King Katani wouldn’t be getting any more of their crystals. Any patrols that came across them would be killed, respawned, and then absorbed into their new tribe. Once they gathered enough force, they would raid a village and convert everyone in it.
The logic of it was plain. It’s what King Katani had done, and now Katani ruled half the gnolls.
Jerome didn’t have the infrastructure of Katani — he guessed he’d need that if his tribe grew much over ‘twelve twelves’, or one hundred and fourty four — but that didn’t matter. He only needed enough gnolls to keep Katani’s mages from destroying him with a single unblocked Crystal Overload.
They’d prepare, training these new skills, until a patrol came across them. If they finished before that happened, they’d go hunting.
First, they played with the new skills.
Specialize (lvl 1 Alteration)
Timing: 3 second cast time
Cost: 8 MP
Benefit: Temporarily take half of the points from a chosen attribute and apply them to another chosen attribute.
Limit: Can only be used on one attribute at a time. However, it can be stacked with Blessing and other buffs. 15 minute effect.
Krystyna read the scroll first, taking an hour to absorb it and learn the skill.
While he was waiting, Jerome checked the warrior’s skills to see if there was anything he wanted to learn, but it was all claw and weapon skills. He contented himself with practicing his magic, as difficult as that was in this form (the warrior had no magical skill levels and no focus or connection).
Jerome cast Blessing on both of them. His base skill level was 4, but because he was still in the gnoll warrior’s form he only got the effect as if he was level 2. They each got +2 on all of their stats.
Finally Krystyna finished and handed the scroll to Jerome. His higher alteration skill and focus attribute meant he took a little bit less time to finish reading, but not by a whole lot since he was in the gnoll form. Learning a spell was hard work.
To practice, Krysytna first took half of her Dexterity and applied to to Agility, enjoying the new smoothness to her motions. Then she cancelled the effect and redid it, this time applying half of her Dexterity to her Strength, enjoying lifting heavy stones with even more ease than before.
Once Jerome finished, he took half of his Agility and applied it to his Connection. Having a bunch of MP renewal was the most efficient way to practice his magic. Then he tested the limits of the skill… he applied half of Krystyna’s Agility to her Connection.
“Hey! Not cool!”
Jerome laughed. “It’s weaponizable! Half your enemy’s best stat and add it to their most useless one!”
“Okay, but don’t do it to me.”
“You’re practicing magic. A higher Connection is the closest thing we have to Refill MP.”
Jerome tried to take half of her Agility and apply it to his own stats, but it didn’t work.
While they practiced magic, Teddy ran around on all fours practicing his movement. Once Claw Movement gained a level it started climbing trees too.
Jerome pulled out the second of the hand-selected scrolls.
Ether Ghost (Lvl 9 Alteration)
Timing: Instantaneous casting to turn on and off
Base Cost: 0
Benefit: Magical damage and status effects are converted to SP damage
Limit: Take lots of SP damage
Drat. Level 9 required.
He’d have to start casting Blessing and Specialize every fifteen minutes if he wanted to get up to that level, but remembering to do that was harder than remembering to floss.
Next he looked at the random Flows scrolls he’d pulled, and was sorely disappointed.
Stream Redirect (Lvl 1 Flows)
Timing: Heavy Channeling
Base Cost: 2 MP/second
Benefit: Redirect a stream of water
Limit: The larger and faster the stream, the more difficult it is to redirect accurately and the more time it takes to redirect.
Great. This would be super useful if he ever needed to run an irrigation project or something. Combat? Not so much.
At least it would help them level, since the cost was less than Crystal Overload, and Krystyna could learn it and practice.
What other spells had he put into his bag?
Windfall (Lvl 6 Flows)
Timing: Heavy Channeling
Base Cost: 2 MP/second
Benefit: Create a wind in the direction of your choosing. The longer the cast, the more powerful the wind.
Limit: The negative effects of wind are applied to everyone except the caster, including allies. The wind dies down slowly after casting ends. If channeling is interrupted then vortexes can form near the caster, followed by the wind dying down quickly.
This one was much more interesting, although the skill level requirement was too high for him right now. He could think of some uses for this when fighting the ptau, although the uses while fighting the gnolls seemed rather limited. That’s probably why it was allowed to be sold.
The rest of the scrolls were repeats or similarly useless. He went ahead and learned Stream Redirect, set it aside for Krystyna, and put the rest in the bag.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
That was only two useful scrolls that he could learn, so Scroll Up would stay incomplete until he got to level 6 in Flows or level 10 in Alteration.
Teddy was practicing Claw Combat on a tree trunks, scratching and clawing and trying to get the most damage from each strike. The thing was a natural born fighter.
Krystyna had found the armor and was checking them out.
Quest Updated (Survival Gear part 1.5)
+500 EXP
“This is… nice. Really nice.”
Wisp Armor
Type: Light
Defense Rating: 7
Magical Defense Rating: 0
Encumbrance: 9%
Max Block: 63%
Bonus Effects: +8 Agility, +3 Dodge, +2 Strikes
Mageless Armor
Type: Light
Defense Rating: 8
Magic Defense Rating: 6
Encumbrance: 23%
Max Block: 74%
Bonus Effects: 20-50% chance of incoming magical effects failing (based on Light Armor skill).
“What do all those stats mean?” asked Jerome.
“So they’re both Light Armor, which means they use the Light Armor skill. So that’s good. The Defense Rating is how much is blocked per strike at level 1, but a multiplier is applied as the you raise your skill level. My skill level is at level 6, so let’s see what this Mageless Armor does for me.”
She willed the armor to coalesce around her and she smiled as she saw the new stats.
Mageless Armor (on Krystyna)
Type: Light
Defense Rating: 12
Magic Defense Rating: 9
Encumbrance: 15%
Max Block: 74%
Bonus Effects: 25% chance of incoming magic effects failing
Looking closer he could see the calculations:
Mageless Armor (on Krystyna)
Multiplier: (9 + skill level(6))/10 = 1.5
Type: Light
Defense Rating: 8 * multiplier(1.5) = 12
Magic Defense Rating: 6 * multiplier(1.5) = 9
Encumbrance: 23% / multiplier(1.5) = 15%
Max Block: 74%
Bonus Effects: 19% + skill level(6)% = 25% chance of incoming magic effects failing
As her skill level went up, just about everything about the armor would improve.
“So if I hit you for what would have been 11 damage, it will do nothing?”
“Not quite. The maximum this armor can block is 74%, so it’ll let in 26% of the damage. I would take 3 damage from that hit.”
“Still… not bad.”
“Yeah. Just try not to get hit in the face or any of the other places that the armor doesn’t cover.”
Given that the armor included boots and gloves that didn’t seem likely… but it was always possible that a foe could pull off a piece of armor in the midst of battle.
“Are there downsides?”
“The encumbrance in a percentage reduction in Agility and Movement speed, but it’s not too bad in Light Armor… Mageless Armor is about as heavy as Light Armor gets, and it’s only giving me a 15% penalty at level 6. It’ll never go away — at level 31 it’ll be a quarter of the stated encumbrance, or about 6% — but the bonuses and protection more than make up for it, even at our low levels.”
“That makes sense. It could be a different story for Heavy Armor, but for Light Armor… yeah. The only trick is… can we get the Intimacy Bonus and the version of you that’s in armor?”
Krystyna thought about it. “When you transformed last, were you naked?”
“No… I was in your tunic, like you were when we parted.”
“Then that’s probably it. The last time you touched me, that’s the form you got.”
Jerome thought about the times he’d transformed and decided that only counted if the target was alive and unharmed. He’d touched the gnoll gatherer for a second time after it was dead, but still transformed into the live, undestroyed version of its body he’d originally touched.
After testing the armor they went back to training. Krystyna learned the Stream Redirect skill and hunted around for water to practice on. “We have to move camp closer to the river,” she said.
No one disagreed.
Jerome tossed her the second Bag of Holding. “Pack up.”
Quest Completed (Survival Gear part 1.5)
+500 EXP
Krystyna stuck all her Herbalism ingredients in the bag, as well as all the armor sets that she wasn’t wearing. When you didn’t need to eat and could stand uncomfortable sleeping conditions it was really shocking how little you needed.
On the way they met a group of five gnolls, who they pulverized with little fanfare. Teddy was the only one excited by the distraction, and it went from level 1 to level 3 from the experience.
Krystyna fished out the crystals from the corpses and put them in her bag. “Let’s see how long these take to turn into level 1 gnolls.”
“What if they turn into gnolls while in the bag?” Jerome laughed at the thought of her reaching into the bag for a crystal and pulling out another Teddy. As long as he wasn’t the one doing the cutting, crystal removal didn’t bother him.
“They’ll take a couple days to respawn if we don’t do the ceremony,” the gnoll volunteered.
“So they should be fine for now.”
When the got to the river they set up camp nearby, setting the crystals in a row, spacing them out enough so that the new gnolls wouldn’t bump into each other. They still hadn’t seen a new gnoll being formed in real time and weren’t sure how exactly it worked; didn’t want to squish one of them or make a mutant two-headed gnoll just because they placed the crystals wrong.
The next day Jerome finally transformed back into his old body.
You have reached level 9! You have 6 attribute points and 20 reserves points to distribute as you see fit.
You have reached level 10! You have 6 attribute points and 20 reserves points to distribute as you see fit.
Krystyna ran over and jumped him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his back. He tottered a bit getting used to the new weight distribution, but was surprised to find that he held her up easily. And her mouth was right in front of his…
He wrapped his own arms around her back and pulled her in closer and kissed. After so much death and so many close escapes it was nice to have this… being in a gnoll’s body really sucked as far as his love life was concerned. He pushed her up against the nearest tree — one without spikes — and ripped off her armored leggings.
“Back up for just a second,” she said. When he did so, she removed the rest of her armor with a thought. “Okay, now.”
He pushed her back against the trees, his tongue in her mouth, his hips grinding against her most sensitive parts. He pushed the tunic up and grabbed Wit, playing with the nipple until Krystyna began to moan uncontrollably. It was like a little volume knob, and he played with the intensity to turn moans into shreiks of pleasure and back again.
Then he got hit in the back with a large stick. Not enough to really do damage, but it still hurt.
“No fighting within the tribe!” yelled Teddy.
“It’s okay,” said Krystyna. “We’re, uh… training.”
Teddy squinted at them. “What skill are you training?”
“A human one,” she said. “It won’t show up on our stat sheets.”
“Okay… if you say so.”
It ran off to go practice elsewhere.
“Wow, that was awkward. Sorry that—” Jerome was cut off by Krystyna grabbing his rock hard Duty and guiding it into her.
Her eyes looked like she wanted to melt.
“No apologizing.”