by Kyle Johnson
Vital Mana and Living Creatures: Vital mana can be used to empower or grow any living or undead creature. It can also create simple, nonintelligent life forms such as plants, fungi, or microorganisms. Creatures so created are temporary constructs and vanish when the Spell creating them ends.
Vital Mana and LP/Stats: Vital mana can be created by sacrificing LP or Physical Stat points. LP can be turned into vital mana in a 1:1 ratio, while 1 Stat Point generates 50 SP of vital mana. The reverse is also true: 1 SP of vital mana can be turned into 1 LP, healing the caster, while 50 SP of vital mana can be used to empower any Physical Stat by 1 point for one hour. SP generated in this manner do not count against the normal hourly limit of vital mana that can be safely used
+450 XP
Party Perks Gained!
Stand at the Gates (3)
You have successfully held a position against a force more than ten times your number.
Benefit: Take 5% less damage when attempting to hold a position against attack (cumulative with the lower levels of this Perk), regain SP and Stamina 5% faster when holding a fortified position.
Shock and Awe (1)
You have laid a successful ambush for a numerically superior group
Benefit: Do 5% more damage for 30 seconds after springing a surprise attack on a foe.
Shock and Awe (2)
You have laid a successful ambush for a foe more than twice your number.
Benefit: Do 5% more damage for 30 seconds after springing a surprise attack on a foe (cumulative with the first level of this Perk).
Shock and Awe (3)
You have laid a successful ambush for a foe more than five times your number.
Benefit: Do 5% more damage for 45 seconds after springing a successful surprise attack on a foe (cumulative with lower levels of this Perk; all durations of this Perk are set to 45 seconds).
Your Companion has gained a level!
Current Level: 13
Per +3, Agil +3, Other Stats +2, +5 Stat points to assign
Congratulations: You Have Leveled Up!
Sorcerer Ascendant Level: 7
Current XP: 122190/136000
Int +5, Wis +5, Cha +4, +5 Stat points
I am without peer! Without sane peer, anyway…
Aranos read through the notifications carefully, especially the ones about his new Ability and aspect. The Ability seemed fairly straightforward: in a support role, he could sacrifice a thousand or so SP off his max to create an Aura that would heal his party 5 LP per second. That seemed great, until he considered that Meridian probably either had a Spell like that or would eventually develop one, and it would probably cost a lot less SP than his Aura. He could also switch it into one that mimicked the azgrovas’ Life Drain Aura, but he’d quickly become Corrupted before the Aura could do any real damage to his foes. Basically, it’s not much more useful than the Energy Drain Ability was, although at least I can use it now if I want to. That’s something, I guess.
The warning about his possible Race change was both heartening and a little nerve-wracking; he hoped that whatever racial change the AIs gave him would be based on how he’d played so far and especially on what he’d done to trigger the Evolution. If that was the case, he wasn’t worried: everything he’d done to advance the Race to Get Ahead Quest had been related to either Evolving Spells, creating Abilities, or Evolving and Redeeming Skills. A Race that gave him bonuses to that sort of thing would be awesome. If, on the other hand, the racial change was random, or was based on random characteristics he had, he was in trouble. He had several defensive bonuses, such as his Fortitude Skill, magic resistance, and elemental resistance; if his new race was one that was inherently resistant to magic, he might end up having to start over in a new Class. He sighed internally; there wasn’t much he could do about it at this point except keep going and hope that the AIs chose not to cripple him, at least not when he hadn’t been playing outside his Class very much.
His discovery of vital mana was exciting. Basically, he’d just given himself an expanded version of the Sacrificial Caster Perk: he could interchange vital SP and LP freely, and he could even turn vital mana into Stat boosts. This meant that he could also turn LP into Stat boosts if he wanted, by first shifting LP into vital mana and then turning it into Stat points. If he needed to, he could quickly boost his Agility, for example, to help him Dodge more effectively, or amp up his Dexterity if he wanted to take better advantage of his Arcane Archery Skill. He could also effectively cast more powerful Spells of vital mana using his LP.
It also meant that he could use an Ability he rarely did and make a vital mana Spell permanent; it would cost 100x the normal SP, but if he crafted a simple Spell that only took 10-15 SP to cast, he could make it a permanent one at the cost of a major chunk of his LP. Heck, if he knew that he would have time to rest afterward, he could dump some of his Physical Stat points into the Spell and make a more powerful one permanent. He could grow one of the ancient, lost trees that way, or restore plant life to a wide area of ground. Of course, he could do the same thing now with his Needful Reclamation Spell, but with vital mana he could do it because he felt like it, not because it was needful.
He glanced over his Status, deciding where to put his bonus Stat points. He was tempted to use them to boost his Str and End over 50, but he’d be able to do that anyway with his next session with the training crystals, so really, it was kind of a waste. Instead, he put a point each into Int and Wis and the remaining three into Cha, which he still didn’t know how to train effectively. For Silma, he tossed a point each into Agil and Per and dumped the rest into her End.
He’d been expecting the Stand at the Gates Perk to go up – by his reckoning, they’d faced almost two hundred of the undead, all told, but they’d only held the doorway against a hundred or so – but he hadn’t realized that his Overchanneled Spells would count as an ambush. He guessed it made sense, since he’d set the Spells up to obliterate the undead once they attacked, but he hadn’t really thought of it as an ambush.
He started as a hand touched his shoulder, and he turned to see Geltheriel settling down next to him. “How does she fare, Oathbinder?” the woman asked quietly, her face and eyes betraying her concern.
“She’s recovering,” Aranos sighed. “I think she’ll need most of the day, but she’ll fight it off. The sword did some kind of necrotic damage to her; if it had killed her, I think it would have turned her into an undead.”
The Shadedancer nodded her head grimly. “That is one of the dangers of battling a lanohtar, Oathbinder, and likely the reason the Avenger chose to combat it alone. Had it felled any of us, we might have risen as undead, and it would have been needful to return us to our rest. That is a difficult task for any Warrior.”
Aranos nodded. “What was that thing? You both called it a lanohtar; my Undead Lore didn’t identify it, though, so it can’t be that common.”
“All of the Light know of the lanohtars, Oathbinder, although every race has a different name for them. To humans, they are blackguards; in the Dwarven tongue, they are called kapsvikar. They are Fallen Warriors of the Light, creatures that willingly betrayed the Light and embraced the Darkness in exchange for power and immortality.”
Aranos frowned. It sounded like the result of a person embracing the Corruption and becoming an undead knight of some kind. “I thought that the Darkness gives great power to someone who turns to it willingly,” he said slowly. “The lanohtar was strong, but as a party, we could have taken it down easily.”
“It is true that the Darkness empowers its champions, Oathbinder, but it does not give great power to all who turn to it. It gives power according to the measure of the one receiving it. A desperate farmer who kills his neighbors and uses their blood to fertilize his fields, making a pact with the Darkness in the process, will not become an epic force of evil. Instead, as he has only a small amount of inherent power, he will receive only a small amount in return.”
“So, that lanohtar probably wasn’
t a great champion before it turned,” Aranos mused.
“Quite likely not, no. None may ever know why it fell, but just as it was not likely of import in Antas before the city was Corrupted, it probably had no great authority before its death. It was a competent commander, but were I to guess, I would call it but a lieutenant in the armies of Antas.”
“Yeah, it makes sense that it wasn’t very far up the food chain,” Aranos agreed. “Whoever’s running things in the city wouldn’t want to send anyone or anything really valuable against us. We’re supposed to be a small recon team, after all, and the commander’s strategy was to tie us up inside the tower while the azgrovas sucked the life from us. If we hadn’t been able to break out and kill it, we’d have lost the war while winning every battle.”
“Now that we have destroyed their force, will they send another, Oathbinder? Had their forces remained outside the clearing, and continued to attack in small waves, they would have defeated us.”
Aranos shook his head. “No, they still would have lost. They lost the moment I figured out how to kill that worm pillar. If they’d kept hitting us in waves, it would have given me more freedom to do that, not less.”
Geltheriel nodded. “While this is enlightening, it is not the reason I disturbed you, nor was my concern for the Lieutenant – although knowing that she recovers eases my mind somewhat.” The woman reached into the pouch at her waist and produced what looked like a small, carved figurine. The carving was the color of bleached bone and polished to a glossy finish. It seemed to represent some beast or monster that Aranos couldn’t identify but resembled a cross between a tiger and an eagle, with a feline body and legs but an avian beak and wings.
“What’s this?” Aranos asked, taking the figurine as Geltheriel handed it to him.
“An excellent question, Oathbinder.” The woman’s face turned grave as she spoke. “You may recall that I have chastised you for not being aware of your inventory, yes?” Aranos nodded with a flinch; his inventory still had old hides and furs from his first day in Ka that he’d never gotten rid of or sold. That didn’t seem to be the point, though, as the woman continued.
“As I prefer to practice the advice I give to others, I scanned my own inventory and found that this had been placed in it. It is not mine, nor is it anything I brought from Haerobel, and it was placed in my pouch rather than my Storage Amulet.”
“You think someone put it in there? Why would they do that?” As he spoke, Aranos turned the figurine in his hands, trying to Appraise it, finally touching it with his Sense Mana Skill. As he did, he grunted in surprise; the figurine practically blazed with mana of a type he didn’t recognize. As his senses swept across it, though, a notification popped up in his vision; as he read it, he realized why someone had placed this in Geltheriel’s pouch:
Arcane Lore Success!
You have identified:
Totem of Beast Calling
Rarity: Uncommon
Quality: Fine
Benefit: The bearer of this charm radiates an aura of aggression and challenge in a half-mile radius. All non-sapient beasts within this radius are more likely to be drawn to the bearer and will be more prone to attack the bearer on sight. These charms are often used to draw predators for capture or to earn XP more rapidly.
Aranos slowly described the totem’s power to Geltheriel, an icy feeling spreading through him as he did. “You know what this means, Geltheriel,” he finished quietly.
The woman nodded. “The most likely scenario is that someone placed this in my pouch to draw more attacks to our party as we traveled, Oathbinder. Perhaps they were hoping that the additional encounters would cause us grief or injury.”
Aranos shook his head. “It’s worse than that,” he murmured as pieces began to fall into place in his mind. “You check your inventory regularly, I’ll bet. When was the last time you checked? I’ll bet it was since we’ve left Eredain.”
Geltheriel stared at the Sorcerer for several long moments. “You speak of treachery and betrayal, Oathbinder,” she said softly. “Do you think one of our party…surely, you cannot suspect the others of such, based on this item. it is far more likely that I overlooked it, and it was planted upon me in Eredain. It could have escaped my notice.”
“There’s more to it than that, Geltheriel. I’m thinking about the battle we just fought. When the azgrovas was forming, the commander attacked in force hoping to rope me into spending all my SP on breaking up and wiping out the larger assault. That means that they had some idea of what I can do.
“I hadn’t really thought much about it until now, but the lanohtar also knew that I was a Sorcerer, not a Wizard, but if it was really as low on the totem pole as we think, it wouldn’t have any reason to be able to tell the difference. Someone told it what I am and gave it a rough estimate of my abilities.”
Geltheriel’s face clouded with doubt. “Surely, there are others outside the party that know such, are there not?”
“Not many,” Aranos shook his head. “There are a few, sure. Dirue knows, which means Keryth probably knew, too. Golloron is aware, of course, and so are most of the Travelers by this point, I’m sure. Heck, if the Travelers have been talking to each other, even the ones in other realms might know that I’m a Sorcerer, by now.” He frowned. “I suppose it’s possible that some Traveler tried to infiltrate Antas, got caught, and was interrogated – or willingly talked to keep from being tortured or imprisoned. That wouldn’t explain the figurine, though.”
“It would explain very little, Oathbinder. Would any of those know of your spellcasting abilities? Would they know that the commander would need to occupy the whole field to challenge you? Or would they simply think you another type of Wizard?”
Aranos nodded in agreement; even if another Traveler knew about his Class, they wouldn’t really know what that meant. Even most of the elves in the House of Stars didn’t really know what a Sorcerer did. Golloron knew how powerful Aranos was, of course, and Ruehnar and Wynathra could probably guess, but other than Keryth, the only ones who had really seen him cut loose were…
“The Travelers in Eredain know,” he spoke slowly. “They saw me wipe them all out with a single Spell, remember? Any one of them could have passed a message on. What if a party of them left before we did, trying to steal our Quest, and got caught? They’d know about all of the elves; they just wouldn’t have any clue what the humans in the party could do. They might even have managed to sneak that figurine in your pouch before we left Eredain.”
“That…would make sense, Oathbinder,” Geltheriel agreed. “It would sit more easily with me than the idea of one among us betraying us, as well. And yet…”
“Yeah,” Aranos sighed. “Let’s face it, the only ones you and I can really trust are each other and Silma.” He paused for a moment. “And Phil. I’ve known him for years; he wouldn’t do anything like this. Anyone else, though, could be a hidden enemy.”
“I believe the Lieutenant has proven her innocence, as well,” Geltheriel said quietly.
“Yeah, probably. I suppose she might have arranged that fight with the lanohtar, but that seems really unlikely. Plus, if we start doubting everything that everyone does, we’ll go crazy and split the party apart.”
“So, what should we do?”
“We go on as before,” Aranos nodded. “I was kind of waiting for this attack, you know. I’m actually glad that it finally happened.”
“Why, Oathbinder? You have spoken that you anticipated such a strike, but what benefit does it give us?”
“You don’t think that the city opened its gates to let those undead out, do you?” he grinned at the woman. “We haven’t been watching them constantly, but whoever’s in charge there would have to assume that we might be. If they open the gates, someone could slip in just as easily as someone could get out. One person in the city might be able to open a door that would take hundreds to force open from the outside.”
“Then how…the tunnel!” Geltheriel chuckled as the reali
zation hit her. “They would have used the escape tunnel. We can track it back to the exit and enter the city at last!”
“Yep,” Aranos nodded. “That’s where Silma is right now. She’s following the path the undead took to get here and scouting out the tunnel as best she can. I’m hoping she’ll be back by nightfall, and we’ll be able to head out at first light. It’ll be interesting to see what Antas looks like from the inside.”
“And the totem?”
Aranos concentrated on the item and called up his Deconstruct Ability. The totem’s power faded instantly; sadly, the only notification that popped up told him that he’d failed to learn the Enchantment on the charm. That didn’t bother him too much; the totem’s description said it was of Uncommon rarity, which meant he could probably find more in Eredain’s Great Square and try again. What was important was that Deconstructing an Enchanted item also destroyed the Enchantment. The totem was useless now.
“I destroyed it,” he said simply, snapping the drained wood in half. “Maybe without it, things will be a bit less exciting.”
“That, Oathbinder, I sincerely doubt.”
The rest of the day passed in relative ease. None of the party was that interested in going out patrolling after the night they’d had, so they spent the day training instead. Aranos took a turn with the crystals and spent some time training Meridian in Meditation and Mana Control. Since he was an Expert in Instinctive Meditation, he was able to help Meridian unlock the Skill herself. Normally, it granted boosts to SP regen, Spell power, and Spell creation, but Meridian couldn’t really take advantage of that last part. Aranos was pretty sure, though, that at some level she’d be able to train her Spells in her mindscape and use her meditation time to grow more powerful.
