“My orders?” Tom asked in disbelief. “Jeffrey has orders for me?”
“Yep. Of course, he does,” Michael said happily, squeezing both their shoulders and drawing them closer so he could lower his voice. “And I quote. See what Useless,” Michael coughed, “Tom can do to clear the hives.” Michael dropped his hands and stepped back.
Everlyn looked confused by the entire exchange. “Was that cough part of it?”
Michael nodded. “Yep, that was an almost perfect rendition sound by sound.”
She shook her head. “He’s a certified idiot.”
“No one disputed that ever,” Michael agreed happily, and then presented Tom with the small hammer in his hands. “We figured this can help you assess how easy it is to destroy the hives.”
Tom accepted the tool and flipped it in his hand. There was no way this could be used to destroy hives. Then again, that wasn’t its purpose. At least while using this makeshift weapon, he wouldn’t accidentally gain a natural attribute point in strength. It weighed about as much as a soft drink can and appeared to be some sort of jewellery hammer. He spun it in his hands, appreciating how the weight was focused on the head. It felt like quality. “This is perfect for today, but tomorrow I’m going to need something more substantial.”
Michael shrugged. He knew exactly Tom’s motivations, and as a card-carrying member of team humanity, Michael would do what he could to make those around him stronger. The opportunity to get a rare title was not to be sneezed at. “Already on it. Thor’s agreed to lend you his, but I’ve got my eyes set on Bazza’s. His…”
Tom waved a hand to tell Michael that he didn’t really need an explanation.
Michael roared with laughter. “That’s our Tom. Happy to get stung a million times by wasps whose every sting makes you feel like your skin is falling off, but if you try to force him to do small talk, he becomes so distressed he wants to go find some more wasps.”
Everlyn snickered.
“Not funny,” Tom protested. “I’m not that bad. I just don’t have time currently–”
Michael thumped him on the shoulder. “Go do your tests, and then tomorrow we can start knocking down the stupid things. I can’t wait to get out of here and heal something other than poisoning. I never thought I would become nostalgic for some good old fashion splintered bones and gaping wounds.”
“Really?” Everlyn asked.
Michael chuckled again. “It was a joke, and I might have gotten carried away. But wasps are boring, and the lack of experience for everyone, that I don’t like.”
“None of us do.” Everlyn agreed. “At least we are getting some. I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if I was in there.”
“It’s not their fault. Don’t look down on them.”
“I’m not. Commiserating, I think, is the right word.”
Tom overtly cleared his throat. “One last thing. I actually hadn’t finished shopping, and I wanted to buy another skill with my excess experience.”
“Why were you delaying?” Everlyn asked seriously cutting to the crux of the issue.
“I wasn’t sure it was the best choice.”
“What’s changed? If it’s not long-term important, you shouldn’t get it.”
Tom looked around at his friends. No one was offering advice; after all, build decisions were private. “I have experience to use, and given the stakes, I’m loath to leave it unspent.”
“I agree.” Michael said. “Even if it’s not an optimal expense, you can’t min max everything.”
“Min max, grandpa.” Everlyn asked, raising her eyebrow.
“One, I am a grandpa so that’s not an insult, and two, I was briefly hooked on a couple of games during my brief retirement.”
“Brief?” Everlyn pounced on the word.
Michael laughed. “I needed to do something with my life. Being home the whole time was not as wonderful as I expected. My wife kicked me out of the house and made me go back to work shortly after. But my point is this is not a game; so min maxing is not necessarily the right way.”
“Not up to us, anyway.” Everlyn said. “It’s Tom’s sole choice.”
“I’m going to spend it. I need a more efficient method to store mana.”
Everlyn cocked her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Damage,” Tom clarified. “Currently, my process is to pump mana into the crystal and lose eighty percent of it and then, when needed, cycle it into Spark. There are more cost-effective ways of doing that.”
“Spark’s a tier zero spell,” Everlyn mused. “I know there are body runes you can get to let you store weak spells. I’m sure they’re personal.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” Michael interrupted. “Even if you’re going down that path, losing skin space for a tier zero spell feels like a mistake. Plus, there’s bound to be someone in the future who will inscribe that directly on you. It’s a massive waste to use experience to get the effect.”
“Agreed.” Tom said hurriedly. “I was thinking more of a pre-cast spell.”
“At one point, I had a silence spell. It was a mana hog, but it lasted three hours.” Everlyn volunteered. “Is that what you were considering?”
“Yes.” Tom jumped on that answer. “I even flagged a few earlier. Did you guys use anything like that?
Both shook their head.
Michael went to say something, stopped, then reconsidered. “I can ask around. See if anyone else used that type of ability.” He jerked a thumb back at the shelter.
Tom felt his cheeks redden. Jeffrey and cronies would have a field day with that. “No, not required. I only wanted to talk it out with some people before deciding.”
“Go I’m listening.” Everlyn smiled at him.
“Same here, Useless.”
Tom glared at Michael, but the healer didn’t care in the slightest. “The techniques I’m aware of are shields, auras, weapons, body parts and skin. If you’re not aware of the method, the best way is to put fire in front of the words. You know fire shield, fire aura–”
“We’re aware,” Michael said dryly. “Even if I’ve never used a fire aura, I’ve fought beasts with it.”
“I’ve fought beasts with all of those,” Everlyn agreed. “And breath, obviously. There was also a spirit that had a ball filled with an arcane energy that it could use when it had spent all of its mana.”
Tom had never fought anything like that. “What’s the last one?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Give me a moment.” Everlyn shut her eye and her face went blank for a moment, then after less than ten seconds she opened her brilliant eyes once more. “It’s actually a combination of spells. You create a ‘magic type’,” she physically made the inverted quotes,“ vessel, then you have a channelling spell to fill it and then another ability to draw energy from the container.” She hesitated, the system room expression reappearing for a few seconds once more. “The vessel can be physical or a spell construct.”
“Did you see what the efficiency was like?”
“Depends on the vessel, but crappy ones leak twenty percent of their power per hour, with the good ones taking a day or more to lose the same amount. Then the channel spell to fill might have a ten percent cost and deployment a similar loss of power. Significantly more efficient than your crystal.”
Tom hadn’t considered that type of solution. It was definitely better than what he had been looking at.
“Unfortunately, I reckon it’s out of your price range.”
“Oh.” Tom responded in disappointment.
Everlyn patted his arm. “Seventy thousand experience to set up.”
“You meant way out of my range.”
Everlyn laughed. “I know. But in the future, I think it’s something every mage type should consider.”
“Agreed,” Michael said. “I’ll let everyone else know.”
Tom looked at the two of them. “Any other ideas?”
They both shook their head.
“Okay, I’m doing this then.” Tom concentrated and entered the system room.
Of course, like always, nothing had changed. The walls were empty till he wanted something to materialise. The only feature in the room was the single electronic one up in the corner above where the shrine would be if he wanted it to appear. Tom, despite being frustrated for the first couple of years with yes or no answers, had grown to appreciate the access to Dux’s oracle role.
Therefore, when it came time to construct his starting abilities and skill set for Existentia proper, keeping the ability to engage the oracle functionality to him had been paramount. It had also ended up being prohibitively expensive.
There was no question about affording the same level of service that he had got in the trial. In the end, he had purchased a one question every 8-day option that had been 20 times cheaper than the once-a-day version. Even the daily package that cost four times more per question was a bargain. Suspiciously so. Tom suspected prices had an element of supply and demand. From everyone he had talked to and overheard, no one else realised how powerful that Oracle ability had truly been, and that had meant nobody prioritised buying it. That made it cheaper.
It was time to get started.
“Show the spells that I previously tagged.”
The wall shivered to reveal the four spells he had tagged. There was only one genuine option that met his requirements.
Spell: Lightning Skin (tier 2)
Can imbue your skin actively or via passive draw with mana that will cause enemies touching you to receive an electric shock. Will kill small animals outright and has the potential to paralyse the responsible limb of larger enemies. Provides a small physical protection bonus.
Due to Spark, proficiency will start at level 16
Threshold bonus 4: Allows adjustable continual recharge.
Threshold bonus 8: Allows targeting within two centimetres of skin instead of purely on contact.
Threshold bonus 16: Improves efficiency by fifty percent.
Cost 8,000
It was a bad Tier 2 spell even with the threshold bonuses. Despite the efficiency of the level 16 bonus per killing value, it was still only half as good as Spark. It had two major benefits. The first was that adjustable recharge. If he used it, he could set up recharge rules like it would only be recharged if his mana was full or a small part of his regeneration, if that is what he wanted. The other less important aspect was that it was automatic, and he did not have to focus on individually frying individual insects. With a capacity of eighty mana and an efficiency of half that of Spark, it was a couple times more mana efficient than using the crystal as the mana storage mechanism, which is exactly what mattered.
It also didn’t hurt that eventually he could leave it permanently on, and until his level was in the hundreds, it would probably continue to have some usefulness.
“Purchase.”
Tom could feel the new information of the spell taking hold, or at least that unsettling feeling where the knowledge of how to apply the effect appeared within his mind. He did not immediately depart for the real world. Instead, he looked at the wall. “Change in stats.”
Experience: 1536 (+ 4403, -8000)
The line showed his current experience of 1536 and what had gone in and out of his account.
“Show combat logs.”
The logs appeared on the screen.
Soldier wasp experience plus 30
…
Worker wasp experience plus one
The logs continued, and he scanned through it, and it became very clear that he was now only getting a fraction of an experience point for each normal wasp kill. From the trial, this was something he had been expecting, but how quickly the experience he was receiving from the insects had degraded was more than a little annoying. He still needed to get 10,000 experience for his class.
Tom opened his eyes, and Everlyn was studying him. “What did you get?” she asked.
“I purchased Lightning Skin.” And utilised the spell. He took his full mana and infused it into his skin and then felt the power flow through it. Almost subconsciously, he changed the settings to ensure that half of his mana regeneration would be devoted to increasing the energy into the spell. That way, if normal insects attacked him, the spell would automatically kill them and keep providing him with sufficient mana to heal himself.
A wasp that had been heading for Everlyn instead diverted and dived to strike his legs instead. Tom smiled; that was his high Enmity level successfully forcing it to attack him and effectively fly to its death. That, at least, had not changed. A moment before the attack landed, there was a crackle of electricity, and it was fried. The stinger had not even landed.
Everlyn laughed. “Now you can do that. You’re broken.”
“Come on,” Tom complained. “I’ve bought skills specifically to do that. Almost fifteen thousand experience.” Tom saw Everlyn was about to protest. “And I got stung enough to kill me five hundred times over.”
She chuckled. “I guess that’s true. Plus, it’s not like I haven’t earned over four thousand experience being your sidekick.”
“I’m not broken; the system is. All my recent kills have been getting less than one XP.”
She patted him on the back, commiserating.
Michael cleared his throat. “Why aren’t you checking the hive?”
“Recharging my mana and now,” Tom slapped his skin. “And then fully empowering my Lightning Skin.”
They stood there. Tom literally acting like one of those UV electric bug lights. Standing there and they would come and die.
They chatted.
Finally, after about twenty minutes both his skin and mana were full. Tom knew he could have sped it up if he of used Spark instead of his new spell, but he was not in a rush. “Wish me luck!”
With a small hammer in hand, Tom approached the pillars his feet sunk into the scrabbly grass that went to his ankles. He watched where he was stepping, and it was easy to avoid the pitfalls. Nothing had changed at the mound. Very few wasps were emerging relative to the huge number yesterday and this morning.
Tom had no pity. One, they almost certainly fit the definition of monsters, and it had been the humans or the insects. The bugs had thrown everything at the humans and failed. Now it was the time to return the favour.
He spun the small hammer in his hand. It was clearly something one crafter had purchased probably hoping they were going to be put down somewhere they could start their crafting immediately.
A double handful of wasps buzzed out of their hive and Tom was stunned when despite his enmity that they didn’t instantly attack him. Instead, they flew angrily around their home. Trying to seem threatening.
When he reached touching distance, they all charged him simultaneously. Most went for its exposed legs and three at his face. He shut his eyes and felt the tingle of lightning skin activating. There was a flash right outside his eyelids and the creatures fell dead around him. It was probably eight experience, but it felt unearned.
Tom swung the hammer.
Clink,
Cracks spread out within the resin; and while nothing was chipped off, it was clear the blow had done a significant amount of damage.
His left hand, the one not holding the hammer, reached out and touched the hive.
It felt like the humming within had increased.
He swung again.
Clink.
A chunk of resin disintegrated. Pieces went flying, and other small fragments rattled down into the hive’s depths following the access tunnels. It had been a hardish blow, but the devastation was greater than expected. Almost a fist size lump of crystal had been gouged out of the hive. While it may have resisted the pressure of his kicks, actual weapons absolutely devastated the brittle substance.
Ten of the large soldier wasps crawled out of the hive. Their wings snapped open as they launched into the air. Firm in the knowledge that they were going to attack him, Tom turned his back and started walking back towards the others. Pain flared up across his buttocks and legs and the electric skin spell discharged.
Tom turned to look at what happens. There were seven burnt shells of insects on the ground. Two of the soldiers in the air were slightly singed and one remained completely unaffected. Those three plunged down to attack him. There was some stinging pain.
Fair enough, he thought his instincts had been about right. He had always known it was less powerful than Spark, but against the larger insects, it was horribly inefficient. That didn’t matter - he could tailor his tools to whom he was killing.
Zap.
Energy arced from a single hand, and all three wasps died.
He collected the corpses because he figured they could be used by budding alchemists in the group — or worst, sold at cost to the auction house — and then he jogged back to the others, giving them a thumbs up once he got close to them.
Tomorrow, he planned on crushing through the hives and hopefully get a strength title from it. For the rest of the day, he would relax.