Buttopia
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Chapter 96: Synergy
🕑 Added 2025-01-31 23:38:29 +0000 UTCThis chapter includes changes in the way I'm formatting things, to make it so tables and images aren't as needed. Let me know your thoughts if you'd prefer (specifically the Dave/Corey convos, to go back to the black boxes)
I made my way back to my garage, wanting not to be interrupted as I explored the new changes in my mana orbs. Before I started that, though, I pulled up my chat window. I needed to push my abilities as far as I could. Too many people were counting on me now.
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>Dave: Corey, how’s the wasp core doing?
>Corey: They are beginning to speak more. Why?
>Dave: Just planning out the future use of cores. We are going to need to pull out all the stops if we want to survive the tenth floor as far as I can tell, so I’m exploring all options.
>Corey: Understood. I will work with them more.
>Dave: Thank you.
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Another dancing weapon was in my future. Though perhaps not next. I still needed to find a way to better regulate my own mana flow and socket switches for optimal growth, and Corey was quickly growing into a more and more desirable solution, assuming they were willing to take our partnership even further. That was a question for the future once I even knew how to do what I was considering. Today, several of my mana orbs needed to be explored further.
I pulled up my life orb first and looked through the changes. There were two new mana skills available in the fifth tier, and they were mutually exclusive. Did all mana orbs eventually have split paths? There was also a new one in the fourth tier, which was a tier I could now invest in.
Mana Orb
~Life (2)~
-Fourth Tier-
Soul Regeneration (0)
Requirements: Inner Vitality (30) Pain Management (30), Soul Ignition
Soul Regeneration allows the host to repair the damage done by afflictions of the soul, ranging from soul degradation to mana channel scarring. The ability to directly channel soul energy is required for the use of this mana skill. Further ranks decrease the mana required.
-Fifth Tier-
Eternal Body (0)
Requirements: Regeneration (25)
Eternal Body allows the host to specialize the life orb towards ailments of the body. Only one mana skill in the fifth tier may be chosen.
Eternal Soul (0)
Requirements: Soul Regeneration (25)
Eternal Soul allows the host to specialize the life orb towards ailments of the soul. Only one mana skill in the fifth tier may be chosen.
That added another reason to figure out soulfire and sure did seem to add some weight to Rabyn’s fate claim. I had a feeling, though, that I knew what had actually given me access to the Soul Regeneration mana skill and quickly brought my Inner Vitality up to thirty ranks to test my theory. The odd feeling when I pushed mana across my channels was still there as I activated the skill and scanned my own body.
Just as suspected, the damage I had done to myself during the fight with the Jesters was registered as mana channel scarring. That wasn’t the interesting part of what the scan revealed, though. Apparently, the damage had been caused by a failed soul ignition. My memory was a bit hazy of what exactly had done during the fight, but that meant I had taken the first steps toward actually unlocking soulfire, and that was some needed good news.
I finally unlocked Bandaid and Regeneration, incredibly glad to have them. Making several of the storable healing items would be a priority before we returned to the Arena. Next up, was investing ranks in all of my healing abilities, bringing them up to their new maximum values. Even after this, I was still sitting at over fifteen hundred skill ranks. With how much core abilities cost to upgrade, I was finally starting to see just how these could be limited in the future, especially considering I hadn’t been barely touching regular skills, and there were likely infinitely more that could learned if really attempted. How many knowledge skills did Elicec have that this point?
Each of my Body-Modification orbs also had a new skill unlocked, one per orb.
-Fourth Tier-
Overwhelming Strength (0)
Requirements: Strength Training (25), Brawn Over Brains (10)
Overwhelming Strength allows the host to temporarily increase their strength to their current maximum potential. The longer this skill is used, the further the recovery time the body will require. Increased ranks decrease the recovery time needed.
Mana Channel Reinforcement (25)
Requirements: Mental Training (25) Brains Over Brawn (10)
Mana Channel Reinforcement strengthens the mana channels at a slightly enhanced rate as mana is channeled, speeding up both the rate and amount at which the host can move mana across their body. Further ranks further increase the rate of reinforcement.
Overwhelming Strength seemed dangerous from the description. I easily imagined a situation where I went way too hard in a fight and found my body unable to cope with what I had done to it, only to still be stuck in the fight facing more people with nothing left to give. Mana Channel Reinforcement seemed like something I was going to need, though, especially if I wanted to further practice what was needed for Soulfire.
That seemed to be the best way to go, so along with maxing out my previous abilities to their new limits, I invested another twenty-five ranks there. It seemed so long ago I had read the basics of how the skill caps worked on them, but it was proving true, as the new max for the first tier skills seemed to now be thirty-six instead of the expected thirty-five.
The new additions in my Elemental orbs were even more interesting. It turned out the synergistic effects of some mana orbs were entirely real, and I had accessed my first set of them.
-Third Tier-
Silent Casting (0)
Requirements: Fundamental Forces (30) Recall (10)
The host is able to dampen the noise required to cast recalled spells. Additional ranks spent further reduce the noise of all components of the spell.
-Fourth Tier-
Synergistic Magic (0)
Requirements: Elemental Focus Fire (1) Elemental Focus Aether (1)
Utilizing two Elemental orbs of different types, the host may combine their effects to produce harmonized spells. Equal ranks must be invested into this skill on both orbs, and both must be accessible by the core at the same time for these skills to function.
While Silent Casting was something I wanted, it wasn’t something I needed, and in the realm of wants, Synergistic Magic far outweighed Silent Casting. I quickly maxed out both of the skills on the two orbs and then disabled all my other sockets to see if I could feel anything differently.
Incredibly slowly, I pushed mana across my channels, focusing on the area between the two orbs, opening one of the switches I had placed there when I designed this but had long kept closed for fear of overloading myself. The mana trickled through the newly opened channel, flowing from the fire elemental orb into the aether; soon, I could feel the different flows intermingling and releasing further down my channels.
Focusing my thoughts on a small piece of wood on the table, I released the energy, letting it flow across the rest of my body and out through my hand. “Oxygen depart, wood ignite,” I said, the words flowing from somewhere beyond me like so many times before. Within seconds, the small piece of wood was blackened. I picked it up and examined it closely. It felt like what I had been attempting to create, but without something to test it properly, I couldn’t be entirely sure. In theory, I had just created charcoal. While I was sure there were plenty of potential uses for it, at the moment, I just let myself relish the exhilaration of having done it. Another step down the strange path Karlinovo had envisioned had been taken, and for once, there hadn’t even been a potential disaster. As a message from Corey popped up, I briefly considered that I had doomed myself with such a thought.
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>Corey: Dave, did you just change something within yourself? The mana signature felt different.
>Dave: I unlocked the ability to combine my Elemental orbs. I just tested that and one of the circuits I had designed between the sockets that I hadn’t opened yet.
>Corey: Interesting, and there was no problem?
>Dave: Not as far as I can tell.
>Corey: I wonder what would happen if we were able to create a second socket within the mallet.
>Dave: Good question, but I think before that happens, I want to add another core-controlled object as well, though we will likely need more willing cores before that is fully possible.
>Corey: I will work with the other cores more often. Do you anticipate needing them sooner rather than later?
>Dave: I wish I knew; Mel is certainly worried about what we will need on the tenth floor, and even once we clear that, I doubt that ends the incoming threats.
>Corey: I doubt that as well. I will work with them.
>Dave: Thank you. Once Traveler joins us, it may be easier for you if you include them.
>Corey: Yes, I look forward to seeing them again.
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With that done, I pulled out the book Elody had given me earlier, relaxed on my cot and started a deep dive into it. My earlier assumptions that what I had done against the Jesters had been a near ignition looked to be true. From what Karlinovo knew about Soulfire, the first step was to channel your soul directly into your mana channels, bypassing the usual reaction that refines the energy into something a person is more capable of handling.
Learning to do this posed a great deal of risk to the body, including both burning out your core as well as killing yourself, but the benefits were impressively useful. Virtually all defensive magic was designed to fight against standard mana. Soulfire would cut straight through anything like that. Karlinovo believed one of the important steps to proper control of it was someone’s presence attribute, apparently, there were some derivative attributes that helped the body handle the force. I guess it was time to stop ignoring that specific stat.
Most people assume your presence is just how well you interact with those around you, and while that can be true on some level, on a fundamental level, it’s how your soul interacts with the universe itself. The higher your presence the more you become the kind of person able to look into the uncaring void of eternity and assert your own right to claim an existence. Yell this loud enough, and sometimes the void even backs down.
Breakdown of the Soul-Core Reaction by Karlinovo
Comments
Vincent Sloan
At first I found the tables and chat windows to be jarring but I like of miss them now. Though I see how this is so much easier to manage so I think it's a good change
David Ellis
On the story itself, this is getting exciting: knowledge of physics/chemistry/etc is going to give him a whole host of "spells" that no one else can think of, and the new elemental orb combination just amplifies that dramatically.
David Ellis
I think this formatting works a bit better. But maybe you can restore a bit of the visual distinction by making the chat and table text a monospace font?
