“My list?” Symphir sounded confused. “I’m not entirely sure what my list has to do with it. Fay’s the one who came up with all the designs.”
Deyana nodded. “About what I expected, but I was talking about the list of things you absolutely wanted, all the time, regardless of whether you’re armored up or not. It’s also best to include anything that you’re going to want a lot of, so that we can make it as efficient as possible. While you think of that, though, tell me your specializations.”
Symphir blinked at her, silent for a moment, but before Deyana turned to Faycez to get the answer she started speaking, slowly. “Durability major, for the first one–”
Deyana cut in. “Durability? Not Impart Durability?” The difference was relatively minor, in practice, but in the creation process would require her to think about it wildly differently. In most cases, [Impart Durability] was much preferred for its ability to apply durability for a duration, where [Durability] proper, in addition to having a lower baseline effect, required a constant trickle of mana to maintain. Still, [Durability] much more easily scaled up.
“Right. I ended up choosing it pretty early, before the Impart Durability was the clear favorite. We still thought it might be more rare than it is when I made the choice.” Deyana nodded. It meant she was a year-one player, then, which explained the level– even without guilds taking her into level hundred-thirty plus areas, Symphir would have been able to work her way to a decent level by fighting monsters below her level. And would have made far more credits than a typical player of her level in the process. “Then {Spiritflame} is my second.”
Deyana blew out a breath, amused. Much like {Manifested Force}, {Spiritflame} was blue, and even then, rare within its tier. She knew it was drop-limited to some type of enemy, but she had little idea which. The fact that they’d likely gotten two of them, one so that Symphir could specialize in it and another for Faycez to craft, was telling. “Gave up on generics?”
“Yup.”
Deyana just shook her head. “Any ideas on what you’re going to be setting as your one-fifty?”
There was a long pause before she answered. “I think I want to see what we’re doing for the tattoos, first. I think the main thing is the durability. It hasn’t happened often, but it’s currently possible for my main durability on my armor to lose contact, which means I’m suddenly a lot squishier than I should be.”
Deyana leaned forward, thinking, and tapped a finger on her knee. “I understand the purpose there, but would you be willing to keep the ribbon/underclothes combo? It’s going to need adjusting to match the new level of baseline durability, but keeping that specifically reduces the load we need to place on your everything.”
Symphir appeared to think about it for a few seconds, then nodded. “That makes sense. I also want something that lets me attack, and something that helps me move faster.”
Deyana felt her eyes gliding over to Faycez, then shook herself. They could buy it. “How’s your VR limit?”
“What?”
She took a breath, steadying herself. “I want to recommend a multiset [Accelerate Perception] for you, but it’ll fuck with your VR limit, especially if your compression assist is high.”
Symphir’s eyes stared into the distance in that characteristic, navigating-menus way, then she blinked and met Deyana’s eyes. “I haven’t really… is three dash five point five high?”
Deyana breathed a sigh of relief. “Not really. It means that you don’t get more than the basic help at all until things are moving at three times the speed of reality, and when it kicks in you spend almost twice the time you experience when it happens. If you don’t hit your VR limits regularly–”
“I do hit it sometimes, but not that often.”
“Then it should only be notable in really heavy combat. A three means we can put you at time and a half pretty regularly without a major downside. If your VR limit is eight hours or longer–”
“It’s close, but not quite.”
Deyana stopped. “Ah. I was going to recommend a ten percent accelerated baseline, but it should only activate when you expect combat, then.”
Symphir stared at her for a second, then her eyes narrowed. “You’re not actually new.”
“I’m not,” Deyana admitted. “I was more of a fighter than a crafter, though.”
“What’re those numbers for you? It’s only fair.”
She thought about it for a moment, but Deyana didn’t really think the question was particularly out of line. She didn’t really want to lie, either, which was inconvenient. Working her way through the thought process took her a moment, and she could see Symphir starting to wave off the question by the time she spoke up. “Seventy-six by point-nine VR limit, and four-point-five dash six star seven-point-four dash fifty-six compression assist.”
She could hear Faycez’s clicking and typing freeze for a second, while Symphir’s eyes went wide. Geria didn’t react much, at least, her head tilting to the side and a tiny, amused smile overtaking her face.
“I’m sorry, what the fuck?”
Deyana forced herself to laugh, the sound hollow to her ears, but practiced enough that she knew it would sound natural. “It’s not like you were lied to about the things that increase it. Just do your meditation, go to new places, have new experiences… and be mentally open to new things.”
Symphir’s eyes narrowed. “And practice Concept?”
Deyana shrugged. “It can help, but that’s mostly the meditation again. Intentional thought. Not thinking about the pink elephant stuff. I’m decent at it, but can usually only manage a minute or two of intentional suppression without a distraction.”
A ping on her interface carried Geria’s message without it being spoken. ‘You know perfectly well that most people cannot suppress a thought at all without redirection.’
‘Yeah. Probably.’
“So, [Accelerate Perception]..?”
Faycez’s typing started back up, and Symphir seemed to shake off the surprise. “Can I get more detail on it?”
“Sure! Now, this is more for you than the way I used it–” Symphir just waved her off. “So we do it in a few parts. Instead of the constantly active one that I used, I’d go for something with multiple triggers going through some logic: you’ll be able to set it to one point one, one point two five, one point five, and six times the normal in-game perception of time, with a secondary trigger for if something approaches you at speed and no acceleration is active, dropping you straight into the six times when that happens.”
“The trigger makes sense. Sounds useful. Why the jump?”
“If you go above one point five, you start spending your time wildly faster anyways. Might as well make it so you can react to a bullet.”
She got a skeptical look for that. “Six times. React to a bullet.”
Deyana just shrugged. “It’s not a lot of time, mind, but it makes them two or three times as fast as a baseball pitch. Relatively. Which, for a mental trigger like runes, is usually enough. Unless they kill you in the first shot. Which is… more of a problem for PvP than PvE.”
“Okay. That makes sense. Is there anything else you’re going to recommend that you didn’t see on my armor?”
Deyana nodded. “Poise, though a stronger than typical version of it, and Increase Inertia if you two can afford Compensate Inertia as well.”
Faycez cut in from behind her. “I use Compensate Inertia to move things around here. I’ve got it. Why Poise, when we’re going to be upping her inertia already?”
“It’s not about the inertia, it’s about the balance. For a melee combatant, getting thrown off your feet really screws you over, especially if you’re not getting flung away very much. Poise helps with that.”
Neither Symphir nor Faycez seemed to disagree, so she moved on. “So, my first thought is fairly simple: Increase Inertia, Durability, Strength, and Speed on a Merge is the flagship, here. We want those as big as possible, as strong as possible, so that’s going on your torso where we can get the most effect out of it. Spaced correctly, I think we’ll be able to make Merge’s area of influence fail to reach your scalp, or part of it anyways, and if you make yourself bald for the tattooing and then have it grown back…”
Symphir’s murderous face made Deyana stumble, but when the shorter girl took a breath and nodded, Deyana found herself relaxing. “It makes sense. I don’t like it very much, but it makes sense.”
“On the upside, you’ll have a secret weapon under your hair.”
She scoffed, sounding amused. “Not much of a weapon. I assume especially in relation to whatever you’re planning for my lower arms and hands.”
Deyana grimaced slightly, then tilted her head left and right in a motion that was neither yes nor no. “The big issue is that we’re going to need to place the Compensate Inertia runes around your elbows and lower thighs, so that they can avoid the big Merge group instead of fouling that up. You’ve got pretty small hands, so I want to take advantage of that even more: an extra, zonal, increase to Inertia and Durability just above your wrists, then Impart Energy Kinetic merged with Spiritflame on your hands, let you punch into things and then fling them away.”
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Faycez turned around from where he was. “Imparting on the target or on her?”
Deyana thought for a moment, then shrugged. “We’re going to need to iron that out in testing.”
Those weren’t the only things they had to work out in testing, and there weren’t a lot of items to do it with. Luckily, the fact that they were counted on a per-item basis instead of a per-rune basis would allow her to use a lot of them in Symphir’s tattoos for the cost of the two discs that Geria hadn’t been able to properly figure out how to use. That still left her with the fire and lightning ones, anyway, and those were plenty scary on their own.
The real work of everything began when Symphir finally left to go get [Accelerate Perception], the supplies necessary for such extensive tattooing, and her head shaved. Deyana and Faycez finally dove head-first into balancing the locations, sizes, and settings of all the runes. While the program he had was an insane degree of overkill for anything she’d made so far, Deyana had to admit that for a project like this one, it took a days-to-weeks-long project of dangerous trial and error down to an hours-long one of carefully lining up colored zones on the projected body and heated discussions about fault tolerances.
Contrary to Deyana’s expectations, slipping the [Durability] |Merge| [Poise] {Target: Self} group onto the lower back wasn’t all that difficult, but placing some of the minor runes (particularly the {Storage: Mana} Faycez insisted on, for some ability to run without direct input) in places that didn’t connect to the wrong major runes or have strange knock-on effects was much harder.
Unfortunately for her expected timeframe, the idea she’d had for [Impart Energy] with {Spiritflame} didn’t work at all. She’d assumed that Spiritflame was a type of energy, given its conceptual link to fire, but it seemed to work more like a pseudo-material; something that could be summoned but not particularly applied.
Faycez was able to rescue her there, though: a rune she’d very rarely thought about, [Wreathe], would (because of Symphir’s specialization in {Spiritflame}) be able to both wrap her hands in the fire without injuring her. Using |Merge| to combine its effects with the reversed [Impart Durability], [Impart Fragility], quickly showed itself to be much more effective than the original idea had been, even.
Some time in the middle of the planning phase, Don sent her a message about meeting up for the day, and Deyana told him that it was a crafting day, preparing for some upcoming action. She’d thought about being more in-depth about things, but quickly realized that the thought was lying to herself– there was no way she was dragging her mind off of the task in front of her long enough to give him that proper response.
Eventually, the planning and testing of various models came to an end, and it was time to finally, properly, apply everything. They were going to start with the [Accelerate Perception] group, Deyana using the runes she had for the controls and logic, then Faycez was going to do the work on Symphir’s hands, the four [Compensate Inertia] runes, and the two {Storage: Mana} before leaving Deyana to do the bulk of the work. At the end, he would also need to add three [Speed] runes, but all of them would be being added to already active |Merge| groups and so didn’t need to be immediately accessible.
For that first hour and a half during which Faycez was working, the conversation was largely wrapped up in the practicalities of the situation. While the specific tools that he had on the walls and was using to mark out distances and relations were new to her, Deyana still had the advantage when it came to practical experience with runic tattoos, as well as the normal kind. Eventually, though, with the help of the incredibly accurately cut and shaped stencils from the cutter he had, they managed to get him through the planned crafting before he left the room to speak with Geria about the planned casting of the spell.
Symphir didn’t wait for Faycez to be out of the room for a second before she started talking. “So how much of my clothing do you want off?”
Deyana raised an eyebrow at her, throwing a few possible responses around in her head. “Practically, I’d say as much off as you’re comfortable with. Shit-stirringly and as someone with an appreciation for the human form, take it all off! With reasonable consideration for all of the angles here, a bra’s going to be in the way a little bit, but most lower underwear won’t be.”
“Psh. How very polite of you.” Symphir said, already removing clothing. Deyana kept her firmly in peripheral vision, checking and re-checking both the forms printing on the cutter and the measurements to various rune locations.
Deyana pushed mana into the tattooing tool, watching in fascination as the magic purged air from the system, sterilized everything near it, and maintained the device in the same moment. “Would you prefer me be impolite? I’m sure I could manage that.”
She was certain the look she got would be withering under other circumstances, but with Symphir laying mostly naked on a newly-purchased tattoo chair leaning all the way back, it was difficult to take her seriously. “Most people trying to get into my pants are. It’s usually more effective.”
Deyana gave Symphir a short warning before she started working. The magical nature of the tattoo gun was incredibly convenient in its ability to automatically regulate the ink depth– allowing even a complete newbie like Faycez to work immediately on a person, provided they had steady hands and a guide– but that came at the cost of pain reduction. “I did somewhat explicitly say that I didn’t need to get into your pants.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“I did,” Deyana said, following the rise and fall of Symphir’s breathing to make sure that the rune’s shape was as close to perfect as she could make it. “But the sentiment still applies. I’ve got enough to deal with on that particular axis right now. It’s a fantastic art piece, but I will not be making an offer today.”
The laugh would have been disruptive, if she hadn’t been predicting it. “Thanks, I guess.” There was a long pause, almost allowing Deyana to finish the first rune before Symphir spoke again. “So… you and Geria. Dating, right?”
Alex almost let the shock of some feeling she couldn’t quite identify pull her hand out of place, but managed to keep to the slow, smooth motion she needed. Continuing her work provided the perfect excuse not to respond immediately– a useful fiction, because she hadn’t begun to think of an answer to the question before it was asked. “It depends on how you define that. Most properly, I’d probably say ‘not yet’?”
“So you assume you will be.”
“No.” That answer, at least, was clear. “I think it’s likely. We enjoy each other’s company. I’m attracted to her, and evidence points towards that feeling being mutual. But I also… I’d really prefer if she asked me out first… in an official way, at least.”
“Uh-huh. Famously the best way to get people to date you, not asking them out.”
Alex smiled slightly. “The situation’s complicated. I’m more concerned for her long-term happiness than I am for my own feelings on the issue, and that involves a conversation that I’d like to approach in the right way. One I only think I can if she asks me out.”
The first rune complete, she had Symphir change positions slightly so that she could better access her side. Once she was repositioned, she spoke again. “So you don’t want me to ask her out.”
“I didn’t say that,” Alex responded, much faster and with more force than she’d meant to put on the words. “If you like her, you should! I… might prefer you wait, but I’m hardly in a position to ask you to. It’s… I’m obligate poly.”
“Sounds like bullshit.”
Deyana clicked her tongue. “It’s a simplification, for sure. I’m perfectly capable of keeping at least sexual intimacy to a single partner, even if it isn’t what I’d prefer. Nonsexual physical intimacy I might be able to manage keeping to one person. Emotional, romantic… I know that I can’t. Then, on top of that… I enjoy having metas to conspire with. I’m happy wingwomaning for the people I date, trying to get them involved with someone else in addition to me. A life with just one other person is one I could live, but one that would make me much less happy. So I won’t.”
The quiet buzzing of the needle was the only sound in the room for a few seconds. “God, you sound like my fuckin’ mom.”
“I’m… sorry? What?”
Symphir’s response was in a voice much more lilting than anything she’d said before, with a tinge that sounded like she was talking to a child. “‘Your dads and I are much happier with all of us than just two’ shit. Goddamn it. Old-as… what are you, forty?”
“What? No! I’m twenty-two!”
Symphir scoffed. “Going on fifty, shit. Pai told me that some people did a lot of research on labels they use, but…”
“Excuse me,” Deyana cut in, faking offense. “I came by the knowledge honestly, by being a catastrophic fuckup!”
“You’re still here aren’t you? Not that catastrophic.”
Both of them immediately fell silent. Alex didn’t feel hurt, exactly, but the weight of what was said implied some experience with the topic, and she didn’t want to just blow that off. It was possible that Symphir felt she’d gone too far, deciding that silence was preferrable, and Alex was fairly certain that she could allow things to end on that note.
She’d never been one to leave well enough alone.
“A result of luck more than anything intentional.”
Silence returned, but the tone of it had shifted from something oppressive to something contemplative. Deyana placed a finger on |Merge| as she finished it, mentally nudging it to the configuration necessary to apply the coverage of [Speed] and the use-based costing of [Strength] to the other runes in the collection. It did, in their testing, decrease the efficiency while in use somewhat, but after some discussions with Faycez they had determined that the inconsistent use of [Durability] and especially [Speed] would likely be more than made up for by the generally lower intensity.
“Your VR limit. By point nine?” Symphir’s voice was hesitant, like she wasn’t sure she was supposed to be talking about it.
Deyana nodded. “Exactly what you think.”
“That’s… you can’t use AR?”
She sighed. “I can, but it’s an exemption. And I still minimize it.” A rare exemption, at that, and one that had been difficult to get. The second number in peoples’ VR limits had to do with how much time they had to pass in “normal” reality to earn back time in VR. Alex, along with anyone else for whom that number was below one, recovered that time less quickly than even the basic forms of Augmented Reality, without the perception-of-time-bending features of more complete VR, spent it. Combined with the fact that AR chips couldn’t fit the same diagnostic tools for measuring when people were approaching their VR limits, most people in that unfortunate position ended up needing to choose between AR and VR access.
Given that the majority of the use-cases for AR were replaceable with a cell phone, the vast majority chose VR. She had, herself, before the battery of tests and endless forms had finally processed… when she was fourteen, and everyone around her had been using theirs for almost seven years. Even then, her AR implant would throw annoying warnings in her vision if she avoided VR for a week, shutting itself off completely if she didn’t access a VR machine for two.
She had complaints about that, given that it absolutely had enough information to keep her well within the limits before it started doing brain damage. But Alex had had almost a decade to calm that annoyance with the very simple fact that she preferred the restriction overzealous for her to underzealous for someone less careful and with less leeway.
Symphir’s tone stayed quiet, much more serious than she had been before. “I haven’t thought about… what that’s like. Recently.”
“Why would you?” Deyana asked, touching up the rune she was working on and having Symphir move again so she could start working on another group. She grabbed the stencil, checking to make sure the guide-lines were in the right places against the blueprint several times before starting again. “It’s neither common nor particularly visible.”
The confused look she got for that took a moment to parse into anything resembling an explanation. When she did, Deyana rolled her eyes. “And besides, it’s impossible to be up to date on everything. All it means is that I’m not just using a smartphone because I prefer the tactility.”
“I guess that’s true. And you probably never have to deal with brain ads.”
Deyana blew out an amused breath. “Not never, but it gets the advertisers fined for doing it.”
There was another long pause before Symphir spoke again. “Can I sign up?”
Alex couldn’t do anything but laugh.