Chapter 62: Improperly Used

Yes, you could navigate the dungeon this way. It a long, winding journey, and it may require you to occasionally descend into highly dangerous areas of the Dungeon, but you totally can. No one knows how deep the Dungeon goes. People simply never return when they go too deep. Most people do assume it goes all the way to the center, but there is no way to make sure.

Domagoj Kurmaic

I had a question. I think it was mentioned that the dungeon is EVERYWHERE, so does that mean you could theoretically enter the dungeon in Cyoria and navigate to say Korsa? And also, does the dungeon go to the center of the planet or is it's depth limited?

Val

Most of those questions shall remain unanswered for now, until their relevance to the story passes. That last question, though, I don't understand. Do you mean put someone else's soul in a magic item and then create a simulacrum of them? First of all, you'd need to be a necromancer for this, a magic item alone would not do. Secondly, no, the simulacrums don't retain memories if dismissed and recast.

Domagoj Kurmaic

Things are getting interesting! I have some questions about Simulacrums. What happens when a Simulacrum kills its maker? Since necromancers can use souls as mana generators outside their original bodies, I assume this is not just a fancy way of committing suicide and the soul still powers the simulacrum spell? What happens to the physical location of the soul, does it stay in the old bodies corpse, move to the simulacrums ectoplasmic shell, or move on to the afterlife? The soul records the experiences of it's original body, does it also record the experiences of the simulacrum created by the vanilla simulacrum spell? If you made a magic item that had a spell formula that cast and maintained the simulacrum spell from an included soul that also powered it, including recasting whenever the spell was disrupted, would the simulacrum retain memories across recasts, or just start with the memories the soul had at the time of death?

Yes, there is a limit. Zach has already hit his a long time ago, for instance. Though one can technically always improve, the improvements get smaller and smaller in time, effectively becoming useless.

Domagoj Kurmaic

I am rereading the story again and I had a question pop up. Is there an actual hard limit to how much a person can train their magic control? I know that the larger your base mana reserve is, the worse control you have, but even Zach, who says his initial control level was around that of a magnitude 25 mage, is able to gain huge amounts of control. So does that mean that while it will be hard, you can always increase your control? And if the answer is yes, does that mean you could potentially, given enough time, be able to cast spells with nearly no mana cost, or is there also a hard limit on the absolute minimum of mana a spell needs? What could also be intresting is if Zorian, through his control and mana sensing, learned to use small amounts of his mana to control large amounts of ambient mana, or something similar to that. Honestly, the fact that Zorian is doing everything in so many fields of magic is awesome. Hell, I am sort of expecting some sort of Neo from The Matrix style gun skillz, with an emphasis on having like 60 guns under his cloak, and summoning golems with massive cannons on their backs, and flamethrower fingers.

Val

That was fantastic ! I loved the interactions between Zach and Zorian. They're becoming good friends despite their very different personalities. Also a restart without much of a dramatic tension and full of mighty antics from our duo is pretty fun to read in between more frustrating or uncertain restarts.

Chaddaï Fouché

Awesome as always. Even when there's nothing super dangerous or suspenseful going on, I still can't help but get completely absorbed. I love the continued development of the magic system and the worldbuilding. And I love the small incremental improvements that just keep being useful in some way. Can't wait to find out what Zorian started to find in the library and what kind of awesome munchkining he'll be able to pull off with the simulacrum spell. Keep up the good work man, I love everything about this story!

Ah man. I'm not quite sure what makes these chapters, mostly full of world-building and grinding, so damn satisfying. You tie Zorian's development into the plot and the world so flawlessly. It's great how every little thing that gets mentioned pays off in some small way. This was a great chapter, thanks very much.

We'll see. I'll try to release it on time.

Domagoj Kurmaic

This was a good chapter. I like how Alanic is beasically like, starting writing down the locations of all these places. Lol, once the time loop is over, the black markets, slave trades, dark evil people's alliances are all going to get wrecked. Litterally this Kingdom that Zach and Zorian are in will recieve a major boost over the other Kingdoms with all these little problems being eliminated. Also, I am willing to bet that the library turns out to have some REALLY good stuff in it. The best part of all is that I bet Zorian is going to train his shaping skillz to the point that spamming magic missiles and fireballs will be possible due to his ungodly level of shaping. On another note, will we be getting a regular release sometime around Christmas, or will you be taking extra time due to family/christmas/etc?

Val

Great chapter! I love reading Zorian's continued advancements in shaping skills.

Love it. The only problem is that I have to wait three more weeks. Gahh . . . is there any way? I don't want chapters to be rushed, but . . . I can't wait to find out what happens! :D

JDG

This is one of the few times I've heard Zorian laugh---maybe the first.

JDG