“I understand that they are dangerous, but Crossroads said I could at least figure out how they work. Perhaps I could make them more reliable?” Dix was getting the distinct impression that none of the other gods wanted him to even think of taking the four skills Chance had originally offered, and that was making the back of his neck tingle. Not to mention making him angry. He had a lot of problems with authority. When he looked at Lust and saw the set of her jaw and the hard look in her eyes, he knew he’d have to push. “Humor me,” he said, voice firm and unyielding.
They might be gods, but they still need me, a lowly mortal. Time to start testing how much leash they’ll give me without pulling back. Did Chance really not warn them about how to deal with me? I can’t tell if Crossroads is playing along, forgot, or is genuinely concerned.
The gods looked around the room, seeming to settle on Lust for the explanation. Beauty was not involved. Sighing, Lust shifted in her chair to get more comfortable. “Fine. We’ll start with the easiest to explain. RTB, much like with the militaries on your world, means Return To Base. Said base must be a town or city, nothing else, so it is limited in use. It’s also a convoy based group skill, meant to be used and cast by a minimum of ten people. Only one person needs to have the skill, but they work together to channel the mana necessary to activate it. You might be able to activate it solo at some point in your life, but why would you wait that long?
“As for how it works, it isn’t actually a teleportation spell. Instead it is simply a very fast traveling skill. It transforms each member of the group into a ball of light, chained to the person who used the skill. That person follows a tether that leads to the chosen base along the path they took to get to their current location. One of the dangers is obviously trust. If the person using the skill takes you somewhere other than where they said they would, you have no choice but to go along. Being the one who uses it carries its own dangers, as you need to trust the people you are bringing back to your base aren’t going to attack you or the town you returned to.
“It is also dangerous to you because it has been almost exclusively used by merchants for a very long time, allowing bandits and other people to create skills to intercept the passage of people using it. Each town has spells and enchantments to stop RTB from blowing through their streets, so people have to stop to travel through the town. This opens you up to ambush, theft, or just high food prices as you wait to regenerate the mana you spent using the spell for that short period. Bandits will just set up their intercepts on roads, knock people out of RTB, grab the first guy to appear, and hold him for ransom or kill him. Either way, if you are the one using the skill, it puts you in danger. There are even monsters that can do the same thing.
“All in all, it’s not the best skill for an adventurer that is new to the world, and doesn’t actually know anyone to use the skill with.” Her explanation seemed to have taken a little of the tension out of her, and she relaxed a little more. She stretched a little, then, without even seeming to notice she had done it, her whole body changed. She went from tall, stunning, and sultry, to prim, propper, and sultry. It seemed to Dix that she couldn’t shake the sultry, being the Goddess of Lust and all, but he liked the new librarian look she was rocking. It matched the lecture she soon launched back into.
“Deadhead is probably the next easiest one to explain. Like RTB it isn’t a teleportation skill. Deadhead transforms the user into a small package that is magically connected to a summoned bird that flies back to its home.”
“Like a carrier pigeon?” Dix interrupted.
“Exactly, which is where the oddities of the skill start becoming problems. First, you have to introduce the summoned bird to a place for a full day to allow it to imprint as its home. Second, the form of the bird is copied from that of a nearby bird when the spell is cast. This means it might have a form adapted to one area, but not the areas it needs to travel through. As you have no control over what form the summon takes, you can’t cancel the skill and choose another one. Some are faster or slower, feared as predators, or hunted as prey. Third, once you are a package you lose all control of where you are going, or how you are doing so. The bird is in control of travel, no matter how long it takes. Two hours or three days, you can’t do anything, and are almost completely unaware of the journey until you either land at your home or you return to your normal form through alternate means.
“If the bird is damaged, you will immediately return to your normal form. Consider what would happen to you if you returned to your normal form after the summon is attacked by a harpy while flying. Without a slow fall or a flight skill you will fall to your death. Lightning, hunters, predators, and even hail can cause your death.”
She gave a bit of a sigh, and pushed her glasses up on her nose a little. She was turning a little more stern, reminding Dix of a librarian from his college, but sexier. “Those are the easy ones to understand, but are actually very dangerous just in simple usage. The other two are much, much more difficult to understand, and one is perhaps even more likely to end in your death.
“Flashback, if used properly, is the least likely to kill you, but it is also very difficult to do that, particularly before the Trials. The skill moves you to wherever you were exactly twelve hours ago. Each skill level adds another twelve hours. You need to keep a very precise track of where you were at all times. Yes, it can help you to escape imprisonment, and then to return later, but if you miscalculate exactly where you were at a specific time, it may leave you in worse conditions. If just before you were captured you were in a forest, and Flashbacked to there, what would happen if that exact location now had extremely dangerous monsters wandering through? Or if you popped up in front of a galloping horse, or wagon?
“This is why it is very dependent on Chance. You can attempt to plan around it, set up small defensive positions at specific locations at specific times, or keep a journal of your exact surroundings at different intervals, but eventually it will get you killed. Without it being tied to a specific location in a safe area, it’s unpredictability leaves you exposed to the vagaries of life on Mantra.”
As she spoke, Dix realized that she had a very good point, as well as some salient points that she hadn’t mentioned about Return. If she was so worried about random acts of violence with Flashback, shouldn’t she be even more worried about premeditated acts of violence with Return? If he took Return, he swore to himself that he would never let his actual return location be exposed, and would change it every time it was used. There was no excuse for being killed due to one’s own laziness.
Librarian Lust shot another disturbed look at Crossroads. The older god had relaxed back into his recliner again, but nodded and twirled a hand at her when it became obvious she was looking for someone else to explain the last of the four skills. With a little grumbling under her breath, and another long put upon sigh, Lust got back to her explanation.
“Anamnesis is both simple and convoluted. All it does is change a particular decision. Skill level determines exactly how far back said decision can be. Once the skill is used, and the decision is chosen, there is no more control. You will not know where you are going to show up. If you originally made the decision to go on a particular job, and then fourteen hours later cast Anamnesis on that decision, you would appear where you would have ended up that exact same duration of time later if you had decided to not go on that job. The only real change to the world though is your location.”
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Dix was wavering between stunned amazement, and complete terror. Anamnesis was the ultimate ‘What If’ skill. Or almost. There were a number of issues with it, but there was no surprise that, if what Crossroads had said earlier meant what he thought it did, the gods destroyed all knowledge of the skill. Dix figured the biggest problem wasn’t with the skill itself, or even it’s death count. No, the real problem was that it was the beginning of a real ‘What If’ skill, and that could rewrite history. Time travel might be deemed completely impossible in a universe based on physics, but in one based on magic? Who the hell knows?
Despite his brief ruminations, Lust wasn’t done talking. “If you decided not to go on that job, but a neighboring town was attacked shortly after, perhaps you would have joined the relief force. So when you cast Anamnesis, instead of safely returning to your original town at the end of your job, you instead are teleported into the battlefield the neighboring town has become between bandits and adventurers. The only problem is that you don’t know anything about what is happening, who is fighting, or where you are. You were teleported smack into the center of the chaos, because that is where you would have been had you decided to not go on that job, but you don’t get the knowledge of why you are somewhere else, only that you are.
“For another example, you were originally trying to decide between two jobs. Having finished one, you use Anamnesis when it is over to take the second job, and teleport to wherever you ended up for that one. You even plan to be attacked immediately by the monsters listed for the job, but the person posting it got it wrong. It wasn’t a goblin troupe, it was a raiding party of goblins, orcs, and trolls. The original poster just saw the scouts. Had you done that job first you would have figured it out fairly quickly, and slowly worked your way through all the scouts before planning an assault on their main base, along with a fair bit of assistance from other adventurers. That assault would have ended with your large group of adventurers finishing off the last troll, after killing three other trolls, twelve orcs, and twenty three goblins all in that same cave. But all you did was cast Anamnesis, which teleported you into that same cave where the other version of you would have been celebrating victory. Instead of cheers of joy and relief, you get to enjoy being eaten alive by trolls and goblins.
“There is no way you can control Anamnesis. You cannot know exactly what you would do in the case that you had changed your mind about a decision because you don’t know what could have happened afterwards. Planning to make a specific decision at some point just so that you can use Anamnesis is a decision you can change, but the one you planned to make isn’t because you already made that decision when you made the plan. If you change the decision to make a plan, then anything is open to your alternate existence. He may spend the evening with a whore, so you end up teleporting into a room with a whore entertaining a different customer. That won’t end well. Or maybe alternately you just went to your own room at a hotel. Then, when you teleport back, it is someone else’s hotel room. Again, that won’t end well. Plan around that problem by going camping? Well the fire you had going kept the monsters from coming near that location, a benefit you don’t have, so you teleport amongst a group of monsters travelling through.
“Do you see why it’s impossible? Of course something bad won’t happen every time, but it is startlingly common. The Laws of Causality don’t like being played with, and will fight back. Not that they would need to get involved with your poor impulse control. You’d be dead the first time you used it.”
Dix really couldn’t argue with that. He had already figured out this skill was a terrible choice for him. Additionally, it went against everything he believed in. Dix was a firm believer in not looking back. For him there was no “What If,” no “if only,” and no regrets. He knew that changing one tiny thing would change everything about himself, and he didn’t want that. Even changing something that most would consider as small, a name for instance, would catastrophically impact his current existence. Without his father naming him Richard William Johnson he never would have spent his most formative years getting his ass beat, and learning to fight back. He wouldn’t have gone through the martial arts training, or segmented his mind. Without that he wouldn’t even be the same person. The very idea of looking back at his life and wanting to change things was anathema to Dix. “Yeah, I get it. That one would never work for me with my mindset. There’s a pretty good chance that I wouldn’t even be able to cast it.”
His comment brought questioning looks from everyone else, but he just ignored them. If the patronage of these three goddesses worked like he thought, they would figure out why it wouldn’t work for him eventually. They needed some mysteries to pass the time as well, and Dix thought he would be a fun one. For now though, “And Return, how’s that work?”
With a last lingering look, Lust got back to her explanations. “Return is the most simple, easy to work with and understand. There are two parts to the spell. The first is the Beacon. Depending on how people learn the skill initially, they may also call it the Anchor, or Mark. No matter what you call it though, it acts as the point you Return to. It can be cast anywhere, as far as we know, allowing for rapid travel back to a certain point. Return itself just takes a lot of mana and time to cast, again working from basically everywhere. In theory, teleportation blockades could keep Return from working, but they would need to be of the high powered, city version. Self cast blockages wouldn’t stop Return without several people working together, so it is very safe to use. As long as you choose a safe location for your Beacon, you should have no trouble at all with Return. There is very little chance of death while using it.”
Chance is right, it’s a boring skill. Incredibly useful, safe as it can get, and reliable, but boring. I wonder what’s wrong with it. Dix’s thoughts brought up an important point. “What’s wrong with it?”
“What do you mean?” Lust tried for confused, but there was a little twitch. Not really even little. More tiny, infinitesimal. Perhaps not even there. But Dix knew that even if there was no evidence of it, there had been a twitch, even if only mentally.
“Return is too perfect, too clean. Nothing is that smooth without there being a problem, so what is the problem?”
Lust looked around at Balance, Chance, and Crossroads with a confused look on her face. Once more Dix was sure she wasn’t confused, she was trying to get some help. When Crossroads gave a tiny nod and a twitch of a finger, Lust gave up the facade and explained. “Fine, what’s wrong with it is that no one has ever increased the skill by a substantial amount. It can gain levels, reducing cast time, cost, and cooldown, but there is no evolution or upgrade to the skill that has ever been found, so it will only ever carry the caster, no one else. There are two schools of thought on why that is. One is that Return is so perfect in its simplicity that it simply can’t be upgraded. The other is that the complexity of Return is so far beyond what mankind is currently capable of comprehending that it will be centuries before someone can improve upon it. No matter the reason, it hasn’t been done.”
Dix contemplated that for a moment. While it seemed reasonable, it just didn’t seem to be enough. Why would not being able to upgrade a skill that amazing be such a problem. The image of Exploding Shot appeared in his mind, followed by an image of a nuclear explosion. Of course. It’s not the current skill that people strive for, it’s the final form. No one is scared of the cute little baby lizard creature, but the big fire breathing dragon is terrifying. I wonder if dragons can do nuke attacks? With that disturbing thought, Dix dropped his inner ruminations and focused on which of the four skills he wanted.
RTB was definitely out. He didn’t really do groups, and had no intention of becoming some merchant’s guard. Deadhead sounded hysterical, but ultimately not an improvement over Return. Anamnesis was a no. That left Flashback and Return. And despite some of the oddities of Flashback, many of which he had already thought of uses for, he still said, “I’ll take Return.”