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(Vol 5) Chapter 11: Walking to New Horizons
🕑 Added 2024-05-02 14:51:09 +0000 UTCSammy pondered the [Be Converted] enhancement for a bit. The System wouldn’t likely discriminate on ‘damage’ needing to be some actual wizard shooting at her or something. She could potentially stick her hand in a fire and get 1 FE (Pneuma) as long as it was enough to damage a typical person.
It was maybe worth experimenting and trying to stack a little since the time requirement seemed minimal. Nonetheless, time was her big limiter. If she could easily finagle a means to get a hundred a day or something like that through some bullshit methods, she absolutely would.
She heard a snicker from the Ring of the Cheater, so she held it up and smirked at the little nagi face. “Oh you like that idea, do you?”
The nagi winked at her and gave a thumbs up, before freezing back into place as normal.
She checked [Light Manipulation] next, and found that it had boosted the Lethality Grade from +1 to +2, similar to the upgrade of [Pneumanic Plasma].
More Dakka Dakka. Who can argue with that? I guess that alone makes level 7 pretty important.
[Mirror Sense] was next and… yep. 13x13 went to 12x12 and that was that. Smaller and smaller required surfaces for the ‘not actually mirrors’ mirrors.
And of course, there was [Mirror Walk], which could always be counted on for a distance upgrade…
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Mirror Walk
Avatar-only. Once per day for free, or for 1 Mirror FE or 2 FE, you may take a full action to transport from one mirror/reflective surface you can normally access in a world to another, distances limited by level. You will appear to shrink and re-grow as you phase into and out of smaller mirrors.
Level 7: Range is within 22 kilometers. The interface between the portals appears two-way but is not except to you. Only your person and gear you can carry may transport through. For triple the cost, you may bring one other individual with you.
Alternately, you may dematerialize your Avatar to the Bridge of Edges. You must spend 10 seconds of uninterrupted time and complete focus staring into your own eyes in a mirror face, and spend 5 Mirror FE (or normal 10 FE) unless you take a full minute instead, in which case it costs nothing similar to a normal dematerialization. You cannot bring anyone with you.
Your Avatar will be anchored to the mirror face which will darken until resolved. If the mirror is destroyed, you will anchor at its destruction location. If you exit from elsewhere, the anchorage will resolve. If the location is not a point along the Bridge of Edges, you cannot exit by means of the bridge.
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Sammy blinked a few times at it. “What?”
Wait… Places we can see on the Bridge of Edges like Azure noticed must be locations I can actually step out in! How do I find more, though? Damn it! Another thing to prioritize. I have to in this case. Moving my avatar between continents and shit is too important. Too powerful.
Meanwhile, the distance went from 12 km to 22 km, which was quite good in and of itself. The Southlands as a whole were becoming traversable for reasonable expenditure, even if she didn’t find better shortcuts.
It brought up the interesting subject of spirit world doorways. She knew she could fashion great viewpoints into the physical world if she synchronized the reference, but informational vs. physically-affecting was almost literally infinitely different. One could not pierce the veil, just ‘go around it’ more or less.
On that battlefield, she felt as if she were close enough to slap Zadkiel at times, but he was effectively a world away. It was only through Sympathy she targeted him.
The area Goldie had led her to was rather special, as was her romp to the underworld. In both cases, her Avatar had synthesized with her spirit form seamlessly. Having an Avatar anchored somewhere complicated one trying to ‘go somewhere else’ physically from out of the spirit world. Whether she could go there or not, becoming physical was likely blocked.
The Bridge of Edges was clearly another special mechanism for avoiding the normal limitations. Her immediate assumption — or perhaps intuition — was it somehow ‘slid’ the anchorage itself to realign it. The spots themselves were perhaps like dips at the convergence of the edges, where the weighted ‘ball’ of her physical location could stabilize once she found the right balance in the 3-D ball maze.
Wow, it makes so much sense to me as an analogy! I’m so smart. Too bad anyone else would be looking at me like a loon if I had to explain it.
Shaking the whole matter off for the time being, she focused back on the gains. Spirit Armor… another simple EL boost, changing spirit-based resist to +5 and mind-affecting to +3. That was good, making it extra-superior to her obsolete Spirit Ward spell.
The final [Goddess] upgrade was to Split Prediction, which once more added a raw boost to the first line, ‘This entitles you to +3 Effective Levels to matters of pure reflex, such as defenses.’ That was up from +2.
So, level 7 gives core boosts to offense and defense. But not everything. Removal didn’t get anything. I guess that tracks considering me having it already is a cheat, and it’s a very powerful one-shotter if I have enough advantage on someone.
With the [Goddess] stuff reviewed, she double-checked [Bound] and the relevant info for what she could do next.
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Tied to your soul, the item has a level equal to your highest relevant class. By default it is considered [Minor] at levels 1-3, [Major] at levels 4-6, [Artifact] at levels 7-12, and [Legendary Artifact] at levels 13+. It has one free enchantment per category. At level 10, you may change all enchantments, if desired.
At [Major] level it obtains a general +1 Effective Levels to use, or +2 at [Legendary Artifact]. At [Artifact] level it obtains Armor Penetration 1, or Armor Penetration 2 at [Legendary Artifact].
The item also obtains the ‘Durability’ enchantment equal to the category above (this starts at High Durability). This only matters for each summoning — it returns to full capability with an action (equivalent to a banish and summon).
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So I got an armor penetration and a durability upgrade, and I have an Artifact-level enchantment to pick. Spell Absorption can be upgraded, too…
She checked the upgrade. It changed the ‘+2 item level storage’ to +5, added +5 to Detect Magic uses on spells, and changed the 4x total storage to 7x. In addition, stored energy could be used for fueling known spells, arcane or divine, spell level for spell level.
The level of spells I can absorb or stop shoots way up with that. Solid, but I should probably investigate the others and weigh the pros and cons. A lot of options considering that if I upgrade this, I then have a Major enchantment slot free. And at level 10, I can reset it all.
She knew that she wanted an offensive spellcasting aid, both for the balance of things and due to the simple fact that magic weapons were usually best at that. She did check Holy Relic Investiture to see if it upgraded Major to Artifact… but no dice. [Bound] seemed to be either fast-forwarded on the power access or Holy Relics didn’t have access at all. Time would tell.
Before she forgot, she picked her two sub-class selections for the quest completion: [Magineer] and [Saboteur], gaining 5 and 4 exp respectively.
Determined not to rush her Artifact selection, Sammy finished up with a quick review of spells. The list had also been updated with the Pantheon’s provision of the Freedom Domain, which drew her eyes curiously.
What jumped out was a level 6 spell, Unfettered Motion, which provided immunity to most forms of physical movement restriction, natural or magical, for 7 minutes per caster level. It included such things as shackles, grappling, paralysis, slow effects, Web spells, simple underbrush, and even being underwater.
Handy. We’re slippery. I guess Redberry wants to be the only one entangling and restricting victims. Tee hee!
Also at level 6 was Freedom of Thought, which was a single-target +2 EL bonus against mind-affecting spells or abilities, as a (Resolute) modifier, which was stackable with (Ward), and thus her [Spirit Armor] ability.
Hell yes. This must be the sort of modifier Red relied on for her resistance against the Dominion’s psychics.
At level 7 was another one with a name she certainly loved: Breaker of Chains. As an AoE, everyone within 10 meters under any sort of restrictive effect immediately broke out if it was non-magical, or contested to break out if magical with a +2 EL bonus to a minimum of EL 7.
An arcane spell she knew about and had planned on eventually, but never gotten around to getting was now available to everyone: Genius of Language at level 4, allowing both comprehension and speaking in other sapient languages.
Ah, good! Half of my motivation was making that available to my clerics. Problem solved — thanks again, Red.
As for her own level 7 contributions, most of it was many iterations and permutations of her own powers for use by her clerics. But, she finally got a basic Dispel on the list, which was quite noteworthy, though Orswyth had long surmised that every cleric got it at some point, depending on domains. It was not considered exclusive to certain Domains, though [Wizards] and specialists got it earlier.
I did already have a specialized dispel technically, too.
Another interesting unique spell was Phase Blinking, a short-duration random phase back and forth from material to immaterial like a status effect. She decided to read it carefully…
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Phase Blinking
(Level 7; Illusion, Phantasm, Movement, Spirit) For the duration (5 seconds per caster level), you phase in and out from material to intangible randomly moment by moment, as if not fully in the real world or spirit world, and always slightly shift position. You can see in both, but the spirit world is normally disorienting and you have -1 Effective Levels to actions or perception (Note: due to existing abilities, this penalty is ignored for you).
You have a very slight subconscious control, allowing you to take advantage of the effect, but it is not active or absolute. If an attack cannot affect the immaterial, you have a random chance for the attack to simply pass through the space you ‘were’ in harmlessly, if the attack is at typical, ostensibly quick, combat speed. This is roughly 50/50.
Against a slower effect, such as a continuous beam or most AoEs, you must defend normally, but if you phased ‘at the right time’ you have a +3 Effective Level bonus against it as a (Phasing) modifier.
On offense, if your foe cannot see the intangible on some level, they are penalized by -3 Effective Levels as a (Visibility) penalty, and it is possible for them to entirely lose track of your location. You always have a +1 Effective Levels (Phasing) bonus due to the ability to take advantage of moving through solid matter. However, you cannot be unphased, attack, and rephase inside someone, as you will shunt position in between.
You cannot fall to any great harm, as you constantly anchor at your relative position every moment — you drift downward 1 meter per 5 seconds. You can walk or run through solid objects up to a quarter meter thick if from a standstill, or thicker if with a running start. You will shunt to the nearest open space if stuck in the middle of something while phased out.
You can interact with intangible entities normally. Their senses are unlikely to be inhibited against you, but your ‘becoming solid’ acts similarly as ‘becoming intangible’ does for material foes, under most circumstances.
If you are in a spirit realm when casting this, the spell fizzles.
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Whoa, that’s trippy. Good buff, but short duration, so it has competitors. This is coming from [Pneuma] and [Illusion], I suppose. I wonder if full intangibility is in the cards at a later level? Probably.
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