Chapter 164: Hickory-Smoked Skills

Chapter 164: Hickory-Smoked Skills

Three minutes passed wherein we were treated to increasingly unhinged solicitations for outdoor grills. The first was a simple affair that used a ruby chip and a fire weave to generate flames that “ruined raw meat precisely how humans liked it ruined.” This went on until we were being offered a grill the size of a small city which was “perfect for cooking large game or enemy civilizations.”

The prices were in chips, and out of curiosity, I bought a mid-range model called the Kill n’ Grill for 3 rubies. It had an auto-cook feature that allowed me to store freshly slain beasts in my inventory and have them butchered and prepared without any further work on my part. I added building an ‘outdoor’ patio within the Closet to The List so that the party could have a barbecue and some brewskies whenever we got a little downtime.

“Why is this necessary?” asked Varrin. I assumed the Ravvenblaqs already had their grilling needs met, so he wasn’t in the market.

I am currently working on realigning System Core 1’s priorities. Thank you for your patience.

“How does this one ‘cook’ dreams?” asked Xim, squinting at her interface.

“I’m getting the Super Smoker!” said Etja. “It has 36 different smoky flavors, perfect for preserving a wide range of meats and cheeses!”

“Sounds Gouda,” I said, shooting her a pair of finger guns. We were each being offered our own customized selection based on our preferences. Targeted advertising wasn’t an Earth exclusive, apparently.

“I am on the fence about the Fish Flamer,” said Nuralie. “An emerald is very pricey, even if it can make one fish feed an entire village.”

Each of our System-made products comes with a 60-day trial period and a 900-year warranty!

Nuralie shrugged and pulled the trigger.

“I purchased the Diner Rewinder,” said Shog.

“Don’t you take your food raw?” I asked.

“It uncooks food that has been tainted by your kind’s misguided attempts at preparation.”

“I see.”

Thank you for your patronage, and welcome BACK to the Skill Zone!

You’ve just unlocked new Passive, Active, and Intrinsic skill slots, and we are here to help you fill those fuckers up!

You will be shown a selection of premium-grade Passive and Active skills that you can be sure will be the envy of your local Delver meetup group! You will then be allowed to select 1 skill from each category, so choose wisely, or live forever in regret and sadness!

“No super intrinsics?” I asked. “Also, earlier you said we had to stop at 1, but this is really 2.”

Assholes don’t get anything, and you’re dangerously close to being an asshole right now.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m not used to this being a conversation. Usually, it’s just a one-sided attack on my character.”

Good thing you’re a masochist!

Moving on!

Where would you like to start, Passive or Active?

“Can I look at both before making a selection?”

Yep!

“Okay, then let’s see those Passives.”

Passive skills! Always on and easy to forget, these skills often serve as the core of a Delver’s build. You may have suffered from a lack of direction in the past, but it’s time to nut up and pick a path! Choose 1 of the following 3 options:

1) Minion Menagerie: Your Minions gain a bonus to all attacks and all defenses equal to your Delver level plus the number of Minions you control, up to a maximum bonus of twice your Delver level. You also gain this bonus so long as you control 1 or more Minions. Minions of your Minions are considered your own Minions in addition to being Minions of your Minions.

Additionally, the cost of your skills is halved when used on one or more of your Minions.

Minions are allied entities under your direct control through some skill or ability, such as summons, familiars, golems, animated objects, and Raised Dead. You currently have 2 minions.

This first passive invited me to double down on summoning, which was something I could start working toward without much effort. I’d observed the Mystical Summon spell during the Bugpocalypse fight, and I could slot it as an active skill anytime I wanted. I also knew there were summoning skills for every school, so I could easily snag Physical Summon. Grotto could use Animate Object, which would apparently count as a minion for me as well, assuming I was reading the ‘minions of your minions’ sentence correctly. It felt like that part was intentionally phrased to be as stupid as possible, but it was admittedly the kind of stupid I enjoyed. Either way, that’d take me up to a theoretical max of 5 Minions without much hassle.

Although, that would fill up all of my active slots, even with the bonus slot I’d just unlocked. I could grab a twelfth slot from an Expansion Delve and fill that with a Minion skill as well, allowing me to have a whole horde of flunkies at my beck and call. If my new summons were half as good as Shog, it would be a potent direction to move in.

The bonus to attack and defense didn’t look massive at first glance, but it was a bonus applied to a whole group of allies, so I expected it would end up making a huge difference. It was currently a bonus of 14 to attack and defense, and I could get it up to 18 by grabbing all the low-hanging Minion fruit as mentioned.

My other actives didn’t have much synergy with the passive, however. I didn’t have any skills that were useful for targeting Minions, aside from Life Warden, but I reserved that skill for protecting Etja and sometimes Nuralie. The resource discount was going to be useless unless I also found a way to swap some of my other actives for buffs or maybe healing.

Targeting a minion to get a half-price Explosion! crossed my mind, but Explosion! didn’t target a specific entity, just a specific point in space. I also wasn’t a complete asshole–despite what SC1 seemed to think–so I didn’t want to go the route of sacrificing summons for damage. They had feelings too.

The next passive was a lot more on brand.

2) Thaumic Wall: You gain the following bonuses every Delver level:

You create a blazing Star of Helios, which rains fury upon your foes. Every 6 seconds you can evoke the Star of Helios to make 1 spell attack of your choice against all unallied entities within a number of feet equal to twice your Mystical Magic level. Star of Helios can make the following types of attacks:

Elemental Fire

Spectral

Holy

Force

Planar

Once Star of Helios is used for one type of attack, it cannot be used again for the same type of attack for its duration. These spell attacks are governed by your Mystical Magic skill level. Star of Helios expires once 5 attacks have been made with it or after 10 minutes have passed, whichever comes first.

Star of Helios and the spells it casts cannot be dispelled, countered, or redirected. If an entity attempts to do so, the counterspell fails without expending any of the counterspelling entity’s resources.

This one was less obvious, but Star of Helios meshed very well with Thaumic Wall. It took a whopping 100 mana, offset by Thaumic Wall’s grant of resources, and had a significant cooldown of 1 hour, also helped out by Thaumic Wall’s cooldown reset.

Even without all that, it looked pretty great.

First of all, it did damage from all 5 magic schools, which was something I didn’t even know was possible with one spell. It keyed off of Mystical Magic for all 5, meaning that it would lay out some serious damage, and it hit in a massive AoE with discretionary targeting. It was the best fuck-you spell I’d ever seen for groups.

Of course, that assumed my enemies would hang out for 30 seconds while I pummeled them with wave after wave of spell damage. Star of Helios couldn’t be countered (fucking righteous) but enemies could run away or–more likely–die before the spell was fully exhausted. That made it a bit of a gamble for its cost, which was the same as blasting out 20 Oblivion Orbs.

Thaumic Wall would help with the cooldown, but I hated the idea of having another spell that was only useful once per fight. Besides that, none of the spell attacks would be as powerful as a dedicated caster for the relevant school since I wouldn’t have any evolutions helping them along. I’d basically be locking myself into 5 AoE attacks for 20 mana a piece over the course of 30 seconds. I had to ‘evoke’ the Star for it to work, but I was betting I could do other things at the same time, like throw hammers, block, and teleport, so maybe it wasn’t as much of a downside as I thought.

I turned my sights on the third skill, eager to see what the System thought paired well with Auradilato.

3) Reverse Card (Aura)

Uno backward is No U

Mystical

Cost: 100 mana reserved, Variable

Requirements: INT 40, WIS 40, Mystical Magic 20

You exude an aura out to a number of feet of you equal to your Mystical Magic level plus your INT. Allies within this aura gain Spell DR equal to your Mystical Magic level.

Whenever a hostile spell you can perceive targets an ally or space within range of this aura, you may seize that spell and change its targets to any valid targets of your choice. To do so, you must expend mana equal to the total amount of mana spent on the target spell by its original caster.

If the spell creates an AoE or targets a point in space, you may decide where the AoE is placed or which point in space the spell targets. The redirected spell maintains the statistics it had when cast, such as its attack, damage bonus, mana shapes, and other effects. The range of the redirected spell is equal to the maximum range as originally cast, centered on the original caster.

Well, shit.

Ignoring the fact that Uno backward is not No U, it’s onU, the skill was outrageous.

Actually, no, let’s go back to Uno backward. Onu could open up other, more correct jokes, like “Oh nuuuuuuu!” as in “Oh, no, my spell!” OR it could be “on you” like “I take your spell and cast it on u!”

Maybe that’s all a stretch, fuck it I dunno. If the System’s only going to add flavor text to one of my choices, it should at least make sense.

Other than risking my interface being forever marred by objectively poor humor, the skill was awesome. It was an aura, so it would get buffed by Leadership and Auradilato would extend the spell DR to myself while also giving me another 5 attack and defense.

The redirect, however, was where it really shone. An enemy targets my ally with a fireball? Fuck them, now that fireball’s roasting their teammates. I get targeted by a fireball? I’m my own ally, so fuck that, the fireball’s roasting their other teammates. The enemy shoots the fireball at the ground nearby so they’re not actually targeting anyone? Fuck off, it’s targeting a ‘space’ inside my aura so now that fireball’s roasting their teammates’ friends and family! I’ll spare the pets, though. I’m not a monster.

The one drawback was how much of a mana sink the skill was. The mana reserve was big at 100, and it would tie up a fifth of my current mana pool indefinitely. Even so, that much spell mitigation seemed worth it, and it wasn’t a cost I’d have to pay repeatedly or that would continuously drain a resource like Aura of Perseverance. On top of that, I’d have to pay for 100% of the cost of any spell I redirected. I could see my mana pool dwindling rapidly as I turntabled all over our foes. Then again, what use is a resource if it’s not being deployed to utterly screw over the enemy?

The skill would also be useless against purely martial fighters, but meh. Those folks can just stab me until they wear themselves out.

Understandably, I had a tough choice before me.

Oh, not really. I knew what I liked. Ever since level zero, I’d wanted to boost my allies as much as possible while still being able to throw down. Auras made me stronger, they made my party members stronger, and they made my Minions stronger (a term I was going to absolutely wear out when referring to Shog and Grotto). I already had an insane amount of health and regen for my level, and Auradilato would give me a solid boost to both defense and offense while significantly increasing the viability of active auras.

Of course, I did not gleefully punch accept on the 2 skills until running it past everyone else. Predictably, no one was going to be mad about me handing out even more buffs, so it was a short discussion. I accepted the skills, committing myself to the auradin lifestyle.

Once that was settled, I only had to figure out my evolutions for Mystical Magic 20, Speed 20, and Intelligence 40.

Easy choices. No big deal.

I was certain my party members would have no strong opinions on the matter.