CHAPTER 251 – LIVING ROCK

Tom wiped the sweat off his forehead and kept fighting the monsters when they appeared. The fact that the enemies in these inner rings emerged the instant he killed everything from the previous round was actually a blessing.

His fate never dropped off and so he was always fighting at his peak. Perpetually engaged in a bubble of good luck that made it so it was nearly impossible for them to hurt him.

The negative was that he didn’t have time to step into the system room. He couldn’t even create time because these monsters couldn’t be knocked unconscious by shoving a spear in their head like he could with those weird lightning and fire casters. He really wanted to see what the dings signified, but the strange creatures were impossible to subdue. Trim all their whips from their body to de-lash them, so to speak. That moment they no longer possessed limbs to attack you they died. Bleed the blue gunk out of them and they perished without the convenient period of weakness that humans in similar circumstances experienced. Instead, they fought at full strength until the life force left them and went from deadly monsters to collapsed lifeless puppets in an instant.

Luckily, the GODs recognised his predicament, and the regular dings did not speed up in frequency, which would have indicated a vanishing window to accept the upgrade or evolution or whatever fun thing was waiting for him. Once combat was finished, he knew it would change quickly, so Tom planned to immediately retreat into his system room.

Fortunately, the fights went by quickly. Thanks to the elevated fate, he could enhance a section of his forearms to be rock, charge them and then weave between the flurry of attacks, dodging or absorbing the force of the whips on his rock solid arms. Then, once he was up close, he would land three or four stabs while weaving through the flailing limbs. Cracking deadly whips, which were inexplicably off target more often than not, did not provide sufficient deterrence to drive him away.

It was all very lucky.

Free fate from a skill was absolutely the best.

For their level, the weird horrors were incredibly fragile. If he saw the thick blue blood thinning he as it exited the first wound he would retreat, usually using a lunge to create space and then reposition to eliminate the next monster that caught his eyes.

The last of the monsters died.

Tom spun around to confirm that there were no unexpected final waves.

He was safe.

The battle was over and he could finally check to see what his fate expenditure had managed to achieve. He was excited to see what he had got because it was not something standard. The triggering event had been when using stone skin he had bent the ankle in order to balance properly. That had to have caused something special.

Without the fate, he could have seen the foot breaking off. Even with some fate, it had been a risk, which is why he had invested so much, and it was time to find out if the gamble had paid off.

With an edge of expectation, he entered his system room to read the message on the wall.

Congratulations.

The spells Partial Stone Skin, Touch Heal and Earth Manipulation have the met the conditions to evolve together into the new skill Living Rock.

You have another 200 seconds to decide whether to accept this evolution.

All input skills will be lost.

For a moment, he looked at the message in surprise as he struggled to understand what he was reading. Three spells all being used in an evolution was not something he expected.

First, Tom considered the losses associated with accepting the decision. Both in terms of replacement cost and, more importantly any expertise that would effectively be permanently sacrificed. Earth Manipulation and Partial Stone Skin were spells that he could buy back at current proficiency levels because of the how far the challenge trial had advanced his Stone Golem spell. There was no loss of proficiency there.

However, for Touch Heal he would lose levels and a lot of them. The bought back spell would inherit half of Directed Remote Heals expertise. That would leave him with a tier three spell with twice the levels in the same niche as Touch Heal, a reverse of the current situation where the lower tiered spell had twice the levels as the higher one. Given those facts, there was no question about it. He would never be using Touch Heal again.

The only incentive to even consider rebuying it was because it was cheap and it would preserve Healing Tranquillity in the remote chance that the higher level spell evolved into something new …

Or if you think you can push it to give you a regeneration trait evolution again, a small thought reminded him.

Was that an option? He asked himself. If he used it purely as a self regeneration, would it evolve to fit that niche? That it had done it once already did that mean it was more or less likely now?

Tom shook his head ruefully. He already knew that now he had thought that he was going to attempt to tailor the spell. As a self regeneration spell, most of the time Touch Heal was as good as the higher tiered Directed Heal, so it wouldn’t hurt to try. He could go down that path and if nothing happened naturally in a couple of years and he had finished his quest and had resources to spend on himself, he could get a potion that evolved spells into traits and force the outcome.

Internally, he laughed at the thoughts. It was a lot of ifs.

Would you like to accept the evolution? You have another 170 seconds before it is automatically rejected.

He knew the costs, and they were not a lot, but he didn’t know the benefits. “Umm, what is Living Rock?”

The wall immediately shivered, and new text appeared in response to his question.

Spell: Living Rock - Tier 4 (Individually tailored)

This spell enables the user to convert a percentage (20% plus 2% extra volume per level) of their body to stone. Converted body parts have the following benefits and costs.

* Cost of a full transformation is 20% of mana (this is reduced by spell level). Reverting to flesh and blood is free.

* Agility of transformed body areas are reduced by 50%.

* Stone body parts, if desired will exhibit the same physical movement properties as unaltered flesh at a cost of 200% of mana regeneration. There is no cost if you are not moving or if this option is toggled off.

* All stone body parts will heal for 25% of the cost of a similar injury in normal flesh and bone.

Tom read the details with wide eyes. He could use stone skin and be able to move at the same time. It was a huge upgrade. For the minimal cost of losing Touch Heal, which, already in most circumstances, was an inferior choice to the directed heal spell, there was no real decision here.

Stolen story; please report.

There was no way he wasn’t taking the evolution. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but the costs were also not prohibitive. The use of the spell like the one it was based on was pricy for sure, but the mathematics was not hard. He’d be able to sustain his stone form after transforming for at least two minutes. The real benefit was the healing bonus. It was material. If he was badly injured, then the smart choice would be to convert the area of his body to rock before fixing it.

He wondered a little about how the system would deal with blood flow and that sort of thing and then stopped himself. At higher levels, the physics he was used to became less and less relevant, and he remembered all the medical knowledge that his inspired foot convert had taken to get right. He had been calculating the shear stress on bones and rejigging the blood vessels near the ankle to keep it flowing correctly in the flesh parts of the body.

A system created spell would do far batter than he had even if his first attempt was aided by copious amounts of fate.

Almost dancing on the spot, he kept reading.

External Enhancement Link will be incorporated.

Because of the nature of events leading into the evolution, the synergy with Earth Sense has been explicitly recognised and the resulting spell tailored to reflect this connection.

While Earth Sense or an equivalent evolved spell is active, the following benefits are enabled.

* Agility penalty is removed.

* All skin converted to stone keeps the same sensitivity to touch.

* Transformation costs are reduced by 25%.

* Ongoing maintenance is lowered by 75%.

Tom’s view of the overall spell changed instantly. It was no longer a useful upgrade that would have niche benefits. Instead, it was worth more than the maximum tier four cost that could be assigned. Its value was potentially higher than similar abilities in the tier above it at least to him. His mind crunched the numbers.

From now on he planned on leaving Earth Sense active permanently, which suggested that it would only cost fifteen percent of his mana to transform, but it was the maintenance cost, which was the big change. It meant the Living Rock spell could be sustained forever at the penalty of only three quarters of his mana regeneration when moving and with the agility cost cancelled he could walk around with his skin turned to stone, if that was what he chose.

He wanted to rush and accept immediately, but he had time. The counter still stated he had two minutes. There had to be a catch. It was too good, the upgrade too material, and he couldn’t risk losing it. He cleared his throat. “Unless I specify otherwise accept this evolution when there are two seconds to go.”

The word acknowledged flashed on the roof clearly in his eyeline. He kept reading.

This spell will start at level sixteen.

* 8 levels from the earth base input spells.

* 8 levels from touch healing.

Tom did a mental fist pump. It was another first. He hadn’t know that spells levels were inherited from both sides when evolutions combined spells from multiple magic types. He guessed it made sense. His proficiency with Touch Heal had no overlap with his abilities with Earth Manipulation.

The performance of the spell changed with those numbers. The utility of it more than doubled as instead of the twenty percent body mass conversion he had factoring in the new number was a little over fifty percent and with the large discount the most a full conversion would cost him was only eleven percent of his mana pool. That might seem like a lot, but the skill didn’t need to only be applied to full transformation. In fact, its power was definitely linked to partial shifts.

What black dodge did to his perception of time and his understanding of the various vectors threatening him would allow him to selectively convert only the parts of the body that were going to be hit. For partial shifts, the Living Rock spell was extremely efficient. A patch of stone the size of his hands, but only half a centimetre thick would be enough to stop a claw strike. It was an effective defence, but most importantly the volume being converted was a fraction of a percent of his mass. That indicated that the transformation would only consume a small proportion of a single mana point. With regeneration factored in, it was almost free.

Completely unable to suppress a grin he kept reading.

Threshold bonus - 4 - Non body stone can patch any chunks broken away from the body. This can also be used to quickly restore amputated limbs at minimal mana cost.

“I accept the evolution.” Tom said instantly. He knew he had stop gap instructions, but best not to use it. This threshold ability alone would have been sufficient for him to sacrifice the others spells. It felt ridiculous that he now possessed the capability to regrow limbs mid-battle. Combined with everything else he was definitely taking it.

The Selena betrayal and the dragon that had weighed on his mind were blown away by the rush of endorphins that being awarded this evolution had given him.

It was extraordinary. A gift that humbled him and one that he promised would help him make a future for the rest of humanity.

He felt the ability to cast the three spells disappear and a download of information about the new spell. There was a lot to unpack, but it mainly built on instincts he had already been given by Partial Stone Skin. There were new bits like how to activate the healing, what was required to incorporate fresh stone into his structure, and most importantly how to shift selective bits of his body into the living rock.

He couldn’t wait to try it out and fortunately he didn’t have to. Without hesitating, he opened his eyes to the sand arena. He was still stuck here for a few minutes, which was more than long enough to do some tests.

Tom held his hand up in front of him and triggered the ability and the colour drained from his skin as it was replaced by exquisitely carved grey stone.

His mana level did not change, as the cost was under half a point of mana as calculated. It was so cheap! Then again, mana was powerful, as after all three hundred points generated five meteorites each of which could crush a house.

He flexed the hand, and the stone fingers moved. When he did nothing, they were stone and inert, but when he switched the toggle so that the hand was a living rock as opposed to a dead one, then it abruptly had the dexterity of a piano player. With a thought, his spear materialised in between his hands. Both of them were gripping it, and he could feel the difference. The stone was rougher and harder than his skin, and it noticeably affected his ability to hold the shaft. That slight bit of give in his natural hand was not present, which had a material impact on the grip.

Now that he was aware of the problem he felt an itchiness in his hand as the spell fine tuned itself. The rock composition did not alter, but its malleability shifted. The nature of the changes was downloaded into his brain. Now if you pressed against the skin turned into rock, the stone would flow away from the pressure and in doing so more closely mirror the behaviour of real skin.

Tom tested the improved hand. The grip was still not the same. Stone versus skin would never be identical, but it was closer, and he felt he could use the spear as effectively with rock hands as ones of skin and bone.

With a thought, the spear vanished, and scientifically he prodded the stone hand. There was the slightest bit of give, but it was a little alien. Usually, if you poked the skin at different strengths, the indentation that was left changed. Whatever his spell did it lacked that level of mimicry. The feeling was also off. It was sometimes softer than it should have been and other times harder.

It was fascinating.

He quickly dropped the spell and then cast and dispelled it ten times in rapid succession.

Tom burst out laughing in delight.

Three mana! Only three. That was all ten transforms had taken. It was extraordinary. He turned everything from the soles of his feet to just above his waist to stone. He sprinted forward. His legs moved the same, but his balance was off. His lower half weighed far more than his upper, but after a few strides he adjusted. The whole conversion had only required twenty-five mana, and that small expenditure was regenerating while he ran.

“This is amazing!” he screamed up at the blue sky, fluffy white clouds, and yellow sun.

That sky… his throat caught at its beauty and nostalgia.

Tom pushed the negative thoughts aside.

Today was a win.

He spun and then leapt. Landing amidst a spray of soft sand. With a thought, he was flesh and bone and he repeated the same leap and compared the craters. The one when he was stone was a good fifty percent deeper, and he knew it was the extra weight.

Another thought and all of his skin became stone. He ran, but this time there was no lopsided feel. There was no need to adjust his balance. He was heavier for sure, but his centre of mass as he moved was in the same place as usual, and now bladed weapons would skip off him. Not invulnerable, just more resistant to piercing and slashing attacks. A hammer blow would potentially do more damage to him, as it could shatter the rock he was made of. But what did he know? Stone with a layer of flesh underneath it might actually tank such a strike relatively easily, with only the crust of rock shattering and the flesh preventing it from spreading further. Even blunt force damage impact might be reduced in this form, especially once you factored in the lower healing costs he now had access to.

It was possible outside of human to human interaction that the stone skin was just superior in every aspect that mattered.

Grinning like an idiot, Tom stopped his play and decided that it would be prudent to see the rest of the spell’s threshold abilities in case there was anything noteworthy before he was knocked out of the arena and back to the zone proper.