They were clearly going to have to practice to make it a habit to echo their words there and listen for what others said, but just as clearly the telepathy worked and wasn’t overly intrusive. The range wasn’t clear, either, but it didn’t need to be all that far. This was definitely good enough to stick with.
Sophia’s question now was which way to take her Path. Sure, they didn’t call them Paths here, but it was close enough.
Amy was already done; she’d taken what she called the “fast route” and picked up the Owl form, one additional Sphere Ability that directly enhanced the new form’s ability to hide, an Unaffiliated Ability that was apparently the first “shieldbreaking” Ability for arrows, and the free Species Ability from the Grand Feat. Amy’s free Species Ability, a Team-type Ability that helped her trick the eye when fighting with people she considered her pack, wasn’t available to either Dav or Sophia. She had increased her Body and Core even though the bonus meant they’d actually gone up two that level, then took her level to three.
Taika was also done, but that was because he didn’t actually get any choices. He had apparently gotten the Feat awards, but he had no idea what was picked or if anything was picked. He acted like it didn’t matter and Sophia thought he might even believe it, but it was clear it bothered him on some level.
Dav, like Sophia, was having issues deciding what else to pick. Since he picked up the two telepathy-like Species abilities, he had fewer Wisps to play with, but he didn’t seem to like any of the Summoner options Rensyn was able to find. Sophia suspected he’d end up focusing on his swordsmanship skills and increase his level without taking more Abilities unless he found some more spells he wanted.
Sophia wasn’t so certain about herself. She had several options and wasn’t sure which one would make her the happiest. If she leaned into magic, she could probably specialize or split her Sphere at level four to get a pure spellcasting class, similar to what she’d had in the past. If she chose instead to hunt down the missing Martial Techniques, she could transition into a more normal Spellblade, and simply upgrade the Sphere. If she focused on her Animated Blades, she could relatively easily transition into a Bladeswarm Mage with the ability to control a swarm of blades and attack from any of them.
Each option had ancillary support options that could make it fit a different number of roles in a group. The mage was probably the least flexible, oddly enough, because few people specialized in Force or Corruption magic and True Death magic was only used by people who specifically fought those enemies. A Spellblade’s extra options depended on both spells and Martial Techniques. The spells would be similarly limited from what Rensyn found, Martial Techniques usually required either physical practice or developing a sense of your surroundings that sounded an awful lot like Sophia’s aura training. The secondary abilities of a Bladeswarm Mage all depended on the blades, but they could be used as sensor points as well as attacks.
Those were the most straightforward options. If she wanted to, she could also focus on spellbreaking or her other sub-elements; each of those had a mage-type that used them and they could probably also flavor a Spellblade or Bladeswarm Mage if she preferred. She didn’t; they would be stronger at their specialty, but she didn’t want to give up any of the sub-elements. They looked too useful.
In some ways, the most straightforward option was one Rensyn didn’t even mention: she could double down on the basis of her Sphere and try to help Cliff collect a lot of monsters and therefore monster Spells and Martial Techniques. It would be a far less focused Path in terms of what it did but it would probably be more flexible and it would definitely support Cliff better. That thought alone was almost enough to make Sophia decide to take that route. The only reason she hadn’t was that she honestly didn’t like it. Collecting monsters’ abilities and using them against the monsters sounded great, but honestly they all sucked so far. More than that, while she liked fighting monsters and seeing new things, she didn’t like the idea of having to do it if she didn’t feel like it.
Her thoughts spun in circles until she overheard Dav ask Rensyn, “Is that really why Eldritch Weapon Alteration didn’t work? I assumed it was because I didn’t have any Attunement slots.”
Sophia blinked and focused on the two of them. She hadn’t even realized Dav wasn’t using one of his Abilities. Admittedly, she’d probably have assumed the same thing Dav did, that the problem was his bonded armor.
Rensyn shook his head. “It’s not Attunable. An Ability shouldn’t require Attunement slots, but it probably does need an Attunable item. I’ve never seen one quite like yours, but a lot of swordsmen get Abilities that will let them call a weapon to their hand or rapidly don armor, even armor without that specific enchantment. It lets them get other enchantments, and that can be a good use of an Ability slot. Let’s head to the Armory and get you a new weapon; that one’s a little short for you. We can probably find something that fits you better.”
“I’m used to this weapon,” Dav answered doubtfully, but he got up to follow Rensyn anyway. “I don’t want something so big it gets in the way…”
Sophia shook her head fondly as they left. She could already tell that Dav would be getting a new weapon. She expected him to be very happy about it; he’d want to spar immediately when he got back, or at least when he finished choosing how he was going to spend his points, so she needed to get a move on.
Sophia stared at her Abilities, then sighed to herself. She didn’t actually have to choose which way she was going forward now, except for whether or not she wanted to keep boosting her Species-based spellcasting. A pure Spellblade that focused on damage wouldn’t. She already knew she wasn’t going to do that. Corruption Bolt and True Death Bolt were both absolutely on her list of things to pick up.
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She browsed through the rest of the spells before admitting that there really wasn’t much else there for her that she hadn’t seen in the Registry’s records. She wasn’t interested in another Blast ability; it simply wasn’t powerful enough to be worth the mana cost. She’d keep Force Blast for the variety, but there seemed to be no point in picking it up for the other sub-elements. She doubted she’d use it often. It was annoying how many of the spells seemed to be “hurt things in a differently shaped area;” that wasn’t what she was looking for.
She’d picked out a few options before, but she decided to pass on them for one reason or another.
Quickstep would need a lot of practice or she’d throw off her friends’ movement when she tried to get them to move faster, and Dav was normally very good with his footwork. Amy used a bow, so it seemed less useful for her the same way it was less useful for Sophia. She’d keep it on the list, but that was where it would stay for now.
Basic Kinesis was a low-weight, short-range utility telekinesis. She could come up with a ton of uses for it, but they were all uses where she could just go do it herself. Sure, there were some edge cases like catching a ring someone threw off a cliff into a volcano, but Sophia didn’t think she’d run into the Broken Lands’ equivalent of a good version of Isildur’s Bane about to be destroyed any time soon. Slots got expensive surprisingly quickly, so she didn’t really want to reserve one for a spell she could usually skip just by standing up.
Weaken Spell, on the other hand, led her to a few more spells that seemed useful. It still didn’t seem like enough when she could simply break spells, though on second thought it would have been useful against the illusion cast by the Juvenile Corpsevine Crown. That spell was too powerful for her to break but she could certainly have repeatedly weakened it. That might have let Dav or Amy escape or even gotten it to the point where she could break it. That was still too rare for her to slot it, but perhaps she should keep an open Spell slot in case she needed one of the spells she hadn’t already chosen in a hurry.
More importantly, there was now an entire set of spells in the same category as Weaken Spell. Weaken Enchantment was close enough to Weaken Spell to make Sophia doubt herself; that might be the one she wanted against the illusion, she wasn’t sure. Maybe either one would work. Weaken Construct was a True Death spell that bypassed Shield and could reduce the Body or Core of anything affected by True Death. Weaken Creature was the Corrosion equivalent; it worked on most “normal” creatures. They were both listed in the various spell lists but until she saw them next to each other, she hadn’t realized they were really the same thing.
As useful as they sounded, they were both noted as being of only limited use, because the creatures you wanted to use them on tended to be only minimally damaged by the ability; it was estimated as normally only removing one or two points each of Body and Core at a significant continuous mana cost. There were times when that was worthwhile, but the primary use apparently was to gather a group of spellcasters with the ability and gang up on a single creature no one could manage on their own. When used that way, they were strong, but when used in a small group they wiped out the spellcaster’s mana to turn a creature the rest of the group could fight without the spellcaster into one they could fight a little more easily.
Sophia fully expected that there were ways to make the spells useful, but she wasn’t yet ready to really start modifying the Guide’s spells. They were just far enough from what she knew to make her uncomfortable with the idea, especially when she didn’t already know what modifications she wanted to make. Maybe she’d do it later when she could afford to break a spell. It certainly seemed like she didn’t really need that many different spells to be effective.
She had to laugh when she found a spell that was designed to “kill contagion borne by food and drink.” She didn’t need a spell to do that, or more accurately she didn’t need a spell from the Guide to do that. She had several different ways, including a Death-based spellform that was only useful on microorganisms when she didn’t mind possibly killing everything in a small area. That was her father’s preferred method. That fact made it even more amusing to know that the Guide classed it as a Corruption sub-element spell.
In the end, the most interesting spells were Attractive Affix, Parrying Presence, and Embody Element. They were all clearly named more for the alliteration than the descriptiveness, which made Sophia wonder if they’d been named by someone other than whoever named most of her spell options. It was actually a bit of a surprise to see them, because while Embody Element was noted as requiring level two, both Attractive Affix and Parrying Presence were supposed to require level three.
Attractive Affix and Parrying Presence were also noted as extremely rare, since they seemed to require actual attunement to the Force sub-element, and they both had an additional interesting feature: they were cheaper and more effective if you had a dual attunement with either Corruption or True Death as well. Sophia’s guess was that they were really “magic” element Abilities, but that was something the Registry didn’t have records for. The note said that they were marginal with the dual attunement, so Sophia expected they’d be quite affordable with her actual affinity with magic itself. She wouldn’t be surprised if the fact that her draconic element was magic was the reason they were available early, as well.
Embody Element, on the other hand, was a spell that could be used with any affinity; it was on almost all of the spellblade spell lists. Sophia was glad to pick it up, and nearly as glad to know that it simply wasn’t available before level two. She’d have felt dumb if she missed something as useful as Embody Element, now that she knew what it did, but the description was bad enough that she doubted she’d have selected it without the records.
Attractive Affix
Affix a mote of your magic to a creature or object and attract other magic, including both spells and enchanted objects. The attraction is weak but may disrupt distant attacks or make the affixed creature or object easier to target. Attractive Affix does not increase the chance of hitting sensitive locations.
Parrying Presence
Manifest a mote of your magic around a creature or object to repel other magic, including both spells and enchanted objects. The repulsion is weak but may disrupt distant attacks or make the creature or object harder to accurately target. Parrying Presence is more likely to disrupt targeting than to completely deflect a blow, though attacks that are poorly aimed may be redirected completely.
Embody Element
Manifest your element physically. Exact effects depend on the element embodied.
Sophia could afford all three of them, so she took all three.