Chapter 111 – Floor Two Preparations

Over twenty minutes passed before the other three agreed that they were healthy enough to return. The long walk back to their living area was silent. It was clear the aftereffects of whatever mind stun that they had been inflicted with was significant and persistent. Their complaints aside, the trip back was pleasant and not a single monster waylaid them. The corridors were empty just like Adam had promised.

“I’m not training,” Eloise said flatly the moment they emerged into the familiar common room.

“I concur I’m going to sleep,” Kang agreed.

“All of today off,” Tom told them. “Then in three days we do the next floor. I’ll have Lightning Javelin by then and things will go faster.”

“And I’ll have missiles.” Kang said, tiredly. “I know the plan. Now I have to sleep.”

He and the girls left, and Tom retreated to the padded, empty room to scheme and practice.

The moment the door shut his tier three spear appeared carefully positioned to be hidden from any direct line of sight from the door. A precaution in case one of the others barged in. If that happened, he would have time to send it back into his soul storage before they got a good look. Just in case, he produced a further two spears for extra deniability.

The fight against the cat had been easy, but he had felt its vitality and how difficult it had been to penetrate its eye socket even when it was knocked out. A fair fight, he had to admit at best would have been long and difficult. The monsters in the rest of the trial were only going to become more powerful. He needed the edge.

He had to change the paradigm he was functioning under to allow him to use the spear openly. Otherwise, he was sure people were going to die.

And his gut was petrified that included Bri.

Somehow, he had to introduce the weapon to them in a way their minds, particularly Kang’s, wouldn’t realise its true origin. He had to manufacture some solid misdirection. “Adam, can you help me with something?”

Yes, of course.

“Can I get a lock put on this door.”

There was a pause.

It’s possible, but is that really the question you want answered?

Tom sighed. “No. It’s not.” He glanced at his weapon. “I need to keep this hidden.”

None of the other three have a skill that can see into your soul storage.

The administrator, Tom was certain was being deliberately obstinate. “Very funny but that’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Yes. I do. What you want I suspect is tricky, and it’s related to something beyond my pay grade and I don’t understand the parameters you’re working with. I’m not sure how much I can help.

“I need to hide its origins and be able to use it when clearing floors. Can I pretend it’s a reward I got for killing the cat?”

You can.

Relief flooded through him. If he could present it as a trial reward, it would make his deception easier. Change its look, openly break the decoy butterfly spear, and then he was free to do what he wished.

But I won’t be able to lie to support the alternative reality you’ll be attempting to construct.

His head snapped up. “Were you teasing me?”

A little. Deception is pointless. As it is, if they catch a single glimpse of it, it will cause them to question everything.

“I was about to change the surface markings.”

That will help, but it still won’t explain where you got a tier three item from when everyone knows you weren’t allowed to bring in any materials. Kang is curious and knows how things work. If he sees you with a tier three spear, he’s going to ask how you got it.

“I’m not a great liar, but I’m not afraid to do it. I can convince him that it is a trial reward.”

Yes, I’m sure you can. But we have long chats. He will seek to clarify the rules with me.

“And then he discovers everything.” Tom massaged the brow of his nose. This was the crux of the issue that he had been ruminating on for some time. “So, what can I do? Only use it when they’re unconscious?”

Or only on the last run. During the floor, you can’t talk to me and I can kick you out when you finish it. The best solution I can see given what you’ve told me is to hide it until the last run and then use it openly after that with whatever protective lie you wish to swing.

Tom lowered his head. It was not a great solution. “And that will work?”

It will shield me from accidentally revealing what you want hidden.

“I guess that’s what we do. Damn, I can’t believe I have to leave this unused until the very end. Unbelievable. We’re going to be risking our lives while I have a weapon that can carve up whatever monsters we’re going to face. To have that type of treasure sitting useless in my spatial storage. It sucks. To be so close… but… damn… there’s no point lamenting about bad luck. I’ll just have to hope that the fate we’ve invested will keep them alive for long enough. Adam, thank you for your candour.” he paused for a moment, grinned and looked straight at where the text was being written. “I don’t want to be difficult, but what about the door?”

Locking it will cause unnecessary question. I think it’ll be best if I give you a warning when someone is approaching it or is likely to approach. It should provide you more than enough time to hide evidence.

He considered the offer for only a second before nodding. “That will work. Thank you.”

Undisturbed by any inquisitive eyes, he went to work on the spear. The first step was to change the design on the weapon to shift it as far away from butterflies as quickly as possible. Warping the wood to give the butterflies a head was the most efficient way to butcher the current design. That is what he focused on while consuming all of his natural and precognition affinity mana generation. Both sources of magic were used to continue to practice his spell. The routine resulted in about five minutes of wood shaping for every one of magic practice.

It was a solid use of his time.

Two hours later, he briefly paused.

He had been forcing the maximum throughput through three skills for hours and he felt fine, which was a massive contrast to how the battle had progressed on that first day on floor one.

Skill exhaustion had always been a complex subject. All skills originated from the soul, which made them intrinsically linked. Once overuse kicked in, the expression of all abilities suffered.  No one had the flexibility to abuse a focus-hog ability like Power Strike and then continue using the other ones independently without paying that cost. Once you dipped into the red, everything deteriorated. Yet there were differences

Danger Sense was a passive ability and seemed capable of functioning, admittedly at a lower level, no matter what state his soul was in. Living Wood and his Precognition Affinity set of abilities were the next step down. He could use them, like he had just done for hours with only a slight amount of strain. They were effectively indefinites but unlike with Danger Sense once the soul was impacted as the trial floor had shown him, they became useless.

Too much Power Strike use not only crippled his capacity to inflict emergency melee damage it also stopped him from using other skills. It would prevent him from generating precognition affinity mana, which was a big deal. The loss of ready access to that mana had almost cost Kang his life.

Continual improvement was what he had to do, and that went beyond creating a new spell, or gaining extra equipment or even improving spell levels to boost their impact. He also needed to hone his decision making and avoid the mistakes he had made previously. It was important for him to be a lot more careful about pushing Power Strike too far. Unless it was life or death, he had to ensure he never got to the state where his soul stress would stop him from using his light touch skills.

Burning it down until using Power Strike became an iffy proposition was fine. Pushing so far that he couldn’t generate mana and / or Danger Sense started malfunctioning was too much, and he promised himself it wasn’t going to happen again.

Discovering the limitations and how far he could safely push was important. He made a mental note to do tests during his next bouts of physical training. The real issue he guessed was sustained damage. Against the strange wrinkly hairless creatures, he had been incapable of harming them without using Power Strike. That was a problem, and he wished he had an ability like Kang’s Shadow Edge spell to supplement his fighting and remove his reliance on skills to elevate his melee damage levels.

It was definitely a hole to address in his next set of chats with April. There had to be something similar in his earth and lightning affinities. Something like an Earth Point spell combined with Lightning Piercing that would let him cut through resistant monster skin. If he could enhance his weapon with spells, he wouldn’t have run into his skill exhaustion issue.

Then again, things were never that simple.

His current circumstances were aberrant. In the divine championship duels, wins were decided by burst damage not sustainability. Unless you specialised in some kind of dodge tank build, then high burst damage was almost always better than endurance. When he was as powerful as Everlyn currently was, he would be able to sustain something like Power Strike for every blow and at that level, relying on spells to supplement spear strikes would be foolish.

Tom laughed at himself.

It was easy to get caught up in his own head. The five weeks they had spent in this trial were impacting his decision making. It was natural to see your current circumstances as normal and lose sight of what the future was most likely to look like.

His plans didn’t need to change he just needed to survive the next month.

“If only it was that easy,” he whispered and then looked at the weapon he was working on and felt like crying.

The spear represented cheat mode.

If he killed… no, if he allowed the others to die, then he could use it for both floors without it reverting back to its useless, original tier. If he did that he could survive easily. Unfortunately, that was not an option.

It was keeping the other three alive, which was the challenge.  

He sucked in his breath and kept training, and didn’t let his frustration show when interacting with the others.

It was the afternoon of the third day. Tomorrow they would be challenging the next floor, and Tom sat by himself as he prepared to gain what he saw as a critical part of his spell repertoire. Carefully, he reviewed all of his notes, as he envisaged exactly what he desired.

Lightning Javelins at least from a spell form perspective had two key functions that it would perform. The first was delivery and given how fast lightning travelled that was not something he wanted to address specifically. The second, that was really a combination of two components was the sharpness to physically cut into the wounds or to go through armour and then the delivery of rampant electricity currents to fry, burn and shock the enemy. Basically, the physical impact of the spell landing followed by the transfer of the payload.

Tom wanted another sideways evolution, but he didn’t know which of those damage aspects would be best to lean into.

Both were important for the coming fights, the duels and even his longer-term growth in Existentia. He intended Lightning Javelin, or an evolved form of the spell to be a critical part of his long-term damage potential. When he reached rank hundred, he would still be using the spell, so it was important to get it right.

The benefits of adding additional penetrative power were obvious. Increasing the probability of blasting through armour could only be a positive, but so too would be a boost to the intensity of the electricity delivered or the advantages that would be associated with improving the stun duration. A small part of him knew he should have decided this weeks ago, but he had been distracted.

The fact he was so uncertain made him pause his preparations for a few minutes to meditate on the issue.

Finally, he stood up and flipped through the pages once more. He knew what he wanted and there was no point delaying and agonising over a decision around the direction of a sideway’s evolution he might never get.

After he had formed the correct image, he spent his completely full fate pool to improve the probability of making the idea a reality.

Exclusively using only precognition affinity mana, he started to shape the spell.

He referenced the pages of wireframe diagrams.

He merged the input spells carefully and watched with a mixture of trepidation and excitement as the occasional line slipped out of position. The angle shifting slightly away from the representation shown in his documentation. A spinning curl turning into a smooth helix, a fractal being broken to become just an ornamental link. The changes were small almost at the microscopic level, but they were there, and he wondered if it was the precognition affinity at work or fate or if it was him making mistakes. The last concerned him because it meant that what he was doing was going to fail and until his attempt finished, he wouldn’t know the cause of the deviations.

 Finally, the magic spell clicked together and hung there stable and ready to use. He waved a hand at the distant wood and metal dummy and triggered the spell.

Briefly a javelin created out of lightning appeared in his hands before shooting away, leaving afterimages burnt into his retinae.

A moment later, there was the crash of metal being twisted and broken as it struck the dummy. Metal armour was shattered and fragmented at the point of impact, and chips of wood flew away. Lines of electricity rippled over the entire surface and when it faded, there were dark scorch marks on the resistant wood.

There was also a simultaneous ding.

He flicked his hand again and then, using the ten free mana granted by his trait a second javelin shot out. It was weaker than the first, but it hit with a similar though less impressive display.

Over the next twenty minutes, he tested what he could do with the spell before checking the notification. He wanted to understand what it could do before descriptions of how it was supposed to be limited influenced him. The spell form was surprisingly flexible. Not only could he bend the trajectory of the javelin mid-flight he could create the starting point over two metres away from him. When he did that his aim was slightly off but the tests were accurate enough that he knew that with a bit of practise he could hone the aiming to perfection.

It would help in the coming fights to a limited extent, and he was particularly excited about combining it with Remote Power Strike. The spell was fast and if a single action could shield break and stun an opponent within a second of a battle commencing, he would be able to start winning duels. Potentially, he might even be able to win regularly.

He cast it again and tried to force it to divide into multiple javelins, but the spell fell apart. Well, that had been too ambitious, for now at least, but he was confident in time he would get it to the point where he would be able to split it into several attacks. It might take a threshold benefit to push it that far from its intended form, however he was certain he could achieve it.

“Adam, can you show the spell.”

He didn’t even need to finish the sentence before the details of his new spell appeared in front of him.

Spell: Lightning Javelin – Tier 3 (Level 3)

Create a javelin out of electricity that travels at the speed of lightning and on impact does physical and electrical damage. Is currently limited to a range of fifty metres.

Sideways Evolution 1: You have 20% improved control over this spell

Sideways Evolution 2: This spell has improved potency. The stun component ignores 100% of resistances and has a 30% increased chance of stunning.

Sideways Evolution 3: Lingering effects such as burns, stun and muscle weakness will persist for twice as long and be eight times as difficult to magically clean.

Tom read the description with a big smile on his face.

Based on his proficiency in Spark and this as a tier three spell, it was supposed to have started at level one but his brief practice had already pushed it up to three and that moved it so much closer to level four when the first threshold bonus would kick in.

Then there was the range of fifty metres. Given how fast these things moved that was quite frankly ridiculous and far better than he expected. It was hard to visualise but fifty metres was five bus lengths and meant he had a genuine ranged attack that would hit before most people could respond effectively. It was nothing like what Everlyn had been able to do with her bow where she had hit targets that were hundreds of metres away but for a kid of his age it was a nasty addition to his arsenal.

The other reason for his smile was the extra sideways evolution that had been added. For a spell whose purpose was to paralyse someone, it was a direct upgrade in its effectiveness. Especially the increased cost it would take targets to clean the stun effect. Eight times was a difference maker.

There was one other gain.

Tom looked up in surprise at that those new words from Adam. He had only registered one ding. “Well, show it.”

Title: Underage Spell Development (I) - Upgradable - Grants 1 free attribute point every eight levels.

·        Awarded for. Developing spells sufficient to be awarded eight points from raw mana manipulation into spell forms..

o   Each uniquely created skill will award spell points equal to the tier level squared. This means the following.

§  A tier 1 spell contributes 1 point.

§  A tier 2 spell contributes 4 points.

§  A tier 3 spell contributes 9 points and so on.

o   No double counting of spell points may occur.

o   Eligible skills must be wholly created. If any part of the merged spell was acquired from a spell stone or trainer, then no spell points are awarded.   

·        Uncommon Title: Competition Rank: 2741, Experience: NA. Ranking Points – NA.

He had speculated that the title existed but when he hadn’t got it after acquiring a tier two spell he had assumed that it was not available. The reason was that apparently the title started awarding benefits after eight assigned points instead of four like the skills version had done.

It would take twice as much advancement to promote it to a higher level when compared to the skill version, but Tom guessed that made a lot of sense. It was a lot easier to create spells from scratch than skills even with the restriction on no double counting.

To get one free attribute per level, he would need to get sixty-four spell points. That was a single tier eight spell or four tier four spells. There were other combinations of course, but that gave him an idea of the difficulty of what he was facing.

Mentally, he assessed what it would take to promote his lightning and healing spells that far. After a moment, he decided he was probably looking at a year or two to get both of them to that level. Given two years had already elapsed that meant each tier four spell was two years of development. His mind raced to calculate the numbers. After hitting those first two milestones, he would have under seven years to acquire additional spells to count. The bonuses from the divine champion trial would help him, but he wasn’t sure it would be enough. Improving it to get one attribute per level looked very achievable. The question was could he get two?

The answer was yes, but also possibly no. He would put a watching brief on the effort. Pushing to get plus two in both skills and spells might be biting off more than he could chew. One in each would have to be enough and maybe two in the skills titles, as that seemed easier to achieve.

He was happy with the sideways evolution and the title, but it changed nothing about his immediate circumstances. He still needed to save the other three, and he was not looking forward to starting the second floor in the morning.

AG. My wife took the boys to the school disco (primary school) so I had an extra two hours to finish this. This mini arc will take a chapter or two longer than I expected (should be finished next week). I'm bad at estimating somethings. In my mind explainig why he would be blocked from using the tier 3 spear immediately was a throw away sentence when in practice it took a 1000+ words to explain.

How long it takes to express a thought process is something I'm finding I'm regularly missing the estimate of.