by Kyle Johnson
Aranos reached out to the departing soul, connecting to it with a mental link, tethering it so that it couldn’t escape. The next step was supposed to be to shift his end of the tether and connect it within the gem; the gem would then draw the soul down the link and lock it within its boundaries. As he connected to the fleeing creature’s soul, though, he felt its terror and sorrow, as if it knew what was about to befall it, and he realized that he just couldn’t destroy a soul that way, even an imaginary one.
Instead, he sent feelings of comfort, warmth, and reassurance to the soul, calming its struggles through the linkage. The soul’s terror eased as Aranos felt energy flow out of him, soothing the small creature, instead of power rushing into him. He was about to release the tether when energy began flowing back down it, returning to him, replacing what he had given and then overflowing into him. He channeled the excess into the gem, which began glowing faintly, and handed it to his instructor as he untethered the soul and let it move on to whatever fate awaited it.
The creature picked up the gem curiously. “What is this?” it asked, its voice hesitant. “There is power in this stone, but no soul accompanying it! How can that be?” Suddenly, the creature shrieked and dropped the gem, shaking its smoking hand.
“Accursed Lightborn!” it screeched. “The power burns! What have you done? Begone; I will teach you no more!”
Aranos felt the memory swirl and dissolve around him, and suddenly he awoke. “Huh,” he scratched his head. “I guess you can get kicked out of a Skill book if you piss it off too much. Maybe that’s how the AIs explain why some Skills are restricted.” The book in his hand crumbled and faded, vanishing from his mindscape. And I guess you don’t get to try again once the book decides you aren’t right for it. Oh, well.
Aranos saw the blinking, blue dot of a notification in his vision, but he also saw an ominous red one and a green one that indicated something unusual. Curious, he willed all the Skill gains to show up as a single notification and read through them:
Skills Gained!
You have learned the following Skills:
Skill: Leadership (Trained)
Rank: Student 1
Party members under your command gain bonuses in and out of combat.
Effect: When you are designated as Party Leader, all party members gain a percent bonus equal to [(Cha / 10) + Skill Level] to attack and defense in combat, and to movement speed out of combat. You may add one more party member to your adventuring party without penalty.
Student Level Ability: You may add an additional member to your adventuring party. You can rally party members affected by negative mental status effects. To rally party members, you must make an opposed check: your [(Cha -10) + Skill level] versus the initiator of the effect’s [(Cha -10) + Effect level]. Success means that the party members shake off the status effect immediately.
Rally Cost: 50 SP
Maximum Party Size: Under normal circumstances, an adventuring party can have four members without penalty. For each extra member above that maximum, party members suffer a 10% penalty to attack and defense (as the larger party makes coordination more difficult) and to all earned XP. This maximum can be increased by the party leader’s Charisma: for every 20 points of Charisma the party leader possesses, one more member can be added without penalty. In addition, certain Skills and Abilities can raise this maximum even further. Familiars and Bonded Companions do not count against this maximum.
Current Maximum Party Size: 4 members
Cha +1
Skill: Battlesense (Trained)
Rank: Student 1
You are skilled at analyzing a battlefield and deploying party members.
Effect: When you are designated as Party Leader or Troop Commander, all individuals under your command gain a percent bonus to attack, defense, and movement speed equal to [(Cha /10) + (Wis /10) + Skill level) when in combat. You can make an opposed check to sense the location of nearby enemies: your [(Per-10) + Skill level] versus the higher of a creature’s [(Agil-10) + Stealth Skill] or the opposing commander’s [(Cha-10) + Leadership Skill]. Success means that you can sense the presence and approach of enemies within 10’ per Skill level. Note that this Skill only allows you to sense enemies during active combat and will not reveal enemies lying in ambush or approaching out of combat.
Student Level Ability: Enemies engaged in combat with individuals under your command receive a penalty equal to the bonus provided by this Skill to attack and defense, but only when attacking or defending against members of your command. You can sense enemies during combat at 15’ per Skill level.
Per +1
Skill: Lifesense (Trained)
Rank: Novice 7
You can sense the presence of any creature with a soul within range.
Effect: You can sense any creature with a soul (any living creature, excluding plants, automatons, undead, or natives of other planes) within 10’, plus 1’ per Skill level. You can sense a creature’s death at double the normal range.
Per +1
Skill: Soulbinding (Corrupted, Trained)
Rank: Novice 7
You can prepare Soul Stones, trap souls within them, and use the energy of these souls to power your Spells, Abilities, and Enchantments.
Effect: If you have a Soul Stone prepared, you can capture the soul of any creature that dies within range of your Lifesense Skill by making an opposed check: your [(Wis -10) + Skill level] versus the creature’s ](Wis – 10) + Level]. Success means the soul is trapped in the Soul Stone, granting you Soul Points equal to the creature’s [Level x 2].
Soul Points: Soul points are the stored energy of another’s soul. They can be used to boost the power of any Spell, Enchantment, or Ability: spending 10 Soul Points will add 50% to an effect’s power and duration, 20 Soul Points will add 100%, 30 Soul Points will add 150%, and so on. You can spend Soul Points equal to or less than your Wis Stat.
Corrupted Skill: Binding a soul and using it for your own purposes is inherently a Corrupt act. You gain 5 CP every time you capture a soul and 1 CP for every 10 Soul Points you use. In addition, any Spell, Ability, or Enchantment empowered by this Skill is considered Corrupted and does 50% more damage to Lightborn or creatures with Redemption Points, but half damage to Shadowborn or creatures with Corruption Points. Corrupted items damage Lightborn or Redeemed creatures that use them, inflicting LP damage equal to the Soul Points used to empower the item.
Wis +1
Congratulations!
You have Redeemed the Corrupted Skill: Soulbinding
Skill: Soulbinding has Evolved into Skill: Soulmending
Skill: Soulmending (Redeemed, Trained)
Rank: Student 1
You can heal wounded souls, gaining Soul Points in the process.
Effect: You can ease the pain of a soul’s passage into the next Realm if the creature dies within range of your Lifesense Skill. Doing so costs you LP but gains you Soul Points: you gain [(Wis + Cha)/20 + Creature Level] (rounded down) Soul Points at the cost of 5 LP damage per Soul Point gained. You do not need a Soul Stone to store these Soul Points, as they are a part of your very soul. You can spend Soul Points to power Abilities, Enchantments, or Spells: spending 15 Soul Points will add 50% to an effect’s power and duration, 30 Soul Points will add 100%, 45 Soul Points will add 150%, and so on. You can spend Soul Points equal to or less than your Wis Stat.
Student Level Ability: Stored Soul Points provide a bonus to your mental Stats: you gain +1 to each Stat for every 30 Soul Points you have stored.
Redeemed Skill: Easing the pain of souls is inherently an act of Redemption. Easing a soul’s passage gives you 5 RP, while using Soul Points with this Skill gives you 1 RP per 15 Soul Points used. In addition, any Spell, Ability, or Enchantment empowered by this Skill is considered Redeemed, doing 50% extra to all Shadowborn or creatures with Corruption Points but only 50% damage to Lightborn or creatures with Redemption Points.
Wis +1
Quest Updated: Race to Get Ahead!
For evolving a Redeemed Skill, you receive: +250 XP
Skill Training Failure!
You have failed to learn the Skill: Soulbinding completely. This Skill book is now locked to you and cannot be used to improve this Skill further.
I didn’t know there were Redeemed and Corrupted Skills, he thought, reading over his new Skills with satisfaction. I wonder if you can Redeem an Ability? Maybe sometime, I should see what I can do with Energy Drain; I’ve got the Ability and can’t use it without getting Corruption.
The Quest that had updated was something of a mystery to him. It was a Hidden Quest, and he thought that if he completed it, he’d get some sort of race change or evolution. He had no idea how many steps were needed to complete the Quest, though; he thought he’d already updated it a half-dozen times, if not more. He supposed that it would take something substantial to grant a racial change; it would be anticlimactic if it happened when, say, he evolved a Spell or something.
He shrugged mentally and re-read the description of his new Skills more carefully. By his reckoning, his Leadership and Battlesense scores would grant his party a 20% bonus to their normal movement rate and a 51% bonus to their Attack, Defense, and movement in combat. However, he didn’t understand the maximum party size: by his calculations, it should have been around 10, between his Charisma and the bonuses for his Leadership Skill, but it was stuck at 4. That didn’t make any sense; he read the description again, but it still looked wrong to him.
“You’re missing the part about it being affected by the party leader’s Charisma and Leadership scores,” a smooth, matronly female voice spoke in his mind. Veronica, his AI guide in Singularity Online, rarely showed herself in the game world, even when he was alone in his mindscape, but she even more rarely waited for him to ask her for help before jumping in with assistance. He noticed that she never told him anything that he couldn’t figure out for himself or anything that would affect a Quest or his own Class progression, but when it was a question about how something worked? She was all over those.
“Right, and my Charisma Stat is at 92 right now,” he pointed out. “That should give me four extra members. With the two more I get from Leadership, I should be able to have 10 people in my party.”
“You would, if you were party leader,” she agreed. “You’re not, though. Geltheriel is, remember? She created the party, she added Saphielle and Rhys, and you’re just another member of her party. With her as leader, you can have four members, not counting Silma.”
Aranos grimaced; he hadn’t really ever thought about who the party’s leader was, although he should have realized it wasn’t him when he never received any notifications about Rhys and Saphielle joining the party. He’d have to talk to Geltheriel about that; maybe she had some other Skill or Ability that gave them bonuses that he didn’t know about, but if she didn’t, she’d likely agree that they’d all be better off with the bonuses they would get for letting him be party leader.
Since he was already in his mindscape, he spent some time training his Animal Handling Skill, which would make Silma stronger, and his Sense Intent Skill, which was very close to moving up to Adept level. He gained two ranks in Animal Handling and Beast Lore and one in Sense Intent from his efforts, and he rose from his mindscape satisfied with his new Skills. He quickly pulled up his shorter status to see how the new Skill gains had benefitted him:
Aranos, Lord Evenshade, Elf-Friend
Age: 26
Race: Aleen
Advanced Class: Sorcerer AscendantXP: 99270/105000
Level: 5
Class: SorcererXP: 72635/78000
Level: 12
Profession: HunterXP: 465/500
Abilities:
Str: 35 (41) Dex: 42 (48) Agil: 39 (45) End: 37 (43)
Int: 106 Wis: 114Per: 48 Cha: 92
LP: 942/942Regen: 6.2/s
SP: 13264/13264Regen: 53.3/s, 69.6/s when meditating
Stamina: N/A
After he’d stopped the Tree-heart from being enslaved by Keryth, it had rewarded Aranos with a Mythical Artifact called the Tree-Heart, which had bumped all of his Stats up by 10 once he’d absorbed it. Doing so had felt like swallowing liquid fire, but in addition to the boost to his Stats, he’d also gained 30 points to his Defense score, 30% resistance to magic, and two Auras: one that improved the LP and Stamina regen of his party and even let them regain those at half the normal speed in combat, and one that he could use once per day to give a big penalty to the Stats of all Shadowborn creatures nearby. That had pushed his Int to over 100, which boosted his Spell Power by 5% and Skill XP by 1% per point of Int over 10. It also reduced other creatures’ resistance to his magic by 25%, which he figured would eventually be very useful. He hadn’t encountered a lot of creatures that were totally immune to his magic – except perhaps the gasha he’d fought in Haerobel – but he assumed he’d be fighting more as he grew more powerful. Magical resistance was a simple way to level the playing field between monsters and parties, especially at high levels when a single Spell could wipe out dozens or hundreds of creatures at once.
In the hour Aranos had spent studying, Durlan and Geltheriel had located four small Houses that had more members than things to do with them, and all of whom were interested in being connected to the House of the savior of Eredain. Durlan assured him that he had only the minimal amount of labor that he needed, but it was enough to keep his House running until he returned from Antas.
And now, Durlan was helping them procure supplies that, honestly, Aranos would have tried to purchase from the Great Square, probably at a much higher cost. That reminded him that he needed to see about buying or collecting more plants for his Herbalism Skill, although the fact that the House of Spring was angry with him might make purchasing them more difficult. He’d have to keep his eyes open on the trip back to Eredain.
The rest of the day had passed simply enough. Aranos had finally gotten his Int and Wis training in, had spent a bit of time Enchanting, and had practiced his spellcasting, leading to some modest gains in his Spells but no new Spell ranks. By the time he’d finished, it had been time for the party to leave the Stronghold for their nightly hunt – which led to the unusual encounter with the impisas and eventually to Aranos standing around, gathering wool.
Shaking his head, Aranos returned his thoughts to the night in the Blightlands. “So, no Harvesting?” he asked, pointing to the impisas once more.
“We will Harvest their hides, yes,” Geltheriel replied. “Impisas are quite resistant to extremes of heat and cold, and their fur can be used to make clothing with similar properties. Nothing else is worth Harvesting, though; their teeth are very difficult to remove, and their claws are too weak to be useful.”
Aranos and Geltheriel set to Harvesting the corpses, the woman using a slim-bladed knife she carried, and Aranos with a blade crafted from unaspected mana using his Forge Mana Spell. It didn’t take them long – while his Harvesting Skill still wasn’t as high as Geltheriel’s, he had his Hunter Profession active, which allowed him to work more quickly and produce more from each corpse than his Skill would normally permit – and it was only a few minutes later that they had the hides tucked away in his Storage Bag.
The party returned to their hunt, deep in the Blightlands. They were farther into the Corrupted Lands than they had been before, moving in the direction of the High Road that lay to the south of Eredain, hoping to find higher-level and more dangerous creatures farther from the Claimed Lands of the elves. Aranos knew that, rationally, that didn’t make sense – in reality, the Darkness would want its strongest minions near its enemies and leave the areas farthest from elven borders more lightly defended – but in game terms, it was totally logical. Low-level players would find weaker opponents nearest the Stronghold, where safety and healing were waiting for them if they needed it. As they grew stronger, they could venture farther into the Blightlands, eventually spending days or even weeks within them hunting truly dangerous creatures.
He’d
taken advantage of this with the new Travelers, in fact, encouraging them to hunt the Forests at night and only venture into the Blightlands during the day, when there were fewer enemies and those they encountered would be weakened by the sunlight. It was a solid strategy for the Travelers to both level up and develop reputation in Eredain by turning in bounty Quests for the weaker creatures.
Silma ranged out before them as they traveled, her keen senses making her almost as good a tracker as Aranos was. The fenrin’s Stealth Skill was much higher than the Sorcerer’s, though, so it was far safer for her to travel on her own. Between her Stealth, natural speed, and the teleportation Ability the collar he’d fashioned gave her, the celestial wolf was reasonably safe from foes that would be far too deadly for even the full party to challenge.
Aranos still Tracked as they traveled, though, because with his Master-ranked Tracking Skill, he occasionally found things that the fenrin didn’t. He could track an eagle’s flight through the air if he had to – he’d done that on a whim when he was first learning how to use the Skill – so there was very little that his searching gaze missed.
So, when he felt Silma returning through their Bond, he wasn’t particularly surprised. He’d noticed a couple of traces of a group of large, cat-like creatures as they moved, and between the trails he’d spotted and the heavy scent of the creatures that he’d picked up, he knew the beasts were about a half-mile ahead of them. That meant that Silma had probably gotten as close as she dared and was coming back with more information.
As the fenrin neared, she glanced at Aranos. I’ve found a pack of creatures ahead. They look like they might have sensed us; they’re lying in ambush in a large tree. She examined the Sorcerer’s face carefully, and her eyes narrowed. And how much of that did you already know? There was no missing the accusing tone in her voice.
That there are creatures a half-mile ahead, that there are four of them, and that they move like big cats, he replied, sending her an image of himself grinning. I didn’t know they were waiting for us, though.