Mage Tank

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!

“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:

+50 HP

+5 Health Regen

+10 Mana

+1 Mana Regen

+1 DR All

+1 Spell Damage

These bonuses are retroactive.

Additionally, whenever your health drops below 50%, all of your Active Skill cooldowns are reset. This effect can only occur once per day, but will not trigger if none of your Active Skills are on cooldown.

This passive was laser-guided directly into my heart. At my current level, it would give me 600 HP, 120 health regen (after being doubled from my ring), 120 mana, 12 mana regen, 12 points of damage reduction against everything, and 12 bonus damage to my spells. It would keep getting better as I leveled and was a perfect fit for my wreck-and-get-wrecked build. It was defense and offense rolled into one, with a focus on having an unreasonable amount of resources.

The cooldown reset was interesting, and would help me toss out Explosion! more often, but it wouldn’t be a major boon. I had a Physical Magic evolution that reduced cooldowns, but it wouldn’t do enough to make the spell viable for anything other than a big opening slam or finishing move. Not until I had Physical at a much higher level, at least. I could always look for more high-cooldown abilities to take greater advantage of the passive’s reset benefit, but the main draw for me was everything else the passive offered.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

I had no idea how the final option could possibly match up, but it did.

3) Auradilato (Aura): Your party members and Minions are always considered to be in range of your beneficial auras unless you choose otherwise, so long as they are on the same plane. Your auras and aura bonuses treat you as an ally to yourself, but this effect will not cause an aura to affect you more than once. You gain +5 to all attacks and defenses for each aura you have active.

Additionally, you exude an aura out to a number of feet of you equal to 20 + your INT. Allies within this aura gain +5 to all attacks and defenses.

I felt a stab of pain in my tender heart when I read this passive since it meant I had to make a hard choice. One major problem with aura skills, like my Aura of Perseverance, was the range limitation. High-level fights tended to involve large distances, and being forced to stay within a hundred feet of my allies could quickly become untenable. The first sentence of this passive immediately solved that issue by making beneficial auras have a range of ‘yes’, so long as we were talking about party members.

The second sentence was a bit tricky, but it was the kind of tricky that could break things open. An effect that targeted my ‘allies’ did not target me, since I was not an ally to myself. A decent number of auras and effects only applied to allies, so anytime I took one of those I was making a judgment call that the bonus to my party was better than choosing a skill or evolution providing a bonus just to myself. If I took this passive, then with regard to auras, it didn’t matter. I’d get shielding from Aura of Perseverance along with my party members (no matter how far away they were), and “aura bonuses” that affected allies would also affect me. That would likely include my Leadership 10 evolution, which made all of my auras stronger for allies.

Finally, the passive made my attack and defense better for every aura I had up and was even itself an aura that gave a minor boost to attack and defense. It was a cute little double dip that I appreciated, allowing the passive to be effective even if you didn’t have any other auras. It would be shit, but it would still do something.

With Who Needs a Cleric?, Aura of Perseverance, and Auradilato up, I’d have a bonus of 20 to attack and defense. Attack and defense were strictly better than damage and damage reduction such as Thaumic Wall granted. Attack increased accuracy and damage, making attacks more likely to land and increasing their power when they did. Defense helped prevent attacks from landing in the first place and also reduced damage. Thus, Auradilato had the more potent bonuses for hurting and getting hurt.

I was already leaning away from Minion Menagerie since it would take a bigger pivot to make it work. Auras and Minions seemed like a solid combo, but I didn’t have room to get serious with both. The System was right when it said I needed to settle down and pick a path. My build was fairly wide, with summons, spell-slinging, tanking, and party buffs all competing. Grotto and Shog were great, but they could hold their own without more backup and would still benefit if I went harder into auras.

The choice boiled down to ethos. Did I want to make myself as strong as I could, layering on more health, mana, defense, and damage with Thaumic Wall? Or did I want to focus on the party while still snagging some decent buffs for myself along the way? I already had a strong preference, but decided to look over the active skills on offer before locking a passive in.

Active Skills! They just work.

Try to make your build functional again with 1 of the following 3 skills!

I frowned at the System’s jab, since my build was functioning entirely well, thank you very much.

1) Hands of Thoth

Mystical

Cost: 50 mana reserved

Requirements: INT 40, WIS 40, Mystical Magic 20

Summon 2 Hands of Thoth to do your bidding. Each hand is 5 feet long from palm to fingertip and can be independently directed through vocal, psychic, or gestural commands. The hands will carry out your commands to the best of their ability until the given task is completed or you issue a new command.

The hands have a flying speed and Unarmed skill equal to your Mystical Magic skill level, health equal to 20 times your Mystical Magic skill level, and are immune to mind-affecting abilities. The hands have STR equal to your INT and deal Kinetic damage when attacking. All other stats of the hands are 1. After being dismissed or destroyed, The Hands of Thoth cannot be summoned again until you have completed 8 hours of rest.

This first choice synergized with the Minion passive that had been offered, and 2 hands probably meant they counted as 2 minions, which was cool. They had solid health, would hit people like a damn truck, and could probably grapple like a five-armed python. They were immune to mind shenanigans, which could definitely come in useful, but they wouldn’t be able to dodge for shit with an Agility and Speed of 1. Still, having 2 more bruisers on the field would be solid.

I’d taken some time during our week with Avarice to train with Etja and snag that final level in Mystical to bring it up to 20, and it was looking like that was a very good decision. Not only was it required by Hands of Thoth, but a quick scan of the other two skills showed that all of them were of the Mystical variety.

2) Star of Helios

Mystical

Cost: 100 mana

Cooldown: 1 hour

Requirements: INT 40, WIS 40, Mystical Magic 20

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.