Chapter 24: Book 1: Chapter 11 (Part 1 of 4)

Blink.

We were back on the side of the road, in the shade of a Beech tree.

I was furious with Dean. If there was one thing I detested, it was being manipulated.

I’d talked myself into giving him a pass yesterday, excused his behaviour when he took the class choice from me.

Many others, including Shana, had stubbornly refused to accept what was happening and it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility that I would have reacted in the same manner. With that in mind, I’d concluded perhaps Dean had been acting in my best interests then.

Today was a different matter. We had adjusted to the new reality, much quicker than most, and yet he still felt the need to use trickery. I summoned my scimitar and swung with all my might at the tree.

The diameter of the Beech tree’s trunk had to be a foot at least and Scimitars aren’t designed for chopping. My strike was spectacularly ineffective, so I hit the tree a half dozen times more until the blade shattered.

“God damn it,” I yelled to the heavens.

<Things didn’t go well I take it?> Quixbix chuckled in our heads.

“Not exactly,” I huffed and sat on a smooth rock wall not far from the tree.

Shana joined me at the wall. I lifted my arm and she moved beneath it and hugged me.

<Shana seems to have a kick-ass new class and has become a Shadowborn Elf. The Shadowborn usually work well with Acheronians and make good corsairs. Why are you unhappy?> the imp probed.

I was about to explain how we’d been tricked into taking a notorious Dark magic-using class but held my tongue. Quixbix wouldn’t understand that we may have preferred to take something less suited to the imp’s desire to see us become galaxy-renowned pirates.

“I’m pissed because Dean didn’t trust us to make the right choice to achieve success ourselves. He essentially made the decision for us, as if we were helpless infants. I am the master of my destiny,” I growled out the last part with vehemence.

Shana gave me a puzzled look and I rolled my eyes upwards. She seemed to understand that I was watching what I was saying as Quixbix was listening.

“Well, it’s done, and we can’t change it,” I said, shaking off my funk. “To thrive we must adapt and make the best of it. It’s a bloody shame these Ice Blades seem a bit on the fragile side.”

I pointed at the shattered pieces of my blade lying atop the tree’s roots.

<You can use more of your Mana during the creation of an Ice Blade to increase its durability> Quixbix advised.

“I can do that? It doesn’t say anything about that in the abilities description on my character sheet,” I said to the imp.

<Oh, yeah. Sometimes I forget Earthers are new to all of this. The standard character sheet is a high-level summary of the information available. There is a lot of data, even for Civilians. When you have your sheet open if you focus on a particular ability you can get a more in-depth description of what it can do> the imp related.

“For fuck’s sake, why would they hide that from us?” I spat, my ire rising from the ashes.

<Torin, it isn’t hidden, it just isn’t displayed by default. Humans can probably understand this a bit better than most, as you had machines for calculating complex mathematical problems. In many respects, that is all the Framework is doing, crunching the numbers to determine if something is successful or not and then applying the results. That means the Framework has numerated everything about every person in the galaxy. That is a lot of unnecessary information in the majority of circumstances, so most of it is suppressed unless it’s specifically asked for.>

“There could be important things we need to know. The default should have shown us everything and let us hide what we don’t want to see ourselves,” I argued, unwilling to let my discontent at the Framework in general go.

  <Every conceivable skill you can think of is recorded, along with a litany of subskills, and then more subskills for those subskills, etc. Literally millions of entries, over 99.9% of it completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Do you really need to know how good you are at Basket-weaving or Macrame, whatever the fuck that is? Both are at zero, by the way> he snarked.

“Whatever,” I grumbled.

I left it that. Arguing with Quixbix wasn’t going to resolve my bad mood, it would likely only exacerbate it. Instead, to distract myself, Shana and I reviewed the more detailed information on some of our abilities.

My Ice Blades Mana cost was based on the size of the blade I created. The ice daggers I had made for a few people only cost five Mana. The scimitars I was using, at three feet in length, cost fifteen Mana to make and the broadsword I made for Malky cost twenty-five. If I paid the Mana cost again when I formed the blade, I could increase its durability by one. Also, provided the blade hadn’t shattered I could infuse it with more Mana later to repair any lost durability.

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There was further information which indicated that as I increased my Frost Harmonisation, the ability would improve allowing me to create other weapon types, items and even armour.

The only drawback was I couldn’t increase its durability beyond what the blade began with when it was first created.

This led to me reviewing the Mana Absorption stat. Unlike Hit Points which regenerated quite quickly at one every minute, your Mana pool refilled at the rate of your Mana Absorption per hour. For me, that was currently twelve.

My Mana Pool when full was one hundred and twenty-one. I emptied my pool of all but one Mana and created a new Ice Scimitar with a durability of eight. My pool would refill in ten hours at which point I could create a second sword with the same durability and let it refill again overnight. I didn’t have any other uses for my Mana at the moment, so there was no need to keep any in reserve.

We examined Shana’s Dark Magic Infusion ability. This allowed her to convert regular Mana in her pool to a type that was used specifically for Dark Magic. Shadowborn Elves, like Acheronians, had an affinity for magic of the Dark and Chaos varieties. This made sense, as according to the Darkwyrlds lore, Acheronians were created from shadowborn elf males using Chaos magic.

The affinities meant spells we cast from those schools had the Mana cost halved, buffs and other beneficial effects were doubled, and we had fifty percent resistance to magical damage from those sources. This came with a downside that we had an aversion to Light and Harmonic magic. This doubled the cost of any magic of those schools we tried to use. Halved any beneficial effect of those spells that were cast upon us and doubled any negative effects including magical damage from those sources.

There were twelve schools of magic. Life and Death made up the other pair of non-elemental schools and then there were six elemental schools, Fire, Frost, Earth, Lightning, Water, and Air. Thankfully, the metadata for these schools indicated the most effective healing spells and potions utilised Life magic, not Light. Although there were some healing spells from the Light school, they weren’t great to start with, so we wouldn’t lose out too much from our natural inhibition to that school.

As a Shadepath Markswoman, Shana could infuse an arrow or other projectile with Dark magic adding damage with the Dark subtype. At level one she was limited to using five Mana per arrow, normally there would be a direct one for one increase to damage but with her affinity, this became two damage per point of Mana. That was a maximum of ten extra magical Dark damage. As her levels increased Shana would be able to use more Mana and even pre-infuse the Dark damage, so she could preserve her Mana pool during combat.

We had a quick look at her Archery skill, heeding Quixbix warning and only opened that entry and not the entire skill list. Shana had a natural skill rank of seventeen in Archery which was boosted by ten with her class and bracers bonuses.

As Quixbix advised there was a lengthy list of subskills under Archery that dealt mainly with different types of bow and their sizes which could increase Shana’s overall numbers by a couple of points, but nothing major.

I looked up my Long Blade skill, which was a far less impressive natural three, bumped by ten when using my Ice Blades. This also had a hefty number of subskills. My rating specifically for Scimitars was at one.

Quixbix told me how we could review how these skills had changed over time and I was happy to see that when I started yesterday my Long Blade skill was at one and I had a zero in Scimitars. The few fights we’d had meant I was already learning how to better use the swords I’d made for myself.

The natural numbers, Quixbix explained, were simply a numerical representation of how good we were at something. His attempted further explanation of how the increases from classes and equipment were practically applied in real life flew about a mile above my head. Not because I was stupid, but it was some truly high-level metaphysics that included concepts I don’t think humans had yet incorporated into our understanding of the inner workings of the universe. We agreed to classify the phenomenon under ‘it works because it’s magic’ and left it at that.

After spending half an hour reviewing the details and talking it over with the imp, I looked at my watch and realised it was almost eight in the morning.

“I think we have spent enough time on this. Shana, we need to get going if we want to cover the necessary distance today,” I said.

We walked back up to the road. It was clear as far as I could see. There were a few cars on the road but most of them seemed to have been pulled over to the side when their engines cut out during the transition and weren’t left directly in the way. I summoned my mountain bike from my inventory and swung my leg over and sat down on the saddle.

<Wait!> Quixbix shouted in our heads.

“Whoa, no need to be so loud, dude. We can’t put our fingers in our ears to tune that out you know,” I told him, as I winced.

<Yeah, sorry about that. This is important, though. Shana is no longer a Civilian, so she doesn’t have the thousand-kilogram inventory any longer. Not to worry, you haven’t lost anything, but when you remove anything, like the bike, you won’t be able to put it back. On the plus side Shana, you now have fifteen equipment slots. Unfortunately, the bike not being Mana infused is not eligible to be placed in them>

“Quixbix,” I said with fake calm.

<Yes, Torin> he answered.

“This is the kind of thing you need to tell us about before Shana levelled up, not after the fact,” I hissed angrily and closed my eyes as I thought about it.

I looked over my inventory assessing the weight of what I had stored. I had very little excess space and there wasn’t enough of what I felt was disposable to make enough room for the bike.

“There is nothing to be done for now. Shana, I don’t think doubling up on my bike would be very practical. We will have to find somewhere to hide your bike if we need to leave it behind anywhere,” I said.

“Okay, Torin,” Shana answered and summoned one of the bikes she had in her store.

Then we were off.

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