Chapter 23: Chapter 23

“So, acquiring new abilities and spells… Any idea how to do it? I just want to clarify that what I read about getting them in the book from Chalgathi’s starter quest was accurate,” Riven asked with a sideways glance at the spider beside him. Then he started writing on a piece of provided scratch paper with a quill pen—adding to the start-up notes of usable totems, one he could take with him when the tutorial ended. The system message had claimed they couldn’t take the books, but given that this station had allowed him two pens and a couple papers, he could assume that he could take down notes and draw out the runes, a means of utilizing soul shards, and totem shapes along with ingredients as long as he could fit it on the provided material.

So far the list of Unholy variant totems the book knew about was rather small, only having come across two very basic totems he could personally use as most of the book talked about theoretical situations or Fae pillar totems. Even so, these were two totems he could create here and now before they entered the tutorial dungeon. They included a Minor Totem of Murk that slowed down enemies that entered a certain radius with an Unholy mist, and a Minor Totem of Leeching that sucked life out of creatures at a steady rate in small amounts.

Athela was busy playing with her threads and took a while to respond to his question on the topic of spells, but she glanced up at him in between fiddling with the red silk ball she’d made and grunted an answer.

“There are a couple ways to learn new spells. The first way is at random times by gaining combat levels; the system will reward you through visions that you must decipher. Whether or not you decipher the visions properly is up to you, and often it is heavily oriented toward whatever class you have. If you don’t have a class, they’re usually oriented toward what your goals may be or how you’ve performed over your life. There is a saying that your combat style will influence the way you are presented classes, but the opposite can also be said to an extent, because the system will award ability visions you may or may not decipher depending on your combat style or achievements—but also on the class you have, even if it isn’t one you want to keep. The system isn’t always fair at how it distributes these… Sometimes the world will present visions to you after gaining three levels, sometimes it’ll present it to you after twenty-four levels. Some people think this is purely due to luck, while others theorize it depends on your own actions and environment. You can also find a grimoire that explains a new spell and study the magic that way, find a teacher who is more experienced than you to explain how the magic works, or study the magic that you’ve got by experimentation. You can also find or buy spell scrolls that work the same way the abilities given by the system do—just read a spell scroll if the magic is within your given attributes and accept the ‘learn spell’ prompt to collect it into your abilities list. However, these scrolls are very, very expensive, hard to make even by master mages, and they often fail if you don’t quickly grasp the understanding it is trying to bestow upon you.”

“Can I create my own spells?”

“Absolutely, though it takes someone who fully understands the magic to do this. The worst mages are the ones that depend solely upon the spells given to them by their class visions, and the best mages end up having a solid fundamental knowledge of the magics they’re working with to better their spells or create unique ones. The system rewards creativity and hard work that way. That even applies to martial arts and miracles.”

“You seem to know a lot about this stuff after being stuck in a nether realm all your life.”

“I only know the basics. This is common knowledge among the natives of Elysium… Okay, fine. Maybe I did some studying back there in preparation for when I got a warlock master, so I lied. Why don’t you create a disc of blood for me, just a single one?”

Riven frowned in the dim light of the cave, then folded his arms. “I’m not sure I can do that. Every time I cast the spell Bloody Razors, I get two discs of crimson per cast. Though if you mean conjure two of them and use one, I can do that.”

Athela stopped playing with her red silk ball and got up on all twelve legs, pointing one of the black-and-crimson appendages directly at him and prodding him in the chest. “No, you definitely can. This is exactly what I’m talking about. You are only using the basic programming of the spell you were given and not thinking about manipulating its potential. That time you summoned four blood discs? You used the spell twice over instead of just once while pooling more mana into the single cast. I saw and felt you do it. It cost you time and additional mana for the start-up cost. If you want to be an elite among your peers—which I intend you to be because I want to stay here as long as possible and hopefully forever—you’ll need to learn these things. When we leave this tutorial, I’ll be giving you regular lessons on how to cast properly, effectively, how to consider cooldown times with combinations of your skills, and how to manipulate the magic you do have while learning how each other’s tricks work. This will all be secondhand knowledge, though, because I don’t actually use spells myself.”

His eyebrows raised, and he leaned in with a little bit of excitement evident in the smile he gave his minion. “You’re saying you’ll teach me? Can we swap our blood skills?”

“No, I just meant that so we can fight together better. I utilize martial arts—my body’s abilities are drawn out of stamina rather than the mana you use. Bloody Strings is a stamina-inducing ability. Your stat points are focused on Intelligence, building a mana pool with every stat you apply to it, while you have very little stamina pool to draw from. Not only that, most martial arts scale off physical attributes like Agility or Strength. There’d be no point even if we do share the same pillars of Unholy and Blood…unless you wish to become a hybrid-type fighter.” Athela quickly held up one of her spider legs and scrutinized him with two narrowed eyes. “And a word of advice—do not become a hybrid fighter.”

Riven’s brows furrowed in confusion, and he held out his hands to either side. “Why not? Seems like it’d be a good idea to diversify.”

She huffed. “It’s just my opinion, but utilizing a pure build is better. You have enough diversity as it is with the number of spells you’ll be able to acquire, and the higher up you go, the more experience or XP it will take from killing enemies or training to level up. Each level will become harder and harder to acquire, and if you don’t push your stats into a more narrow selection for your build, then you’ll end up finding yourself weaker than your peers who are of a similar level. Because although you may have lots of different miracles, martial arts, or spells at your disposal, they all build off different stats and all will be weaker, and that isn’t good if you end up wanting to continue growing levels and power at a steady rate. Hybrid classes always take far longer to level up—just look at your average paladin.”

“What about your average paladin? I’m from a planet without magic and whatnot—definitely no paladins in the average neighborhood, if you catch my drift.”

Athela did a spider version of a facepalm and shook her arachnid head. “Ugh. All right. Back to the basics. So there are three general pathways to power: your martial arts that typically key in and scale on Strength and Agility. The second path to power is magic or spells that scale off Intelligence and in some cases Willpower. You in particular will be using Willpower for more than just magic, though, because I’ll be needing more Willpower from you as my bonded slave in order to evolve.”

Riven ignored the slave comment completely, even with dramatic pause and an amused hiss on Athela’s part.

“Willpower will also be needed by any other minion-contracting classes, such as beast tamers, angelic summoners, or necromancers…but we’re getting off topic here. The third pathway to power is through miracles, which scale off Faith mostly—but there are a lot of miracles that also have the Luck stat incorporated into how they work.”

“Truly? You’re meaning to tell me that casting miracles can require points into Luck?”

Athela shrugged. “Yup. So again: the bare-bones foundation for martial arts is Strength and Agility, for spells it’s usually Intelligence and sometimes Willpower, and for miracles it’s usually Faith and sometimes Luck. Getting back to paladins—these hybrid idiots try to spread their limited stat points on four and sometimes even six different main stats. This usually leads to the majority of would-be paladin start-ups dying really early. Still seems to be a popular choice, though.”

Riven frowned. “Popular with who?”

“The other people of Elysium’s multiverse, of course.”

“Other planets?”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Yes.”

He scratched his head. “Can you tell me more about these other planets? That’s so fascinating, thinking that I may be eventually meeting people from elsewhere in the universe. That’s just crazy…”

“Sorry, can’t do. Against the rules. I don’t want any punishment dished out my way, no thanks. I can’t give any advantages concerning specific knowledge of the multiverse until one year in, so ask me in a year. Even now what I’m telling you with the general stuff is pushing my luck, but telling you about the other people already integrated would definitely get me a one-way ticket back to demon time-out for a century or two.”

Athela gave a helpless shrug when he glared at her, but eventually he sighed and just accepted it. It would be a stupid thing to lie about, and there was no reason Athela would gain from doing so here—at least no gain that he could immediately see. “Fine. Then why would anyone want to become a paladin if they’re as bad as you say they are? Surely it can’t just be for the diversity…”

Athela paused. “Well… There is one upside to choosing hybrid specializations. If you manage to get a good class title from the system, if you earn it from the system, you’ll find that they give out large percentage bonuses or scaling bonuses that make up for the spread-out stat points. It’s an equalizer, but getting one of those class titles is very hard to do, and it takes a lot of time, dedication, and grinding through the lower-tiered classes in order to get a paladin class worth a damn. Later on in the leveling schemes, the paladin classes are actually really good or even some of the best, but most people die before getting to that stage in the attempt. You have to survive long enough to make it worthwhile.”

“So you’re saying that paladins and hybrid classes are typically really weak early on and scale much later if they earn an evolved version of their class?”

“Yes, but we’re talking many evolutions down the line—not just one. You’re a Novice Warlock right now, for example. It’s a base class, which is really good in the early tiers, so your survival chances are high, and you’ll have a wide variety of evolution options depending on how you fight or progress. Some options may be better than others, and the system gives out better class titles to those who display competence in the lower tiers. How you behave, environmental factors, and how well you do determines what options you get. You could even stop utilizing magic entirely and start fighting with your fists, and the system would probably consider giving you some sort of brawler class completely devoid of any magic perks. It’s complicated.”

Riven frowned, rubbed his forehead, and sighed. “Right.”

“Just concentrate on putting your stats into Willpower for minion power-ups and Intelligence for your own magical pool. Then, as I said earlier, occasionally put points into Sturdiness so you don’t die so easily. At least for now, until you figure out a more specialized build specific to your fighting style. You’ll always want to put a couple points into Sturdiness here and there to keep you alive, or Perception to make sure you’re not entirely snuck up on all the time, but generally focus on Intelligence and a little less on Willpower. Trust me on this. Okay?”

“Fine. What awaits us after this tutorial, by the way? I have no idea what to expect…and so far everything has been less than friendly. Other than you, of course.”

Athela gave him a chittering laugh. “That’s for both of us to find out. All I can say with confidence is that it will likely be a version of your world.”

The demoness spider flinched as if she’d just gotten a mental shock, and she shook her head back and forth with a hiss. “That’s just a guess, though—every integration is different, and the system won’t allow me to say more than that without punishing me—and I have no intention of defying the system. Sorry.”

She paused. “Moving on to another topic I was thinking about… I know that you said, ‘Mama didn’t raise no simp,’ and you didn’t choose the Succubus because of it, and mark my words, I’m happy you didn’t, because you got me! But crowd control specialists—like the Succubus—will become very valuable to you in the future. Warlocks and most other mage types generally aren’t very mobile, and they don’t have many defensive skills unless you get lucky or reach the higher levels. In order to reach the higher levels, you need to live through the lower ones, and leveling up fast requires killing things. Therefore, your best bet to survive would be to utilize crowd-control minions that can stop your enemies from getting to you in the first place while you use your high-damage ranged attacks. So a Succubus would have actually been a very good first choice for a warlock, if you hadn’t picked me instead. That idiot with the zombie wolf had no clue what he was doing, choosing not only an undead starter minion that’s supposed to be used for hunting and tracking, but also utilizing a poor combination of skills along with a class meant to utilize numerous weaker minions when there were no resources to raise them. If he’d been smart at all, he’d have chosen at least one crowd-control ability, just like you did, and would have chosen a different class specializing in one-on-one combat before transitioning to necromancer later if that was what he really wanted. Or he would have capitalized on a minion that had long-range attacks to compliment his miasmic bolts, because he already outranged you and probably would have outranged anyone else, too. Fortunately for us, he wasn’t the brightest.”

This was actually making a lot of sense, and Riven rubbed his chin thoughtfully as the spider continued to talk. “Just to clarify, since you’re a demon under my control… Does this mean you don’t have your own stats?”

Athela shook her head and plopped her abdomen back on the table to sit. “No, I have my own stats. You can look at my status page for more clarification on the matter.”

The spider summoned her own stat page and flipped it around to show Riven what she was talking about, and he immediately realized that as a minion, her stat page was a lot shorter than his own, with a few different descriptors.

[Athela’s Status Page:

• Level 3

• Pillar Orientations: Unholy Foundation, Blood

•

Traits: Race: Blood Weaver Demon, Class: None, Adrenaline Junkie (Blood) (+15% to Agility), Naturally Agile (+7% to Agility)

• Abilities: Necrotic Venom (Blood), Bloody Strings (Blood)

• Stats: 12 Strength, 7 Sturdiness, 10 Intelligence, 38 Agility, 5 Luck, 23 Charisma, 18 Perception, 4 Willpower, 1 Faith]

Huh. So her base stat for Agility was thirty-eight, but the 22 percent bonuses she had from her traits made it really top off even higher at forty-six. That was eight free stat points.

Interesting. For her, Agility was a stat that scaled faster than the others just because of the bonuses alone…and he could see why she’d concentrated her stat points there because of it. He was even lucky enough to have one of those two bonuses, though his path on magic was already set and he wouldn’t be transitioning anytime soon.

Turning back to the scratch paper he’d been working on and glancing down at the instructions for the two totems he wanted to create, he tapped his finger on the yellowed parchment and kept a solid gaze fixed on Athela. “But this craft, if I choose to pick it up…will my Intelligence stat affect it? Or would it not?”

Athela paused, read over the description in the book, then nodded and slammed a spider paw onto the picture Riven was pointing at. “Yes, the more magic you have, the better you can make the totem. I think. A Blood attribute is needed to create this Minor Totem of Leeching as well. These things bind and unbind to the people with the required prerequisites of Willpower and pillar affinity to distinguish ownership. Totem making is actually a very rare craft, from what I’ve gathered, and you got very lucky to have it randomized to this tutorial. If it’s a craft you want to pursue, it would be both very useful and lucrative.”

“And very interesting.” Riven nodded in agreement with his hands clasped in front of him. He winced as Hakim slammed home a rather loud hammer strike from across the room and frowned their way, getting a laugh from Julie and a sorry wave from Hakim when they caught his glance. “I could definitely see myself doing this. Would you mind helping me, Athela?”

Athela nodded in contemplation atop the wooden table, then flipped the book around with one of her legs. “Sure. I’ll have to catch up because you’ve got a few hours on me, but I’ve read about these in minor detail before.”

“Yeah, that works for me—go ahead and start reading up to that point. In the meantime, I’m going to leave you to the book and try to have a go at making the totem of leeching. All the materials are here, so hopefully it won’t be that hard.”

The spider gave him a shining spider grin. “Don’t be so sure of yourself. There’s probably a reason it’s a rarer craft… despite the poor stigma it has, most people would still find totems very, very useful.”

Unfortunately, the spider proved right. Totem making really was hard, far harder than he’d anticipated.

The Minor Totem of Leeching he was trying to make was about two feet tall and made out of wood. It had to be carved into a cylindrical shape, so using a small tree stump or something like that could have probably worked, but that was just the body for it. Riven found himself using a chisel and mallet, along with occasionally pulling out his hatchet, to hollow out the totem until he could see the opposite end of his wooden cylinder and stick his hand through it. Then he stuffed a few small quartz crystals inside, which he’d actually found underneath the table in one of many drawers he hadn’t noticed earlier, dribbled some of his own blood onto the quartz crystals, nailed flat circular boards over the top of the crystals to keep them in place, and painted it red all the way around.

Apparently for this particular totem, red coloring was a necessity. It didn’t have to be painted, but it definitely had to be red.

Then after the paint dried, he attached yellow feathers, which he took from a nearby crate, around the top of the totem with a sticky resin and flour mixture. The resin dried after a while into a tar-like substance, and he switched to a yellow paint to add two additional symbols to either side of the totem—each a hollow teardrop shape with a line from the center down the middle of the bottom. When he completed the sigil, he carved divots at regular intervals in a ring around the top and bottom.

Then he took another look at his notes, placed a hand on the totem, and concentrated while attempting to channel his blood mana into it by focusing on the image of what he wanted.

Nothing happened.

He did it again, trying to focus on a pool of blood within his mind’s eye.

Nothing happened.

Frustrated, he tried to force mana into the totem—focusing on the feeling he got when he used magic but simultaneously picturing an actively bleeding corpse of one of the men he’d killed not long ago. This time, he got a prompt.

[Would you like to infuse this totem with the Blood attribute? Yes? No?]

Smiling widely at his sudden success, he selected Yes. Then he immediately turned that smile upside down as the totem literally exploded up toward the ceiling in a shower of blood as the top blew off, pelting both him and Athela in disgusting remnants of his laborious attempt. It was far more blood than he’d actually put into the totem himself, which confused him, and then another prompt appeared.

[Totem creation has failed.]

Riven muttered under his breath, wiping blood off his face and onto his clothes as he got looks from around the room and chuckles from the spider.

He did this again, taking another hour to put it back together properly, and ended up getting a notification saying he’d placed the runes improperly. Athela pointed out that they needed to be opposite from one another on each side, and he took her advice to get yet another prompt when he tried to infuse mana—saying the runes he’d drawn with the yellow paint were not adaptable to blood magic.

Looking his yellow runes over, he found that one of them had actually dripped paint down the wood before it’d dried, and it didn’t look like the original rune anymore. When he finished with this one, instead of exploding out the top, it just started leaking blood all over the countertop and remained inert without any real effect otherwise.

[Totem creation has failed.]

It was hours later, after a light lunch with the others and on his next attempt, that he finally got it to work. Well…work better than it’d been going, anyway.

[You have created an incomplete Minor Totem of Leeching. Soul shard is still required for complete autonomy and movement; enchantment and runecraft is intact. Incomplete Minor Totem of Leeching has been bound to you; unbind this unfinished totem to transfer ownership to another.]

[Incomplete Minor Totem of Leeching: Slowly whittles away at health, dealing one average blood damage per second, drawn from a single nearby enemy, eighteen-yard sensing radius. Since this totem has no soul shard, you will need to place this totem in a secure position or on ground and command it to activate for use. Targets any enemies you would consider hostile. Uncommon tier. Requirements: 2 Willpower, Blood subpillar.]

The totem’s yellow runes began to light up, turning from yellow to a dull orange glow with a few red strands of power encircling the totem in slow intervals. It was a spherical pattern that traveled through the wood of the table as if it weren’t even there and was rather mesmerizing. Riven definitely felt pride swell up in his chest at having created it. Even though he’d had a handbook guiding him through the process, even though the damage rating was rather pathetic, it was still an accomplishment to be proud of.

“The totem knows who I would consider hostile?” Riven asked curiously as he showed her the system message. “And why does this totem have a damage average on its attacks when my spells don’t? I thought that was only for items.”

Athela looked up, putting the book concerning totem making down on the table and folding her front legs sagely. “I don’t know how the totem knows. As for the average damage per strike, that’s because the runes, mana input, and materials you used were good or bad enough to average out that way. If you made another Minor Totem of Leeching, it’d probably be around the same damage but may not be exactly the same. Same goes for the sensing radius.”

Athela jabbed a foot into his chest. “The reason why your spells don’t have those numbers is because it largely depends on how much mana you channel into them. Like I was telling you earlier, Bloody Razors can come in ones, twos, threes, or any number, really, if you have the mana during the channeling. However, they can also be flung at faster speeds, can have their shapes manipulated, can become more mana dense, depend on your magic level… The list goes on. Therefore spells usually don’t have an average damage on them when looking at a status page because it depends on who the user is and how they manipulate it on a given casting… But if you really wanted to know how much damage you’re doing with a spell, there are items you can acquire that will measure the damage for testing purposes.”

“Got it. How do I test this totem out here and now, though? We don’t have any enemies around yet.”

The spider demon chuckled, then crawled off the table and walked over to an area of the room devoid of anything fragile. Turning, she waggled her arms at Riven and danced on her back legs. “Think for just a moment that you want it to hit me and see what happens! I don’t know if this will work, but—”

Riven didn’t let her finish as the totem’s glowing orange runes lit up brighter on either side. In less than a second, a strand of red light pulsed and shot out toward the Blood Weaver with respectable speed.

The spider easily dodged it, though, being far too fast to hit, but she was surprised when the strand of red light took a U-turn and followed her around the room. For a few seconds, the totem and the demon played a game of cat and mouse where the strand of red light continued to zigzag through the air as Athela dodged left and right, before she eventually went out of bounds and left the totem’s eighteen-yard radius zone. She bobbed up and down and looked at the spot on the ground where the thread of red light had smashed into the stone floor. Then she looked back up at Riven, both eyes sparkling, and literally jumped into the air with a screech of excitement. “THAT’S SO COOL!”

“I KNOW RIGHT!?”

Riven had also jumped up, and the two of them laughed as they did a ridiculous dance together and galloped in a circle.

“WE’RE GOING TO BE AMAZING!” Riven yelled over the clanging of the hammers.

“I KNOW! I KNOW!”

“MASTER ARTISANS!”

“WIDOWMAKERS AND BABY STOMPERS!”

Riven immediately stopped dancing and looked down at the excitedly shaking spider. “Baby stompers?”

“I was just kidding.”

“All right, just making sure. Stomping babies isn’t what I ever intend to do. Like, ever.”

“What if you…like…theoretically had to go to sleep…and a whiny baby was keeping you up at night? You really wouldn’t stomp it?”

“Athela. I better not catch you ever attempting to stomp a baby because, so help me God, I will strangle your little arachnid neck.”

“To be fair, when I have stomped babies in the past, it was more of a poke because my feet are so small. They didn’t die or anything like that.”

“…what the actual fuck are you talking about? Haven’t you been stuck in the nether realms?”