Grotto and I teleported back to my Pocket Penthouse to begin reforging my active skills. We spent some time setting up a dedicated meditation space clear of anything distracting or destructible. I’d never had a catastrophic failure while skill forging–and had no idea what fucking up something like Explosion! might do–but I admittedly had limited experience with the practice.

I still had more experience than 99% of Delvers, but we were firmly in the pioneering stage of the art. I just happened to have been given a head start by a goddess, a brain injury, and now an ancient intelligence with vast knowledge and questionable opinions on ethical experimentation.

I was sitting in a lotus position on an extra-thick woolen rug, having nostalgia over my first few sessions in the Closet meditating and dedicating my mana regen to its expansion. Doing that now would have been a pittance compared to the constant output of the obelisk.

I settled into the carpet, centering myself and clearing my mind of stray thoughts and distractions. Unfortunately, Grotto wasn’t helping much with that.

“Do you really need to sit there?” I asked.

Grotto’s feelers were draped over my shoulders as the Delve Core perched atop my head like an animal hat.

[Close proximity will allow me to more accurately gauge your biological reactions and deactivating my gravitational countermeasures will free up a minor amount of processing power. Would you prefer that I sit in your lap?]

“No. That sounds much worse.”

I suspected Grotto’s reasoning had more to do with establishing dominance than it did with the nonsense he was presenting. In the past, he’d managed my “biological functions” just fine from a distance, and I thought it took more effort for him to stay in one place than it did for him to hover. Either way, I let it go and did my best to get into the zone.

My first time forging a skill was with Sam’lia, who’d guided me through the process of modifying the imprint of Gravity Anchor on my mana matrix. This involved a light amount of soul manipulation, which she’d handled to make sure I didn’t accidentally hurt myself.

The second time I’d taken a swing at the undertaking was when I’d reforged Shortcut into Reckless Shortcut. That was a quick and dirty affair done in a moment of dire need and while missing a significant chunk of the brain cells responsible for things like inhibition and rational thought. It had been extremely risky, and the only thing that had kept me from bricking the skill or worse was having Soul Sight cranked up to a level I’d never before attempted. That was another trick I only got away with because my brain had been borked enough that it didn’t interfere with processing the information granted to me by the Sight.

Since then, I’d done a lot of work to readjust my approach to Soul Sight. The spiritual senses that it granted created a lot of strain when processed through my organic mind, but were as easy to manage as any ordinary sense when I allowed the information to flow through my soul directly. Things could still be overwhelming, but the burden was significantly lessened when Soul Sight ran on its native operating system–the soul–as opposed to being bootstrapped to my organic OS–the brain.

This allowed me to reach incredibly high levels of sensitivity with the Sight and dive into my soul to observe it through the spiritual equivalent of a microscope. The mana matrix existed within this spiritual realm, and with the level of detail I could attain I was able to trace the mana pathways that my various active skills utilized. Understanding what paths a skill took was essential to understanding why the skill functioned as it did. Erasing and rebuilding those pathways into a different configuration was the core step to modifying and reforging them.

Part of the risk of skill forging was not understanding why certain pathways existed or how adding certain pathways would affect things. Carefully purging and adding pathways also took a significant amount of Spiritual skill, something that I was poorly equipped for since my attunement did not give me access to Spiritual Magic. Sam’lia’s gifts gave me an edge, but they weren’t a replacement for an entire magic school.

When I’d reforged Reckless Shortcut, it was an act of butchery. I’d destroyed pathways and forced them to regenerate on their own, which caused the skill to evolve unpredictably. It resulted in something that took advantage of my strengths, but there was no guarantee I’d have that same success taking that approach again. I also preferred to plan my build, rather than relying on the gacha gods to give me something I liked. I already got enough of that from the System.

This was where Grotto came in. The Delve Core’s highest competency was Spiritual Magic and our soul connection gave him access to intimate parts of my inner being. We hadn’t yet experimented with having Grotto make changes to my mana matrix, but I had a good idea of how he could at least guide me.

Once I dove into myself with Soul Sight, I used Reveal to share this awareness with Grotto. Connecting with Grotto using Reveal was already easier than with anyone else–since it used our soul connection as a bridge–but it was even more intuitive ever since we’d had our temporary combination with Shog, creating the mighty Arlottog. Instead of simply showing Grotto what I was experiencing, it was more like I opened the door for Grotto to walk directly into my soul. I felt the Delve Core’s presence in my spirit, and the process of remodeling began.

I currently had 10 active skills, although I did not want to make changes to all of them. Reckless Shortcut already worked well, and I didn’t have any useful ideas for ways to improve it. It was cheap and had a massive maximum distance. The trade-off of taking damage when I pushed its limits was less and less of a downside as my health increased and as my Dimensional resistance and skill with Dimensional Magic improved. The variable cooldown also wasn’t much of an issue, and eliminating it wasn’t an option without trading out some of the skill’s versatility. In fact, the variable cooldown was a source of inspiration for how I planned to alter Explosion!, but that’s for later.

Dispel was a skill that did exactly what I needed. Any modifications I could think of were better done through mana shaping. A single-target counterspell was basic, but it was incredibly effective, and I wasn’t willing to start trying to get fancy and ending up with something less adaptable.

I also had no plans to alter Reverse Card. I hadn’t yet had the chance to test out the spell redirect function, and the aura granted a healthy amount of spell DR. It was expensive, but I needed to get used to it before considering changes.

Life Warden also served the purpose I needed it for. It transmitted damage from an ally to myself and was a constant companion for Etja. It took pressure off the mage and kept her in fights, which had made a huge difference on several occasions such as during our fight with the Pit. Without Life Warden, Etja would have been forced to withdraw due to the chip damage from the exploding pustules all over the creature.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

The only thing I considered changing was how the mana cost worked. Right now, it reserved 10 mana, meaning it reduced my maximum mana pool by 10 while it was in use. It also cost 10 mana per hour, which effectively reduced my mana regen by 10 while it was active. My mana regen was 100, though it got a boost when there was a lot of Dimensional mana for my Ambient Absorption ability to soak up. Life Warden reserved 2% of my 500-point mana pool but cut me off from 10% of my regen.

I had similar thoughts about Dimensional Summon. Shog’s summoning spell had an initial cost of 30 mana with a 30 mana per hour upkeep. That was an initial hit of 6% to my mana bar, but a 30% ongoing drain to my mana regen. Both Life Warden and Shog were worth it, but I thought it might be better if the spells didn’t have any hourly mana upkeep.

Reverse Card reserved mana, but had no ongoing cost unless I wanted to use it to actively redirect a spell. With Grotto’s help, it was easy to figure out the pathways to make this happen, it just required increasing the mana reserve on Life Warden and adding one to Dimensional Summon.

Life Warden’s upkeep could be removed by increasing its mana reserve from 10 to 20. That would also make the spell more viable for casting on multiple targets since it wouldn’t gut my regen to do so. I could cast it on everyone else in the party (plus Grotto) for 20% of my mana pool. To do that with the original would have cost half as much in reserve, but would have robbed me of half my mana regen. Xim and Varrin didn’t need the protection, but reserving 60 mana to place Etja, Nuralie, and Grotto under my umbrella of protection was worth it to me.

Dimensional Summon could be adjusted to a 50 mana reserve. That was a tougher pill to swallow, but if I were engaged in multiple fights across a couple of hours it would be a net benefit. For a single engagement, it would be a minor loss, but I was built for sustain and wanted to keep moving in that direction.

Further, swapping to a mana reserve would remove the chance of Shog’s spell being canceled if I ran out of mana and had my regen interrupted by some effect or other drain. Nuralie had poisons that could interrupt regen, and there were plenty of other effects out there that did the same. If that happened, Shog would be unavailable for 24 hours while the spell was on cooldown. Operating on a reserve would add consistency that helped me feel secure in making the alteration.

I pulled back out of my soul to check the System text for each ability and make sure everything else looked the same. I was surprised to see that the names of the spells had changed. The alterations had been so minor I didn’t think it would be worth an update, but the System apparently felt otherwise. It had also felt lazy, it seemed.

Arlo’s Life Warden

Arlo’s Dimensional Summon

[I can help you rename those if you wish.]

“No, it’s fine,” I said with a sigh. “At least it didn’t do anything too silly, like making it Life Warden V2, or Life Warden but Different.”

[I would have simply added a plus symbol to the end.]

“The prefix Stable might have made sense. Either way, it doesn’t matter. I’m just going to keep referring to them as normal.”

Now that the easy changes were done, I moved to the more complex problems.

Oblivion Orb. Mi amor. My first attack spell and the spell I used more often than any other. I rarely deployed it in its normal, touch-based form anymore, but I did use Nimean Weapon to slap it onto nearly every hammer I threw. I was curious to take a look at it within my mana matrix since the spell’s description had always been a touch vague.

Oblivion Orb

Dimensional

Cost: 5 mana

Requirements: None

For the briefest moment, you create a small dimensional tear in the shape of an orb in your palm, which attempts to transport whatever it touches to another plane of existence. Higher levels of Intelligence increase the size of the orb. Damage is increased by 1 for each level of Dimensional Magic. The critical damage of this attack is increased by 100%.

As my understanding of skills and the System as a whole increased, the skill text I was given was more in line with the mechanics of how I thought things worked. In fact, as I studied Oblivion Orb, I was able to boil it down to a much simpler expression.

Make an INT Planar attack against a target you can touch. This attack deals +100% critical damage.

The spell used my Intelligence for base damage, added damage based on my Dimensional Magic skill, and wrecked shop when it hit something vital. That was all well and good, but there was one major problem with that.

I wasn’t focused on crits.

I wasn’t focused on precision. Plus, I was rarely in a position to grab the back of someone’s head like I had with Hognay. Beyond that, as the monsters and Delvers I encountered got tougher and had higher Fortitude, there seemed to be fewer regions of the body that counted as critical locations.

I could imagine another universe where I’d pumped crits, investing in Agility and Luck to lay hands in the perfect places at the perfect times, pumping out heroic levels of damage as I removed organs with laser precision. Sadly, that was not a road that I’d traveled. Regardless, I had all kinds of mana shapes that would make the orb a lot more deadly, and which were more reliable for the current me than aiming for a vulnerable location and hoping for the best.

Biggus would make it an AoE, Drill Beam would make it a penetrating line attack, Funnel would straight up double its damage, and Jet would give it a range of 20 feet. I could even make 1 of those completely free with Arcane Geometry (which was currently set to Bubble so I could rapidly cast group Shortcuts in case we’d needed to flee from the Littans when we’d exited Deijin’s Descent).

In some ways, the extra critical damage from Oblivion Orb seemed like a natural consequence of the spell. Yeah, having part of your heart teleported to another dimension is gonna suck. But so would having it sliced in half, pounded into meat giblets, or frozen into a block of ice. Oblivion Orb had an easier time penetrating flesh, but mana-woven armor, shields, and some monster hides would stop the spell in its tracks.

When I traced the mana pathways, I discovered that Oblivion Orb’s critical damage boost was a conditional effect that reacted to a trigger. When it encountered a ‘vital’ area that was fortified against damage–such as a Delver’s mana-rich heart–it would automatically concentrate its effect to reduce the vital location’s resilience. Fortitude and evolutions could negate a part of the Planar damage, but the orb would take advantage of its natural penetration to make it much harder for those attributes to stop damage to vulnerable areas. The more focused the volume of the orb was on the weak spot, the better it was at condensing damage in the sensitive location.

As I chewed that over, Grotto guided me to pathways that would increase the orb’s crit chance even without investing in Luck. I could rewire the spell to take more advantage of my high Intelligence, boosting the concentrating effect even when the orb had a large volume. I could fire off larger orbs that were more likely to encompass something vital and trigger the effect more efficiently.

That would increase the orb’s base mana cost and make it more useful than it was, but that wouldn’t change the fact that I had no other crit-related enhancements. I would want evolutions and gear that boosted crit damage, effects that further improved crit chance to guarantee a critical, and maybe an aura that did one or both. It would mean splitting my focus again into something I hadn’t yet built into, which I was reluctant to do.

One of the things I’d loved about Oblivion Orb early on was how it seemed to bypass defenses. It took perfect, sphere-shaped bites out of weak enemies and mundane materials. As I grew in level and encountered more robust enemies, it had become less amazing. That made sense. It was a basic 5-mana skill. I couldn’t expect it to kill God just because I popped him in the head with it.

But maybe there were ways to guide the orb back in that direction. I wasn’t too enamored with the idea of crits. Yes, it would help my damage on average, but I hated relying on effects that had a chance to occur. I preferred reliable damage; consistent damage. I preferred inevitable, inescapable, guaranteed damage.

Maybe there was a way I could rework the trigger and the effect into something a bit more my style…