NOVEL NEXT 64. Moonlit Conversation
The strangest stat of all is Attunement. On paper it is simple. One point of Attunement equals to five points of mana and one point of regeneration per hour. Simple and easy to understand.
The trouble begins when you consider what the word means. To attune something means to bring it in harmony or resonance with something or someone else. Attunement is the stat that most directly correlates to increased energy. So the question arises. What is one being Attuned towards? What cosmic font of energy are we being attuned to? And if we are, can it run out? And is it changing us beyond giving us mana?
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the system, otherwise so happy to reveal the secrets of skills, spells, and traits, leaves the functioning of stats to only be guessed at.
The opening of a transcript of a lecture delivered in an academy in Old Catria
\\\\Ananya's Gift: 83
In a now fallen world, there was a legend. A story of a great being, half woman and half serpent, from whose womb sprang forth all monsters. Monsters that even the gods would fear. That being was named Echidna, the mother of all monsters. And now one more seeks to walk that path and her first monster, her first spawn is you.
Born from an impossible union of the Third Calamity's biomancy, the unbound potential of a creature touched by the Unformed Chaos, and the memories of mighty primordial life, this skill has two aspects.
We Are Legion: The holder of this skill is not a singular entity but a swarm of eternally evolving organisms united by a singular Will. Each individual organism, called a Mote, can share genetic information with all others, meld and separate freely into new forms, make more of itself from organic material, absorb biological traits and skills from the biomass it consumes, heal perfectly over time by consuming mana or biomass, function as a conduit for skills and spells of the Will, attempt to infest and take over a target to make a new home for the Will greater than the sum of the Mote swarm and the target, and separately benefit from any Harmonics the Will possesses.
The Will always occupies a singular Mote or the combined form of several Motes as a host within the swarm and instantly moves to another freely as desired. The Will can use the Mote-infested corpse of an organic lifeform as a temporary shell to go beyond its current biomass limits. Furthermore, Motes combined into a single form can also count as one or several units simultaneously due to their unique horizontal genetic transfer and assimilation system. Organisms whose brains are consumed by Motes grant the Will their memories.
No individual Mote can move too far from the current host unit of the Will without getting cut off from it. The Will of the swarm constantly uses biomancy to sustain these impossible organisms and being cut off results in perishing.
For every level, the maximum range that a singular Mote can stray away from the Will increases by 0.3 meters. Current bonuses: 24.9 meters.
For We Are Many: The holder of this skill can create certain predefined templates of creatures. These are called drones. Each of these drones are mindless and always under the command of the skill holder independent of any other skills granting control or simply more mundane forms of control. These creatures can be recreated after perishing by expending biomass. Drones have the We Are Legion aspect of Ananya's Gift but with greatly diminished control and lack a Will of their own to enable transformation. These creatures can be stored within the holder of this skill as compressed biomass for easy transportation. At will, the holder of this skill can cause any drone to self-destruct with a small explosion.
Each drone has a certain point value assigned to it based on its might and complexity. Total points can not be exceeded.
For every level, add one more point. Current bonuses: 0/83. Current creatures: none
I closed the description of Medea's new skill with mixed emotions. The skill was good but seeing my own world now described as a fallen world, becoming just one of many stories of the times past that the system used for its description was… I don't think my old world was good but this just felt final in a way that didn't really put anything to rest or grant closure. It just felt sad. "Here you go, yet another fallen kingdom with its legends. Isn't it fascinating?"
At least Medea seemed to be happy with the changes. Or satisfied. I couldn't really tell the minutia of its emotions that precisely, that was assuming those emotions were even something Medea could now feel. Thinking about what Medea could feel soured my mood again. I was not ready to talk about the things it had said to me earlier and I didn't want to make it feel bad about, if it even could, for saying them so I was more than happy to distract both of us by going through its status again. My own hangups aside, I was not going to copy that skill over to Vespia. With Vespia, I wanted to see if I could get a different evolution of ERROR first. The wider a skill became, the less likely it was to evolve without a ton of levels behind it. Better to see if I could get a different evolution going for it and then have those merge together. And that meant I couldn't even use the same skills as ingredients either. Had to be creative. Thank Quiraion that Medea was strong enough now to not make that an immediate priority.
Medea was — well I was confident that it could have defeated its previous tier 5 incarnation as a tier 4 even without the drones Ananya's Gift could provide. It was that much stronger. Still, I partially took over Medea and together, we began to design the drones when we had the time and relative safety rather than risk being without the drones in an emergency. The most obvious designs could just be miniature Medeas but personally I thought something to cover it in combat would be better and that was what we did.
The first template of drones I designed were lightweight and winged. They had a mechanism spanning from their throats to lungs for spitting out Medea's acidic venom in a thin fast moving and accurate projectile. They just looked like mutated large bats, if bats had four wings, sharp talons, compound eyes, and circular mouths. They were each worth 4 points. Then came the second type. These were heavily armored beetles without flight and any offensive capabilities beyond sheer physical bulk and strength, no acid, no legs sharpened into blades. Their gimmick was that each had several of those centipede-like armored tails on their heavy backs sans the spear-like tips. These were for restraining enemies or in the worst case, being literal meatshields. 5 points each. Finally, I created something that was just a small silently flying bug with good senses for scouting and nothing else. That meant I could have something else in my own swarm. They cost 1 point each.
Good enough for now. Ultimately I just decided to name them Flyers, Crawlers, and Scouts because they were disposable and just not worth naming something cool. That, and I was creatively exhausted and just wanted to go home and take a day long nap or something to avoid stewing in my thoughts about Agitjin and Fahria.
Medea's Motes absorbed trees to get the biomass for the drones. And then I watched in fascination as the drones compressed themselves into small hard pieces of biomass resembling crystals that then embedded themselves into Medea. When the last Flyer was about to be compressed, I interrupted Medea.
'Wait. Let's test out the explosion first. You can make another afterwards.'
Medea didn't reply but the drone flew up and landed at the top of a tree some distance away. Then it popped like a balloon of gore. The tree shook for a moment before stabilizing and I could see that several boughs and most of the leaves had been blown away at a spot in its massive canopy.
Not bad but I doubted it would do anything other than stun a classer or a monster assuming they weren't complete novices without any stats. Medea echoed my sentiment. A cloud of motes swirled around the vegetation until a new flyer was born.
For every level, add one more point. Current bonuses: 83/83. Current creatures: Flyers: 4*10: 40, Crawlers: 5*8: 40, Scouts: 1*3: 3
It had taken me over an hour to design the templates and then several minutes for Medea to acquire the biomass and use it. The sun had set and I was really glad that I hadn't left it for later, only to discover in a life or death moment that drones took time to make. Now if only Medea's maximum biomass was larger so that I could actually use it as a ride since its form was not so fixed anymore. But nooo, that's too much. I still had to trundle all the way back to the city in the dark. No, I was being stupid. I could just do the Summon Swarm trick again. One piece of my mind went to Selene to begin the casting. The spell was simple and because it was system recognized, I didn't need to do it manually but expanding the mana structure to allow me to also be carried with it was always a lengthy, mana-intensive process.
It would be faster than before because I was the only passenger this time but still, I had to wait. Leaning against a relatively smooth section of Medea, I sat down on the grass and idly checked another of Medea's new skills. At least, it was strong enough to beat back any threats we could encounter out here. Probably.
NAME: [MEDEA]
CURRENT RACE: [ELDER CHRYSALID WHELP]
TIER: 4
AGE: 3
MANA: 100/100 (REGEN 20 PER HOUR)
BIOMANA TANK 1: 934/934 (REGEN 467 PER HOUR) +
BIOMANA TANK 2: 934/934 (REGEN 467 PER HOUR)
STATS:
STRENGTH: 83
CELERITY: 76
VITALITY: 90
ACUITY: 45
WILLPOWER: 47
PERCEPTION: 68
ATTUNEMENT: 20
SKILLS:
PASSIVES:
Ananya's Gift: 83
Superior Ambush Predator: 75
Acidblooded Double Biomana Reactor (!): 79
Corrosive Hyperkinesia (!): 56
Superior Aviation: 54
Toxicophagic Decay Pseudo-elemental (!!): 80
ACTIVES:
Lesser Geomancy (!): 78
Paralyzing Visage: 31
Size Modulation: 56
Greater Earthen Barrier(!): 59
Earthbone Overclock(!): 70
Harmonic Blightsinging(!): 30
TRAITS:
Swarm General of Hivemother Anya:
Awakened:
The highest level skill it had after Ananya's Gift was Toxicophagic Decay Pseudo-Elemental. Born from its own Pseudo-Elemental skill and Poison Blood Cultivation, it applied its boosts to all poison, acid, and earth skills. That, combined with the fact that it had 6 empty skill slots made me confident that Medea was going to be a terror after a good meal or three. I would have considered copying over Hivemother's Crippled Dominion and related skills but Medea already benefited from them considering that one strand of my consciousness was almost always within Medea. No, it was simply better to avoid doubling up on skills unless it gained something out of it.
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Then there was the other change; the Third Calamity related traits were all gone now. The way I saw it, there were two possibilities here. One was that since Medea was no longer counted as a spider-scorpion, those traits were removed. Secondly, the limiter ran on those traits and breaking that destroyed them as well. Whatever the case, I had yet to sense any of the instinctual antipathy Medea had for the wasps after its transformation. That meant the limiter was truly and permanently gone, right?
A branch snapped in the darkness and we froze. I couldn't see anything and I trusted Medea to at least hold its own now but no reason to be stupid. We waited for a moment before slightly relaxing. Whatever it was, it was content to let us be unmolested for now. Worst case, it was the Man in Iron and I would have to survive with my aspects on cooldown long enough for the spell to resolve. Even with Medea as it was now and Suit of Bones, I didn't fancy my chances against a focused assault. And that was assuming he didn't come prepared with a way to track mana like Kalist could. On a totally unrelated note, I briefly reopened my class selection to see what would be most immediately powerful.
'Mother, the moon is bright tonight. Look up." Medea rasped. I caught a hint of something odd in its voice but looked up nonetheless. Medea was not lying. The moon was indeed bright tonight. Abnormally so.
As I watched, the rays of moonlight shimmered in the air before sweeping across the forest floor like floodlights. Wherever the moonlight touched the grass, lightly glowing white lotuses bloomed. Night Bloom. One of those phenomena that I had read about but had not personally experienced before. Harmless by itself and relatively common, most people in the Hunting Guild claimed to witness several of them in the forests every year. They happened often but no one knew why. They just did. A subtle fragrance filled the air and I leaned back and watched with mild interest as flowers bloomed around me. They were pleasant, no portent of things to come, no weird shenanigans, no power here to gain or to fear. Just pretty flowers and a nice smell that would both disperse into nothingness by dawn.
'Mother, can this one ask a question?'
'Yeah, 'Dea.'
'When you first found this one, it did not have the stats and the skills to kill someone who had been smuggling powder through the forest, right?'
'Yes. I thought we had agreed that someone else had done it and you were simply a scavenger.' That was another problem and I had enough on my plate already to try to solve that one so long after the deed. Someone had set into motion events that directly led to some of the chaos in the city.
'Yes but this one is not thinking about that.'
'Then?'
'Did you ever find traces of the unit that birthed me?'
'Your biological mother?' I swear if Medea was developing this particular human trait.
'No, mother is mother. Sire is something else.' Medea actually sounded frustrated, not at me but at its own incapability to explain it. I nodded, recognizing that it was simply a limitation of both the Dellish tongue and English.
'I see' I said mentally while most certainly not really seeing it. 'Any particular reason you are bringing this up now?' I kept my tone casual, isolating the panic in my mind. I was not ready for Medea to announce it wanted to leave me and go live with its kind right now. I wouldn't stop it, not after being in each other's mind for so long but I didn't have to like it. I mean, I should be happy for it as long as it wasn't attacking innocent people but I was not. No, I was being stupid again. Modern spider-scorpions were solitary predators.
'Yes. This one thinks that if it could consume it and gain the sire's memories, it could repeat the process to eventually track down the local Queen of my old kind. It would surely have many beneficial skills.' I let out a breath I hadn't realized I had started holding when it began to explain its reasons. Medea didn't want to leave me, it uhh, wanted to kill its sire? If I could think of any other mythological figure other than Oedipus who was relevant, I would have regretted naming it Medea.
'Wouldn't a queen be a tier 6?'
'Yes. Or in the most exceptional of cases, it would be on the seventh echelon. That's the farthest the Heavenly One's limiter will allow however.' Yeah, no. A tier 7 would eat us for breakfast. Godtouched or not, Elder Chrysalid or not.
'This one was not saying we should do it immediately.' Medea protested. In the distance, Selene had finally stabilized the summon spell. I could use it at any moment now. Or at least until it degraded. I didn't want to go now. The Night Bloom was nice and it felt good to just relax like this alone. Away from the city where I had either people trying to kill me, trying to use me as pawns in their games, or perhaps wisely deciding that I was more trouble than worth and just maintaining a distance. In all honesty, I kind of did not even want to return.
'Mother, you are unusually silent.'
'So, which class do you think I should pick?' I changed the subject. I had to return but I was happy to steal these moments of rest. And it was a legitimate question. It was not as simple as just picking the highest levelled classes now that I was seeing things above 30. The levelling requirements turned kind of esoteric. Not to the point that I couldn't level unless I fulfilled them (those would come later) but still I could actually get experience penalties. Another reason why you didn't pick anything you had available unless you could afford the long term slowdown. But regardless, after so long, I had real choices.
Medea took a moment to answer. And in that silence, my gaze was drawn to some kind of flying insect that was hovering near one of the lotuses. It didn't have an Earth-analog but vaguely resembled a stubby dragonfly. I suppose in a hundred years or so of tasting the nectar of Night Blooms, one of its descendants might develop a lunar affinity but for now it was perfectly mundane. I smiled when it took flight again, wobbling in the air as if drunk.
'The druid.' Medea said finally. I pushed the dragonfly out of my mind and turned my attention to it. 'More magic and utility will help us more now than further growth. This one can handle direct combat better and your biomancy seems adequate enough at the moment.' I was afraid of that. Something about my recalcitrance must have leaked through because then Medea spoke in my head again.
'This one knows that we can replicate most of what it can do together but—'
'Yes, yes, it makes us better at them and the grimoire alone is worth it. I know.' I cut it off, biomancing away the blush that was threatening to creep on to my face. Sure, the argument was solid but I hated the class. The philosophy it espoused was not something I even remotely agreed with and the theme was not something I particularly liked either. I would call it too gross for me if not for the past several months. I just… I just did not like it, it made me feel dirty in a way that being a swarm of cancer-bugs or being covered in blood didn't. And that was embarrassing because I had hesitated less about potentially permanent regressions before. Even the underlying philosophy of it not being to my liking was a flimsy reason for my dislike considering I had taken classes that explicitly praised the Unaugured God before.
I had an empty passive slot and I did not want to have a repeat of Blood Mana when I had learned that apparently some passives, once slotted, could not be removed without risking death. I had learned my lesson. Going through my unequipped skills, I had only Basic Earth Education to fill that slot. It would suffice. Still, I was not ready and asked a question that I had been saving up to distract Medea for a while.
'Quick question, [LARVAL HIVEMOTHER] was one of your kind's classes, right? How does that work? You don't have class levels."
'It's complicated. We don't choose or level classes up like mother does but they exist, just beyond the reach of conscious control. We pick them automatically as we grow into our roles and specialities. The First Mother was the one who personally defined most of them actually.'
"Mhm."
'Ready?'
I was not but I picked it before I could say something humiliating and cringed as the description reopened in my notifications.
\\\\Class [FESTERFLY DRUID OF THE FIRST RING] selected
\\\\FESTERFLY DRUID OF THE FIRST RING: 1/45
The great forests of the Catrian continent date back to the times of the First Calamity itself. When elf was weak and the Living God Emperor and his Divine Line were still mortals, when the great Empire was yet to be born, from a single grove tended by dryads bent by age, sprang forth the forests that would endure the Second and the Third Calamities, endure even the wrath of the God Emperor and outlast him. And even now, the forests not only endure but grow, preventing further encroachment of the civilization of elvenkind. The forest grows eternal. Its wardens coax growth and life from the sun. Yet the forest rejects the false dichotomy imposed upon it. It grows not just through life but also through death. Every end is a new beginning. The darkness and the cold are equal to warmth and light. Without death, without rot, the soil grows sterile. Without endings, there is no space for new beginnings.
[FESTERFLY DRUID]s are the dark tenders of this delicate balance. They purge what has overstayed its welcome, twist and corrupt the flagging with new vitality, and peel away the coverings of civilization to reveal the infection beneath. The pestilent flies spread their rot and disease under your command, and yet they can do so much more. From mending wounds, to obscuring the senses, to inducing nausea and illness, to exacerbating injuries, to even the reanimation of corpses as shambling mindless husks. And beyond that, the druids of this festering branch can further dramatically empower their spells by the very rot they inflict upon life.
You, who walks in the forests and eschews armor for bone and finds kinship among the insects, you who twists life into shapes anew, who rejects humanity for the multitude of the swarm, you have found yourself a place among the filthy, the vermin, and the meek.
There are no higher forms of this class for it is only a stepping stone. And yet, in that limitation, boundless potential awaits. Study the rotten, the festered, the putrified, and you may never find yourself without the means to restore the balance.
NOTE: Due to the presence of a similar spell list and a spell list specific skill, they can be merged into a new spell list. You can refuse this merger.
NOTE: The combined spell list will exceed complexity thresholds and become a Grimoire. You can equip up to three Grimoires at a time. Spells from an nonequipped Grimoire will not benefit from system assistance when casting or be modified by any spell-affecting skills.
MASTERY BONUSES:
+10 to VITALITY, ATTUNEMENT, and WILLPOWER. +3 to all other stats
Ew. Ew. Ew. Ewww. Thank Quiraion, I had learned how to shut down my sense of smell at will by now. Still, something as mundane as flies was making me feel more disgusted than literally keeping test subjects in my house and turning myself into a body horror piece. I saw the most efficient way to kill my friends all the time but this irrational disgust was what I was struggling to power through.
\\\\Skill Blessing of the Flies learned
\\\\Blessing of the Flies: 1
You can touch any dead biomass capable of rotting to infect it with maggots that will turn into flies in 9 minutes after devouring it in that time. The number of flies that will be created depends on the physical size of the biomass. You can then absorb these flies to convert them to Putrefaction charges. The maximum number of Putrefaction charges you can hold is equal to the level of this skill.
By consuming charges, you can significantly empower spells from your Gnat Magic spell list. In addition, you will find it easier to develop new spells for that list.
Uses 10 mana per use. Uses a hundredth of the mana cost of a boosted spell in charges, rounded down with the minimum cost being 1. Current charges 1/1.
Yes. Acceptable. The class also had a passive skill that let me subsist off of dead things and other biological waste. Even I had my limits and that was beyond them. I didn't take that skill. Medea didn't need it either with how its physiology functioned.
\\\\Festerfly Magic spell List unlocked
\\\\Festerfly Magic Spell List
Mending Maggots: 40
Maddening Hum: 50
Cloud of Filth: 80
Festering Wounds: 70
Reanimate Husk: 200
Explode Husk: 40
Nothing as bad as I had feared. A somewhat gross ranged healing option, a spell that summoned a small swarm of flies that hummed at a deafening frequency that made people see spots and lose focus, a spell that conjured a persistent cloud of flies that made targets throw up while sapping their Vitality and Strength and disrupting mana, a spell that made injuries worse and dealt damage over time by infecting them with maggots, and one that raised dead bodies as shambling bloated zombies filled with flies for a time and finally one that made said zombies explode violently.
\\\\Compatible Spell Lists detected. Merge them?
Yes.
\\\\Grimoire formation commencing
\\\\Grimoire of the Flying Pestillence (Festerfly Magic/Swarm Magic)
Hasten Swarm: 25 mana
Molting: 50 mana
Silken Snare: 10 mana
Diagnose Insect: 10 mana
Enlarge Swarm: 50 mana
Summon Swarm: 75 mana
Mending Maggots: 40
Maddening Hum: 50
Cloud of Filth: 80
Festering Wounds: 70
Reanimate Husk: 200
Explode Husk: 40
\\\\Grimoire equipped
Idly I cast Enlarge Swarm on Medea. It grew a bit, more comparable to its prior tier 5 size. It stood up and took a step away from me. I dismissed the spell and it shrank down again. Then I activated my latest skill with its one charge and cast it again. Medea swelled until it was as tall as Titan had been with a full swarm.
\\\\Blessing of the Flies is now level 2!
'See? It was worth it.' Medea didn't seem smug, just genuinely excited and I winced again. Medea being right only made it worse.
'Let's just go home.'