Spells, Skills, Abilities. These are the three forms that our powers take within the domain of the system.
Abilities are special powers that an individual is born with, they cannot be taken away or transferred, but abilities can be improved or altered through practice and good fortune. Of course an ability could also become worse through various means as well, which is why they are one of the most important factors to consider when deciding on a final build.
Skills are special powers that are gained through the system through sufficient action or given by a class for reaching a certain milestone within that class's advancement. Skills are easy to learn and a skill holder will always possess innate knowledge of how to use their skill. This makes skills excellent for consistency and power as one can often perfectly execute their activation regardless of the situation.
Spells are magical formulas that are gained through study or given by a class for reaching a certain milestone within that class’s advancement. Spells are far more difficult to master when compared to Skills and Abilities, but they make up for it by being incredibly versatile. A caster can regulate everything about their spell, including using earlier lower-leveled versions if they so desire. This makes skilled casters incredibly hard to best as they can quickly develop counters to any skill or ability you might have. The best way to beat a caster is through attrition, as spells are famously the least mana efficient of all the system granted powers.
* Arkham Ever, the last Telminar Archmage, from his book ‘Theories of Magic and Mana’
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Eternal Dungeon POV
It takes me only a few minutes to fully catch Wyla up on everything that I’ve been doing. Our bond makes communication incredibly fast since we can simply directly transfer thoughts and feelings and only need to wait a few moments for the other to process them. I had already told Aika and Bellator everything I thought they would need to know when we were waiting on Wyla to finish her ascension.
“I agree that we need to do something about the boss situation, however I’m uncertain if your plan of creating duplicates will work.” Wyla says, the tone of her voice indicating that she’s still thinking over the problem in her mind.
“Well they don’t have to be full duplicates. What if it was just like an extra body they could puppet? We could make the bodies at the level we need and then we wouldn’t have to worry about them leveling up since they would just be shells.” I said excitedly.
“It might work, but if you choose this route you should be aware that it might cause conflict within the dungeon. Excluding the Wyrm of Duality, all the rest of your bosses are well aware of the fact that they need to train replacements and many of them are expecting the promotion system to continue.” Wyla says.
“I already spoke to many of the bosses and it seemed like they didn’t mind one way or the other. I get the feeling that many of the prowlers Bellator has been training as replacements would much rather stay with him than be stuck on the second floor. The Wyrm of Duality also expressed that it wanted to keep being the boss of the third floor and the fifth floor doesn't even have a boss yet. Besides, it's not like I’m removing the promotion system, I’m simply changing how it interacts with Bosses so that the adventurer experience is better.” I respond
“Hmm, I think we would need a proper test to see if it would even work out. Why don’t you start working on the first prototypes for these ‘boss shells’ and I’ll check in with all the dungeon creatures to see what they think. They’re less likely to immediately agree if I’m the one asking the question instead of you.” Wyla says as her attention begins to shift away from me.
“Sounds good. I wanted to start with the Wyrm of Duality, so focus on questioning their subordinates first.” I reply before shifting my own attention to my laboratory of indestructible and isolated experimentation rooms.
‘Time to play with some mana’ I chuckle to myself as I begin to pull mana from my core and convert it into the affinities I’ll need.
* * *
This is slightly more complex than I initially thought I would be.
Originally I assumed that making an empty body for my boss to inhabit wouldn’t be much different from the process I used to make the wyrms in the first place. However I've quickly learned that it’s a bit more difficult than that. My dungeon magic is highly inclined to create proper living things which inevitably ends up creating full new creatures instead of empty bodies.
Fortunately I had already done a lot of testing on this subject when I created my first Avatar, which now simply resides in an isolated storage room when not in use. I can certainly borrow some of the principles from my avatar creation, but the situation is different for the creation of a boss shell.
When I made my Avatar I knew that I needed to make a connection to it without making the body alive enough to attract an actual soul. This was a delicate process that took me several hours of experimentation to figure out. While I would love to just do the same for my bosses, the problem is that, unlike me, they have no experience inhabiting any body other than their own. Not only that, but I also need the process to be easier to perform as otherwise I might have to shut down boss rooms while the bosses link up to their new shells.
Ideally I could just create a shell that is completely inactive until a challenger shows up. Then the boss can enter the shell and perform their boss duties of fighting them to the death. Then the boss can simply return to their original body and go about the rest of their day. That would be the perfect scenario, but I know that there are likely going to be more complications beyond that even if I figure out how to make a perfect shell. Complications which I will ignore thinking about until I solve the boss shell problem.
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While the difference between my situation and my bosses' situations make doing the same thing I did for my Avatar an impossibility, it does come with its own upsides as well. The bosses don’t need a body that lasts super long as it will end up dying to adventurers over and over again. The bodies also don’t need to have any capacity for growth since I’ll want to keep the shells at the same consistent strength level. This means that I can take some shortcuts that I wasn’t able to when making my more permanent Avatar.
One of these options is to simply create a sort of projection that mimics a cloning skill that I’ve seen some of the Wyld and Light mages perform. The basic skill I’ve seen simply makes a duplicate that is a weaker version of the original that can act semi-independently. I’m hoping that if I modify this to require the person using it to inhabit the new body then I can also make the body stronger. Then I would simply need to make sure that all my bosses learn and master the skill so that they can create bodies for themselves at a specific desired level of strength.
The problem with this route is that I would somehow have to create and then teach the skill to all of my bosses that I plan on keeping in their positions. Those bosses would then also need to dedicate a large amount of training time to perfect the skill to the point where they can flawlessly create and control a body that is weaker than their own.
Another option would be to try and do everything myself by creating a mana-construct that my bosses could temporarily inhabit whenever an adventurer triggers the boss room. I already limit how many times a boss can be fought each day via their respawn time, so it wouldn’t really be super noticeable that I’m generating a copied construct instead of an actual boss, especially when my capability with Wyld magic is taken into account.
The problem with this option is that I would have to figure out how to reliably create these constructs and allow my bosses to inhabit them. Most of the issues with this option stem from the lack of knowledge on its viability. If it's possible to create a construct and for my bosses to inhabit them, then the plan is the best one since it would be easy to integrate it into the current system.
The last option I can think of is one I’m 90% certain will work, but is something I’d prefer to only do as a last resort. I could always kill the boss and respawn it using an earlier iteration of its template, then whether or not it succeeds against the adventurers I can kill it again and respawn it back to whatever its original level was at. I’m pretty confident I could get this to work, but I really hate the idea of requiring my bosses to die regardless of if they win or lose the fight. That’s not even mentioning all the times they would have to drop whatever they're doing and die just so they can appear for the start of the fight.
So with all of this in mind, I have two options to explore the possibility of and one last resort if all else fails. It's the perfect starting point.
* * *
I would love to claim that I spent several hours or days researching and testing different methods for accomplishing my goals, but that would be a lie. As a dungeon, especially a True core, my ability to manipulate mana is on a completely different level from most people. Which is something that makes doing anything with magic a far easier process. That being said it was my dungeon ability to deconstruct and recreate things that really cracked open the issue.
I had started with trying to figure out how the various cloning skills functioned, something that was greatly assisted by the number of people with cloning skills who have died in my dungeon. Anytime a person dies I take a portion of their experience and then revive them if they still have lives left, so far no one has died without more lives remaining so I haven't dealt with much permanent death beyond the people I specifically gave black marks.
Whenever someone dies in my aura range the system allows me to ‘plunder their soul’ for lack of a better term. I get to take the experience, but I also can get an in depth look at a select few skills, spells, abilities, or even memories. If I were to permanently kill someone then I could take everything, but because I want to revive them afterwards I can’t risk damaging the soul too much. Of course all of this soul nonsense happens only in the outermost soul layer where the system has control, so it's not like I’m even really doing much soul magic. It's mostly the system doing the work and I don’t want to piss the system off so I haven't tried any of my own soul magic.
Anyways, thanks to some people with cloning skills dying I got a good look at both cloning skills and spells are put together. They create a temporary magical construct that is then inhabited by a small piece of the casters soul which creates a subordinate yet separate entity. I studied both the skills and spells quite a lot before having a realization. If I could use a good cloning spell as the base and then alter it with the inhabiting feature of a projection or observation spell (which causes the caster to ‘disconnect’ from their body and perceive through a magical sensor) then I could possibly make my ideal mana construct method!
This is when my dungeon ability to manipulate mana came into play. I had samples of both spell types and now I just needed to stitch together a new spell using them as components. A process that, thanks to my perfect memory and incredibly precise mana control, would be an effort that would be more time consuming than it is difficult. All I had to do was make a prototype of the spell formation and then continuously tweak it until it worked as I desired. While monotony often bores me, magic never does. Something about it manages to keep me engaged even when all I’m doing is slightly changing a spell formation and then testing it over and over again until it works.
“Looks like you’ve made good progress.” Wyla’s soothing voice intoned over our bond. I could feel her attention had moved to overlap my own as she observed my spell testing.
“Why did you go with a spell?” She questions with genuine curiosity and not a hint of malice.
“I went with a spell for several reasons. First of all, as a spell I can adjust it so that I can be the caster while still being able to use it on others, this satisfies my goal of minimizing how much time my bosses would need to expend to use it effectively. Second, spells have far more control over what strength they’re cast at which makes it easier for me to precisely control the level of the mana construct copy. Third, manipulating and creating new spells out of old ones is far easier than with skills. Spells were designed to be an open magic system where a trained user could theoretically create a spell for anything and everything, something which I learned from this ‘Theories of Magic and Mana’ book which was gifted to me by one of the adventurers.” I explain in a proud voice.
“Excellently reasoned, let me know when you're finished because I think the Wyrm of Duality is excited to test it.” Wyla says sending me encouraging feelings and a warm smile over our bond.
“I think I’m actually almost finished, why don’t we go together to visit our resident wyrm.” I say to her as I finish up performing a test of my latest iteration of the spell.
“Sounds good to me. Afterwards maybe I can finally convince you to stop dragging your feet and finalize the fifth floor.” Wyla teases.
“Jokes on you, I had planned to finish the fifth floor anyways. All it really needs is a final check and a boss and then it should be good to go. I’m pretty sure it's had enough time dilation by now.” I respond as we both begin to shift our attention away from my experimentation rooms and towards the third floor of the dungeon.