“The elf has a point,” she murmured as I opened the door.
An hour later we had four Manual Mandibles, plus two more from an Elder Crawler—these were a bit larger—and a pair of Giant Cave Bat wings. The bat had been a particularly fun kill. Angie’d used one of the M&Ms like a throwing spear, missing the first few times, while I’d run back and forth as bait. The bats loved me. Not sure why. In the end, it proved the undoing of a nice big one today.
“I think this is enough to get started with,” I said. “Let’s go back into the torchlight.”
“Suits me.”
We sat on the steps, shut off from the monsters by the iron door, but safe within the time freeze, and I laid out each object in front of us.
“Ok, now.” I cracked my fingers and read the M&M stats:
Weapon: Manual Mandible (x4)
Class: First Tier
Range: Close Proximity
Attacks: Slap, Slash, Stab. Can be thrown with requisite skill.
Damage: 1HP min, 5HP max; 10HP with Power-up
Durability: 10/10
Weapon: Elder Manual Mandible (x2)
Class: First Tier
Range: Close Proximity
Attacks: Slap, Slash, Stab. Can be thrown with requisite skill.
Damage: 3HP min, 15HP max; 30HP with Power-up
Durability: 20/20
“That kind of sucks,” I muttered.
“What’s up?”
I shrugged at the Elder M&Ms. “They don’t have the same max damage they did when they were attached to the Crawler.”
She read the stats. “15HP’s a good start, but it’s not much for a crafted weapon,” she said.
“No.” That’s why I planned to craft them. Taking a breath, I activated Mana Sight.
The threads glowed even less brightly now the creature was dead, but they maintained a steady pulse, still swimming about within the enclosed transparent shell. I waited a moment to see if I’d get any notifications if I just stared at one of the M&Ms and thought “craft,” but no dice. It was going to take a little more initiative than that.
I noticed the threads seemed more densely collected along the sharp edge and the tip, where the weapon did the most damage. That was interesting. I popped out of Mana Sight and confirmed what I thought I had remembered. It was the dull edge, not the sharp, that was thicker and bulkier. But in Mana Sight it almost looked the opposite, as if the sharp edges had more mass.
Maybe their higher mana density has something to do with the damage they can doll out, I wondered. When I’d been whacked with the flat of the mandible, I’d only lost 3HP. But the sharp, piercing edge had caused me to bleed to death.
“Getting anywhere, bro?”
“Huh?” I shook myself out of the skill and looked at Angie. She was sitting back on the steps, slumped, suppressing a yawn. “You aren’t gonna try?”
She shrugged. “Not really my bag. I’ll happily go snag some more spare parts for you from inside the dungeon.”
I shook my head. “I’ve got enough to work with for now. You bored already? It’s been what, a minute?”
“Dude!” she laughed, “it’s been like 15! And that’s not because of the time freeze. I know that look. You used to get it when you were hyper-concentrated on Mario. You’re like, in flow state, bro.”
“Huh.” I shook my head. Good thing it didn’t matter how long we spent in here.
“I might try to snag us some food,” she said.
“Yeah ok,” I answered, hardly hearing her. I was plunging back into the skill already. I had to know what the mana inside the M&M could do.
Concentrating as much of my own mana in my hand as I could, I prodded at the tightly bound threads in the more deadly part of the weapon. They didn’t budge. Figures. So far my observation was that the more dense the mana threads looked, the less likely it was I’d be able to manipulate them. Whether that was something that would change as I leveled my skill or not, I couldn’t say. Sighing, I gave up on the sharp edge and tried connecting to the looser, floatier strands that made up the broad, dull edge. I grabbed one with ease.
Gotcha! Now what to do with you?
Inspiration struck. If density yielded damage, then an even denser concentration should yield even high damage, right? I pursed my lips and pulled the loose thread, inching it toward the dense collection along the sharp edge until it met those threads. Interesting! Hoping to see a real difference, I grasped at a handful of loose strands and moved them across to join the dense ones. Then I let go and popped out of Mana Sight to check the stats:
Weapon: Manual Mandible
Class: First Tier
Range: Close Proximity
Attacks: Slap, Slash, Stab. Can be thrown with requisite skill.
Damage: 2HP min, 8HP max; 15HP with Power-up
Durability: 8/8
Oh yeah! It worked! I’d knocked all the damage up, creating a more deadly weapon. 15HP sounded a lot better per crit than 10! Then I noticed the lower durability. Crap. I scratched my head. I guess it needs those threads on the dull side to stay strong.
But it might be worth the trade if we were careful to only use the sharp sides. I wondered, if I were to concentrate most of the mana in the tip, would I get a really powerful throwing spear? It wouldn’t have the durability of a blade, but it wouldn’t need it, would it? I smiled. This was excellent.
Then the stats reverted.
“Wait, huh??”
Point by point the damage went back to what it had been and the durability rose to 10/10. I frowned and tried to activate Mana Sight, but my MP was depleted.
Dammit.
A few minutes later I was at it again. It looked like I could move the mana threads around within the M&M, but after a short time they returned to their original location. Their bound location?
Passive Skill Leveled Up: Mana Manipulation
My, you’re a quick study, aren’t you? It seems like only yesterday you were learning about mana for the very first time. Now you have begun to explore how it can be shaped and weilded as a tool and weapon. It will take a long time for you to be a true master of mana, but everyone starts somewhere. Mana Manipulation is a passive skill that can only be leveled through use.
Skill: Mana Manipulation
Type: Passive
Level: 3 (scalable)
Effect: 9% increase in ability to manipulate mana from user’s body; 6% increase in ability to manipulate mana from environment
Passive Skill Leveled Up: Mana Sight
Congratulations, you have gained a level in the skill Mana Sight! This is a passive skill that will be leveled both by use and as your mana pool increases.
Skill: Mana Sight
Type: Passive
Level: 4 (scalable)
Effect: 12% increase in ability for mana to illuminate surroundings and other mana sources
Cost: 1MP per 3 minutes
Alright, about time! I grinned. Bring on the magic skills, please. My smile sank a little when I saw that my cost per minute for using Mana Sight hadn’t changed with the level-up. Well, it made sense, I supposed. They’d have to cap that sort of thing early on or else the skill would get seriously overpowered.
I was heavy into playing with the mana threads again when Angie opened the door.
“Hey, you wanna come help me with this?”
“Huh?”
She stepped to the side and revealed something I really hadn’t been ready to see.
It was an enormous spider. Oh, it was dead, but it was bigger than a dog. Now, I knew very well that giant spiders were a favorite for game designers, especially for underground dungeons, but call me an optimist: I had really hoped not to see any. I was almost sick just at the sight of it.
“You want me to craft… that?” I asked, as if the mere suggestion was revolting.
“Craft it?” She opened her eyes wide, then laughed in my face. “God, no! I want you to eat it! With me! C’mon, we’re gonna make a fire. If you think you can figure it
out, oh high and mighty wizard.”
It was very good luck, she explained, that she’d run into the thing—and literally run into it, as she’d been trying to get away from an OP’d Crawler at the time. She had a plan for what we would do. She wanted to slice the carapace of the abdomen open, splitting the exoskeleton into two more or less evenly shaped bowls. Then we’d boil the guts in the bowls like a stew, and voila! Spider soup. All I had to do was figure out how to set some fuel—the spider’s long, hairy legs—on fire beneath it. Simple enough. If I could keep any of it down.
“Alright!” she said, her voice full of pride. “She’s open! Where’s my fire?”
“Ugh.” I tried to hold my breath. The stench! This game was far too real for anyone’s good. I plunged into Mana Sight and tried, for the fifth time, to make something happen beneath the spider. I saw the threads, I saw them changing as the last bits of life eked out, but I didn’t know how to make them catch fire, if it was even possible. I tried moving them around. I shook them. I thought maybe with enough volatility something would happen, but nothing did. Then, just as I was about to give up, they all burst into a bright, blazing flame.
“Shit!” I fell back, nearly blinded by the fire from within Mana Sight, and deactivated the skill. “I did it! I did it! But… what did I do?”
“You fell on your ass.”
Angie was standing over me, one of the doorway torches in her hand. She walked back through the door and replaced it on the wall.
Oh.
“That works,” I muttered.
“Don’t worry bro. I’m sure you’ll be hurling fireballs in no time.”
“Mana balls would do.”
“That’s enough about balls. Let’s eat.”
I grimaced as the gooey concoction began to boil. I was surprised when Angie let out a little “whoa.”
“What’s up?”
“I just gained a skill.” Her smile broadened. “Cooking level 1! Ha!”
“Congratulations.” I still was none too excited about the imminent meal, but if it kept us alive and allowed us to stay down here a while longer instead of going back up to the work camp, well… maybe it had some value. “You’ll have to teach me.”
“Nuh-uh. You’re a terrible student. I saw you in there poring over those mandibles for hours. You can kill your own spider and cook it. I’ll feed you, though.”
It had been hours?
“Crap! I haven’t figured anything out!”
“Tell me about it.”
“Big help, Angie.”
“No, dumbass, I mean it. Literally. Tell me about it. Maybe I can help.” She handed me one of the smaller M&Ms and then dug into the stew-goo with her own, bringing it to her nose and inhaling. “Mmmm, mmm! It smells like home, Ezekiel.”
“Is that a reference I’m suppose to get?”
“Probably not.” She slurped some of the goo down, her face a mask of revulsion. “Gah! You may be right. That is pretty nasty. Oh! But I’m getting some information… oh Gid. Man. You’re gonna want to drink that.”
“Really?” I looked at the mutilated spider corpse dubiously. I mean, I guess I didn’t want to end up with the permanent debuffs from not eating or drinking for three days, but it hadn’t been…
“What kind of information?” I asked.
“Just drink already!” This time she scooped more gunk up onto her own M&M and shoved it into my face. I opened my mouth to protest, and she pushed it in.
“GGRRBGGGK!”
Nourishment
You have consumed one portion of Night Weaver Stew. The Night Weaver is a bigger-than-average arachnid that prefers cool, damp climes, often choosing to live underground. Its chitlin exoskeleton is prized for low-level armor, and its ghastly innards possess ingredients for advanced spells. Consuming Night Weaver innards raw is fatally toxic. Brought to a boil, the innards will grant sustenance and randomized buffs and debuffs.
You have met your avatar’s needs for food and drink.
I swallowed the last remnants of goo and cleared my throat. It did have a foul taste and an offensive texture. But, as previously regaled, I’d recently had worse. “Random buffs? That sounds interesting.”
“And debuffs,” Angie said, frowning. Her eyes had the faraway look of someone reading their text prompts. “I got my strength taken down by a third for the next hour. Dammit!”
I winced. That would be rough for her, being her key stat. If my mana got dinged, I’d be royally pissed.
You Have Recieved the Buff: Mage for a Day
Ever dream of wielding a wicked amount of arcane power? Congratulations! Your recent consumption of Night Weaver Stew has granted you the buff Mage for a Day. For the next in-game 24-hour period, your MP and spirit stats will be doubled. Use it well, but don’t let it get to your head. Once the day is done, you’re back to your every day self.
“Holy shit!” I leapt to my feet with excitement. “Angie! My MP is doubled for the next 24 hours!”
She smirked at me. “Congratulations,” she drawled. “Maybe you can carry us for a while.”
I vowed to make a point of duplicating the stew with the first spider I saw in order to unlock the Cooking skill and make more myself. But for now, it was time to work with the mana. Lifting the M&M to my face, I activated Mana Sight. My larger mana pool would give me more time before a recharge, but my increased spirit stat was the unknown factor. And apparently the it factor. I felt the mana in my own body pulse more strongly and deeply than before, and when I reached out to the threads of mana within the weapon, they thrummed with resonant power.
I almost cackled.
Slowly, steadily, I brought the threads side by side to the sharp edge, once more increasing the density of mana there. They sang beneath my fingers. I felt like a magical piano tuner. But it was no use; no matter how long I held them in place, or how much power I channeled, they always slipped back to where they seemed to belong after just a few seconds.
“This is bullshit!” I yelled, running out of mana and sitting down in a huff.
“Yeah, yeah,” Angie said, nodding. “Getting away from prison and having a sweet buff that perfectly synchronizes with your intended build is bullshit, I agree.”
I gave her a withering look.
She sighed. “So tell me what’s going on.”
I tried my best to explain the mana threads in the M&M, and what I wanted to do, and how the damned things just kept snapping back into place no matter what I did. “It’s like their bound,” I said.
“Well, yeah, that makes sense.”
“Does it?”
“Sure. Maybe that’s like an underlying device in the game world. Maybe mana bonding and binding together is what makes… you know, stuff.”
“Stuff.” I teased her, but she might have been on to something. It wasn’t a bad analogy for matter and energy in the real world anyway, if you wanted to think about things at the subatomic level. I thought. I was a little hazy on real science; most of what I thought I knew came filtered to me through cheesy documentaries. But it seemed to make sense to me.
“Yeah, stuff.”
“So if the stuff is bound…”
“Yeah, no idea. Maybe try using stuff that isn’t bound?”
“Huh.” Profound. Not very helpful. My MP had regenerated enough to activate my skill again, so I “looked” at the M&M once more. All the mana was encased in that pesky translucent shell. Like a binding.
I looked around for something, anything, that I thought I could afford to break. The scorched remains of a spider leg presented itself, poking out from around our makeshift “pot.” I grabbed the leg, wrenched it free, and “looked” at it, too. The mana inside looked remarkably like the mana in the Manual Mandible. Dead, it still dimly glowed and flowed along threads all bound within the shell.
So I smashed it on the ground.
I brought it down hard and dinged off half its durability. The thing was already pretty weakened from the fire. Another whack and it cracked down the
middle. I stood on one end and pulled the other, breaking it into two distinct parts. Then I “looked” again.
Now the mana was dripping down the threads like beads on a string, leaving the item altogether and floating off into… into nothing. Evaporating. Being recycled into the game, I wondered? Was mana a finite resource within the universe of Hero Online? Thoughts for another time. For now, I had what I wanted. I channeled mana into my hand and grabbed at the dripping threads, now free from their shell-like binding, and pulled a cluster of them free of the decrepit spider leg. Then I laid them against the barrier wall of the M&M and, channeling all the mana I could muster, gently pushed them through the wall and into the weapon.
It worked.
I gasped, watching them pass through the shell and float freely among the mana threads already present in the M&M. Then I deactivated the skill to let my MP recharge a bit.
“You know, sis, for someone who seems totally uninterested in all things mystical and arcane, you actually have a pretty decent knack for it.”
She looked at me blankly. “Something I said working for you?”
I waved her off. “Yeah. You’re a master-crafter, Angie. Have a beer.”
“Ha.” We were silent a moment, enjoying the dying embers beneath our spider pot. The red glow felt homey, like we were out camping beneath the stars. If you pretended it was just a cloudy night, it could almost be that way.
Almost.
“Is it even crafting you’re doing at this point?” she asked. “I mean, call it what you want, but it seems more… you know, wizardy. I’d call it enchanting.”
I snorted. “I like the thought. But I don’t know any spells. It’s kind of a blurred line, I guess. Like runecrafting.”
“Yeah. Too bad you don’t know any runes.”
I bolted to my feet again.
“Angie, you’re a genius!”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” She lay on her back and stretched, yawning. “I’m gonna meditate for a few minutes. Wake me if the spiders come looking for their friend.”
Quest for Vengeance Page 13
