Mage Tank

Chapter 243: Glow Up

The week passed without incident. My idea for a smithy wasn’t anything new, and I’d commissioned the materials months beforehand. It was a quick jaunt over to Eschangal to pick all of it up and stuff it into the Closet via my inventory screen. By the time I was done, everyone at the workshop had stopped their projects to stare at me while I lifted thousands of pounds of metal one piece at a time, only for it to disappear.

I said hi to Zenithar Zura along the way, who’d been meeting with the other two Zenithars, Dal and Sakra Manar. Zura’s attendants were familiar with me and the party, but I got some funny looks from attendants of the other two when I showed up to the Temple of Deijin with a bag full of tiny cakes that Etja had made.

Zura’s people let me in over the protests of the other two groups, and the Zenithars were delighted with the treats. I quickly left them to their business managing the theocratic nation, giving the attendants a box of cookies as I made my exit. Zura’s people immediately began snacking while the others watched on in judgment. Their groans of satisfaction eventually forced the others to break decorum and try the goods themselves. I knew the cookies wouldn’t last long once they’d had their first bite.

With a crowd of satiated losons in my wake, I returned to the Closet and put the smithy together with Varrin and Xim’s help. While I was superhumanly strong, the pair of them made me look like a toddler trying to lift their father’s suitcase. Where I lumbered, they moved equipment like it was made of styrofoam and happy thoughts. We got everything assembled and in place in no time, and I got to work forging some stuff for Nuralie.

Her modifications of the Zng armor were leaving a few gaps, which we filled in with articulated bands of prismatite. We kept them thin to stay light. Nuralie used the armor’s composite fabric to create a gambeson, with prismatic cloth making up for any material missing. Nuralie made the cloth by weaving very small strands of prismatite into wool.

She wanted to avoid cannibalizing a second suit of armor, both to conserve the materials and also because she didn’t think it would be an improvement over what we were making. It had something to do with how the armor was built to manage its mana flows through specific channels, and using materials from a second suit would be like grafting a new finger onto someone’s hand.

To me, it sounded like hardware that wouldn’t operate without power. She couldn’t do it yet, so our gap-filling materials were just as good or better than inert material from another Zng suit.

Prismatite was extraordinarily hard, but injecting mana into it as I worked allowed me to manipulate it with greater finesse than I’d ever been able to do with verdantum. I also learned how to create a plethora of very small things, like screws and fasteners. I steadily improved throughout the process, and it yielded a level in Smithing without spending a single mana chip.

Your Smithing skill has increased to Level 17!

Etja was generally a pretty easy-going person, but she had a few suggestions for the armor’s design that didn’t really sound like suggestions. Fortunately, Nuralie was able to accommodate for aesthetics without adding much to the time it took to prepare the gear, and Etja also had low-level Tailoring so she could give Nuralie an assist. The majority of the work was figuring out how to modify the armor in the first place. After that, color and style were fairly trivial. Nuralie was experienced, had a healthy Speed score, and her first Intelligence evolution more than doubled her crafting speed.

Unlike Etja’s prior robes and the fancy dress she’d taken to wearing lately, the Zng set gave her full coverage.

The armor was a beautiful cerulean with turquoise highlights. It was light and form-fitting, with the armor along the arms and legs having a textured, scaled pattern. Her neck and upper chest were protected by a delicate gorget that moved like it was made of snakeskin while still being hard enough to stop an arrow, so long as it wasn’t a direct hit from a skill-enhanced shot.

She had fingerless gloves with low-profile plates along the back of her hands, while her torso and shoulders had the more robust hardshell material over thin gambeson. Boots came up to her mid-calf, with knee coverings made of the same material as her gorget, and there was a flowing skirt to protect her thighs, which hung a bit longer in the back.

She hadn’t been a huge fan of a full helm, so we went with a classic wizard hat. It had a wide brim and pointy tip, which sat askance at an angle just-so. It was the perfect vibe for a professional sorceress who knew how to relax. The body of the hat was a fully protective helmet, of course, and a quick ping of mana would make a mask drop down that was as stylish as it was imposing. The gorget extended upward to protect the back and sides of her head, but her hair hung down over it so one would only notice if they were looking closely.

Once she tried it on, she floated into the air and did a spin, skirt flowing around her. She activated the mask and took out her staff, holding it in one hand as she drew three separate wands. One was her reward from the Icon of the Psychopomp in the Descent. The other two were ones I’d made for her.

Etja wove together a series of spells using the lightest touch of mana, causing her to glow with divine light as swirls of anti-magic mana curled across her body.

She looked like an absolute badass.

“How is it?” asked Nuralie.

“It’s great!” said Etja. “Comfortable, and it moves with me. It doesn’t get in the way, and it’s a lot softer on the inside than I expected.”

[Bane silk is a prized material for its luxurious touch.]

“Why am I feeling insecure right now?” I asked. “Am I no longer the most stylish member of the party?”

“I feel like you lost that title when Varrin came back with his new armor,” said Xim.

“Varrin’s look is solid, but it basically shouts ‘I’m rich’,” I said. “Etja’s is more like ‘I’m the chillest person in this room but I can and will kill you, so watch out.’” I crossed my arms, giving the armor a final, critical look. “This speaks to me more.”

Varrin walked over and clapped me on the shoulder. “You are

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“Yeah,” I said. “No one can take that away from me, no matter how fucking good they look.”

Etja withdrew the mask to reveal a radiant smile. Her skin shifted into a glittering, clay-red material. It was a combination of the chitin from the Praying Heads we’d fought back in The Cage, mixed with elements of the Prismatic Mask she’d absorbed during the boss rush of Deijin’s Descent.

“I can still use my natural armor too!” she said. She twisted her upper body back and forth. “Not quite as comfy, but it adds a lot of defense.”

The Prismatic Mask material had been made of prismatite as well, and the mage had used Incorporate on several prismatite ingots to make its effects more potent. She could deflect line attacks–like her own death beam–from any part of her body with a thought.

“She’s a red quartz goddess,” said Xim. “I’m also feeling jealous.”

“Looks aside, this is better than any other light armor in the party by a wide margin,” I said as I inspected the gear’s final properties. It didn’t stack up defensively to something like Varrin’s gear, but no light armor would ever compare to a heavy set made by Papa Junior with all the DR that money could buy slapped on. Regardless, the end specs of Etja’s new outfit were impressive.

Prismatite-Infused Zng Carbonweave Armor

Light Armor Set

Requirements: STR 10, SPD 10, AGL 10, CHA 30, LCK 30

Effects:

+35 Physical DR

+40 Spiritual DR

+30 Divine DR

+25 Mystical DR

+20 Dimensional DR

+40 to maximum Dodge Pool

+10 to Dodge Recovery

+50 Health Regeneration

+60 Stamina Regeneration

+80 Mana Regeneration

When worn as a full set, this armor will consume mana to fully repair itself from any damage over the course of 1 minute.

Mana Capacity: 60/60

I commented on some of the weaves, and both Nuralie and Etja were happy to explain their reasoning for the choices.

“My Tailoring skill is less advanced than my Alchemy,” said Nuralie. “The highest requirement I can apply is 30, and only to defensive weaves. I am also more adept at weaves with Agility and Speed requirements, so we focused on those as much as we could.” Pause. “Etja has a 10 in both, which is enough to yield effective properties.”

“I also have bonuses to dodge from my Agility and my wand,” said Etja, waving the Wand of the Descent through the air. “Even though my Speed and Agility aren’t very high, those plus this armor should make me really hard to hit.”

“And the stamina regen?” I asked. “You don’t have any abilities that use stamina.”

“Right! I’ve been wasting that resource, and I have a lot of it since my Fortitude is at 25 now. I also never picked up another active skill after Throne’s Delve, so I decided to get Haste. Between my stamina regen and Varrin sharing his stamina regen through Deep Breaths, I can have it going every time we run into baddies.”

I brought up the description for Haste and reviewed it.

Haste

Dimensional

Requires Focus

Cost: 2 stamina per second

Requirements: Dimensional Magic 20

Your body and mind are accelerated, doubling your movement speed and allowing you to act 100% faster. Additionally, you are immune to the Slowed status for the duration.

Haste was one of those skills that was always on my ‘maybe’ list. The description made it sound incredible, but some research had shown me it wasn’t quite as juiced as it seemed at first glance. It was definitely powerful, and the movement speed bonus was multiplicative.

The “act 100% faster” was an additive bonus, however. If you were already stacking similar buffs, then it was less impactful. I wasn’t too deep into action speed bonuses, but Speed was one of the stats I was working on, meaning Haste would become less potent as I leveled. I wanted things that scaled.

For someone like Etja, it was great. Although I still had questions about the choice.

“Does Haste combo with your other skills?” I asked. Etja’s build let her mix and match her abilities in ways no one else could. I didn’t know how Haste would work when mixed in with a death ray.

“All of my spells can be AoEs,” she replied. “I’ll just use mana shaping so the harmful bits hit the enemy and the helpful bits hit everyone else. That way, I can give everyone Haste. For a little while, at least.”

The way she casually talked about not only making spells discretionary, but making individual elements of spells discretionary, made my inner jealousy demon twinge again. I put my boot on its neck and forced it back down.

“That would be abnormal for a stamina-based ability,” said Varrin. Today, he was oiling the joints of a gauntlet. “Techniques center on the self. They emanate outward to affect others, but otherwise they only augment the user.”

Etja nodded and smiled while Varrin mansplained techniques to her. Then she blasted him with Repulsion.

The gauntlet Varrin was working went flying as a wave of divine mana crashed into him and knocked him out of his chair. Etja had held back, so it hadn’t hurt the big guy, but when he sat up he was still glowing. So was the floor. And the gauntlet.

“A lot of auras are techniques,” said Etja. “I used Arlo’s auras as a model when experimenting, but they’re all spherical. The skill does need to project out from me, and auras are usually spherical, but I can mana-shape the skill so that the aura follows the shape of any AoE I make.” She fired a weak death beam at the wall. It wasn’t enough to leave a mark, but the floor glowed in a line beneath the beam. She fired another one at me, and the world slowed as the Haste buff popped up on my HUD.

“Oh shit,” I said.

“I can Haste the whole party for up to twenty-five seconds,” she said proudly.

“That’s really good,” said Xim. “More than half of our fights end in under thirty seconds.”

“Now they’ll end even faster,” I said.

Varrin stood and brushed himself off, then gestured at the ground. “I apologize for assuming you had not developed an unprecedented method of mana shaping.” The man was being completely serious as he said that. Etja stood and gave him a hug.

“It’s okay,” she said, squeezing him tightly. “Just remember that I’m a genius next time.”

“You really went and made an aura out of Haste,” I said, taking a jump to the left, then a step to the right. The line of glowing ground followed me. “Does it still require focus?”

“Yeah, I have to concentrate on each AoE individually to keep them going.” The glow around Varrin and the line on the ground both disappeared. “But I can focus on four things at once! So it’s not a problem.”

My mind boggled at that. My Focus Trinket let me have two streams of thought going at the same time and that was already too much inner monologue. I couldn’t imagine four of me chatting in my head.

Xim stepped next to me and nudged my arm with an elbow. “Are you going to make yourself some fancy prismatite armor?”

“As much as I’d like to, not yet. I want to get the next evolution in Smithing before I burn the materials.”

“A good instinct,” said Varrin. “We should make the most of what we have.”

I mumbled my agreement and got back to business. “Now that two-fifths of us are well geared up, we should probably head out,” I said. “Etja, do you think Joma is recovered enough for you to leave her for a while?”

“She’ll be okay,” said Etja. “I think the Hysteria stuff has all healed.” Her smile faded some. “Now she’s just working through everything else.”

I gave her a sympathetic nod, then pulled out my not-quite-as-cool-anymore armor. All of us got equipped, and I pointed–superfluously–at a wall to summon the portal to the northern Wastes.

Varrin and I strode out into a blizzard to continue our journey towards the continent’s tallest mountain.