Wyatt pulled up Debuffer while he watched Jasmine eat, but it didn’t have any modes listed.

He spent some time thinking about what a passive debuff might be.

Something that works when I walk near monsters? When I’m hit? Like an auto-debuff on hit.

But he got no message about discovering Debuffer modes, and his interface for it remained stubbornly unchanged.

He moved on to exploring all Analyzer’s new modes.

The active mode for the Interrogate permutation was what he’d been using since getting the skill.

With the reactive mode, things were automatically inspected, but not the landscape: things like the trees, rocks, ground—those didn’t pop up. Not unless he manually used the active mode of Interrogate.

Whether that was because their level was too high, or simply the fact that they weren’t generally things he’d be interested in inspecting, he wasn’t sure.

The reactive mode didn’t take Energy to keep up, but anything inspected with it would use a bit of Energy. Since it automatically inspected everything he looked at, this made it dangerous to keep activated, as it would quickly drain him of Energy.

Handy for exploring and finding out what he could get information on, but too risky to keep up most of the time. At least with his current Energy pool.

Just the one use of it looking around the clearing completely drained him of Energy and he had to let it recharge. Which it seemed to do faster if he was sitting down with his eyes closed.

From what he could tell, all the passive mode did was highlight things that could be Interrogated. But again, not the landscape.

Perceive in reactive mode was what he’d unlocked in battle with the quinametzin. It was quite useful since it drained a constant amount of Energy while activated, and that amount wasn’t too great. He could keep it up for at least ten minutes if he was running Energy into his titan skin, a little longer if he wasn’t.

In addition to showing him health and Energy circles and status icons for his teammates, it also gave him a visual indication when a pinned target used a skill. Everyone seemed to flash with light when they used a skill or when a skill was used on them, but this would alert him even if he wasn’t looking in the target’s direction.

It didn’t show him what the skill was called or what its effect was, only that one was being used, and who or what the target was.

He could even see Jasmine’s Waste Eater skill when she used it, each corpse kind of pinging as she ate.

The active mode for Perceive was exactly like the reactive mode, except it automatically created reticles and nameplates for everything in the vicinity, pummeling him with information and turning his vision to chaos. Not to mention being quite the drain on his Energy.

The passive mode was a true passive mode, but seemed like it only affected messages, giving him more information than he’d otherwise get.

When he deactivated it and looked at their time remaining for example, it went back to showing 4096 and 2 days.

It was a little annoying having to switch between the modes when he wanted to inspect something, but at least it was easy to do, and the passive modes automatically activated when he stopped using the active or reactive modes.

Eventually he moved away from Jasmine, her earlier comments reminding him he’d been about to try to give Bailey quintessence before getting distracted by the upgrade to Maria’s purse.

“What?” Bailey snapped at Wyatt when he tried to pull her away from the others. She looked both upset and… happy?

People were so confusing.

Not wanting to explain here, he took her by the arm and pulled her away to the sacellum.

Patrick looked their way and grinned for some reason, but then went back to watching Jasmine eat, which everyone save for Carlos was doing.

No one was watching the two of them.

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“What?” Bailey asked again, glancing between the group and him.

“I want to try something.”

She looked up at him. “Okay. Are you going to tell me or just do it?”

He placed his hand on her chest, causing her breath to catch.

Is my hand cold?

Pulling up the quintessence message, he focused on transferring some to her.

His vision flashed, all color inverted, and he felt like he was having the life sucked from him, then refilled with something that felt like poison.

Bailey gasped and went to her knees, falling against him, head resting on his crotch.

Which made him realize he didn’t have his titan skin expanded, the only thing between them the fabric of his boxers.

Should I make a joke?

But she regained her composure before he could decide, looking up at him from the ground and triggering a handful of distracting memories. “What was that?” she gasped.

“Pull up your status message. I think you might have… something new.”

She opened her mouth to respond, then frowned. “It says I have fifty quintessence. What’s quintessence? Is it like essence?”

Fifty? He hadn’t meant to give her that much. He wondered if there was some way for her to give some of it back to him. If his estimates were correct, she really only needed—

A pinch on his thigh drew his attention back to her.

He frowned down at her in confusion.

“Stop spacing. What did you do to me?” She got to her feet, using him as support.

For some reason she glanced at Jasmine, who was still busy consuming the ratapua corpse, much to Carlos’s continued and vociferous dismay.

“Gave you quintessence. Try to increase your Energy by one.”

She stared up at him, hands on his shoulders, body pressed against his.

“Bailey? Did you… do it?”

She sighed, pushing away, then her eyes unfocused. She shivered. “Whoa. That felt… interesting.”

“You have Energy now?”

She nodded.

“Yes!”

“Glad to see I can still get you excited.”

Wyatt ignored this. He wasn’t going to get distracted by confusing and contradictory behavior. “You should be able to use your skill now. I want you—”

“No,” she said sharply. “I’m not testing it on you.”

He frowned. “Obviously. It’s called Murderer.”

“You don’t exactly have the best sense of self-preservation.”

“That’s what Jasmine said.”

Bailey scowled. “If we’re done here, I’m going to sit with Tyler.”

“Did you know him or something?” Wyatt was pretty sure they’d never met before this, but she did have a younger sister who went to the same high school as Tyler did.

“No, Wyatt. It’s just normal to care about other people. You should try it sometime.”

With that, she turned and walked away.

Wyatt watched her go, weighing the benefits of going out to look for monsters for her to test her skill on, or simply waiting here for another attack.

We’ll wait a little longer, see if another attack comes. If not, we’ll go out to scout, maybe have her test her skill if there aren’t too many and they’re not too strong.

That settled, he focused on the feeling he’d gotten when he’d transferred quintessence to her. It had felt like he’d gotten something in return, but he didn’t know what exactly.

All his stats looked the same. Except for quintessence, which had decreased by fifty.

I wonder if she used it all.

But he didn’t really want to ask for it back. If Murderer was as good as it sounded, letting her keep the points to boost her Energy again seemed a reasonable allocation of resources.

Plus, he didn’t think it was even possible for her to give it back. It had felt like he’d used Devour on her to transfer the quintessence to her.

But that didn’t make sense. Devour took something when he used Debuffer on someone, feeding on them and implanting weakness, like a mosquito sucking out blood and leaving saliva in its place.

But isn’t that exactly what I did here, just in reverse? I gave her strength and took in, what, poison? It felt like that, but it didn’t affect me. Like I stored it somewhere, the same way I stored quintessence.

[Debuffer] arcanum effect discovered

He pulled up Debuffer, but it hadn’t changed. Using Interrogate on it didn’t hit him so hard this time, perhaps because there was only a slight change to the description of Devour:

Devour (Arcana):

Quintessence Capacity: 136⁄500

Mutagen Capacity: 8⁄100

Each time a permutation of Debuffer successfully affects a target, you gain quintessence. Additionally, if Devitalize disintegrates a target, you gain additional quintessence. Amount of quintessence gained varies based on target’s level and ?. Can be used directly to consume ?.

Each time Devour is used to transfer quintessence, you gain mutagen.

Mutagen? What does that do?

Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t able to find out.

🞠

Wyatt tried using his mantle to jump high into the air to see if he could get a better look at their surroundings to determine whether to wait or go out and scout, but could manage only a few yards of elevation, which wasn’t enough to see above the trees.

He was impressed with how high he could now jump, and it was actually kind of fun. Everyone dreamed of flying, and while this wasn’t that, it was damn close.

He repeated it several times, jumping up then gliding from one end of the clearing to the other.

He was able to move in the air, even if he’d jumped straight up. Which suggested the mantle was altering gravity if it allowed him to change his vector.

He wondered if that was the ‘curious ability’ mentioned in the item’s description.

It was fun, but everyone else seemed more amazed with it than Wyatt was.

“You can fly!” Olivia exclaimed. “Holy fuck, how are you just now showing us this? What else can you do?”

Wyatt wasn’t sure how to reply to that, so he didn’t.

Mostly this was due to him simply not wanting to, but partly it was thanks to the monsters that chose that moment to descend upon the clearing.