Ability Selection
Choose a new passive to learn. You may later replace this passive with any other passive you are eligible to learn by consuming its Passive Card or using a Passive Book.
Passive – Soul Font
[Mana]
Add 25% regeneration rate to your base mana regeneration.
Passive – Farcaster
[Divination]
[You already know this spell. Choose a different spell available to you.]
Passive – Soul Font
[Mana]
Add 25% regeneration rate to your base mana regeneration.
Passive – Spirit Web
[Mana]
The upkeep cost in Mana is reduced by 15% for any beneficial spell you have affecting 10 or more targets.
I’d gone into the game settings and changed them so that abilities all displayed their subtypes, now—my Mind Link ability and my new Master of Illusion boon made them relevant. It was nice to see that at work, but apart from that I looked at the passives on offer with a sense of dismay.
“We’ve got to pick up some passives next time we’re in town,” I said, taking the only two passives I could. “One of mine sucks. The other is Energy regeneration, which I’m starting to need, especially with the cost on Perfect Invisibility and my soon-to-be double-supercharged buffs.”
“Mine were fantastic,” said Cuby from where she sat by the boss chest. “Just so you know.”
I brought up the virtue ability we’d gained next:
Ability – Gift of Purification
You purge the infernal from an object, creature, or place by channeling this ability for an amount of time proportional to the strength of the infernal influence. This ability can change the properties of items and abilities, kill or cure corrupted creatures, disable some powers of demons and devils, and more. This ability does not sanctify items.
Items will now specify if they can be corrupted, purified, or sanctified.
“That’s… nice, if it’ll do what I think it will,” I said. “I think I’ve got an ability that this might purify.”
“The virtue boon?” Cuby asked. “Some of the items need it, too. The boss loot, I mean.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I got a spell off of Eradicia that I’m sure needs it—a pretty good spell, too.”
“Say,” said Cuby. “Look at this!”
Legendary Equipment – Shard of Crucifect’s Crossguard (1)
This small piece of shattered metal belongs to a powerful artifact. The lore skill might tell you more.
Grants Technique: Exposing Strike
“I hope you don’t mind that I took it,” Cuby said.
I shook my head. “It’s obviously for you,” I said. “But how does this work—I can guess you gather all the pieces and you get a quest to reforge the sword, naturally. But do you just get the ability for having it in your inventory?”
“Nope!” Cuby said. “It goes in my fragment slot and gets stronger the more I collect. Also, I got a warning when I looted it that other players with fragments can use them to find me if we’ve both got enough of them, and that I can’t get rid of it except by giving it to another player.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. That could be a problem, but I suppose it also made sense—otherwise the legendaries would never get finished. “So people are going to hunt you down for having that.”
“Not yet!” said Cuby. “You need five fragments to detect other fragment-bearers, and even then you can only detect those with five fragments or more. Once you get ten fragments, that goes down to four—and the threshold keeps going down until someone is holding most of them and not even those with a single fragment are safe. Now, I think that there’s a hundred fragments, but I’m not sure.”
I laughed. “I guess we’ll just have to see how that goes, then—honestly, the safest way to carry that around seems to me to be to have the most shards so you can detect anyone coming after you. Free ability in the meantime, though. What does it do?”
“It reduces Resistance to whatever my affinity is,” said Cuby. “Seems pretty strong with my Favored Technique Augment, because I can stack the debuff quickly. Plus, since it’s a strike, it reduces the shared cooldown on all strikes, so that’s nice. I need more damage like you need more spells.”
“All right,” I said, smiling. “What else have we got?”
“Three chosen boon cards that we can’t even use yet,” said Cuby, grinning. “Plus the ones we can use. So when we hit level 20, we’ll be set.”
“We got five from the dungeon,” I said. “With the two we got from Nerien and Haroshi, it’s kind of absurd. Actually, that reminds me—”
I used one of the boon cards I’d looted off Haroshi right after killing him, then navigated the options to take the Signature Move boon:
Signature Move:
You gain a Signature Move slot. This slot can hold any ability you are already eligible to learn.
When you prepare an ability into this slot, you choose one of the following:
- You gain a second copy of the ability that functions exactly like the first, but counts as another ability. This means that Buffs and Spell Augments can be applied more than once to a target or ability, and cooldowns will be separate.
- The ability has no cost. If the ability consumes uses or charges of some kind, such as a miracle, it will consume a use only every second time it is used.
- Increase the Ability’s effect by 40%. If it is a buff, increase its effect by 80%.
I hesitated a little before I chose it, of course—taking a boon was a huge commitment. If wizard worked the way Cuby said it did, then the boons that gave chosen slots were even more attractive, and some of the spell subtypes—mental, conjuration, maybe warp or time—felt like they’d be nice.
But as nice as a second Supercharged Spell Augment that stacked with the first? Heh. No.
I took Signature Move, then—navigating through an Ability Selection pane that contained all my currently known abilities, including Iconic Passives but not including Class Passives—chose Supercharged Spell and took the copy option. Then I started furnishing us with triple-strength, quintuple-cost buffs: Mana Shield, Elemental Weaponry, my three aegis spells, Moment of Mastery, Moment of Solace. Then I stored a Twin Fragmented Doublecharged Implosive Missile, 55 Spellcraft and 2000 damage a target, more than my entire Hit Points even if my resistance would halve that.
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And this was the bullshit someone had to fight through, now—if they could see me. “Chosen boons are overpowered,” I said.
“You are correct!” Cuby stated, grinning. “And you get one more than everyone else.”
“Any idea what you’re taking?”
Cuby sighed. “Much as I hate to admit it because it feels so boring, the one that grants immunity to critical hits and mental effects might be best for me, especially if you can hide behind rocks and cast all your spell through me like you did with the bosses. Same goes for the extra Hit Points and Might boon. But….” She shrugged. “There could always be a ‘Master’ boon that gives something really specifically powerful, and the Signature Move with Favored Technique or Double Strike would be good… if you don’t mind, I’ll wait a while until I’ve got my second uncommon class. But I sort of think I’ll just wind up taking the immunity boon.”
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing,” I said. “Invincibility, that is.”
“Nothing I can do is as flashy as your stuff,” Cuby lamented.
“I think your Flurry of Steel is already flashy enough,” I said. Then I looked at the damage of my Implosive Missile again. “Even with my resistance buffs, and Mana Shield at almost 1000 absorption, I feel like our offense is outstripping our defense. As overpowered as we are… I am sort of worried about other chosen. They’ll all have two boons now, and uncommon classes—it’s not totally unthinkable that two people could drop me in a heartbeat.”
Cuby shrugged again. “Yeah, but that’s war. Keep up with the divination spells so that you see them coming, I guess.” She shook her head as if to clear it of something, then squeezed her eyes shut a few times. “Let’s keep looting—there’s three bosses and two players’ worth of stuff around here, if you count what Nerien and Haroshi have picked up.” She jerked her head toward Ryxariel’s boss chest. “How about we get through this stuff, then you go bring the bodies back here. I’d help, but I want to… I don’t know, take a break for ten minutes. I don’t want to deplete my self-mastery, and that fight in the ravine with that monster… it was bad.”
“Yeah,” I said, running a hand through my hair. I was trying not to think about it, but the boss had obviously once been a person… and that meant that when the system had initialized this world and created the multitudes of living, conscious beings that inhabited it, one of them had been fated to be… that.
Who would ever create a world like this?
“I looked already,” said Cuby. “That’s where the fragment came from. There’s a stack of assassin cards, too—and some items that we can fix.”
“Purify, you mean,” I said, bringing up our virtue ability again.
“We got two of these,” she said, passing me a necklace of some sort—a glowing ruby set into a medallion of black metal:
Rare Equipment – Demonstone Amulet of Regeneration
This amulet of regeneration has been corrupted by infernal power to slowly heal its wearer.
+ 10 Hit Point Regeneration / Minute
Evil: Virtuous characters who equip it will lose virtue points.
“All right,” I said. The item was basically completely useless to someone with access to heal spells—it would save a little Mana. “Let’s see how this works.”
I used my Gift of Purification on the amulet, which involved holding my hand above it and bathing it in a soft, blue-white light. Instantly I could feel some force acting against the palm of my hand—to my senses it was as if the air between my hand and the amulet contained a writhing, thrashing snake. But I could also sense the time it would take to purify the amulet—somewhere around half a minute.
When I was done, the medallion was gold, and the stone had stopped glowing:
Rare Equipment – Ruby Amulet of Regeneration
This expertly cut ruby has been set into an elaborately carved golden medallion and enchanted to gradually restore its wearer’s body and mind.
+ 5 Hit Point Regeneration / Minute
+ 3 Mana Regeneration / Minute
Adaptable: you can focus on this item for 5 seconds to change its bonus Mana Regeneration to Stamina Regeneration, doubling the bonus.
Neutral: this item has the potential to be corrupted or sanctified.
“Interesting,” I said, equipping the amulet and flipping its bonus to essentially double its effect with no drawback. “The Hit Points are totally worthless to us, but 6 Energy regeneration is pretty nice… with two Supercharged Spell augments I’m starting to feel the strain.”
It was true: the three aegis spells and Elemental Weaponry were the worst offenders, each costing 20 Mana per hour, but 100 Mana per hour when they were doublecharged. All told I was losing more than 12 Energy a minute to upkeep—and my regeneration, with the amulet, was close to 32. Most of my spells had now scaled over or close to 10 Mana each, which meant that my 2665 total Energy would only last me a few minutes of intense combat. And Perfect Invisibility, while promising a god-mode, would completely ruin my Energy bar in very short order with an upkeep cost of 52.
“It might be time to start leveling Focus,” I said. The added casting speed would perfectly counterbalance the cost reduction for my combat spells, but would save me from some of my hungry hungry buffs—and if I could ever get to the point where my regeneration exceeded invisibility’s cost, we could have it on all the time instead of having it just for a hypothetical ambush.
“Sounds good,” said Cuby, seeming distracted—she was holding what appeared to be one of Ryxariel’s swords, bathing in the purifying blue glow. As I watched, the hilt grew brighter, black metal becoming silver. “Huh,” Cuby said at last, holding it out and admiring it. She held it out to me. “Look at this.”
Rare Equipment – Surreal Sword of Rapidity
This sword’s hilt was forged from infernal iron and its blade made from the light of Raxira, the Star of the Conquerer. It has been purified of infernal influence, and the blade is now composed of unnaturally strong steel.
Weapon Class: Light
Attack Speed: 1.0 Second
Weapon Level: 5
+ 1 Divine Affinity
+ 1 Physical Affinity
+ 7 Precision
Adaptable: you may suppress or renew either of this sword’s Affinities (but not both) by focusing for 5 seconds.
Rapidity: Increases the duration of Flurry of Steel by 1 second.
Neutral: this item has the potential to be corrupted or sanctified.
“That’s for you, I take it,” I said. “Just how long does Flurry of Steel last, anyway?”
“Three seconds,” she said. “Normally it’s enough for two strike abilities, now I can probably fit three. And this,” she said, producing a card. “Is for you. I think.”
Iconic Ability – Infernal Step
[Hybrid],[Warp]
Requires: 20 Prowess or 30 Spellcraft, Kill a boss-grade devil
Cooldown: 1 Minute
Effect: Infernal Step up to 24.4 meters, adds 31 Defense Rating
You instantly teleport up to the listed distance. If you use this ability in response to an attack, you gain the listed Defense Rating against that attack.
[Note: a [Hybrid] ability counts as a Spell if you meet its spellcraft requirements and a technique if you meet its prowess requirements. It can count as both.]
Evil: Virtuous players who use this ability will lose virtue points each time they do.
“Let’s see, then,” I said, using my gift of purification and eventually getting the new ability:
Iconic Ability – Warp Step
[Hybrid],[Warp]
Requires: 20 Prowess or 30 Spellcraft, Innate Magic Affinity
Movement: Full
Cost: 15 Mana or 30 Stamina
Cast Time: 1.8 Seconds
Effect: Warp Step up to 24.4 meters, adds 31 Defense Rating
You teleport the listed distance. If you trigger this ability in response to an attack, you add the listed Defense Rating against that attack.
Neutral: this item has the potential to be corrupted or sanctified.
“It’s nice,” I said. “But both of us can use this.”
“You have all the spell augments,” Cuby said, reading the card. “And fewer evasions than me. I think it’s better on you, still—though really, I expected it to be a spell.”
“All right,” I said. “What else have we got?”
“Class cards,” said Cuby. “Assassin, Elementalist, High Priest. They’re all a lot of reading.” She sighed, then sat, putting her back against the boss chest. “But I’m done. Will you go get the bodies? I really need to rest.”
“Sure,” I said. “Give them to me and I’ll read them when I get back.”
Cuby responded by groaning and lying on her side on the ground before opening a trade to pass me the cards. “I wish I had Make Camp. Hitting my limit is awful as a human.”
“Will you be okay?” I asked.
“Mhmm,” she said, closing her eyes for a moment. “I just need to do nothing for ten minutes or so. I think.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll look at the classes when I get back.”
And I left to go collect the bodies.