Jerome held up a large flask of water and tilted his hand carefully, trying to make the liquid come out in a tiny steady stream. Bending the entire river was obviously ridiculous at his current skill level — he didn’t even know how to think about moving it, or tell if he was making progress — but surely he could control a tiny stream of liquid.
Heavy channeling was a timeless feeling, where things nearby were either moving in slow motion or marching forward in double or triple time, but never moving at the right speed. When he’d called the storm it had taken several hours, but it had felt like nothing. With this, at least, he’d break out of the trance when the water or his MP ran out.
The first pour he could barely get the water to tilt to the side, but by the fifth pour he was making it do loops in the air before gravity won out and made it fall to the ground. Krystyna didn’t make quite such rapid progress, but that was only because she didn’t have any skill levels in Flows built up beforehand.
Mana cost scaling meant that at skill level 11, Flow skills such as Crystal Overload would cost 1/2 of what they would at level 1. At skill level 21, they’d cost 1/3 of their level 1 cost. The precise formula was Base Cost * 10 / (9 + skill level).
What that meant in practice was that the higher the level in Flows, the more times he could use his best move: Crystal Overload + Magic Burst. This was especially important for his Krystyna form, since the Intimacy Bonus made that the most powerful form he could take.
Thus they both practiced the kind-of-useless Stream Redirect spell, then waited for their mana to come back (they both had Blessing and Specialization applied so that their Connection was as high as possible).
When Jerome used his two level ups (those quests pushed him just over the edge) he applied all 40 of his reserve points to MP, and then put a disproportionate amount of his attribute points into Connection. At this point the ability to train up his emergency powers and thus protect himself more effectively against mages was the most important thing.
He also practiced Magic Burst with Stream Redirect, which was much less expensive than with his other channeling spells. What happens was something akin to flicking the water — three seconds of flow redirection done in a moment.
After quite a bit of practice on that front he got a level up in Magic Burst — an exciting development, considering how difficult it was to level!
Magic Burst skill has reached level 2! You can now choose the amount of channeling time to used in the burst, between 2.9 and 3.2 seconds. Skill power and mana usage are adjusted accordingly.
Jerome tested it out and saw that the water flick at 3.2 was slightly stronger and the one at 2.9 was slightly weaker. Very slightly. The mana usage difference didn’t even register for this small difference in time.
This development wasn’t immediately useful, but once he leveled up Magic Burst even more it could help him either save mana while performing interrupts or get a greater effect if he wanted to spend more mana. For example, bursting 2.1 seconds worth of Crystal Overload would save almost a third of the mana but still get the same interrupt effect… meanwhile, because of the two-second warmup, bursting 4 seconds of it would use only a third more mana but get double the damage and double the shock time of a 3 second burst. A high cost either way, but he could slowly start working the move into even more situations.
The days wore on with practice, practice, and more practice — a big skill grind. They used magic skills, in Alteration, Healing, and Flows. They fought using armor, getting Jerome used to the slight penalty caused by the armor’s encumbrance and leveling up his Light Armor skill to reduce the negative effects. Whenever they ran out of MP, Jerome and Krystyna would practice another type of grind, but now being quieter and finding a better hiding spot so that Teddy wouldn’t interrupt them.
Teddy was developing quickly. He’d sought out other woodland creatures to kill and thus reached level 4, but when those ran out (did they have crystals and spawn times?) he went around scratching and climbing trees, leveling up his two claw skills, and swinging various improvised weapons.
Jerome realized that he’d started thinking of Teddy as a ‘he’, not an ‘it’, and wasn’t sure what he thought of that development. Teddy was going to be cannon fodder — a respawnable ally, like a game NPC. It couldn’t really be thought of as human… and yet he’d assigned human traits to those AI systems (or even, in the older ones, the scripted sequences), so why not to a flesh-and-blood creature?
Jerome decided on a rule for himself: ‘he’ for gnolls in the tribe, and ‘it’ for gnolls outside the tribe.
About three days in the other gnolls appeared.
They followed a similar route as Teddy, although they didn’t get quite as much personalized attention from Krystyna. Jerome wasn’t sure, but he somehow felt that these new ones were more menacing because of that. He thought of Teddy as a child that his girlfriend had adopted, but these new ones — even though they were currently less powerful — he thought of as soldiers in his army. Maybe it’s because he remembered striking them down and had purposefully waited for them to respawn, instead of them being a happy accident like Teddy.
Whatever the reason, there were now six gnolls running around and training. His gnolls. He was the de facto tribe leader, since Krystyna seemed more than happy to hand him control once he showed the slightest competence and willingness to lead.
The gnolls were happy for now, but they kept on asking about growing the tribe. “We are not even one twelve,” they said. “We should be twelve twelves.”
Finally Jerome decided they were close enough. “We’re ready to grow our tribe. Prepare to march.”
He took one last look at their stats before heading out.
Name: Jerome Wallaby
Race: Human
Level 10, 12% progress
150/150 HP
190/190 MP
140/140 SP
Statuses: None
Strength: 32
Endurance: 28
Agility: 43
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Focus: 34
Dexterity: 17
Connection: 41
Skills
Special Abilities
Transform Level 3, 98% (unique)
Store, Transform, Preview (level), Pass-through (attribute bonuses), Intimacy Bonus
Recoil Burst Level 9, 26% (unique)
Burst
Portal Hand Level 6, 13% (unique)
Portal (2)
Blast Off Level 3, 79% (unique)
Blast Off
Magic Pulse Level 2, 38% (unique)
Pulse
Unarmed Strikes Level 7, 41%
Flows Level 6, 63%
Crystal Overload, Stream Redirect
Healing Level 6, 49%
Refill HP, Refill SP
Alteration Level 6, 21%
Blessing, Hold, Specialize
Dodge Level 6, 4%
Grappling Level 5, 61%
Sneak Level 3, 84%
Light Armor Level 3, 79%
Herbalism Level 3, 9%
Identify Herb, Make Potion (see recipes)
Heavy Armor Level 2, 17%
He was a flexible fighting machine with a cornucopia of fighting tactics available.
Krystyna had fewer moves available to her, but she was still ridiculously lethal when fighting in her ideal environment of physical hand-to-hand combat.
Name: Krystyna Kowalska
Race: Human
Level 10, 14% progress
180/180 HP
120/120 MP
180/180 SP
Statuses: None
Strength: 35
Endurance: 25
Agility: 50
Focus: 19
Dexterity: 20
Connection: 27
Skills
Special Abilities
Recoil Burst Level 17, 56% (unique)
Burst
Dodge Level 13, 25%
Hear the Wind
Herbalism Level 11, 74%
Identify Herb, Make Potion (see recipes)
Grappling Level 11, 7%
Mobility Awareness
Unarmed Strikes Level 8, 41%
Light Armor Level 7, 19%
Healing Level 5, 62%
Refill HP, Refill SP
Flows Level 4, 32%
Stream Redirect
Alteration Level 2, 71%
Specialize
Then there were their new allies. Teddy was the most advanced of the gnolls.
Name: Teddy
Race: Gnoll
Level 4, 56% progress
140/140 HP
80/80 MP
130/130 SP
Statuses: None
Strength: 19
Endurance: 16
Agility: 23
Focus: 10
Dexterity: 11
Connection: 10
Skills
Special Abilities
Claw Movement Level 5, 71%
4-legged run, Climb
Claw Attack Level 4, 39%
Swipe
Clubs Level 2, 93%
Swing
He wasn’t especially formidable yet, but every little bit helped.
When they found the gnoll village they approached it quietly in the early morning dawn. It didn’t quite have twelve twelves of gnolls, but there were plenty there. Probably a hundred or so.
The six gnolls in their army hid about a hundred yards away, prone on the ground, awaiting for the signal. Each of them had gotten a Blessing (+6 at Jerome’s Alteration level) and a Specialize (from their Connection to their Agility), which at their level was quite a considerable boost.
They clutched the special firestarter concoctions that Krystyna had made with her Herbalism skill. Each had a handful of powder in each hand that would, when combined, create a stunning blaze.
Jerome and Krystyna sprinted in a crouch to one of the outside huts. These outer gnolls weren’t quite as sophisticated as their city/kingdom counterparts, and it showed in every aspect of their life.
Jerome reached into his Bag of Holding and grabbed one of the dozens of rocks he’d placed in there, cradled it between his hands while peeking around the side of the hut.
“Let’s do this,” he said. “Let’s kill our future army.”