Corvayne took a few steps to the right, and a few to the left, then pulled the hive great sword back and swung it.
"[Cross-Skill: Star Breaker]!" He called aloud, mostly because it gave the skill enough of a discount to work with his cracked items.
Across from him, on the other end of what looked like windswept bluff, the titanic griffon screeched as pink glowing ships crossed the invisible line, then vanished in a thousand purple and pink novas, leaving only four burnt bird legs behind after Corvayne's vision recovered. He huffed and let Bell offer him a hand to stand.
He would be winded for a few minutes, but with the grass was already parting to reveal a trio of chests signifying there wasn't some other phase that would require his allies to step in. He gave LBC, Spears, and Bell a nod before he plunged into his mindscape.
It had changed a little, with corridors of starry gas mingling with the ever-present storm. The wind inside the space had picked up, fluttering as he fell for longer than before.
He landed without impact, popping straight to standing as if he had fallen feet first. The titanic wraith looked at him.
“SOON.”
It then vanished.
He saw gates, and Gylwin's shadow, and of course there were new bridges and a new gate with wings that he could check out, but his focus right now was on a huddled figure, staked to the ground with what looked like strings, wearing a faded white dress. It's form wavered, clearly not the concrete body of bombshell.
“I was trying to take you down, for what it's worth.”
The figure looked up. He had perfect understand of it, as it was something that remained alive at his whim. It was not angry, just... terribly sad. Bitter, lonely, and filled with guilt. He could feel her core memories, the idea she had trained hard to serve the Magus, had been selected, then... left to rot. He got the image of a broken capsule and a dried up body, curled up in some dusty well on Floor 43.
“I was unworthy... no... I was used...” She started to speak, then stopped, her voice breaking as she started to sob.
The feeling... of a compulsion. The Magus with a great many women, his brides, following him. Forced, charmed, controlled... thankfully at least Corvayne didn't get any indignities beyond just a complete disregard for the woman's well being.
“The Magus used you and betrayed you. He is my enemy. To fight him, I need to know what you do... I'm looking to find a weakness.”
“He was hunting the ones that could split into three. They are carriers of some sort of challenge to his power.” The shade was looking at him now.
“More than one? Did you have details?”
“They had code names, the one I was looking for was 'Animal' and was a man with chimeric powers. I don't know if it was something the Magus summoned... he had called forth many things to try to either aid him or challenge himself. I'm sorry, I don't know more about him. I was paired with another bride.”
Corvayne felt and saw the thing was unbalanced. Still, since he was asking. “Do you know of the blockade? Is there a way through?”
“I... I...”
He stepped back as it trailed off and was quiet. The shade of bombshell, the bride, was not dead, but burnt out, tired.
Gylwin had moved over, her hood doing little to hide her spidery form, though it merged into an elf as it moved. “I'll take care of nurturing it.”
The blockade sounded like a problem, but on the other hand the Tower seemed like it was a sieve rather than something like a river with a few bridges. If there was a will, there was probably a way.
“I might not be back for a while, I'm going to try to clear the curse that requires not using my powers.”
“Oh? A year isn't it?” The form laughed, red eyes blinking. “Without your tricks, won't you get bored?”
“I've done some testing.” He wondered if this counted as talking to himself. Well, he wouldn't place anyone with tampered memories as extremely sane, so what did it matter? “I can let my shadow arms act on their own, the Adept cycling doesn't trigger it, I can craft with Lythandies' blessing as long as I don't invoke a prayer, and if something is stopping me from using an ability or weaponskill, that doesn't count. I have one more test, summoning without a black crystal catalyst or my own mana, which I hope works.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
His grasping class seemed to include it as the 'magic' part of Grasping Arms Master, and the seeds of Lythandies alone were a resource that had saved people close to him.
Gylwin seemed pleased. “And of pacts?”
“If I 'strain' them or focus them to do something... so no new [[Unity]] links, but the ones that form on their own won't count as long as I don't try to shove something through. Emotions, regeneration, class abilities.” He had tested with a house plant.
Gylwin gestured to the shadow gateway, then the pact panel. “I would recommend then you invest your essence in something that might let you avoid needing to trigger your powers in the first place.”
“I'm going to think about it a moment.”
His original plan was to boost shadow. It seemed making the limbs stronger would eventually make them actual extra limbs, at least from what [[Understanding]] implied. However, the conversation with the bride had given him another angle. The benefit to finding stairs and doors he had gotten from level 10 of the pact, as well as the warning that at 20 it manifested more towers... as far as he understood it the Barricade was a total defense of a place in the real world that covered all entrances. If he could force an exit into that spot, he might be able to skip trying to deal with the Magus's fortified cult.
The bride and the ones he had seen implied that the Magus probably had forces that included a number of women Watchers. Walking out of a portal and having, say, thirty clones of Spears, LBC, and Diamond all gang up on him... he wouldn't walk away from that, let alone if Coming-In-Hot or Knocks-Off-Tables was included and had continued to hone their skills.
“I think I'm going to push [[Tower]] up. Can I get to the 30 break point?”
“Yes, 32.” Gylwin gestured to the controls and Corvayne placed his hands on it, the cool surface a sudden jolt of tactile reality against the general feel of a dream he had in the storm.
He had saved up a lot of energy, but the number of extra abilities that formed between his bonds was taxing.
[[Understanding]] seemed to be more 'luck' or 'instinct' bending abilities:
25: Tower Guidance – Better ability to find doors to biomes or areas that are sub-biomes.
30: Loot Intelligence – Helps understand what loot is used for, and where to look for more of items that do something.
[[Unity]] seemed very handy, given how he was advancing in levels glacially and hadn't stepped outside the tower in what may have been months:
Tower 25: Slightly improves stats of allies on the same floor.
Tower 30: Slightly improves stats of allies in the same base tower.
[[Growth]] actually would likely work well with his current plans: To use the time not applying powers to focus on rounding himself out...
Tower 25: Improves stat gains in the Tower. More likely to find permanent benefits.
Tower 30: Bosses can be overloaded additional times, scaling with Tower levels. Vastly improves rewards for overloading three or more times.
… As well as an ability he was going to test WAY LATER on a level 5 boss before he even dreamed of applying it to anything more dangerous. Perhaps something that he already had a strategy for beating? Like the robot spiders that were critically weak to his Ruststorm combo... or any fight where he could throw out one Cross-Skill: Starbreaker on a single enemy with his hive great sword.
[[Tower]] itself gave him information that he probably could have found out from asking Dot, the Tower-Folk librarian whom he hadn't seen in a while.
Tower 25: Reduces suppression effects from higher tower floors. On floors with weak or no suppression, improves movement costs and/or speed.
Tower 30: User may remove one flag on a floor while they are on it. Tower level influences if this is successful and varies with tower level and how powerful the modifier removed is.
He was aiming for pushing the passive effects of [[Tower]] to make more holes in the universe, but the ability to 'attack' a tag might also let him explore floors that otherwise would be impossible or extremely taxing. Or totally demolish an entire universe, he wasn't sure if stepping onto a floor and removing 'Floating Islands' would cause the entire floor to detonate. [[Understanding]] suggested it wasn't quite so easy to destroy a floor, but not impossible. Maybe with a different [[Tower]] power that inserted a tag.
Finally, [[Essence]] and [[Tower]] being at 25 gave a new benefit that generated more essence if the floor they were on synergised with an activity, or there was a faction on the floor notable enough to engage in the activity. So, the obvious example, he'd get more out of cultivating his tier on the same floor as Fistful of Dao. Perhaps more essence for using fire magic on a fire floor?
He wondered if his brother had an expert at builds on hand, though he also might be the only person with the particular powers he had in the entire Tower... still he felt like there had to be ways to combine his abilities in the same way his current gear created a powerful synergy. Swinging the sword and watching it amplify his own powers was becoming a wake-up call.
Corvayne opened his eyes then followed the group to the 'Exit', a feather lined slide, which lead back to the entrance to floor 21*. They turned around, leaving the clean mountain air and windswept crags for the minty seas of floor 20.
*(His defense for not fighting the robotic Fire Fighter again despite knowing that particular floor 20 boss and it's attack patterns inside and out: They were sick of fighting Fire Fighter, they had done it dozens of times to get the courier guild interim floor, and any random level 20 floor boss, especially the one the locals dubbed 'big bird' was no longer a daunting prospect. That and the Mr. I argument to end all arguments: you couldn't eat Fire Fighter.)
Greencarpet was a few miles from the staircase they were dumped off at, and there was a gravel road between farmers fields that did the work of navigating and let them enjoy a cool evening walk as the floor switched into dusk for a few hours. Level 34 bright-green dire-crickets came up to them checking to see if they had any treats, to which Spears produced fruit and Bell begged her to drive them off. The monsters happily took some mangoes she had stowed away to work on being able to get tan skin tone, and then hopped along after their meal singing to repay the favor. The well behaved monsters even waved as they crossed into the safe zone that marked the town.
The Juggernaut opened a single eye under the hood of the truck on it's back, then snorted and returned to snoring.
“Home sweet home.” Spears announced as they entered the side hall of their hotel turned base, going up the back stairs to quarters molded out of wood.
Corvayne had planning to do, both for the reunion with the rest of their party and discussions about how the Fistful of Dao and the Three Kings organization would handle sharing this corner of floor 20. Not to mention what his role would be for a year or possibly longer of undoing another curse.
Still, as he went into his own room, shaped to look like a log cabin, he settled onto his bed. He didn't rule out that a year 'off' from using powers would be a little boring, nor did he expect it to go without incident. But it was a chance to expand in other areas, and to connect with the people in his life.
He yawned and let himself fall asleep, feeling the warmth of his links to friends and family.