The next five hours were a mind-numbing blur of repetition. Anise’s freezing spell was rather slow, and she took a small break after each cast to think about ways to optimize the spell, given her limited manifestation reserves and the large quantity of chains we needed to deal with. Her ‘freeze the Prismium chain’ spell went through a few different iterations, but the general course of action remained the same. Anise would slowly freeze each chain of Prismium until it reached the point of being ‘physical’ again. Then, she would borrow Sallia’s sword, activate the gravitite using her alteration essence, and break the chain. Every single chain took about two third-circle spells to remove, meaning it cost 42 magic symbols to destroy each chain, and without being frozen, none of Anise’s attempts to destroy the chains worked.
The fact that each chain cost 42 magic symbols to break meant that Anise ran out of manifestation essence long before she ran out of chains. The four of us told the dragon we would need to return later, since Anise was exhausted. Then, we moved away from the dragon, in order to discuss whether there was a way to make this process a little faster. The dragon was wrapped up in several chains - I estimated that there were around 20 left, which meant that we would be stuck here for five days, if we broke four chains a day. The dragon might be able to free itself once we broke enough chains, but either way, we were still going to be stuck here for a while.
“Do we have any ideas for how to improve this process?” I asked. “Or anything we should do differently?”
“I don’t have any ideas for making the process faster,” said Sallia, grimacing. “I can’t learn new spells as quickly as Anise can. And a couple of the magic symbols she used to make the spell are ones that I don’t have - I have no compression magic symbol, in particular.”
Felix nodded. “It’s a bit of a shame, but I don’t think we have a good way to speed things up. At least, not that I can think of right now.”
I sighed, but nodded. It was hard to think of ways to improve the process, especially if we were still trying to leave Anise the overwhelming majority of the Achievement and rewards for freeing the dragon.
However, despite that fact, after we spent a while trying to optimize the process of freeing the dragon, Sallia turned her attention towards a different subject.
“Could I break an extra chain or two on my own?” asked Sallia. “I mean, I don’t have the compression magic rune, but I think if I just blast a chain with ice spell after ice spell on the last day, I can still probably freeze a single prismium chain enough to break it. Of course, it would be best to do it on the last day or two, so that the dragon doesn’t wonder why we aren’t freeing it faster.”
“Why?” I asked, feeling a bit confused. I had thought we were planning to let Anise do everything, to maximize her odds of joining us in the Market. I mean, I still think we should all at least use Sallia’s sword to break a chain once, so that we get some participation Achievement, but if you do too much, Anise’s odds of joining us permanently might get worse. An extra chain is probably fine, but what’s the reason you want more participation?”
“Well, I was thinking about how Abilities work. I’m already resolved to upgrade my primary ability after I die - after all, it’s my primary combat ability, and I doubt that’s going to change in the future. No matter what I end up doing, it’s always going to be based around absorption essence. But I’ve also been thinking about what our ‘optimal builds’ would look like, and I’ve started to realize that, at least early on, our Abilities run into major roadblocks if we don’t have a supporting magic system.”
“How so?” said Felix.
“Well, for example, Miria. Your ‘primary ability’ is alteration, right? That’s your primary magic system that you’ll be using in the future?”
I nodded.
“And you’re planning on using a mix of alteration and absorption in the future, I presume?”
“Yeah, that’s my current plan. I might swap out if I find something vastly better, but at the very least, I don’t think this world’s manifestation essence magic system is for me. It doesn’t really cover any of my weaknesses the way absorption does, and I find it kind of hard to use effectively. In most of our fights, I’ve basically relied on mental attacks from the rune magic system and then either extinguished enemies, or altered those mental attacks to provide support. And that feels right to me. And I also have healing spells that can deal with more long-lasting injuries from my attunement. That’s more or less what I envision myself doing for our group in the future - providing magical support and helping drastically weaken strong enemies. Right now, absorption and alteration work really well together to do those things, and I often end up struggling to find a use for my manifestation essence outside of logistical stuff. Which is nice, but frankly, it’s not something worth spending any keywords or Achievement on. We can find items to solve logistical needs.”
Sallia nodded.
“I agree, you use the two really well together. It fits the way you fight, and the fact that the rune magic system has a few abilities that are very quick and easy to use means that you have plenty of time to ‘alter’ them if you need to mess with what they do.
“But ever since we started talking about Anise joining us, and during our journey through the wastes, I’ve started thinking about what I should be doing long-term as well. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about my full build.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to invest too many keywords into secondary magic systems - instead, I think it’s best to have two magic systems as your ‘primary’ magic systems, and then focus on finding other keyword abilities that support those two magic systems. That’s my current idea, at least. For you, your ‘full build’ looks like it’ll be a mix of absorption and alteration. I think I want to try combining absorption and manifestation, then find some abilities to back both up,” said Sallia.
“I see,” I said, thinking about Sallia’s words.
“Manifestation?” Felix said. “Why manifestation? Miria just noted that she was having a hard time using it in combat. And I really agree with Miria - alteration and absorption seem to work well together. Absorption has extremely easy to use and efficient abilities, but those abilities are incredibly limited in how they work and what they do. Alteration lets you cheat a little bit and change the rules for how your ability works, letting you fix the major drawback of the absorption system. And it also gives you an attunement for an extra ‘fourth’ ability rune, in a sense.“
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“It’s because Miria and I do different things,” said Sallia. “Right now, Miria is mostly trying to pivot towards becoming a strong back-line fighter, right? Something of a ‘classic mage?’”
I nodded.
“Well, alteration and absorption work really well together for that, and there’s probably some combination of ability evolutions that would make alteration and absorption fit what I want to do as well. No matter what happens, I want to keep being our front-line fighter. However, I’ve been thinking. My greatest strength right now is that I’m excellent at melee combat, and my biggest weaknesses are that I don’t really have good ranged attacks, and I don’t have good ways to deal with ‘weird’ attacks, such as spatial manipulation and whatnot.”
“I suppose?” said Anise. “I don’t think that’s a big problem, though. You’re really strong on your own, and the four of us are stronger together. Even if you struggle to handle spatial attacks, Miria is definitely going to be able to handle them after her ability evolution. And if… when I end up joining you, Miria and I could reasonably focus on ‘classic mage roles’ and weird attacks, while Felix makes items and you fight on the front lines. Why branch into manifestation instead of alteration?”
“I’ve been thinking about what my absorption essence will be doing AFTER I evolve it, and I think that manifestation essence combines REALLY WELL with what my ability will be doing in the future,” said Sallia.
“After all, the biggest limitation on this world’s version of a manifestation essence spellcasting system is that it’s hard to learn new magic symbols, and that it’s hard to construct spells on the fly. Constructing spells, especially massive fourth circle and above spells, requires a huge amount of Intelligence - it’s the primary stat that seems to influence spellcasting speed, as well as the maximum number of magic symbols one can reasonably control at once,” said Sallia.
“Is it?” I said. To be honest, I had never experimented closely with what stats impacted spellcasting speed - likely because, unlike Sallia, I had never formed my seventh rune, meaning I had no easy way to manipulate my mental stats in this life. Sallia could just flood her seventh rune with absorption essence and give her mental stats a boost, but I could only boost my physical stats.
“It is,” confirmed Sallia. “If I dump a bunch of absorption essence into my seventh rune, it becomes easier and faster to cast third circle spells, and I can almost cast fourth circle spells. If I had the ability to form an eighth rune, I could probably do fourth circle spells, but sadly, it’s not to be in this life. But in the future, my ability evolution for absorption essence will combine my first nine runes into the first three, meaning that I will very quickly get a +3 grade bonus to all of my physical and mental Stats. And then, with that +3 grade bonus, it will be easier and faster to learn new magic symbols and use them in chaotic battles.
“Combined with the fact that manifestation essence seems to simply pluck local laws of reality and use them in specific, limited ways to cast spells, I figure there must be ways to deal with ‘unusual’ attacks in the magic system, somewhere. Perhaps one needs to learn a ‘soul’ magic symbol to deal with soul attacks, for example, or a ‘space’ magic symbol to deal with spatial attacks. But it should be possible to create them, I think. And the other biggest appeal of the spellcasting system is that it’s very easy to take spells from one world to the next quickly. When I’m growing up, my primary magic system leaves me very vulnerable, because absorption runes take a lot of time to build. However, the spellcasting magic system is different - one only needs the appropriate amount of magic circles formed inside of their head, which takes a day or two each, and knowledge of the appropriate spells and magic symbols to cast spells - something I don’t lose from one life to the next. I can have my entire spellcasting system online about a week after I regain control of my body each life, although it will take longer to get all of my mental boosts online. And this magic system also combines very well with my swordsmanship - I can use it to boost my muscles and the strength of my body, as I’ve been doing for most of this time.
“Finally, manifestation essence is excellent at providing long-range attack options, which I currently lack. While I don’t currently know any spells beyond third circle, I can still remember how devastating the Overseer’s attack was before we were forced to abandon our home city. Someday, I should be able to create similar attacks on my own
“The only real weakness I can think of is the fact that I would need to study new spells and figure them out on my own, as well as learn new magic symbols, and experimenting with new spells can cause misfires and hurt the user. My body is much sturdier and stronger than a regular person’s, meaning this drawback is mitigated by my other magic system, and I’ve already talked about how my mental stat boosts should help me learn new symbols.
“Overall, I think manifestation essence is a good combination with my desired role in the party and my own individual combat abilities and weaknesses.” Said Sallia.
I mulled over Sallias thoughts, and I could see Felix doing the same. Anise didn’t look like she understood every facet of Sallia’s explanation, possibly because she had never actually used the rune magic system for herself. However, she still seemed to like Sallia’s arguments - although maybe that was just because she would have someone to talk about spells with in the future, if she joined us permanently.
“I can see your reasoning,” said Felix, finally. “I’m not really sure how I feel about your statement that it’s ‘optimal’ to have two magic systems - I just don’t know enough. I suspect that one can make do with as few or as many magic systems as they want to, as long as their build is set up a certain way.” Felix shrugged. “But you make a good argument for why manifestation would blend well with your ability set in the future. If there is such a thing as a space magic symbol, or a soul magic symbol, at least. Otherwise, you might need to compensate for very specific weaknesses of manifestation essence using your absorption essence.”
Sallia nodded, and grinned before turning towards me.
“What do you think, Miria?”
“I can see it as well,” I said, smiling at her. “So I take it you wanted to break a few of the dragon’s chains specifically to boost the odds of getting a manifestation keyword ability?”
Sallia grinned. “Freeing a dragon using a certain kind of magic does seem pretty impressive, don’t you think? I Imagine it’ll be worth a lot of Achievement. And I’ve done a lot of other things using manifestation essence too, so my odds are good.”
“Do you have the glut penalty to absorb both abilities?”
Sallia winced. “Nowhere close, at least not yet. I’m using 21 of my 22 glut penalty maximum, and I have a little more Achievement than I need to finish upgrading all of my Stats to Grade 1 and then buy my next ability evolution. I’ll have 4 Glut penalty left over after that, plus some Stat purchases. But I’m hoping I’ll have some more Achievement to spare before we die. In any case, I think it’s at least best to plan for how to maximize our gains in this life, even if it’s not guaranteed that those plans will work out, right?”
“I suppose,” I said. “Let’s do our best to get the Achievement we need by the end of this life!”
Sallia and Felix grinned at me, and Anise looked both nervous and hopeful.
After we finished talking, we returned to the dragon and requested that it help watch over us while we waited and slept. Sleeping in full view of the black sun was a terrible idea, and exploring the palace filled with unknown dangers while one of our group members was totally tapped out on her primary combat resource was also a poor choice. So, we began the process of completely freeing the dragon.