NOVEL NEXT Chapter 91 – A new elemental, a little toy and defensive capabilities.
John’s budget after selling all his Loot and adding the money dropped: 283’719,25$
“So.” Rave sat down next to him in the videogame room at her house, “What do ya want to buy exactly?”
“Mhm, I have a small list of things. First off, I need some way to deal with multiple enemies more effectively.” Mana Ray was satisfyingly powerful when it came to one enemy. Gnome was a wonderful multipurpose tool: she was good at defending him, her crowd control was pretty good and her offensive power could be stunning. However, using her offensively was not very cost effective and her abilities were severely limited by the environment. In the forest, she had been incredibly strong but, in the dungeon, or the encounter with Travolta she was either lacklustre or needed a long wind-up time. Eventually he would fight somewhere there was no dirt around.
The elementals he had his eyes on were therefore wind or fire. Just buying all the basic elementals at once and being done with it was an option. However, he wanted to learn one thing after the other instead of rushing things along. Build a strong foundation of understanding before he wasted his mana in some flashy quad-elemental moves that ultimately nullified themselves, that was his thought process.
“So, wind or fire…” John mumbled and tapped the mouse with his index finger as he swiped back and forth between the two. Both of them were always available, that was the most important thing. Wind was more about disruption and finishing the enemy through little cuts and bruises while fire was simply overpowering destruction. That was his understanding anyway.
He sighed and looked away from the screen to find the world tinted red. “The Hell?” John asked. Did somebody pull him into a Trap Barrier or something?
“Chillax, tiger.” Rave laughed. “It’s just the eclipse.”
The eclipse? He looked at the date on the computer screen. It was indeed the date an eclipse had been announced for. It had slipped his mind, with everything else going on. “Right.” He relaxed a bit.
“Want to watch? I’m prepared with special equipment.” Rave pulled two tinted glasses from somewhere and gave John one. It was a rare occasion so he agreed.
Seconds later they were leaning out of the window together. Shoulder on shoulder, they looked up to the sun as the moon slowly covered the whole star, holding hands, not speaking a word. Rave was fascinated by the light of the sun at this moment but John saw something else. In the moment of total eclipse, the corona flared red and orange and gold. Pillars of flames, lifetimes away, seemingly visible to him for a brief moment: fire.
The moon wandered on and the sun shone down again. They stood there watching until the moon had halfway vanished behind the sky again. “Beautiful, wasn’t it?” Rave asked and pulled back from the window.
John stepped back a moment later. “Yes,” he answered and they went back to the computer. Without any more hesitation he chose the fire elemental. And just like that he was 25’000 USD poorer.
258'719,25$
“Okay, now that I have something in the AoE department,” he said, “I need a target for Possession.”
“Isn’t that, like, whatever you can find to annoy your enemies?” Rave asked, in apparent confusion.
“That’s how I treated it up until now. However, I always wanted to use Possession to use disposable bodies as my frontline. With Aclysia as my non-disposable but yet very sturdy frontline that plan is not necessary anymore so I will postpone it a bit.”
“What do ya want then, John?” Rave kept probing until she understood.
“If it’s not a combat body I need, it is information I want!” He started looking into the Abyss Auction for lifelike mechanical constructs of flying animals and insects. Rave still looked confused, so John explained in length as he kept scrolling through. “My logic is that right now there is no need to clutter up the melee area of our group with more people. As of now we have you, Aclysia and Gnome as melee fighters and only me as ranged. We have no healing or other support and I would like to change that. If I could use one of my two Possessions on a doll and scout out areas before we clash with an enemy we would have an advantage we currently lack.”
Rave nodded repeatedly, “Okay, I get it now, s- THAT ONE IS CUTE!” she suddenly interjected and pointed at the screen.
It was a Verdin, at least that’s what the description said.
‘Buy now this perfect replication of a Verdin. Many hours of work and Enchantments went into making sure that this little bird is impossible to differentiate from actual members of its species from a distance and if something were to happen to this little piece of machinery, the enchantments will make sure no mundane will think anything about the machinery on display!
It comes with the whole range you could want from such a little container: an enchantment for true sight, full flight capability and a small, easily overlooked appearance. Just put the Soul Enchantment of your choosing inside and the party can start!’
It did indeed look pretty nondescript. It was a short bird with a small dark beak, a yellow head, grey white body and wings with the only somewhat interesting bit of colouration being the red spots on the shoulders. It wasn’t as commonplace as a pigeon, but it wouldn’t stand out either.
“Buy that one!” Rave commanded and he obliged with a smile, “Yay, birdy. I will pet it all the time.”
“You know it will actually be me though?”
Rave leaned over to his ear and whispered, “Like I have anything against petting ya.” One of her hands found its way to his crotch. The fact that he earlier had the best sex in his life be damned – he would fuck his girlfriend in the next hour, that he swore to himself. First, however, he wanted to finish up shopping. Which would be soon, given how quickly his budget was shrinking.
258'719,25$-200'000$. He was now left with 58.719 Dollars and 25 Cents.
He had hoped for a bit more wiggle room. He could get one or two more books with that. Question was what else did he want? He got offence and information; the logical next step was defence. But what kind? He searched for Mana Barrier and looked at what he was offered. There were a lot of different sellers but it boiled down to a basic difference of two skills.
Mana Layer created a shell of mana around him at the immediate cost of mana. It was sturdy but would break once the mana he used to create it was used up. Mana Shield on the other hand was described as costing a small amount to activate but afterwards only costing mana whenever something collided with it.
Generally talking, for a guy with an MP Regeneration focused build like his, Mana Shield sounded like the more attractive option. He would activate it and if his Mana Regeneration was high enough it took care of the damage until his mana was depleted and if his mana was depleted he was fucked either way.
Mana Layer he could probably stack in preparation. How often would he get the chance to prepare himself in an actual fight though? Getting both was overkill when one did the job (not like he had the money for both anyway, they were priced at 40 grand each). In the end, he decided that Mana Shield worked better with his high Wisdom Stat and put it into the shopping cart. Then he bought the whole thing.
The drone arrived about ten minutes later. John took the small box and closed the window. He put aside the fire elemental book for the moment, he would get that done in his own time. Learning Mana Shield could be done now.
Okay, the costs were heftier than what he had bargained on. The day had brought so many great things that he had thought the world was smiling on him for a change, especially after all the shit he had been through recently. Nope, same old logical system. To test the waters, he activated the Skill and a blue sphere formed around him. It didn’t obstruct his vision in the slightest, just the slightest tint of blue so that he knew it was there. Well, that made grinding it during the day impossible. Bummer.
“Try punching me.” John instructed and Rave cracked her knuckles.
“With pleasure.” As her raised fist passed through the Shield without any problems John realized three things in rapid succession. One, the pinches he had to live through occasionally were surprisingly worse than her fist on his face (34 Damage). Two, people in his group apparently could pass the barrier without any problem. Three, judging by the satisfied smile, Rave was angry at him and enjoyed this a lot.
John stumbled a step back and Rave’s satisfied smile changed into concern for a moment as he needed to re-orient himself. “That wasn’t too hard, was it?” she asked, “I expected the shield to slow me down at least a bit.”
“No, it's okay…are you angry with me though?”
“A bit. I watched you fuck another woman right in front of me ya know.” She crossed her arms, “But I won’t get all whiny about it, all I need to do is out-fuck her.”
“Okay?” John wasn’t sure if he completely understood but out-fucking Nathalia was an idea he very much supported.
“You don’t want a second try?” Rave asked as she saw him deactivate the shield. “No, you dealt 34 damage to me and that would absorb 170 mana. The skill is not very good right now. I will need to grind it up a bit first.” With that he picked up the Verdin. The bird was even smaller than he had imagined. He used Possession on the outside. The Skill was typically limited to one continuous object (although what counted as one continuous object wasn’t always clear). The little bird had been crafted with this in mind, evidently.
He put himself on the ground and started moving around in the bird’s body. He made a few careful steps and then opened his wings. He fluttered for a bit, not quite understanding how to take off. Slowly he got the hang of it. After five minutes of trying, he flew through the room.
“This is pretty great,” he admitted as he landed on the couch. Carefully, he hopped over to Rave and reared his head to be able to look at her. “You know what I find interesting?” John asked as he tried flying a bit more.
“Nope, but Copernicus is going wild over wanting to jump at that bird,” Rave informed him with a giggle. “Anyway, tell me, tiger.”
“When I Possess something without eyes, Possession gives me a sort of axis around which I can rotate my field of view,” he explained. “However, if I possess something with places where eyes are or should be, like this bird or the golems Victoria brought with her, my eyes are where they should be. Rules are weird.”
He slowly grew comfortable in his second body. Sure, mastering it would take a while and flying in weather conditions was a whole different story, but he liked being a little bird. Gave things a different perspective.
“It was the same with Aclysia now that I think about it. There was no reason for her to have her eyes on her eyes, aside from them being supposed to be there.”
“Speaking of Aclysia, where is she?”
“I sent her ahead to do some shopping and cooking before I got home.” John explained. “Mhm, just us then?” Rave asked in a sensual voice.
“Just us.” John responded likewise.
