Burnout Reincarnation [SLOW BURN COZY 'MAGIC CRAFTING' KINGDOM BUILDING PROGRESSION] (LitRPG elements) [3 arcs done!]

"I do love it when you show initiative and collaborate with one another to generate novel ideas that can drive the Dungeon forward," said the Merchant of the Damned in monotone. "Please, take all the time you need."

"I hate this fuck," Archmund said. He just wanted to kill it and be done with this already. He didn't need to be lectured on teamwork by an amalgamation of the resentful dead trying to recruit him as a peon for its managerial factory.

"You use that word in so many varied ways," Rory said. "How'd you defeat the last one that talked to you?"

"I hit it hard, over and over again, until it started making offers, and then I ignored what it said and kept stabbing. But it didn't have Influence. And we can't even reach it."

"Did you try opening a door to get us out of here?" Beatrice said.

Archmund nodded.

"What did it feel like?" Gelias said sharply.

"Slippery. Its power is overwhelming mine. It has more control over the Dungeon than I do, so… I couldn't get a grip on space."

Rory was mouthing the words confusedly. Archmund couldn't blame him — the power was utterly abstract.

"Then you just need a space where you have control," Gelias said.

"Overwhelm his Influence with your own," Mary said.

"You took them off on your own once," Rory said. "I think you can trust yourself this time, again. I trust you."

"So even if you don't trust yourself, trust him," Beatrice said.

The Merchant of the Damned mimicked a laugh. "Ha. Ha. You think you can overcome my Influence, in this place?"

Archmund slipped on the Gemstone Cufflinks, and they began to gleam bright orange. It didn't matter if he couldn't. He had no choice but to try anyways.

It was a mental Skill, like Rory's Inspire and Taunt. And the curious thing about mental magic was that it was shaped by the recipient's mind — most minds naturally resisted magic that wasn't purely beneficial, but could accept "neutral" influences with conscious direction.

"We can do this," he said. "The five of us, together, we'll make it out of here. Not just alive, but victorious."

He saw their eyes light up with flagrance of spirit. As empty and hollow as his words felt, they would get them through this. It wasn't for nothing that "fake it until you make it" was the motto of the tech world.

Gelias flared his magic, and the air around them flashed with the black-green of a shaded wood, mingled with the orange of influence. It was small and constrained, at best just hugging the five of them. "I've tinged your magic, making it appear to mortal eyes. That's the scope of your power," Gelias said. "We're each in a bubble of it."

Even when Gelias's magic faded, Archmund could still see the vague shape of the power cloaking them. Gelias had opened all their eyes.

Archmund tried to open a portal again. Now, his magic could grip this place, this office where he'd once sat, grip the small places where his magic hugged them, and he cast his senses and his memory to the upper world — but he couldn't get a grip on any of the levels. The Dungeon was shrouded in darkness. And the upper world, his home, his room, the camp where Garth Alavant no doubt awaited his return beside his father — he couldn't see it in his mind's eye at all, couldn't touch upon the space, sink his hooks in, and fold space together. It was so far, far away, so very far, a climb, an odyssey, a lifetime.

He could only open up small portals within the room, connecting one side to the other.

"Please remember that this remains a Dungeon," said the Merchant of the Damned. "It may bear your name of Granavale, but it is first and foremost a Dungeon. You may have managed it for a time, but you have not conquered it."

"We're stuck," Archmund here. "We have to fight."

"You don't have to fight," said the Merchant of the Damned. "You could simply accept your write-ups for insubordination and return to gainful employment."

"Yeah," Beatrice said grimly. "Looks like we have to fight."

"Ungrateful brats."

The words should have been angry. But they were all said in the same impassive tone, as if nothing more than an automaton.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The Merchant spun up its hands and materialized a dark crystal, a massive dart that boiled and pulsed. A giant version of the one that had struck down Mary, but boiling with even more power and poison.

"All, dodge!"

The five of them split. Each of them had enough defensive tactics to survive a hit, and right now they were all still on their feet. Archmund wanted to see what this weapon was made of, and anyways he had his Bodily Barrier. He could absorb hits — Mary's defenses were oriented on dodging them. But no. It was possible it could sneak past whatever defenses he had — he remembered how corrosive it had been to Mary.

"Beatrice, red barrier!"

Beatrice cast a crimson red barrier in front of the path of the giant black dart. The Merchant twisted its hand, and the barrier strained and thinned — but it didn't break cleanly in two. It split into six frayed bits, still slightly connected, until the dart tore it apart wholly. Archmund sidestepped the dart and it crashed into the wall behind him.

Gemmy. Insights?

Visualize the magic.

Archmund tuned his sight to the magical instead of the physical and saw the magical flow of his Influence Skill. There was a stream of warm orange light running from him to each of his friends. Each stream perfectly intersected with the largest chunks of Beatrice's red barrier. He could only watch for a brief second, though — the Merchant kept firing crystal darts. Now that the five of them had scattered, the Merchant spun around, launching darts in all directions across the room.

But they were, for now, easy enough to stop. His Deflection was more than enough to block the darts.

He couldn't bend space within the Merchant of the Damned's domain, but its power to bend space was similarly weak within his Influence. Which made perfect sense. Otherwise, you could just use a power over space to bisect people, tear them apart along their spines.

That would be key. He just needed to figure out how.

Gelias and Mary dodged the bolts as they came — a risky possibility, but Archmund supposed Mary no longer fully trusted the defensive capabilities of her Gemstone Rapier — while Beatrice had vanished into the shadows, barely perceptible as a shimmer of magic, as Rory raised his staff to a Shielding Spin.

Yet Archmund's thoughts weren't coming as quickly as they could. His racing thoughts, normally pervasive and unyielding, had slowed. Not to a crawl, not to a trickle, but enough that he could sense silence in his own mind. Was this the effect of the Suppression? Calming his racing thoughts, his wild instincts, the irrational ideas that sometimes were flashes of genius?

Clearly not, lmao. (That was old Earth slang for "laughing my ass off".) If anything not having access to his Gem bonuses was more like not having access to Google, or maybe an AI assistant.

Gemmy. Insights?

Your Influence needs a signal booster.

Was Gemmy being laconic, or was it also diminished by the Suppression? It didn't matter.

Signal boosters. What could possibly work as that, though?

His eyes flashed to Rory's staff, spinning so fast it looked like a solid disk, the lanyard at the ends flung straight by centripetal force. Would his Taunt even work on the Merchant of the Damned?

No. A Monster with such dense power would have sufficiently strong mental defenses.

Gemmy, could you get me a stat estimate?

Gemmy gave him some truly exorbitant numbers, similar to the Monsters he'd seen. 30s. 40s. 50s.

Those are five times higher than ours. How screwed are we?

I cannot comment on how "screwed" we are likely to be. However, note that if you were to die, this form of my existence would likely cease to exist in turn. Therefore, I am incentivized to keep you alive.

Great. Thanks.

But the fight had always had some aspects of hopelessness. There were reasons to believe they could win anyways. Individually they might be weak, but they had a numbers advantage. Plus, while the living used their magic to protect themselves through techniques like Bodily Barrier, Monsters expended their very being. Monsters had no existence outside of magic. So if you attacked them, even if superficially there seemed to be no change, the longer you lasted the better you did. This was an application of the Lindy Rule, which stated that you could expect a thing to last into the future for as long as it had survived in the past.

But the one disadvantage was that their stat total was spread across five different people, and there was no way the stats added linearly. If one of them got hit, it would hurt. It wouldn't just chip off a bit of their fighting strength, it might take one of them out entirely.

Unless…

Most minds resisted magic that wasn't purely beneficial, but they welcomed magic that was. Another thing to investigate — if it was cultural, if the mind could be tricked, how this interacted with the Disguise magic of the Omnios.

Right now, his Influence was reaching his friends, and rendering the Monster's power weak. But that was geometrically vulnerable. They made four lines to him.

He needed more points.

"Rory! Inspire!"

Rory's Gemstone Quarterstaff flashed the brilliant red of fresh blood. It was his own power, flowing out of him like a beacon. A symbol of who he was and what he wanted his life to stand for.

And Archmund met him where he was. He shaped his Influence, imbued it with his thoughts about Rory specifically, and sent those thoughts along their Influence-link like directing magic into a Gem.

Rory had so many things Archmund didn't. He was happy with his lot in life. He was glad to serve people he held dear to his heart, Beatrice and Archmund. He viewed Archmund with genuine kindness and grace, even despite his selfishness and caprice.

And Archmund hated the charity of it, and was jealous of the kindness of it, and was disgusted at his own willingness to take advantage of it, and admired the impulse for it so deeply.

He was glad Rory could bear these things, if he could not himself. For Rory had faced his worst impulses and accepted him as a friend nevertheless.

He wondered for a second if this plan would fail, if Rory would reject his magic.

But the red of his staff suddenly flared the bright orange of the sun at dawn. Archmund felt a surge of strength, confidence, self-worth and assurance.

In his magic vision, three new streams of Influence erupted, tinted red, connecting Rory to Beatrice, Mary, and Gelias. Slowly, Rory's Inspire seeped out to fill the space between the connections. It would take some time, but together they could envelop the room in their power.

Combo Skill Unlocked: Inspirational Influence