Sanquar and I found the brothers as they were dropping a bunch of things onto the picnic table next to my garage. Cecile was rapidly pulling things from his storage while Elicec was sorting what he had placed down. Not for the first time, I wondered how easy it was to control their arms so independently. The layout of their nervous system had to be fascinating.
“Oh hey! We found a bunch of stuff!” Cecile yelled to us. They certainly had. There were several mana orbs, a few weapons, and even an odd gauntlet on the table. The sword that the leader had been using was lying on the ground next to it all. Were any of us sword people? I’d been wanting to move away from more direct combat, though I could consider a dancing sword at some point in the future. Although, if I wanted to keep the no-weapon bonus, how would the System feel about a dancing boxcutter?
“We piled the bodies up to burn later, but we scavenged everything useful they had on them. I’d really like to claim the gauntlet unless there are any complaints,” Elicec said. I didn’t really have any, but I also had no idea what it was.
“What is it?” I asked, looking over the different colored mana orbs on the table. There were several I didn’t recognize in a wide variety of colors. The most curious to me, though, were the black and white checkered patterned orbs. There were more of those than there were dead orcs. What was so special about that mana orb?
“It’s a socket swap reserve gauntlet. Looks like three slots; that’s a good find,” Sanquar said.
“So it’s a quick way of swapping mana orbs? Yeah, sounds like something you two could use, no complaints from me,” While it wasn’t overly useful for me at this point, or at all useful really since I had all my orbs socketed, there was a strong chance that I’d want one in the future. And looking at the orbs on the table, that future could be within the next few minutes, but they needed it more than I did currently. I already had access to seven orbs and could likely build further tools to house more, assuming I had willing dungeon cores.
“Yep, Cecile has been wanting a good way to add a life orb to his retinue for a while, and he’s okay with me using the other two slots. I’m thinking of a body-enhancing orb for one of them, but what I really want is a mana siphon orb for the last. Too bad there isn’t one here. Speaking of, Sanquar, any idea what type the weird color ones are?” Elicec asked.
“I’m a little surprised you don’t already know this, but those are class cores. Looks like you have twenty-two of them. I’m guessing you found two on the tough one?” He asked, looking intently at the orbs. So, classes were orb-based as well? How exactly did that work? Mel hadn’t explained much there, and it wasn’t something I had been aware even existed while we were in the archives.
“Yep, he had the gauntlet, too. So we don’t really know anything about class orbs or much about classes at all. How do they work?” Cecile asked. Even if those two didn’t know much, they knew far more than I did.
“Keep in mind that my knowledge is vastly out of date, so none of them could represent the modern way things work in the Spiral. Class orbs contain the features of a single class. Once you socket the class into yourself, you’ll have an option of applying some of your experience towards the class to further evolve it and unlock the various abilities within. Classes tend to grow with the host and can take on different aspects as their power increases. As you saw with the leader, you can use more than one class orb at a time. I recommend against it unless you have a path in the class that offers a class synchronization feature; otherwise, the orbs will work against each other, making each weaker,” Sanquar explained. That was interesting. When a class grew with the host, did it fundamentally change or just add more things that worked with the host’s style?
“When you say grow, does that mean if I took one of these orbs, as I leveled it up, it would change to fit me better?” I asked, very curious about that concept.
“Yes and no; a class is a class, so while you can choose to let the orb evolve when you level it up, you can always reject the option and force it to maintain the exact pathway it started with. Many factions don’t, or at least didn’t, allow their rank and file to choose their own classes. They were assigned them and strictly analyzed for any deviation from that pathway,” Sanquar answered. That made more sense than a class orb just randomly changing. That likely meant there was some influence from a host's core trying to push the evolution.
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“How do we tell what these classes are?” Cecile asked. Yeah, that was a good question. I didn’t want to socket anything unknown just to see what it was.
“You don’t unless the bird has some Arena management skills hidden away. We’re likely gonna have to wait on Mel for that piece of knowledge,” Timon answered as he sauntered up to us, looking at the table.
“Sadly, no, as far as I can remember, that is not something I ever did,” Sanquar answered. Well, at least for the mana orbs, I had the skill to identify them. I hadn’t ever tried it and hadn’t really wanted to waste the ranks when Mel was around. Did I want to use them now?
“I think I can identify the mana orbs if no one else has the skill, though I’d be glad to save the ranks and let someone else if they can,” I said.
“That’s also typically an Arena manager or an adventurer hall skill, not much use in people wasting their ranks in it when they can just hit up a hall. But considering Mel isn’t here yet, and we have zero access to any halls, you might be stuck, Dave,” Timon said as he bent over and picked up the sword, giving it a few swings.
“Fair, let’s go ahead and sort them by color first, and I’ll see if I can just identify the type without too many ranks, and then if anything sounds super interesting from there, we can go further if needed. Sound good?” I asked. Should I be so stingy with my skill points, considering I could reset them when I fortified my core? I wasn’t really sure, but I still didn’t like wasting them. They could be needed in a pinch for something, and that seemed like as good a reason as any to keep some in reserve.
We had a dozen body-enhancing orbs, five shield orbs, and three imbuing. Those were the ones I recognized. There were another twenty silvery grey orbs, two orbs with different shades of yellow, one much whiter than the other, two brownish green orbs, and finally, a blood-red orb. I set the ones we could immediately identify aside. “So, which ones do you want me to start with,” I asked.
“Those are weapon orbs. You can probably skip them for now; they’re all going to be locked into weapons that it’s unlikely you’d want to use anyway,” Sanquar said, pointing at the silvery grey orbs. I would want to investigate them later, same as all the other orbs we could ID on sight, but he was right, it seemed like a waste of time at the moment. I doubted we had much interest in clubs, axes, or the big sword. Hadn’t one of them had a bazooka-like weapon? What had happened to that?
“Agreed, hey guys, speaking of weapons. Wasn’t there some kind of big projectile-firing thing with one of them?” I asked.
“We didn’t collect the scrap for it yet. One of my lightning bolts reacted poorly with it,” Elicec answered. That explained that. Too bad, I kind of wanted to take it apart.
“Ah, well, if no one has any order in mind, blood red it is,” I said as I reached for it. I started by bumping my mana orb grading skill up to ten ranks. I now at least had an overlay saying mana orb, type unknown. So that was a start. I slowly increased the ranks until it finally gave me a name at seventeen ranks invested: Anger. “This one is apparently an anger mana orb,” I said. I hadn’t read much about the emotional mana orbs. I had mostly focused on what was in my possession at the time, which meant that I didn’t know anything about it beyond what I could infer from the name.
“Ah, that would make sense with the level of rage he showed. That’s a dangerous emotional orb to use. It’s a very good way to get yourself killed without realizing you’re overwhelmed, which explains what happened in your battle,” Sanquar said. I set the orb down and went through the others one by one. All three of them were environmental orbs. The lighter yellow was a polar desert orb, while the darker of the two was an arid desert orb. The final one was a woodland orb.
“I haven’t used any of these myself, or even seen a polar desert orb that I can remember, but it does make some sense that the scouts would have several environmental orbs. I imagine they make traversing strange climates that much easier,” Sanquar said. It did make a lot of sense, and I was sure when we identified the class orbs, we’d see many classes relating to scouting as well or would we just see the one? I suppose it depended on how the System listed a combatant. They’d all been called deep scouts other than the boss. Did that mean that was just all the orbs were other than the bosses?
“Hey guys, John says he’s managed to get some dinner going if you’re all done discussing your balls. Okay, he may not have said the last part, but you know what I mean,” Maud said, appearing from the corner of the house.
“Alright, we’re coming,” I said, not intending to miss my first dinner with my family in years. I could always check my quests later. “Let’s move all of this into the garage real quick and go grab some food.”
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An arid desert mana orb is an interesting choice for someone looking for a more advanced mana orb typing. It combined some heat magic, drain magic, and terrain-handling skills into a single orb. These are generally used more often by scouts and rangers, but there are very powerful offensive and defensive applications if utilized in conjunction with a team. The rarity of their use in the Arena means very few are prepared to deal with them.
Mana Sources Volume 2 by Henjen Klank