Mage Tank

Chapter 252: Durgons and… (8)

As with many of Nuralie’s problems, the solution involved math.

Before deciding on the best delivery system for her toxins, Nuralie first needed to make sure she could actually kill the Domininth. A quarter million health was quite a lot, and it was slowly ticking ever higher with each hour that passed. Nuralie wasn’t one to rush, however, so she focused on the problem with the same patience and attentiveness as she normally would.

Her best soul toxin had a base Toxicity value of 154. Assuming that she delivered the toxin with a ranged weapon, she had enough bonuses to take that figure up to 243. Soul toxins were resisted by Wisdom, rather than Fortitude like a physical poison, and she had little to go on when determining the Domininth’s Wisdom score–or whatever its equivalent was. If she assumed that a mana pool of 5,000 equated to a WIS of 500, then her poisons would do nothing before breaching that figure.

So far as she knew, nothing had a Wisdom score that high, but she decided to use it for planning purposes. Better to be over prepared.

Her poisons worked by delivering damage equal to the Toxicity minus the target’s threshold–500 in this case. Then the value was reduced by that threshold. If she applied 1,000 Toxicity, the Domininth would take 500 damage, reduce the Toxicity to 500, and then stop taking damage.

If she managed to build Toxicity up to around 17,000 stacks, that should be enough to kill the Domininth, assuming it didn’t have a good way to cleanse the poison.

Nuralie’s skill, Hunger Shot, let her charge an attack and would fire multiple shots in rapid succession based on how long she’d charged it. It cost 1 stamina per second, and Nuralie had 220 stamina, meaning she could get 36 attacks if left to charge it for around 4 minutes. With a stamina potion she could stretch that to 37. More if she were willing to use emerald or diamond-grade potions, but she’d only resort to throwing money at the problem if there were no other good solutions.

The first extra attack from Hunger Shot didn’t require a charge due to her Cloak of the Descent, which let her use any charged skill as though it had already been charged for six seconds. Hunger Shot also added one attack from the start, meaning she was up to 39 attacks when dedicating a full stamina bar.

With 39 attacks each applying 243 Toxicity in a short enough time frame, that yielded a Toxicity value of 9,477. Then she could use Venomous Escalation to double that figure, assuming she could hit the Domininth with a spell attack. If that failed, she could double the Toxicity with Mad Experiment instead, which cost more and required her to be much closer, but worked automatically. If she hit with both, she could push the Toxicity up to 37,908.

Hypothetical values like these seldom survived contact with the enemy, however. People dodged, blocked, cleansed, used items, or were sometimes immune to her poisons entirely. The Domininth was immune to her Physical poisons, but not her Spiritual ones. The Domininth also didn’t look like it was about to dodge, but she doubted it was helpless. There were a host of other defensive measures it might possess that didn’t require mobility.

If she connected with ninety percent of her arrows and landed at least one of her multiplicative spells, that should be enough. Everything else was her margin of error. So, how would she accomplish that task?

Three-quarters of a mile was too long of a shot for her. She’d have no problem hitting a target from that distance in perfect conditions, but such an environment didn’t exist. There was a breeze rolling through the forest, sending swirls through its misty floor, and Nuralie assumed the wind speed would increase at higher altitudes, as it typically did.

To hit a target from three-quarters of a mile with a bow would require a significant arc, taking the arrow several hundred feet up and into an area where the wind speed was less predictable. Her arrows were fairly light when compared to their surface area, and the fletching would be susceptible to being caught in a crosswind. While the Domininth was massive, Nuralie needed to be certain that nearly all of her projectiles found their mark.

Her bow also didn’t have the draw weight for that kind of range. Maybe if she fired with the wind…

Nuralie suppressed a sigh as she thought back to the Ballistics evolution she’d passed on. She’d been certain that a thousand feet was plenty of range for her purposes, and being able to hit something from a mile out with any bow seemed like a waste of an evolution. That was still true, this was just an exceptional circumstance.

Even if she’d had the range with her bow, Mad Experiment required her to be within 46 feet of the spell’s target. A good deal shorter than three-quarters of a mile. The Domininth sucked the souls out of its victims from several hundred feet away, so Nuralie didn’t want to get that close.

Venomous Escalation only required her to perceive the target, but she had to assume the Domininth had excellent defenses, given its massive resource values. She just wasn’t confident that she could land a spell attack.

The ranged attacks weren’t as much of an issue, since she had more bonuses to bow attacks than spells, and she could convert all of the attacks to Holy damage using her Bow of Yearning. The Domininth was vulnerable to Holy, meaning the attacks would hit twice as hard. She only needed to deal a single point of damage for her poisons to take hold, making her reasonably confident that it was a valid strategy. She could also aim for a weak spot.

Thus, Nuralie needed to find a better way to mitigate the Domininth’s soul divergence aura so that she could sneak much, much closer. Or she could do something else.

“Something else” seemed preferable to Nuralie.

One of Nuralie’s more recent passive skills was called Spiritual Lensing, and it allowed her to activate her abilities from the position of any of her party members, rather than her own. There weren’t any party members with her in the forest, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make one.

Nuralie’s exploration of Spiritual Magic had focused on her senses and her poisons. Those were the core facets of her build. However, both Throne and Grotto used Spiritual Magic to create and control minions. Throne harnessed Undead and Spectral entities, whereas Grotto crafted golems.

Nuralie had no interest in the Undead and their pursuit could quickly result in a violation of her faith. Golems were more interesting, but she couldn’t pursue them the way Grotto had. The Core had the intrinsic skill Golemancy, which synergized with his Spiritual magicks, and his control over the golems was psychic in nature. Nuralie did not have the Golemancy skill, nor was she particularly psychic.

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What she did have was the Machinist intrinsic. She also had the Abandoned Grimoire, which had numerous entries on the creation of minions. Finally, she held a bow that was created from an essence they’d earned from killing the specter of Orexis. Given how the bow’s abilities were evolving, it was clear there was still some aspect of the avatar lingering within it. Orexis had a clear talent for Golemancy, given that he had created Etja, and the bow had a direct causal link to the avatar.

Nuralie’s first revelation allowed her to dive into the history of objects, see their connections, and explore the moments that defined them. With the Grimoire, it allowed Nuralie to see the witch who’d created the tome at work, so long as the tome had been nearby at the time. The bow wouldn’t let her do the same with Orexis–the bow as an object had little connection to Orexis–but she was learning new ways to use the revelation. She might be able to isolate or extract the divine essence itself and use that instead.

Nuralie shook her head. The bow had begun to make her uncomfortable recently, but it was an excellent weapon. She knew that some part of Orexis lingered within, especially after their near-disastrous exposure to the fragment of Hysteria. Extracting the essence would be toying with forces that were better left alone, and it was likely better that she purify the bow with Zenithar Zura’s help.

She also needed it to shoot things–and for the Holy damage–so the bow would live to see another day.

Nuralie once again withdrew deeper into the forest, tracing her steps back to a cave she’d found while scouting. There, she used one of the party’s defensive kits to create a barrier over the entrance and obscured it with a combination of color-shifting cloth and natural materials.

Once Nuralie was satisfied with her new hideout’s camouflage, she pulled out a variety of ‘spare’ parts from her work on Etja’s Zng armor, along with schematics she’d drawn up of Vaulty’s mechanical body. She’d also borrowed several of the Zng rifles for study. Two more full suits of armor had found their way into her inventory as well, and looking at all that, Nuralie realized she’d taken most of these things without notifying anyone.

Not that anyone likely cared. One-fifth of the stuff was hers, and she certainly didn’t need permission to appropriate what she already owned. Regardless, she would be advocating for a system of logging what was being taken from, and placed into, their collective armory. If someone needed something, they should be able to easily track it down. She’d be sure to remember to thank Grotto for the suite of tools he’d loaned her for working on the materials as well. The Core did have a process for checking those out, one that she’d followed.

Alongside Nuralie’s normal suite of trap-making, tailoring, and alchemy equipment and materials, the loson had the better part of a mercurial inventor’s research laboratory in her inventory. One that featured both a machine shop and a greenhouse, complete with several rare species of delightful and well-behaved frogs.

Her inventory was very full.

Now, Nuralie just needed to figure out how to create a golem of a more machine-like persuasion than what Grotto produced. Then, she’d work out how to animate it through a spiritual process that would allow it to act with at least some degree of autonomy. She’d also need to make sure it wouldn’t be susceptible to the spiritual divergence created by the Domininth, but she had ideas for a soul tether based on the connection that Grotto and Arlo shared.

Nuralie hunkered down and got to work.

*****

Nuralie’s crafting spree took place over the course of an uninterrupted twelve hours. Her Speed, Agility, and Intelligence made her a fevered whirlwind of productivity, further bolstered by evolutions that allowed her to work even faster. She could accomplish in a day what would have taken her months only a handful of years prior.

The inspiration for new uses of her Spiritual Magic, combined with her incredible pace and uninterrupted focus, led to a bevy of insights that flowed into her mind one after another. The bountiful Spiritual mana and resources of the Dungeon environment made it the perfect location for her research. At some points, Nuralie felt as though an unknown force had its thumb on the scales, allowing every experiment to proceed without error and for every attempt to yield results at the pinnacle of her expectations. The force wasn’t guiding her, simply eliminating all extraneous factors that might interfere and giving her every material advantage possible.

The Littans had said that a Dungeon could lead to a month’s worth of progress in a single day. Nuralie could do in a day what took a month’s worth of work. While her Machinist skill advanced twice–an excellent yield for the time spent–her growth in Spiritual Magic was unparalleled. The intrinsic practically screamed its way up to level 40. The progress was significantly slower after reaching the Dungeon’s recommended skill level, but she still netted another three levels before she was finished, taking her to level 43 by the time her project was complete.

For the first time since becoming a Delver, Alchemy wasn’t Nuralie’s highest-level intrinsic.

She didn’t think that would last for very long, of course. Alchemy was only two levels behind, and if she had a choice in Dungeons at any point in the future, Alchemy was certainly at the top of the list. She already had bonuses to leveling her Alchemy, and Nuralie was quite interested to see whether that would stack with an Alchemy Dungeon’s bonuses.

The level 40 evolution choices for Spiritual Magic placed Nuralie at a crossroads, which was expected. One option would allow her to acquire yet another new sense–mind sense–which would further build upon her suite of perception skills. However, it would present a significant overlap with most of what she already had. How many things possessed a mind, while at the same time had no life, no detectable magicks, no Divine presence, weren’t evil, profane, or sacred, and didn’t move? Very few, she expected.

The second option improved her mental defenses. A tempting offer, but she was already well on her way to addressing any weaknesses there through Alchemy. She also had any number of ideas for how to give herself more of an edge with new equipment.

The third choice was one that would allow her to combine two disparate parts of her build into a more unified whole.

Mechamancer

You have an enhanced connection with the technology you imbue with your spirit. Mechanical entities under your control can be constructed to possess a number of your intrinsic skills equal to the number of Spiritual Magic evolutions you possess. Intrinsic skills granted this way begin at a level equal to your own.

Further, you may focus to strengthen your spiritual connection with one of your mechanical minions, allowing you to perceive through it, guide its actions, and grant it the ability to use any of your intrinsic skills as if they were its own. You may only inhabit one minion at a time in this way.

The evolution read like a more specialized version of the ability Arlo had been granted through his amulet. It was more limited in some ways, but more versatile in others. Arlo could only share his skills with Grotto, and the Delve Core had access to the full suite at all times, regardless of Arlo’s concentration on the matter. While Nuralie had to focus to grant her full set of intrinsics to a single minion, the shared perception was a major advantage.

Plus, she could have additional minions that each had three of her skills. She would have to explore the ability to determine whether there was a numerical limit on how many she could control.

Thinking over the evolution’s description, Nuralie found that she disliked the term ‘minion’. She was in favor of using appropriate terminology whenever possible and minion was a defined term used by the System, but it encompassed a large subset of entities. The product of her recent work was similar to a golem. However, that term carried with it a number of preconceptions. She preferred something more specific.

The name of the evolution was Mechamancer, implying that she was becoming a ‘mancer’ of ‘mechas’. Mecha seemed like a good enough term, and Nuralie didn’t believe it was one in use by any other disciplines.

She sat back and looked over her new Mecha with a wave of satisfaction and a hundred ideas on how to use what she’d learned while making it. However, despite how gratified Nuralie felt, she couldn’t help but think that the Mecha was a bit… small.