The observatory door opened at my touch, not even requiring me to put the key in the keyhole. I called out just to make sure there was no-one else inside who I would inadvertently startle, then moved through the semi-darkness, bluish under the dim light of polished glowstones, checking the display cases.
It was strange: even as a level 7 chosen, I felt like I had a ton of spells. Mage gave two extra spell / spell augment slots, and I’d already bought another slot with my skill points. Yet still, reading the cards around me made me feel like I needed more spell slots.
Without any real idea of what I’d be replacing, I began to unlock the cases and take cards. There were too many spells that I could very easily imagine myself wanting at some point in the future, and I hated to think of what would happen if circumstances arose where I’d be missing them.
The bottom floor held most of the display cases. I took:
Common Spell Card – Auditory Illusion
Cost: 17 Mana + 4 Mana / Minute
Cast Time: 3.5 Seconds
Effect: Auditory Illusion for 32 seconds at 21 Illusion Strength
This spell conjures sounds of your choosing. For example you can conjure a scripted conversation, a sophisticated piece of music, or any simple, repetitive noise of your imagining. The volume of these sounds can be as quiet as you desire, but cannot be so loud as to harm nearby creatures.
The spell lasts until you cancel it or cast it again. The listed duration indicates how long the sounds you conjure can be unique; it is the maximum duration that the illusion can last before repeating itself.
Common Spell Card – Unnatural Terror
Cost: 4 Mana
Cast Time: 2.1 Seconds
Range: 20 Meters
Effect: Unnatural Terror
This spell fills your target with unearthly fear. They may cower, flee in terror, or simply fight less effectively. Creatures gain a resistance bonus to this spell for each time it has been cast on them that day.
This spell is more effective if you have insights into your target’s fears.
Uncommon Spell Card – Destructive Wave
Requires: Magic or Psychic Affinity
Cost: 14 Mana
Cast Time: 2.8 Seconds
Effect: 108 Damage
A damaging arc slowly extends outward from your position when you cast this spell. The arc travels to a distance of 10m and is 10m wide at its widest.
Common Spell Card – Immobile Illusion
Cost: 17 Mana + 4 Mana / Minute
Casting Time: 3.5 Seconds
Range: 5 Meters
Effect: Immobile Illusion at 21 Illusion Strength
This spell conjures an illusion which can occupy a cube of up to 2.5 meters on a side. The illusion is an image only, and those who interact with it and discover that it is an illusion can thereafter see through it without penalty, though they will still be aware of its existence.
Uncommon Spell Augment Card – Intuitive Spell
Base Spellcraft: Add 2 Per step you reduce (see below)
Casting Time: Add 20% Per step you reduce (see below)
You reduce each of the oral, movement, and mental components of the modified spell by any number of steps.
Uncommon Spell Augment Card – Warped Spell
Requires: Magic Affinity
Base Spellcraft: Add 1
Spellcraft Multiplier: Add 50%
Cost: Add 20%
This Spell Augment only affects spells which launch a projectile at their chosen target. The projectile originates from a position you choose within 20m of you, rather than your position, then moves to strike your target as normal.
You can use this ability to increase the effective range of your spells; the spell is cast as if you were standing in the targeted position.
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Uncommon Passive Card – Ambush Caster
Double your Precision for spells you cast against targets who are unaware of you and not engaged in combat.
This ability has no effect if you are outside an NPC target’s engagement range when you cast your spell.
They all seemed fairly good, or even fantastic, now that I’d been in actual battle. The idea that I might use either illusion to mislead Haroshi’s group into a mis-step even in PvE was highly appealing. The Unnatural Terror spell was psychic crowd control, which I was pretty sure meant it would be very effective against the demons that we already knew infested Mirrakatetz. Since I’d skipped on Mana Bomb, Destructive Wave would be my only area effect attack.
And then there was Intuitive Spell. Its spellcraft adjustments were well within my current spellcraft of 42, but would mix poorly with my bread and butter, Supercharged Spell and Fragmented Spell—Implosive Missile had a base spellcraft requirement of 6, which went up to 8, then was tripled to 24 by the multiplier. Reducing a single component of the spell—say, taking away the single word that I had to speak at the conclusion of its casting—would bring that up to 10 base, then 30 total. 2 reductions would bring it up to base 12, 300% multiplier—36 spellcraft.
Expensive to stack with the others, but being a double caster meant that I could still afford to stack it on Implosive Missile. But the real use of Intuitive Spell, to me, wasn’t just in quieting my Implosive Missile—it was for casting a spell that had full movement components, like Hardlight Construct or Hex of Chains, while moving. I checked the expanded view of Hardlight Construct: its spellcraft requirement was 12—I had just barely been able to cast it as a Supercharged Fragmented spell earlier—its adjusted spellcraft had been 42, exactly mine.
“Clearly I need more caster levels,” I muttered. Maybe the Wizard Class that Cuby had mentioned increased spellcraft even more?
Warped spell also seemed promising: maybe if I threw a missile at someone from behind, they wouldn’t know to cast a defensive ability like, say, Spell Reflection. Even if I couldn’t, I still had more than enough spellcraft to roll it into my damage combo and give myself an extra 20 meters of range.
Ambush Caster filled my head with visions of silently executing Haroshi’s sleeping party members with a quietly cast Intuitive Spell and a lot of free Implosive Missile criticals. But the spell itself still made a lot of noise even if casting it wouldn’t, and the critical hit was something I could get from Moment of Mastery. I doubted that I’d use it, but I took the card anyway.
I also took a Reactive Armor card. I had the spell already, and I wasn’t going to get rid of it—it was good in PvP, had no doubt caused a miss or two when the mine crew had tried to focus me down earlier. But right now it was prepared into one of my Spell / Spell Augment slots from my Mage Class passive—and I might need to move it to get access to the slot. The other Spell / Spell Augment slot was, unfortunately, Hardlight Construct.
I wasn’t getting rid of Hardlight Construct. Hardlight Construct might have been my strongest spell, even stronger than Implosive Missile—it wasn’t a crowd control in that it didn’t stop someone from acting, but it could cut them off from assistance to their allies, which could be better. It was a defensive ability, too—Fragmented Spell meant I could cast it quickly to interpose it between myself and projectile. It also had no duration—you had to damage it to break the effect—and there was no accompanying resistance increase as with Hex of Chains that would slowly render the spell ineffective by repeated casts.
Problems with healers? Well.
Have you tried locking them in a luminescent bathroom stall with Cuby?
Problem solved.
I admit, I was a little giddy with anticipation by the time I was headed upstairs. Video games get me that way—either I’m excited to finish combat, finish farming, and spend experience and gold on new features and toys, or I’m excited to get out of town and into combat so that I can use my new toys.
But my mood fled me when I climbed the stairs to enter what was certainly a set of living quarters and I was struck by the thought that Miradel was dead, never to return, and the bookshelves and cabinets around me all held her things—her life. I found her bedroom, a book that she’d never finish laid open across her bedside table, and quietly shut the door.
The workshop was one of the last rooms I found. A work table laden with cloth dominated the center of the room, and hung on a rack against one wall, I found a robe:
Uncommon Item – Wool Robes of the Battlemage
A thick set of robes suited to colder climates, runed with gold and silver thread to increase their wearer’s survivability.
+ 80 Hit Points
+ 2 Divine Resistance
+ 2 Magic Resistance
+ 2 Physical Resistance
+ 2 Psychic Resistance
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, taking the robes and then equipping them over my starting gear. They were gray, hemmed with black, and otherwise quite plain. I couldn’t decide whether it was a good thing that people wouldn’t be able to look at me and tell my starter class anymore, given that I was actually a Mage / Psychic, but it didn’t matter. Everyone who wasn’t Haroshi had already had enough trouble trying to kill me through my defenses, and more were always welcome.
Then I searched the desk that Anoth had spoken of. I looted 4 common card stock, 2 uncommon card stock, and 3 of each rarity of paints, but apart from those there were two more ability cards:
Uncommon Iconic Spell Augment Card – Supercharged Spell
“Huh,” I said, reading the familiar description. It made sense that iconic abilities could be learned from the cards, but it was good to know that I’d be able to switch them out sometime in the future.
The second card was more useful:
Uncommon Spell Augment Card – Huge Spell
Requires: Magic Affinity
Base Spellcraft: Add 4
Spellcraft Multiplier: Add 200%
Cost: Add 200%
This spell augment can only affect a spell which has an area effect. This augment triples the total area of the spell’s cross-sectional area of effect.
Note: this means that a spell with a radius of 5 will end up with a radius of 5√3, not 15.
“Mathematical,” I murmured, taking the second card. I wondered if it would work to give me more volume on my Hardlight Construct. Clearly it would work to enlarge the Destructive Wave spell that I’d picked up, and also Devour Magic. Still, I was almost disappointed—of everything I’d found in the shop, this almost seemed the least useful. Maybe if I’d taken the Mana Bomb plus Free Spell combo that level 7 had offered me it would seem more appealing, but then the spellcraft requirements would probably have been too high.
I hadn’t found any potions despite Miradel having told me earlier that day that she sold them, but I left without searching the store a second time, thinking that to search every drawer and container I could find would take too long.
I launched myself into the night air and started gliding toward the center of town. Soon, Haroshi.