What is an ability? That was the question I had been thinking about for awhile now. When I thought about Void Asura or any of my Void abilities I realized something, they were not powers that came from the System, I suspected Kalesa and the other six gods who had created the System had abilities before hand or more likely they had what would become abilities.
For abilities like Telekinesis, any of my Passives or Void Asura I didn’t have to speak aloud, I just thought and it happened. Some abilities required a spoken verbal command and contact with the System to work and as I thought about them I came up with a theory for why that was.
All abilities were really just spells programmed into our bodies, sometimes they were always active while other times they needed to be spoken aloud. Most actual spells, even combat ones required several seconds of chanting to enact the System let us bypass the need for that by just speaking a simple phrase and it did all the heavy lifting. That’s why spells that could do all the same effects and damage as an ability weren’t practical because they took ten times as long to set up.
All this thinking had led me to wonder this, could I make my own abilities? Program spells into my own flesh and soul? Maybe but it was probably very dangerous….so I was definitely going to do it.
I sat in meditation on the throne in the temple at the top of Avalon. The first ability I wanted to experiment on was Shadow Allias, that ability had been invaluable in rescuing Guinevere, but I hadn’t used it once since. Deception, spying and sneak attacks just weren’t my style, so I wanted to modify it to better fit my actual combat style.
Brilliant bands and motes of light filled my soul as I searched through it searching for the nodes that were my new abilities. I could see band connecting them together in particular the brightest node of them all that represented Void Asura. It had bands connecting to all my other abilities that my Heralds could use. I found the band connecting to Shadow Allias and poked at the energy, it tried to move but I held it fast, I wasn’t just shoving abilities together and seeing what popped out, that had been something I’d been forced to do because of lack of experience and pressured necessity.
I pulled on the nodes for Doppelganger and Mirage Men, they were similar enough that I felt I would have the best luck in using them as my building blocks. Doppelganger wasn’t exactly what I was looking for and just seemed like a slightly different version of Shadow Allias, I was actually surprised the System hadn’t offered me a choice to merge the two abilities together.
Mirage Men was the more interesting with actual potential in combat, I wanted to draw more heavily on it for the alteration of Shadow Allias. I started poking at the ability it recoiled and tried to move away but it didn’t even have the strength of Shadow Allias and I pulled at it weakening its light as I peered inside looking to discover just how this thing worked.
Runes, thousands and thousands of runes greeted the vision of my soul. I pulled back, abilities being like spells was even more literal than I had first imagined. They weren’t just imprinted on our bodies but on our very souls as well. I looked back into the abilities node reading the nodes, it was like reading the notes of a nuclear physicist after just passing high school but even that glimpse was radically expanding my understanding of magic, spells and enchanting.
If I were to create a new ability it would be basically creating a non-physical enchantment in my soul.
That of course was for another day, today I was just modifying an existing enchantment and I had an idea. I took the node for Doppelganger first to test my idea, I was going to graft it, the way you would graft the branch of one tree onto another. It wasn’t easy but I pulled out strands of energy from the node for doppelganger and wove them together with strands from Shadow Allias, I connected bands of rune script that I hoped would result in more combat and less stealth and deception focus.
Ability Destabilized: Tampering with your abilities has resulted in both becoming unstable and unusable.
The message from the System was disheartening but not discouraging, if the ability was unstable that implied it could be stabilized, I needed something to balance it. I pulled the node for Mirage Men and began using it connecting strands of it to both Shadow Allias and Doppelganger. It took hours but eventually after repeated messages from the System informing me of my failure the ability stabilized. I wove ethereal energy into it to impart the power of the Void into the ability and further empower it.
I opened my eyes and read the message.
New Ability Mutated! Shadow Guard (Rank 20, Max Rank): A king has many enemies and many seek the glory in being the one to slay them, thus a King must be able to disguise himself and surround himself with duplicates to deceive his enemies. You surround yourself with twelve copies identical to your current appearance, the Shadow Guards last for a max of 24 hours or until destroyed, they can take up to Extreme damage before disappearing, your Shadow Guard cannot move more than 100ft away from you at any time.
You can change your appearance to look as you see fit or to perfectly copy any humanoid you have seen, including their description and make your Rank appear as anything lower than you and up to a 100 ranks higher than your real rank.
You can use the titles of creatures you have slain or seen in the description of yourself and your Shadow Guard.
While active your Shadow Guards act as focal points for your abilities allowing you to cast from them as if they were your body.
You can teleport at will between your Shadow Guard switching spots with them to hide your true location.
Your Shadow Guard have limited real physicality able to pick up objects weighing less than 100lbs and to deal physical damage with copies of your weapons though they will not do the full damage of your real weapons.
Max Rank Bonus: Perception checks and abilities made against your Shadow Guard slide off unable to tell which is the real you.
Cost:
25 mana and 25 ethereal per second
Cast Time:
Instantaneous
Each rank of this ability increases your Perception attribute by +4
I smiled, it wasn’t the best ability or even close to my most powerful but it was definitely a combat ability now; what’s more Karnen would have use of it when acting as my Herald.
Congratulations! You have raised one of your Attributes beyond 350, the Hierophant limit. Your body will now physiologically change to adjust to this increase to keep your Attribute from killing you.
I grimaced as my eyes popped and goop ran down my face, I couldn’t feel what must have been agonizing pain as my eyes liquified as my body strained to deal with me raising attributes far beyond what I should.
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Your eyes have adapted to the overwhelming energy of your soul and body to be more compatible with the Void, no longer made of flesh your eyes are formed of energy, you lose some of the effects of previous mutations but your eyes can never be blinded again and you do not need to blink, you can see in perfect 180-degree vision as well no longer needing to rely on pupils to direct your sight. Light is not necessary for you as your eyes do not function as organs of flesh and blood.
I’d never lost previous effects from my mutations before, but the upgrades did seem a fair trade off. This first experiment had been a success, but it was time to move on and see what else I could do. Karnen now had almost all his abilities he could use upgraded, only Phantom Form was unchanged, but I didn’t have abilities I wanted to merge with that yet. The Shadow already had some of its abilities recently upgraded as did Voidra, that left Ares.
Unending Flow was a fantastic ability for me, but for Ares it was a passive that wasn’t doing much for him and was taking up one of the four slots for his available abilities, I needed to make it not just a good passive for a singular fighter but something that could benefit more than one person preferably an army. There were two new abilities I’d just gotten that I thought might help me do that.
Devotion of the Flesh and Holy Ground didn’t seem like direct links to that skill and the System hadn’t given me an option to merge them so it seemed to agree there. However if I could combine their effects…. Devotion of the Flesh raised my stamina and not just my mana with each kill. My stamina lagged far behind my mana, I already got an increase in my Ethereal regeneration for each humanoid I killed so that wasn’t something I needed. Holy Ground let me increase the regen rate for my allies not just myself, if I could combine all three it would provide my allies with a lot of benefit and give Ares a much more useful skill. Ares was not a direct combatant perse as one of my Heralds, instead he acted as more of a support commander empowering the whole of the army instead of a single individual.
I started to draw together the nodes for Holy Ground and Devotion of the Flesh bringing them close to Unending Flow. I looked inside Unending flow searching the thousands upon thousands of strands of rune script finding the ones that pertained to what I was looking for. Carefully I pulled them out and pulled strands from the still complicated but far less so rank one abilities and began to graft and weave them together.
The work was slow, mind boggling complicated and tedious. I operated less on a scientific chemist’s formula and principals and more on a alchemists gut feeling and experimentation. Failures were just as important as successes informing future decisions as I got closer to a final result. The System continued to inform me of my unstable failures even warning me several times that I was in danger of rending my soul. It never tried to stop me though, I wondered if this was because it couldn’t, it wanted me to succeed or if there were simply no rules against what I was doing so it didn’t care.
I wasn’t sure how long it took to finish this ability, it could have been longer or shorter. Guinevere knew what I was working on and would keep anyone from disturbing me unless something on the level of a God or an Ancient showed up. My work went on as I wove the three abilities together pushing it towards what I needed it to be. RNJesus was a thing of the past for me now, I would guide my abilities how I saw fit not what options the System granted me, and in time I wouldn’t even have to rely on the System to give me those abilities.
It was finished and I opened my eyes and read the results of my work.
Power of Faith (Rank 20, Max Rank): There is no faith without sacrifice, every kill made by those who follow you is done in your name; every man or woman who dies under yours or any of your knights’ blades increases the strength of the faith in your cause. Every humanoid that dies from you or your allies gives a permanent increases to your mana and stamina regeneration by .6% to a max of 75% per individual (neither you nor your vassals gain the benefits of this increase from others kills). Your presence in the midst of your followers increases their faith, the more who believe the greater that faith, they gain +50 to their Maximum stamina and mana and +1 to their regeneration for every other follower within 2,000ft of you.
Reduces the cost of your mana abilities by an amount equal to your bonus to your regeneration.
Increases the duration of your abilities by an amount equal to your bonus to your regeneration.
When you or one of your followers kill an enemy, they have a 25% chance they evaporate into mist leaving behind a crystal, if you or a follower smash the crystal will restore a Severe amount of damage taken and 10% of your mana and stamina. (If an enemy smashes the crystal they will take severe damage and be drained of 10% of their stamina and mana.)
Max Rank Bonus: All abilities for your followers cost 50% less Ethereal, Stamina and Mana to cast while within range of this ability.
Cost:
N/A
Casting Time:
Passive
Each rank of this ability increases your Power, Endurance and Spirit attributes by +1.
It did exactly what I wanted it to do. I looked at the watch on my wrist frowning, it was a simple mechanical piece I’d brought from Earth but it showed the day and time, I’d been at this for at least four days. I stood up.
“System what is my current status?” I asked.
Mordred, Proto-god of Heroes and Sacrifice; Gifted- humanoid/void-born, Exarch, Rank: 586
Available Rank Points: 128,957
Might:
183 (+50) = 233
Mind:
308
Speed:
330
Perception:
368
Toughness:
211 (+48) = 259
Spirit:
410
Endurance:
213
Power:
221
Maximum Stamina:
1,294
Maximum Mana:
5,364,058
Stamina Regen:
per second
Mana Regen:
343.4 per second
Ethereal Regen:
7,6800 per second
Maximum Ethereal:
3,843,171
Abilities
Void Asura (Rank 50) World Forge (Rank 50), Shadow of Judgement (Rank 50), Abyssal Magic (Rank 50), Heir of the Titans (Rank 50), Voice of Tartarus (Rank 50), Watcher from Beyond (Rank 50), Hero’s General (Rank 50), Phantom Form (Rank 20), Storm Soul (Rank 20), Hell’s Talons (Rank 20), Storm Fall (Rank 20) Dark Guardian (Rank 20), Blood Renewal (Rank 20), Teeth in the Dark (Rank 20) Shadow Guard (Rank 20) Power of Faith (Rank 20), Hurricane Winds (Rank 1), Raining Light (Rank 1), Relentless Assault (Rank 1), Lava Burst (Rank 1),Famine Breath (Rank 1), Sickening Aura (Rank 1)
Blessings:
Blessing of Tadris
Titles
Mark of Cain, Bloody Pugilist, Exorcist, Survivor III, Feral Barbarian, Field Alchemist III, Berserker, Beast Slayer III, War Chief, Venom Resistant III, Keytaro’s Guardian III, Wrathful Meditation, Fireproof III, Superhuman, Bearer of Death, Lightning Resistance, the Fate Breaker, Apprentice Bludgeoner, Master Deflector, Apprentice Spearman, Divine Smith, Master Enchanter, Knight of Camelot, Challenger, Artifact Breaker, Void Walker, Abomination Slayer, Spell Carver, Master Swordsman, the Possessed, Ghost Path, Holy Resistance III, Acid Resistance III
My actual rank hadn’t gone up that much since I’d been combining abilities but I’d fought creatures twice my rank and new that the number at the end of your description didn’t mean to much. It did effect the bonus strength I got from my armor but that was a small price to pay. It more was about attributes and the strength of abilities that determined who would win the fight and soon no one would have better abilities than me, the only thing after that would be to figure out how to give others abilities.