Chapter 87: Making the Choice

Chapter 87: Making the Choice

Choose one Spell to learn:

Ember Gale

School: Fire

Type: ToggleThis chapter's initial release occurred on the n0vell--Bjjn site.

Cost: 9 Mana/Second

—

A gust of wind blows arcane embers through the area. While active, all beings (including yourself) within 75 paces of you take 8 damage per second.

Intelligence information:

If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:

Wrath of God - School: Divine

Flamebreak - School: Fire

Elemental Appeal - School: Alteration, Arcane

Expedite

School: Alteration

Type: Activated

Cost: 55 Mana

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Increases the Dexterity of up to one being that you are touching by 20 for 30 seconds.

Intelligence information:

If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:

Wild Might - School: Alteration, Nature

Defy Gravity - School: Arcane

Sanguine Bond - School: Arcane, Curse

Heartstone

School: Alteration, Summoning

Type: Activated

Cost: 480 Mana

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Creates a Heartstone that crumbles to dust after six hours, or when destroyed. All beings within ten paces of the Heartstone become Heartful. When under the effects of Heartful, a being’s Health/Minute, Stamina/Minute, and Mana/Minute are all increased by 100%. In addition, individuals that are Heartful become rested from sleep twice as quickly.

Intelligence information:

If you choose this option, your next Spell options will be:

Brave the Elements - School: Alteration

Inspirit - School: Alteration, Divine

Bloodthirsty Blade - School: Curse, Summoning

To begin with my choices, I decided to pick a Spell. Honestly, they all looked powerful.

I almost discounted Ember Gale as not useful because it’d damage Erani and the Dryad, who both had pretty low Health, but then I remembered that Erani wouldn’t be hit as hard from it as I thought. With Angelic Shield, she’d be able to block the damage, and would really just be taking a hit to her Mana, which she had plenty of.

There were other downsides to the Spell, though. It’d be borderline useless in populated areas, since I could hit civilians, and it would also be pretty bad when I was facing single enemies. I mean, Ray of Frost dealt a bit over 2 damage for each 1 Mana spent, while this dealt less than 1 damage per Mana. Plus, it damaged me, too. Now, it could be insane value for Mana against a massive crowd of monsters, but it wouldn’t do much outside of that.

I thought back to the wasteland. With Ember Gale, I could easily kill off any Ghouls that came near us, and probably without spending so much Mana. And, of course, with the long range it could possibly get me a good amount of XP.

So Ember Gale was solid in the short-term, but could fall off pretty hard once we were out of the wasteland and into more situations where its downsides were more apparent.

Next up was Expedite. 55 Mana for 20 Dexterity was a good rate, when compared to other Stat-boosting Spells. Thinking back to Bioshift, which I’d been offered once before, that created a gap in Stats of 20 for the cost of 80 Mana. And Holy Strength, which I’d been offered a long time ago, gave 5 Strength for 15 Mana, but for half the time Expedite offered. So Expedite gave me the best value for my Mana in that respect.

However, it also offered the least amount of flexibility. Bioshift was costly, but it could also target any Stat I wanted. And Holy Strength only covered one Stat, but it could be used in smaller increments, allowing for much finer control of exactly how much I wanted to spend. So there was definitely some trade-off there for the efficiency of Stats for Mana.

But I definitely preferred efficiency over flexibility here. If I spent, say, about 500 Mana on the Spell, I could give myself an extra 180 Dexterity for the next half-minute. Thinking back to my previous experiences, I could absolutely see the opportunity in that. With that much Dexterity, I could’ve dashed through that blockade the Demons set up to trap us in the forest fire without a problem. Or flee from something like the Mountain Troll without ever having to fight it.

And, of course, it could be used in non-extreme cases, as well. Just casting one or two stacks of the Spell active on me could mean a massive boost to my Dexterity in a fight – and Spells like Noxious Grasp were useful when used in conjunction with a high Dexterity Stat. So Expedite was a solid contender here.

See a flash of the future. When activated, you will be shown what will happen over the course of the next ten minutes if you were to proceed with no information of the future.

This Talent may only be activated once per day.

Intelligence information:

If you choose this option, your next Talent options will be:

Retrograde

Time Dilation

Inverse Perception

Exponential Reclamation

Type: Passive

—

Time is warped around your Mana receptors, greatly increasing Mana/Minute the more Conjuration you have. For every point you have in Conjuration, your Mana/Minute is increased by 1%. This effect multiplies with itself. (Currently multiplies Mana/Minute by 2.35)

Intelligence information:

If you choose this option, your next Talent options will be:

Cumulative Catastrophe

Spatial Flux

Future Sight

Status Reconstruction was obviously useful in a fight. I could run in recklessly, spend all my Mana and not care about taking hits, and then right before I died, activate Status Reconstruction and get all my resources back. My main problem with it was the thirty-second time limit. Realistically, it could be difficult to effectively use those resources so quickly. Plus, if I got killed by an unexpected hit because of my low Health and I died before I could use it, I’d waste that use of the Talent – and a use of Time Loop.

Precognition was an interesting spin on Time Loop, essentially providing me an extra, but limited, use of it. I wasn’t sure how useful it’d be in my current circumstances, though, since my main usage for Time Loop was to guard against sneak attacks – which Precognition would effectively be useless against unless I got incredibly lucky.

And then there was Exponential Reclamation. It wasn’t too often you saw a Talent that only increased the regeneration of a resource, but not the maximum. But it made sense why this one had that limited functionality; it increased my Mana/Minute by an insane factor. Even by itself, multiplying something by 2.35 was a huge difference. It’d take my Mana/Minute from 18.33 to 43.13. But since it was dependent on my current Conjuration value – and not only that, but it also multiplied with itself – it was that much better.

In fact...

You have used 3 Stat Points to increase Conjuration.

Your Conjuration value is now 89.

Right. Now it would multiply Conjuration by 2.42. So it’d go from 18.87 to 45.75. Normally, increasing Conjuration by 3 would increase my Mana/Minute by about 0.5. But by taking that Talent, it’d turn what would be a 0.5 increase in Mana/Minute into a 2.5 increase – both because of the existing modifier, and because increasing Conjuration would increase the modifier, too. And, as I kept putting in more points, that ratio would only become more favorable.

So its numbers were absolutely incredible. But I could also see why its numbers had to be that good. It was just difficult to utilize a high Mana/Minute rate effectively. Increasing maximum Mana had an obvious point to it. You have a higher max, you can go into a fight with more Mana. But unless your Mana/Minute was a truly absurd number, you probably wouldn’t be able to see much of that regeneration within a fight.

Sure, I could see my Mana/Minute double. But did going from fully regenerating my Mana in an hour to fully regenerating it in thirty minutes really matter?

That was what someone else would think.

What I thought was that I had the perfect use for that extra Mana/Minute.

The Talent worked delightfully with my Mana-hungry fighting style. And with the method I’d used to kill that Mountain Troll, it’d be even better. If, say, I got my Mana/Minute up to 60 – which wouldn’t take long with that Talent – that’d mean I’d get 1 Mana every second. And when my strategy was to drag fights out to be as long as possible, I could make good use of that extra regeneration. Suddenly, as long as I could keep an enemy from killing me, I’d have an effectively infinite cap on how much damage I could do to it.

Before, if I encountered a monster with, say, 100,000 Health, it would be completely impossible to kill. But now, as long as I could keep it debuffed and survive long enough, I’d always have more Mana to cast Spells with. And that was just with 60 Mana/Minute, something that would come in my near future. Once I got to 120, 180, or even 300, I could start doing absurd things like having Noxious Grasp constantly active – I’d never have to shut it off. And those insane levels of Mana/Minute weren’t even that implausible; because of the way the Talent exponentially increased my Mana regeneration, it would only ever get higher more quickly.

And then, there was the interaction with Recursive Growth. As I got higher and higher in Level, Recursive Growth would give me more and more Stats, and thus, more and more Conjuration every Level. With that much Mana/Minute, I could Rank my Spells even faster, outlast my opponents, and survive fights even when they were mere minutes apart.

It was perfect.

So I had my two choices. Expedite and Exponential Reclamation.

You have learned the Spell Expedite.

Your next Spell options will be:

Wild Might - School: Alteration, Nature

Defy Gravity - School: Arcane

Sanguine Bond - School: Arcane, Curse

You have obtained the Talent Exponential Reclamation.

Your next Talent options will be:

Cumulative Catastrophe

Spatial Flux

Future Sight

And now, I just needed to test them out.