The simple effects all seemed to work perfectly fine, but once I got to the level of making a handheld barrier, or a storm cloud above my hand it started to fail more and more often. After branching out again, I tried a field of magic I had no experience with, illusions. I was not surprised at all when it took me over two dozen tries to make an illusion copy of my hand floating above the real thing. So, complexity and compatibility determine the likelihood of the spell succeeding!
Dominion has increased to 12
Well, at least I’m back up to two hundred now, and I didn’t lose my second Hidden Power. I smiled inwardly, continuing my experiments while we journeyed down the road.
Chapter 31
So, at this point I should probably make a summary of what I learned from experimenting with my Dominion magic. Theoretically, its possibilities are limitless. Similar to what Krath described as the Runelord’s power, it can create the effects of any spell based on my imagination. However, it’s not as simple as that. There are several facets to this power that aid or inhibit its ability.
First, whether I know the system of magic I am attempting to use. For instance, I could create an illusion despite not knowing any illusion magic, but it has a higher chance to fail. If I am familiar with the system, and have trained in it steadily, then the results are much more favorable.
Second, the result is largely influenced by how clearly I picture the spell. Going back to that illusion example, it would fail repeatedly until I made sure to have an absolute perfect image of it in my mind. In this sense, if I was trying to cast a spell from an unfamiliar school of magic, then I might as well be writing the spell myself. Though, this aspect will likely change as my mastery of Dominion increases.
Next, to a lesser degree it can be influenced by whether I know similar magic. For instance, I know Fireball, so it wasn’t difficult to create a sustained sphere of flame above my hand that I could control. This leads back to the clarity of the image and my understanding of the magic system, I believe.
Of course, the complexity of the spell is an influencing factor as well, but I learned various other things regarding this talent. Even if a spell fails, I still spend the same amount of mana as if it had succeeded. I had been curious about that, so I attempted to cast a wide-scale illusion magic to shift the terrain into a desert. Naturally, the spell failed, but I exhausted all of my magic as normal for a tier 5 spell.
Another thing, although spells still cost mana, simple effects won’t cost me anything. From what I can tell, the definition for a simple effect is something that does not leave the range of my aura, and does not interact with anything. So, invisibility would qualify, but since flight has to actively carry me, it wouldn’t.
Thankfully, all of this experimenting furthered my understanding of Dominion, as well as giving me practical experience. This allowed me to increase its level four more times before we stopped for the night. I also received a level in Hidden Intellect, which I assumed came from devoting myself to studying my new magic.
That night, I worked on a new type of Barrier, which should work exceptionally well for keeping us safe at nights. When I finished it, the system named it Double Encampment, which seemed like a fitting name at the time. The barrier worked in two layers, a set barrier and a sustained barrier. First, the sustained barrier took half of my considerable mana regeneration to keep itself functioning, while the other half constantly built up the set barrier.
The end result of the Double Encampment was a decently powerful barrier surrounding another barrier that grew stronger over time. Considering that my mana recovery was two hundred every second, this resulted in a fairly powerful barrier. Though, since I hadn’t mastered it, the damage prevented by the sustained layer was only double the mana provided, and the set barrier only protected against half of its total.
Still, the only way to break through would be to break the first barrier by dealing two hundred or more damage, and then break the considerably stronger second layer. On average, the damage per second they would have to maintain to break it would be over two-fifty. Of course, even if they dealt twice that, it would take them the same amount of time that I had already been maintaining the barrier. The ultimate downside to this was that it used up the entirety of my mana regeneration, effectively removing me from combat.
That night, I was only vaguely aware of the repeated attacks on the barrier, but since whatever was attacking had no real hope of breaking the second layer, we manage to sleep peacefully. By the time we woke up, the barriers were still standing firm. The outer layer looked translucent and rippled like the waves of the sea, while the inner layer was an almost solid sheet of blue energy.
I wasn’t in any rush to dismiss the barrier, so we all took the time to eat a nice breakfast, courtesy of Denise. Afterwards, we gathered all of our belongings, and loaded up on the wagon. In order to practice Gravity Magic, I cast Gravity Field, holding the spell in my mind so that I could sustain it. By slightly decreasing the gravity around us, Midnight was able to pull the wagon faster than he had before.
This time, our encounters were roughly the same level as they had been the day before. Our first fight, handled by Denise, was a pack of ten Wind Wolves. Since there wasn’t a need to keep a watch at night anymore, the girls decided to just handle the monsters depending on who would be most suitable. For creatures that focused on speed, that meant Denise. There were very few things we had encountered that could be faster than her. Likewise, for creatures that rely on strength, they were passed off to Cynthia. While she might not be the strongest person around, her strength was still superhuman.
In a flurry of movement far too quick for me to follow, six of the ten Wind Wolves immediately fell to the ground, blood flowing through several long cuts that had not been there a moment ago. Next, Denise seemed to split into two forms, each going after another wolf. Though, this time at least the speed was reasonable.
On the other hand, the four remaining wolves were struck with fear once they saw the majority of their pack slain in an instant. Without even the time for rage, they immediately turned tail to run, but that too was a futile effort. The fact that Denise hadn’t seemed to move when she killed the six wolves meant that she defeated them, and then calmly moved back to her starting position before we could register her movement. Likely, this ability to copy herself was another aspect of her speed that she was using to toy with them.
Sure enough, once the wolves turned around, the two copies of Denise seemed to converge, before her form melted away. Without any other warning, the remaining four enemies fell to the ground, unable to even resist. And she calls me a cheat…
Out of curiosity, I checked Denise’s skills list, and found what I was looking for under her Speed talent.
Speed Clone(18/100 Intermediate)- This skill, reserved for those possessing superhuman speed, enables the user to create the illusion of a clone through rapid movements.
Very nice. That must be an evolution of her Shiva Arms, right? I recalled one of her skills, which allowed her to move so quickly that she could attack multiple times simultaneously. Once more, I was forced to appreciate the group we had. First, there was Denise, who was an excellent ranger and rogue archetype. Next, we had Cynthia, who was turning into a very well built tank. Finally, myself, who will hopefully become an Archmage soon. As Denise came back and hopped onto the wagon again, I was surprised to find a message waiting for me to read it.
Denise has converted Reflex 35 and Speed 35 into Hidden Agility 7
Now that’s interesting… Glancing at her character sheet, I saw that her level had dropped to 312, but the boost she received to Agility remained unchanged. So Hidden Agility required both of those? And did she just now receive it because she wasn’t able to level down before I did? I’ll admit that I was curious to see whether any more of their talents would change, now that they weren’t forced to stay at my level.
For that matter, I was somewhat curious as to what a character would look like if they received all of the ‘Hi
dden’ talents for attributes. Likely, only someone that spent an insane amount of time training purely their stats would get that. But, if they did, they could potentially take any path they wanted. There was even the chance that the ‘Hidden’ talents could combine to form an even greater level once they were collected.
With this line of thought, something else occurred to me. I’m a level 200 player, with level 375 stats… There was no real need for me to invest my stat points in any particular field. After all, my mana recovery was enough to sustain anything short of tier 5 spells nonstop in battle. And even if I did open a fight with such a massive spell, it would be less than a minute before my mana had recharged. Comparing that to a fledgeling caster, with only a one hundred mana pool and ten wisdom, they could only recover one mana every minute.
So… what should I focus on now? Looking at my stats, I seriously considered it. However, there was a single stat that was seriously low, and might have a huge effect if I managed to level it up. Luck can’t be entirely useless, right? Especially now that I have Dominion…. a high Luck stat might help me cast more easily.
With that, I resolved myself to begin training my Luck. Of course, I hadn’t received a natural increase in that stat since I joined this game, so the only way I could train it was by putting points into it every level. Still, by the time I get caught up, I wanted to have two hundred Luck. After that, I would focus on my Wisdom again until it reached a thousand.
The next attack we encountered was a monster that looked like a stone bear. At first, I believed it to be the same as the Armored Bear that appeared in the elven forests. However, the Worldlore ability informed me that its race was a lesser earth elemental. This time, it was Cynthia’s turn to go out and face the enemy. Her fights were more exciting to watch than Denise’s, but only because I could actually see what was going on.
At first, she strode out towards the elemental bear in nothing but her town clothes. Then, from one second to the next, her outfit shifted greatly, steel replacing cloth as she summoned her armor. Though, the typically small gauntlets were replaced with much bulkier ones that resembled steel boxing gloves with knuckles. Having been the one that enchanted all of her items, I recognized these as gauntlets that increased her strength. Combined with her armor, which increases all physical attributes, her strength should be increased by at least a couple hundred points.
I was slightly surprised that she chose to fight in this manner, when I knew that she possessed a large hammer that she was far more proficient with. Going by what Denise did earlier, it seemed that they were back to not taking these enemies seriously anymore now that they understood their attack patterns. “Did you guys fight one of these things when I wasn’t paying attention?”
Denise glanced over towards me, seemingly bored. “Hmm? I guess so. You were practicing your new stuff at the time, so maybe you didn’t notice. Only good thing about these things is their strong defense. Regular blades don’t seem to cut them, so I just let her deal with it.”
I nodded my head, turning back to watch as Cynthia idly walked up to the enemy. Once the two were only a few meters apart, spikes began forming on its skin, and it charged towards Cynthia. The redheaded girl, one the other hand, merely planted her feet in the ground and pulled back one of her fists. Just before the elemental beast finished its charge, she suddenly brought her hand forward in a powerful punch, causing a small shockwave to be released from the impact.
The elemental’s body stood completely still, cracks forming along its exterior, until its body shattered entirely. With a dejected sigh, Cynthia started moving back towards us. “I was hoping it’d last for at least five hits.”
“Well, that’s what you get for not holding back.” Denise replied with a chuckle. Thankfully, I had previously asked Foresight to keep an eye out for elemental essences, because it spotted one in the stone remains of the lesser elemental. With a flick of my wrist, I surrounded the essence with my mana and sent it into the Artifact World. Surprisingly, this registered as a Greater Earth Essence, despite coming from a lesser elemental.
Curious to try something, I unloaded all of my earth essences. Though, there unfortunately weren’t that many, only this new one and three normal essences that I received from Earthen Worms. From their descriptions, it was possible for creatures of similar affinities to get stronger by eating them, but I hadn’t tested it. I was pretty sure that Denise qualified as having a Dark affinity, but I couldn’t exactly ask her to eat a black marble for me.
For this, I wanted to test out a different theory. Lilith had told me that, in order to make a Hellfire Essence, I had to condense hellfire into a single point until it became a solid object. In theory, the same should be true for all essences. So, putting my considerable mana pool to work, I charged a single point with as much earth magic as I could manage.
If not for my Dominion, I doubted it would be this easy, since it allowed me to infuse my magic into my aura. So, in reality, all I had to do was convert my aura to earth magic, and then condense it into as tight of a ball as I could. As expected, the result was a small orb that started as a grain of sand, and then grew into the size of a marble. By the time I was done, it had become the same size as the other Normal Earth Essences. On the other hand, my mana pool was entirely depleted, and I had to wait for it to recover.
Starting from when my mana was around half full, I took two Normal Earth Essences, and held one in each hand. Again I focused on my Dominion magic, but this time I added a touch of Enchanting into the mix. What I was doing was pulling the energy out of one of the essences, and pushing it into the other. Thin streams of yellow light poured out of the draining essence, waving through the air to enter the other, which steadily began growing.
Once the process had ended, the result still registered as a Normal Earth Essence, though it was slightly larger. Not at all deterred from my plan, I repeated this process until the remaining Normal Earth Essences were used up. After that, it had finally grown into a Greater Earth Essence. So… it takes at least four of a single grade to advance to the next one? Okay… this is going to take me a while.
For the next ten minutes, I was repeatedly making and fusing earth essences, until I had all four Greater Earth Essences that I expected I would need to reach the next step. Sadly, the energy in each of these was more difficult to manipulate than the normal ones. This made it take over ten minutes for me to fuse two of them together, so another half hour before they had all been combined into one.
Elemental Earth Essence
Rarity: Rare
This is a tightly condensed ball of earth energies, capable of summoning an elemental to serve the essence’s owner. This elemental will start out at the lowest levels, but can evolve over time, and will remain loyal to its owner unless mistreated.
Ah… so that’s what comes next… I kinda want to know if there is yet another stage… but at the same time, I don’t think I’d be able to control it if something like Stoneheart appeared again. I couldn’t help but recall the fight that we had in the forest. While I suspected that the fight would be much different now, I wasn’t that eager to test it out.
I did, however, want to test out this elemental essence. There was just one problem, as it did not tell me how to use it. I’ll look into it next time I’m in the library… I shook my head and sighed, but began working on making essences for the other elements as well. At the very least, some of them could be used for excellent enchanting results.
The day continued on like that, and by the time we stopped I had created a an essence each for fire, water, earth, wind, ice, lightning, light, and dark. Thankfully, I managed to get a total of four more levels in Dominion, bringing it up to 20. I could hardly contain my excitement, because at this rate it would just be a few more days until I reached Dominion 30, and was able to finish my quest.
Of course, I should have known that thoughts like that raised all kinds of red flags.
The next day, I was back on the rotation to help fight off en
emies, since my magic had recovered enough to be almost at its normal levels. What I lacked in firepower, I made up for with versatility, and my Magi Guns made sure that I didn’t lack much in firepower. Still, they only let me go out against the easier groups, not wanting to risk something bad happening.
Currently, I was fighting a pair of Seven-Tailed Fire Foxes, each a bit bigger than a horse. As usual, I got out of the wagon and moved forward to meet them far enough away that the others wouldn’t be caught in the crossfire. With the Staff of Winter Storms resting on my back, and my Magi Guns in my hands, I was confident in my ability to deal with these two.
The two beasts turned their gazes towards me as I approached, letting out low growls. Unlike in typical games, monsters had no way of knowing if you were far stronger than them, or had defeated countless of their kind. If they couldn’t tell from a single glance who was superior, they assumed the answer was themselves. As such, they didn’t hesitate at all before charging at me once I was in their territory.
Now, let me explain something. It would perhaps be possible to make this journey without encountering so many fights if we took detours to actively avoid them. However, we would spend longer on the detours than we would fighting it through, and risk getting lost more easily. Not only that, but some monsters were difficult to avoid, such as Earthen Worms and Wind Wolves.
The Dive: Birth of a Hero Page 45