146:
To say that Tom hadn’t expected the results he was seeing would be an understatement. He wasn’t even sure if he liked the way the Object Permanence sub-skill worked, but it had certainly subverted his expectations one way or the other.
He went through the newly modified Warrior’s Shardsong’s description carefully, making sure that he didn’t miss anything. A part of him wondered if he had been too hasty in his decision, if he had invested too heavily by sacrificing the mimic slot of the Revenant Claw, an incomplete yet incredibly powerful deckholder.
“No,” Tom muttered to himself, shaking his head. Hoarding artifacts would do him no good if he wasn’t practiced in using them. The Blood Wyrm chainmail he had recovered from the gatekeeper didn’t offer protection to the arms, but Zeth’s damaged bone armor set would encase his arms along with chest, legs and feet once Aleph repaired it for him.
Layering an artifact on top of another artifact wasn’t possible, a fact that Aleph had told him early on in their lessons back in the Syrelore Kingdom and Tom needed all three of the set pieces for the set effect. But even if that wasn’t the case,Tom couldn’t bring himself to forsake the lesson Zeth had learned through his fateful encounter with the man who had defeated him outside the tower.
It had taken Zirel, Aleph and himself to take down Zeth and he had an ephemeral soul card on his side that had given him a glimpse into his fighting style and weapons even after failing. He could not ignore Zeth’s fierce determination and even after they had slain him and Tom had claimed his Shadow Wraith card, he was nowhere close to attaining the mastery his fallen enemy had over the shadows.
If he could limit his arsenal to deck cards that he had extensively trained with and artifacts he was well versed with using in combat, Tom shuddered to imagine just how much of a nightmare he would be to fight with the advantages his ephemeral soul card gave him. He didn’t have to mirror Zeth’s extreme fixation with obtaining total mastery over a single card, but he could adapt it to his own fighting style.
Refocusing on the artifact, Tom ran his hands along a band of silver that had looped around the sword, his expression gradually turning to one of awe as the implication hit him.
‘I see why this is a pseudo epic,’ Tom thought, as he compared the original iteration of the weapon with the new one his object permanence had crafted. Aura of Enhancement was both stronger yet paradoxically, weaker than the Revenant Claw’s weapon skill, Greater Enhancement at the level Tom had mimicked.
It had narrowed the scope of the flat effectiveness boost to a single card in comparison to eight cards that could be quickly switched into an active slot, but in exchange it offered a 50% increase in effectiveness to any card upto the Rare rarity versus the 32.5% Greater Enhancement offered for a Rare Card.
Alone, that distinction would give Tom more raw power in exchange for versatility, which was a change that Tom could’ve taken more time to think through.
However, there was more.
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While modifying the Greater Enhancement skill to be suitable for a one-handed longsword, it had inadvertently corrected the biggest limitation of Warrior’s Shardsong. Sure, Warrior’s Shardsong used the kinetic energy of its enemies to strengthen itself and its scything frost energy was deadly. That made it a Rare.
Now though, Tom could charge the weapon outside of battle by summoning the Aura of Enhancement at no cost before funneling his SP into the weapon, for it to be converted into frost energy.
Not only could Tom use the stored frost energy to get a flat effectiveness boost to a Rare Deck Card in the midst of battle, which he was excited about, but he could also choose to just wreak havoc on the battlefield by unleashing scythe after scythe of frost energy.
And instead of charging Warrior’s Shardsong through battle, he could make sure that his reserves were constantly topped off as long as he kept parrying enemies, if any could break past his guard.
Tom wasn’t certain that he could always use object permanence to such effectiveness, but in this specific case at least, the subskill had inadvertently rectified a limitation of the weapon artifact because making the Aura of Enhancement rely upon something as nebulous as kinetic impacts to the weapon would be too great a departure from it’s essence.
“Well, I’m not complaining,” Tom shrugged, before he reached for the blade’s hilt and slid his hand into the knuckle guard.
Without further ado, Tom activated the Aura of Enhancement. He watched as Warrior’s Shardsong was enveloped in an iridescent aura that ranged in hue from a gentle azure to a brilliant purple and did not flinch as the aura extended it’s domain to encompass his hand, then his shoulder, to his chest before his entire body was ensconced by the new weapon skill’s effect.
Thankfully, there was no cost to summoning the aura itself. While his SP reserves were precariously low, they were in a safe zone and had no reason to believe that the Neem Guild would try anything.
It was as safe as an environment he was going to get, so Tom decided that he was going to give funneling SP a shot.
Merely holding on to the artifact let him sense Warrior’s Shardsong’s hunger, if he could call it as such. The blade wasn’t sentient, let alone sapient but it had been designed and then redesigned to function on frost energy.
Tom leaned into that hunger and he almost immediately felt the pull on his SP. Instead of resisting it, he allowed Warrior’s Shardsong to drain him of five SP before he fought back against the sensation.
Almost immediately, the pull faded. There was no intelligence behind the longsword, so it came as no surprise that it was incapable of siphoning SP from him without his permission.
Warrior’s Shardsong had grown a little more luminescent, a fact that Tom only noticed after he directed the Aura of Enhancement to recede.
The beginnings of a smile began to tug at Tom’s lips as he realized that Warrior’s Shardsong was just over 5% pull. While that meant that Tom would require a hundred SP to fill it to the brim, he could already use weapon skill perfect conversion to fire off a scythe formed out of frost energy.
He had been right after all. The sub-skill, object permanence had transformed Warrior’s Shardsong into an entirely new weapon.
Guess I am a Rare Crafter after all, Tom wryly thought as he stored the longsword in his inventory. Sure, no one besides himself could use it, but that wouldn’t stop them from stealing a clearly valuable blade.
Now, it was time to pay Aleph a visit and see if Zeth’s Armor was salvageable. A part of home wondered if he should try and use object permanence on Zeth’s Armor if he found any remaining mimicked artifacts that had a synergy with the set armor’s properties, but he shelved the idea for now.
As powerful as object permanence could be, Tom had no doubt in his mind that he gotten lucky with the outcome he’d ended up with.