to 50 fireflies at the moment, so the base is 10 plus the 40 from Hive of Fireflies 2. You spawn one every 12 seconds passively. Fireflies buff one of three or all Stat categories. The buffs do not stack, are short-lived, and different ones cannot be active at the same time. You also spawn a Firefly for every 1’000 mana spent on Skills or spells or whatever you want to call them.”
“That’s the gist of it, yeah… You forgot the bit where I can use fireflies offensively though.” One of the many dots on the wall behind her flew over to John and exploded on his forehead. It hurt about as much as getting flicked against it would for an average person. “Not quite as effective without Bombflies, but it’s still a thing. Only real way I can spend duds too.” Occasionally, a colourless Firefly would be created that did nothing and even dealt less damage.
“…Well, if that’s your sole offensive tool at the moment, I think we should go with Black Dart,” the Gamer dared to suggest.
“Gee, ya think?” Momo sarcastically replied. “Just tap the damn button.”
“Black Firefly?” John asked. Thornmantle sounded pretty good, despite its high cost, but she didn’t have enough barrier spells to really justify it at the moment. Directional Defence was even more enticing, if only because layering barriers was a superb way to assure safety. Removing duds out of the rolls was nice, however.
“Minimizing RNG? Sign me up,” Momo agreed immediately.
John opened his mouth, only for Momo to already say, “Pick the Monochrome Fireflies already.”
“Sure thing, boss,” he told the sassy support. That had been the last of the three bonus Skill choices. Now they had one more regular choice to go and then a second round of Minor, Skill and Perk.
“Darc Lance,” Momo demanded.
Personally, John would have preferred the Directional Defence in this case, but he couldn’t fault her for wanting to sort out her basic offensive capabilities first. With her fireflies and White Barrier, she also provided a good amount of utility and, as important as it was to think about things in the group strategy way, she shouldn’t be helpless on her own. Darc Lance provided the powerful destructive tool she needed. Plus, with its range, it let her take advantage of her ability to fly.
“As you wish,” he conceded on the spot and pressed the button. “Let’s knock out the second round too.”
Intellect again, that was easy enough.
Pitch sounded pretty awesome on the face of it, but John felt that it squarely belonged in the ‘noob trap’ category. By that he meant that its appearance of power was, when put into practice, exceedingly deceptive and would not net any of the wanted results.
To start with, it demanded, to fully take advantage of it, a lot of mana spent on offensive spells. That mana could not be used on shields, limiting Momo’s utility. Because it would be automatically cast when the fireflies buffed someone, getting a worthwhile Pitch off also meant that she had to withhold on buffing her allies. Finally, the buff was purely for physical damage, making it useless on anyone that used magic as their primary damage source and highly dependent on the kind of enemy they were facing.
In any real scenario, it was a lot more useful to have 10% Stat buffs and shields on the group, than it was to have a single ally that got a chunky addition to their damage. At best, the Passive could be cheesed via preparation before the fight. That may make it attractive for Raids, but in real life engagements, it was probably going to be dead weight or accidental 1% bonus damage. That could be useful, but was realistically negligible.
“Give me the Directional Defence,” Momo came to the same conclusion as him, as she had on most of the other choices, and the confirmation was made. “I will miss my minor invisibility spell,” she sighed, “and my freeform barriers. Your system makes things really rigid.”
“I know,” John sighed, having complained about this in the past. “You’ll probably get freely placeable barriers at some point. That would make sense as a white spell.”
“I better, or I’m officially calling getting together with you a downgrade.” Momo crossed her legs.
The Gamer was reminded that she was still wearing clothes and so was he. There was still a Perk to go, but he decided that it was time to rid himself of the tyranny of pants and thus opened his character screen for a moment. His naked body was, immediately, the center of attention for every woman in the room. Through all the talking, their desire had built up.
Expectantly, John looked at Momo, reading her reaction. The sassy support bit her lower lip, the fullness of the pink squishing nicely under her white teeth. “Can’t keep your pants on, ey?” She did mock him, however.
It was beyond obvious that Rave had told her about some kind of orgy plan they had for the evening. Apparently Momo wanted to reserve her re-introduction into the lewd side of the harem until then, which was her call to make. As for the rest of them, their day to day made it pretty obvious what should happen next.
“C-can I?” stuttered Lee into the room of girls, wondering who would get to tend to the dick right now.
“Ya think that’s a good idea?” Rave asked with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t want ya to collapse before we get to the gift giving.”
“We’ll keep it casual,” John promised, and a few seconds later witnessed the dark-haired woman kneeling down in front of him. He was ready to jump straight to the main program, but Lee wanted to make sure everything was slick. In the meantime, John pulled up the final window.
“…Why can I turn into a fairy?” Momo wanted to know, before they debated any of the mechanical advantages of the three choices.
“That’s a good… ooooohhhhh,” John realized halfway through the sentence. “Right, Richard is a fairy.”
“Richard…? The Horned Rat is a fairy?” Momo blinked several times. “The skull-headed dick? Are you fucking with my soul?”
“No, he said… well, insinuated it himself,” the Gamer told her. “Back when I placed down the Midnight Forest. He doesn’t fit the modern nice image of fairies, but he does have kidnapper energy so I think that fits. That aside, your core was something he gave me, you have your wings because of his pre-programming of it, and you ate one of his horns, so that would cover the ‘why’.”
“If I may interject,” Lydia spoke up, barely able to rip her eyes off Lee sucking on the dick she herself definitely needed more of to cover her own thirst, “you also have some fairy-esque characteristics about you, Momo. I would not accuse you of being a kidnapper, but you do have a tendency to somewhat whimsical behaviour, headstrong disagreements with the state of reality, and going to places you probably shouldn’t.”
“That’s just cold reading,” Momo drily responded, making an effort to never look at the source of very wet sounds and moans at the moment.
“I can see it though,” Rave commented.
“That’s the point of cold reading,” the sassy support stayed on point.
“Well, whatever you think of it, these are the choices we have,” John said, eager to hurry things along. The quicker this wrapped up, the quicker he had his hands free to lift Lee into his lap. “I personally tend towards Firefly Fairy, because that would suit you the most, I think. Also because I’m biased towards the whole ‘feeling like a human’ thing.” There wasn’t a big difference between her silicone and genuine flesh, but there was a difference.
Momo only thought about it a couple more moments, then nodded. Once the decision was made, a similar phenomenon to Aclysia and Beatrice’s dragonification occurred. A wave of white light, outlined by black lines, crawled over Momo’s body. Although that particular visual was the same, there were no apparent changes by the end of things. That was, aside from the announced one.
Getting on her feet, Momo manifested her wings. What had previously been several panels of silvery white energy on a black frame was now a single pair of insect wings. The structural veins that ran in mostly straight lines from the base of the additional limbs to the edge of the round wings were black, the membrane between white, translucent, and softly glowing. In terms of colour scheme, nothing had changed. They didn’t need to flutter either, to allow the sassy support to hover, so functionality remained the same as well.
“What a day,” Momo hummed. “Back for a couple of hours and already my body is changed.”
“Wait until your power triples at the end of whatever eating binge we can arrange.” John smiled. There was quite a bit he still had to discuss with Momo. All of her findings, most importantly the staff called Tiolyst and the ancient IBMA, and her future place in Fusion. However, for today, they had enough in terms of serious discussions.
Things relaxed from there and they spent about two hours just chattering about this and that, letting the afternoon roll into the evening. They only had one real activity planned for the day, the gift giving, and that was reserved for the night. Until then, they just took this opportunity to live with the jolly carelessness and togetherness that they, with all of their individual responsibilities, rarely got to enjoy for a whole day. Laughter and moaning was had.
Until Thana, for the first time in hours, said something.
“I don’t want to go.”
Comments
Alexius Matsi
Oh my, my heart won't be handle a sweet sad Thana!
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