Four hours of work later and he's discovered that the health portion of Rejuvenate is made of two different runes: One that became the skill Mana Conversion (Health) lv1, while the other pulls in nearby mana. How to get mana from his pool to where it needs to be automatically is still unknown to him, but is irrelevant to his current task.
After becoming skills, the mana and health conversion runes did not want to change shape or accept additional soul. He tried pushing as hard as he could, but he couldn't get new soul to fuse onto a skill. He could, however, very, very slightly move the runes themselves, which would impact the efficiency of the rune.
He pulled one off course enough that the system stopped viewing it as the skill, then cut a small bit of the line making up the rune before putting it all back together, just with a gap in one spot. He repeated the same thing for the other conversion rune and put the mana puller between the two, then made sure the structures were the same as the skills', minus the gap, then replaced the gap in both conversion runes at the same time.
And now, he's rewarded with the fruits of his labor.
Congratulations! You have modified a skill!
Sanguine Restoration lv40 becomes significantly more powerful!
Degritone sighs a very long sigh. "Finally done with that," he says, rubbing his forehead and activating Sanguine Restoration. "I say we make some sort of damage reflect and then work on making the troll image next. Ugh. I really don't want to do any work after that, though. Oh, hey, go check if it's still around when we left. It's been, what, 20 hours now?"
His clone stops messing with mana, gets up, and goes through the portal. A few minutes later, he's back. "Yep. In fact, the goblin arrows were still in flight."
"So, what, just a few fractions of a second per day? Let's just say half a second per day for now," he says, laying down. "If we're incorporating damage reflect into the troll's skin, what if we made it similar to DOS2? I think they made it lightningish, if I'm remembering correctly. We already have the rune for mana conversion. We'd just need on-damage trigger and auto-target runes.
"Though, that's just if we wanted to make it ourselves. It would probably be more powerful if we made it ourselves, but we don't even have any idea how to make runes that matter for it, and no way am I trial and erroring my way through effectively infinite possibilities. The best we can hope for me to accomplish is to get the system to fill in the blanks and then have me trial and error on whatever pops out and make it better that way.
"But even that requires way too much effort for me right now. If it were life or death at this very instant, yeah, I could probably do it, but this is just maybe potentially life or death in the far future. By then, we'll almost definitely have figured out how to buff skills by throwing image at them, or maybe even just straight up conjure the effects with just the image, and having a slightly more powerful base skill will be meaningless.
"So, system, now that I know the trick behind mana conversion and know what I want, give me the skill already," he says. After laying down, he drapes his arm over his face and starts imagining someone shooting him with a bow, only for the shooter to get shot with a blast of electricity. After a few seconds, he says, "You know, since we're incorporating electricity into the skin, maybe we can also do it to the muscles to make Haste fit. It uses stamina in terms of system mechanics, but electricity works on muscles. Correct application of it could let you move faster, potentially."
"Off topic. Get back to making zappidoo," Degriclone says.
"Yeah, yeah," he says, going back to trying to get Divinity: Original Sin 2's Retribution. He then thinks about how it actually reflects the damage type done by the attacker, and unconsciously groans when thinking about going through the oil slime fight with the only way to deal damage being Retribution. When they heal from their own damage type. Shaking his head, he gets back on to making a purely electricity-based version of Retribution, one with the static damage type of electric. A couple minutes later and he's finally rewarded.
Congratulations! You have created a skill!
Electrifying Vengeance lv1
"Ok, so finally got that," Degritone says, sitting up. "So, let's talk through the Immortal Troll. We probably don't want to incorporate the idea about absorbing other creatures' DNA to gain mutations, since that's not exactly predictable. Could lead to some great growth, yes, but not really what we're after and not something we should rely on, since it could be either terrible or amazing, depending entirely upon what we come across.
"So, let's just do the basics, for now," he says, sitting back in Degriclone's mana chairs. Well, the new ones made by this Degriclone. "Typical fantasy troll? Grey skin, big arms, sharp teeth. Regenerates through anything. It'll be annoying to not let fire seep in as a weakness, but it shouldn't be too hard. Imagining scenarios with him in fire like it's nothing shouldn't be too hard."
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He closes his eyes and crosses his arms. "Blood first? Since that's the big one, that will incorporate most of our regen skill, except aura and maybe gland. Combine gland with aura to make sweat glands that produce sweat so potent that just inhaling its diffuse vapors causes you to gain a percent of the troll's regenerative powers. Make it so his regenerative blood is so hot that he constantly has to sweat, maybe even to the point of constantly steaming. Literally."
"Ooo, kinda the giant titan."
"Ooo, yeah. It can distinguish friend - and neutral - from foe, somehow, so maybe... I dunno..." He thinks for a bit. "It would be cool if it was that anyone hit by his lightning is marked, and anyone marked by his lightning becomes immune to the regenerative properties, but that wouldn't quite get the same effect as aura, nor would it really be what we want. Don't want to have to mark allies, either.
"Maybe it can... read intent, in a way, kinda like Danger Sense - since we're now involving that in here, I guess - and the sweat actively avoids those that have ill intent toward the troll. Damaging them would be cool, too, but I think then we're putting too much into the sweat. In terms of image. In terms of mechanics in a game, it would be pretty cool, if maybe hard to balance. But anyway, so, we have intent reading sweat that has absorbed a bit of the essence of his blood that its vapor is potent enough to heal people, but only those without ill intent, and is constantly steaming away due to his blood.
"And his blood... maybe it's just pure, liquid health, along with some soul constructs to allow for actively burning mana, stamina, and/or health to generate more health. This gets into more circulatory system than raw blood, but what if his blood vessels travel through his stamina and mana pools themselves, traveling through soul constructs to convert health to stamina and mana to keep the stamina from Rejuve and mana from Sanguine.
"As for the skin, it's tough. Like, beyond metal. And through that metal runs electricity, with which it blasts all who dare damage it, as well as using it to boost his speed. Using controlled bursts for an effective constant Haste, while also incorporating large, semi-uncontrolled bursts for Empower, and able to go into maximum overdrive for Limit Break. Thinking about it more and more, more and more skills keep getting added to what would be the ideal combinations here.
"So, time to just sit and imagine for a while. Gonna need to get it to at least the same level as arm thing, I'm assuming. You go have fun or whatever. Just please make this a recliner before you go." He feels the mana shift under him, becoming a near-copy of his chair from home, just excluding the softness. He reaches down the right side and pulls the lever to bring up the foot rest and pushes the back down so it lets him lay down, rather than sit, and begins imagining.
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The Immortal Troll wakes up to find his house on fire. He sighs before yelling, "VARUL SENT YOU, DIDN'T HE? I TOLD HIM THAT IF HE WANTS TO GET THAT HEM, HE'LL HAVE TO PERSONALLY PRY IT FROM MY UNDYING HANDS!" After standing up, electricity pulses from his legs as he jumps through the wall, the fire above his exit hole extinguishing as he passes through.
Using his sweat as a detector, he finds three people hiding in the bushes behind his wall. Walking through the marsh he calls home, he jumps over the fence, and grabs the littlest one before biting her head off. The horns impale the roof of his mouth and he spits her head out. "Bleh, tiefling does not taste good."
The red scaled one impales him with a sword made of fire before getting zapped in the face with electricity, temporarily stunning him. The third one runs to the body of her fallen comrade, casting some sort of magic while crushing a gem in her hand. "Ah, I see he bought some competent ones this time," the troll says, grabbing the scaled one's hands along with the sword, pulling it out of himself.
The tiefling stands up, her head back on her body, and circles around him before attempting to stab him in the back of the neck. "But not good enough." He slams the scaled one into the rogue as steam erupts from the wound where the sword impaled, rapidly closing it. With electricity sparking from all over his body, he seems to just appear at the healer, who quickly casts some ranged healing magic on her two comrades. Before she can react, but after she's finished her spell, her head is crushed by the troll.
He walks over to the rogue and scaled one, crushing the rogue's torso under his foot, before keeling down and ripping the legs off the scaled one. He looks into their eyes and says, "You competent ones are all the same. Assume that just because I'm a troll, I'm weak to fire. If you'd have just done a little research on me, specifically, you'd know that that doesn't work." He impales the scaled one's heart with one of his long fingers.
"The true masters of your craft would have simply researched me, found out that I can regenerate from as little as a single finger, then decided to just sneak the gem out from under my nose. But no, you just had to kill yourself fighting the invincible monster for glory," he monologues. A ring on the scaled one's hand starts glowing as his body goes limp, and before the troll can react, he's inside a large pool of acid, surrounded by adamantium.
His skin starts to dissolve off, but as it does, the wounds have already healed before the acid can reach his blood and his sweat begins to steam, causing the acid around him to bubble. He feels something lifting his body up. His head breaches the surface and, as his eyes and ears regenerate, he sees Varul.
"Ah, looks like they decided to use it, eh?" Says the almost too average looking man sitting comfortably beside the pool of acid.
"They're dead," the Immortal Troll responds. "You'll never get the gem so long as I live, and we both know it's impossible to kill me."
"Yes, but we also both know that you aren't immune to pain. Being dissolved in acid is quite painful. I tested it on a few failures. So, I'm just going to leave you there, forever suspended in acid, unable to do anything but feel pain and think, for all eternity until you decide to give it up." Varul gets up and walks out of the chamber, the chair he was sitting on dissolving into mana.
The Immortal Troll closes his eyes, feeling the danger radiating off the acid as his skin dissolves into it and is rapidly replaced.
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After imagining a few more, similar scenes playing out from before the Immortal Troll got captured, he moves on to specificity in its features. Specifically, his blood, sweat, sweat glands, soul constructs and blood vessels in his mana and stamina pools, skin, and muscles. Once he puts enough detail into those, he zooms out, imagining the Immortal Troll simply standing there, breathing and steaming.
He rotates him around a few times to see him from every angle. He feels a headache coming on, and stops for now. Yawning, he raises his arm and immerses himself, once again, in the calming image. Slowly, his headache falls away and he falls asleep.
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After a short, dreamless sleep, he wakes back up. Rubbing his eyes, he yawns once more. He hears Degriclone pipe up, "About 50 minutes. How's the Immortal Troll?"
"Pretty good. No idea how he'd be on the Tellus scale, but I doubt it's even a visual thing yet. Here," he says, actively trying to manifest the image as he thinks of it, rather than just conjuring it without thinking like his calming image. Surprisingly to both of them, a 10-foot tall, gray humanoid with long arms and fingers appears and immediately starts producing steam and arcing electricity from its skin.
Even more surprisingly to Degritone, he gets multiple notifications.