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

As the light of Rory and Archmund's Combo Skill washed over Beatrice, Mary, and Gelias, the room lightened. Archmund could practically see their fears dissipate. Mary's frantic dodging grew dancelike. Gelias's, effortless steps. And Beatrice's Shadow Cloak shifted form the lashings of a frantic beast to the perfect vortex of a supercell storm cloud.

As for himself, a new Skill. Right at the perfect time.

Natural for harsh combat situations. Magic, nurtured properly, flared to life, given shape and direction by stress and survival to manifest as Skills.

But a Combo Skill?

He hadn't thought it possible — it seemed a distinct magic from the Grand Working of the Omnio, which took the raw magic of contributors and shaped it into something defined by the Empire's Gems of Worldsoul. This magic drew upon the shared characteristics of each of their spells. Raehel hadn't mentioned anything like this — but obviously she wouldn't have, she was a ridiculous loner, set apart from her peers by her arrogance and intelligence and precocious knowledge of magic. And Princess Angelina — she probably couldn't get close enough to anyone to rely on shared powers.

It was lonely at the top.

"'Peasants-banding-together' is a deeply unethical practice," said the Merchant. It said "peasants-banding-together", with roughly the same vibe as a corporate warning about the dangers of unionization. That told Archmund he was on the right track.

As video games had taught him, if your path was blocked by a boss, it meant you were heading in the right direction. Never mind that video games were carefully curated experiences where the challenges were meant to be solved… eventually, not actual matters of life or death that would actually kill him if he failed.

As if on cue, the Merchant summoned another set of daggers. These were inky dark, and dripped miasma onto the carpet, which sizzled where it fell.

Now, to make sure this was a true victory instead of a false confidence. A genuine surety of success as opposed to a drug-addled delusion. He wanted to win, and it wouldn't be great if he was just giving them a happy death instead.

He was still missing a piece of the puzzle. The human gift of communication, speech, was a gift that enabled mass coordination. In the legends of old Earth, when united under one language, humanity had almost succeeded in building a tower to heaven to meet God — so God cursed them with multilingualism, so they would fight.

Speech was a gift, but it was imperfect. It was all most humans had, but in a tense combat scenario against a much stronger opponent, where every second mattered, where they hadn't trained as a team but just as powerful individuals, imprecise shouts would not be enough.

Gemmy. Insights?

Your Influence is unidirectional at the moment.

He'd dreaded hearing that. It was one thing to lead from the top, giving ironclad commands. But a true leader knew when to take advice from their subordinates, and served to filter the good ideas from the bad.

Was that even possible? He could project his will through his Influence skill, but could he receive the thoughts of others?

If he was strongly Attuned, enough to Awaken the Gemstone Cufflinks, no doubt he'd be able to massage the Skill to receive as well as give. But was he?

He had to take a leap of faith.

Gemmy, more info if you can.

Human magic acts upon the world unidirectionally. Elven magic integrates with it more tightly.

It was a stretch. The start of a half-formed thought.

"Gelias. Magic," Archmund shouted.

The elf shot him a quizzical glance before returning to his dodging. Ah, the imprecision of speech.

"Just blast out your magic!" Archmund shouted.

Gelias's eyes widened. His irises tightened. Maybe he still didn't trust Archmund, which was… understandable but regrettable. But half a second later, a wave of Gelias's elven magic burst outward, washing over his spirit.

"This is how it has always been done," said the Merchant of the Damned, droning on. "Policies and procedures must be followed. Every edge case, every possibility must be captured and documented, so that the machine always runs smoothly."

Archmund could analyze the magic, but more importantly, he could feel how it intersected and interacted with his Influence. The two were intermingled without intersecting, communicating without interfering. In website design, computer servers would have "headers", dedicated parts of their messages that said GET or POST to tell other computers what to expect from the rest of their messages. Maybe he could…

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

He sent a directed command down the line of Influence of Gelias. A risky move, given Gelias's rejection of Dungeon influence. And he'd used this power before — against Monsters in the Dungeon. He'd used this power to tell them to kill themselves, and they had, folding upon themselves into just their Gems.

But this time it was nothing more than the equivalent of a GET message, a request for information. A pulse of magic that meant "Tell me your thoughts."

For if nothing else, they could almost be intellectual equals. They had different depths of knowledge that others would not understand, could never understand. They could fight as rivals and tear each other apart by coming from different contexts that could never be reconciled — one boy reborn from another world, one boy embedded in a thousand years of this one — or they could communicate, share strategy and knowledge, and triumph.

Gelias's eyes widened. His magical outpouring tightened, sharpened, became an arrow. It flowed into Archmund — and then Archmund saw, in that sight without seeing, but in vibrant brilliance far beyond his own sight. He could feel the magic in the room against the pressure of the Merchant of the Damned, the personal magical circuits of the five living, the skeletal roots of the Dungeon and the Suppressive Rope that wound around them, and from them to him.

Combo Skill Unlocked: Battle Bonds

Gelias's eyes widened as he looked at a spot right over Archmund's shoulder, narrowing dodging an array of black bolts. He was looking right at Gemmy.

Gemmy. Can you relay thoughts?

Along a sufficient magical connection.

Tell Gelias: see if he can extend this to Rory. Our power should fill this room.

Gelias's flow of magic jumped to Rory. Then, surprisingly, Beatrice. It snapped up against Mary, but didn't take. He could get faint impressions from each of them.

They weren't out of the woods yet. Archmund could borrow Gelias's senses to feel the flow of battle, catch the bolts with his hands and drain them against his Bodily Barrier. And more importantly he knew exactly where he could strike, the gaps in the Merchant's guard, where its magic was weak enough for a mundane blow to have enough real damage — the same power behind Gelias's [Fly Straight My Arrow].

But the Merchant's tactics were changing.

"Barriers between information exist for a reason," it said. "Those who do not respect those barriers… and those who do not strictly need access to such capabilities… should have their access removed."

Unfortunately Archmund actually had to agree with it on that one. Sometimes he did care about ethics at inconvenient times.

But the Merchant swiped its fingers sideways, and a blue spiral flowed from its torso, growing larger and larger as it filled the room. He could feel it cutting into his Influence, into Rory's Inspiration, against Gelias's senses, a dull blankness, a power that cut through magic and left void behind.

But magic was as much a matter of intuition as truth.

"Beatrice. Fog!" Archmund shouted. She blasted a Fog of Darkness throughout the room. All of them could still see because she could tune her power to not affect her allies, but even if it had, they had senses beyond the physical. Her shadows coated the blue void, tightened around it, made a shell for the emptiness, a physical barrier that extended into the magical world.

"What about the red barrier?" she shouted into the darkness.

"Do that too!"

A flick of her wand, and a red barrier surrounded the Merchant. The Fog of Darkness flowed into the red barrier, clearing the air.

The Merchant swiped, claws rending at barrier, provoked into motion for the first time in the fight. Even if it couldn't tear space within Archmund's influence, it could still use its hands like mighty claws, and seams appeared. The Fog seeped out from every gash, and an indent from its blue spiral strained against the barrier.

They had maybe half a minute of reprieve.

"A master at navigating the bureaucracy can only be slowed, not stopped, by red tape," the Merchant said.

"There's a trick to this, isn't there?" Beatrice said.

"What do you mean?"

"This whole stupid level's felt like a dumb riddle, hasn't it? One that you have the secrets and solutions for. Coffee fountains. Force-feeding Monsters. What do you think the key is?"

"Your side of the family's famous for coal," Archmund said. "Black-stone."

"Now is not the time to try and get a trade deal out of me."

"I was wondering why you had darkness powers. They didn't fit into my understanding of what magic was — manipulation of the material world," Archmund said. "Fire, Water, Earth, Air. I thought, perhaps, that you might have a skill related to manipulation of Numen, the way Rory's power shocks the mind or Gelias's channels the memory. Because of how gloomy and dour you were."

Beatrice flicked her wand, and another layer of red wrapped around the Merchant. "Right, and you have heat powers because you like watching the world burn."

"But is it darkness, really? It doesn't have any twisting effect on the mind and soul. Your powers with it are physical — you can disrupt people's vision either individually or hit the whole room, and you can protect yourself with a cloak of it, and you can hypercharge your physical powers with it. If anything, you're not controlling some mysterious form of darkness, but finely controlling coal dust."

"No. That can't be," Beatrice said her voice leaning on fury. "That's. We would've figured it out by now. We would've known."

"I literally never would've had a reason to shoot you with my powers," Archmund said.

"You never shot through one of my Fogs of Darkness? Even a graze?"

"It's magic. You're controlling the motion of millions of small particles of darkness, practically conjuring them from somewhere unseen. Who's to say you can't suppress combustion as well?"

"I'm just pissed," Beatrice said. "Was the reason I couldn't catch up with you was because I thought my power was something that it wasn't? All that time sitting in dark places, meditating at night, thinking about what it meant to be of the shadows, and it turns out it's just a lot of floating coal?"

"It's just a guess," Archmund said. And it was possible she just wasn't good enough, wasn't at his level. But saying that out loud now would be profoundly unhelpful.

"But it feels right, the way magic does," Beatrice said, gritting her teeth. "Want to try it?"

"Let's."

She dilated a small hole in the barrier, and Archmund fired an Infrared Lance.

Combo Skill Unlocked — Detonate