Explorer of Edregon

As much as Vin wanted to dive straight into working on his newest spell, there was one more thing he needed to take care of. Something that had gotten put briefly to the wayside with the reveal of Golrim having been responsible for founding the Red Dawn and the following ambush they'd had to prepare for.

While Lumel went back to trying to figure out that last secret of the Underside that continued to elude her, Vin mulled over the passive point he'd earned for hitting level 35. His idea to ask Kym for advice had been a bust, but Kym himself had said going to others for their ideas probably wouldn't be an issue.

Granted, before that he wanted to see what his options were.

First, there were the three options he'd been contemplating all the way back for his level 25 passive before he ended up going with Mana Well. They hadn't exactly gone anywhere and were still ripe for the picking.

Resistant Runes

Resilience

Far Strider

While all three still had obvious benefits, none of them appealed to him in quite the same way as they once had. Knowing tier four spells took up to a month to learn meant Vin still wasn't planning on learning higher level magic, making Resistant Runes a bit of a lackluster pick. He'd grown even more assured of his durability over the last ten levels, which made Resilience less appealing. And now that he both had access to the Underside for quick travel and was picking up spatial magic, Far Strider seemed a tad redundant as well.

Instead, he pushed those options aside, scanning through the passive list for anything new that sounded useful. Scule had explained to him way back when that the passives provided by the System were similar to classes in that they were offered based on a person's experiences and skills. For example, the petian had only been offered the Animal Companion passive because he'd taken the time to train Reginald and raise his relevant skills. With that in mind, Vin tried to see if the System was now offering him any interesting sounding passives that it hadn't back when he was only level 25.

And indeed it was.

Dungeon Delver

Artifact Extraordinaire

Unchanging Affinity

Continued Focus

Magic Mantle

Everlasting

Crap, that is a lot of options.

Vin stared at the six passives that hadn't been on the list the last time he'd checked it, wondering what the hell he'd even done to get them added. Some were fairly obvious, such as Dungeon Delver, which could only be because he'd gone into so many different dungeons at this point, or Artifact Extraordinaire, which he was assuming was similarly because of how many artifacts he'd handled, or because he'd replaced half of an arm with one. The other four passives, however, were a bit less clear.

"Hey Lumel," he called out, seeing her pause in her examination of the corridor. "Sorry to distract you, but I'm trying to pick my level 35 passive, and I have a few options I was hoping to run by you."

"You're never a bother, Vin," Lumel smiled, nodding for him to continue. "Go ahead and run them past me. I didn't study passives nearly as thoroughly as I did skills back when I had access to the palace records, but I still know many of the main ones."

At the very least, that means she's probably safe to ask, even with Kym's theory, Vin decided. He listed out the six different passives, and Lumel nodded with each one.

"Unsurprisingly, I've never heard of Dungeon Delver, but that makes sense seeing as dungeons are unique to Edregon. Your theory is right about Artifact Extraordinaire, you got that because of your continued exposure to so many different artifacts. If you take that one, I'm pretty sure the artifacts you use will get a boost to whatever it is they were designed to do, and you'll be able to detect new ones more easily. I think it might also help with making them, but I can't remember. I'm also familiar with Continued Focus, Magic Mantle, and Everlasting. There are passives given as options to everyone once they hit 50 points in any of the six attributes, and those three are half of them. Continued Focus for focus, Magic Mantle for magic, and Everlasting for endurance."

"Oh, that's neat! Do you remember what they do?"

"Continued Focus lets you maintain a spell when your mind would otherwise be busy, such as while you're sleeping or distracted with something else. Magic Mantle is a bit strange in that it actually lets you lend someone else one of your active spells. You still provide the mana and focus on keeping it active, but they receive the benefits and can make certain decisions involving the spell. And Everlasting lets you use your stamina in other ways, such as converting it for mana in an emergency, or burning it to heal wounds if needed."

"Well those all sound extremely useful," Vin grunted, realizing he was going to have one hell of a choice this time around. He almost wished the System had given him fewer options to choose between. "And Unchanging Affinity? It sounds pretty obvious, but I figured I'd ask."

"That's not one I've heard of before, but it has to be because of the sheer number of different affinities you have spells for," Lumel nodded. "And I agree, I can only imagine it would prevent you from developing an affinity regardless of what spells you learned."

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"Damn, I would have taken that in a heartbeat at level 15," Vin admitted. "Granted, that would have meant no Threat Detection, and that passive has saved my life countless times, so I guess it's a good thing the System didn't offer it to me back then."

"There's nothing harder than trying to pick a passive," Lumel grinned. "Let me know if you have any other questions, but I'm in the camp that it's normally best for people to try and make the decision on their own."

"I'm with you there," Vin nodded, returning her smile. "Thanks for your help."

"Of course," Lumel blushed, turning her focus back on the corridor she'd been studying. "Let me know what you end up picking!"

Promising he would, Vin looked back over his six options, deciding the simplest way to go about this was to quickly get rid of the ones he just didn't see himself taking.

Mana Well already gives me a ridiculous amount of mana, which only grows with every level. Not to mention I already have a healing spell, he thought, quickly striking Everlasting from the list. While the thought of simply burning energy to heal or cast spells is cool, it's not really needed.

Magic Mantle is neat, but I just don't see that being all too useful. At least not with the spells I currently have. Confirming his decision, he struck that from his list as well.

Now came the hard part.

Vin actually was interested in the four remaining passives, and he struggled trying to come up with a list of pros and cons for each.

Dungeon Delver is a total unknown, but obviously, it will do something related to the dungeons. The tricky thing is the Dungeoneering skill already seems to be doing stuff related to dungeons as well, and I think I'll get two more small effects when the skill hits levels 15 and 20. Not to mention I might be able to evolve it.

Artifact Extraordinaire would be useful even if it only helped me find new artifacts to learn spells from and add to my collection. Not even including the fact that it might make creating artifacts easier down the line, knowing that it also makes artifacts more powerful is icing on the cake. How powerful would my arm become if I tacked the effects of that passive on top of it?

Continued Focus has so many different uses. Being able to keep up any of my sensing spells without my concentration would be huge, and because they barely use any mana, I could basically keep any one of them active constantly.

And Unchanging Affinity…

Vin sighed, scratching his head as he tried to decide how he felt about the last one. Like he'd told Lumel, that passive was exactly what he'd been looking for when he was a lower level and had just started learning magic. But that was before he realized just how many spells one had room for as they advanced in level. Hell, he was only at level 35, and with his magic attribute in the 50s, he could already learn six spells for each attribute without risking an affinity. Across all the different affinities he'd already discovered, that was somewhere around seventy or eighty total spells, and that number would only go up as he continued increasing his magic. Not to mention that number was actually even higher for him thanks to him having picked up Mana Well.

I need to make a decision, or I'll be stuck agonizing over this for days.

Sighing again, Vin focused on Dungeon Delver, and removed it from his list. While he was extremely curious what the passive would do, it was also important for him to figure out exactly what the Dungeoneering skill did, as he was one of the first people in existence to actually take it. If he had both the skill and the passive, there was a good chance he'd struggle to tell what was from which.

Next, he removed Continued Focus from his dwindling list. The thought of always having Sense Life or even something like Tremorsense continually active was very enticing, but it wasn't quite as necessary as the remaining two passives on his list.

Both of which he desperately wanted to take.

Groaning, Vin's eyes flicked between the two passives as he struggled to make a decision. The pros for Unchanging Affinity were simple and straightforward, but there were a lot of little things to consider from Artifact Extraordinaire.

Not only were artifacts sources of new potential spells he could reverse engineer the runic formations from, they were also one of his main sources of quick and easy experience. While learning spells also granted large bursts of experience, naturally, learning a spell was far harder than simply picking up an artifact. There was also the fact that Lumel said the passive might come into play while making Artifacts, which would be absolutely huge. That was one of the next feats of magic Vin wanted to try dipping his toes into, and if the passive made it easier for him to make them, or made artifacts he made permanently more powerful, then that was a serious plus in its favor. Not just for him, but for all of Terra.

The more Vin mulled the choice over, the more he realized he'd already come to a decision.

It was the fact that said decision went against what he'd been striving for back in his early days on Edregon that made him hesitate.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Vin muttered, removing Unchanging Affinity from his list with an almost physical wince. The only reason he was comfortable with the decision was because he'd get another chance to pick up the passive at level 45 if he still wanted it. He had plenty of open spell slots to fill up in the meantime without risking an affinity, and he had to keep repeating that to himself as he focused on his final choice and selected his newest passive.

The moment he made his decision, he gasped as a subtle pulse of energy seemed to radiate out of each and every one of the artifacts on his person. He felt his skin harden for a moment as the ring of barkskin he'd received from the dryads increased his durability. A chill went through the air as his amulet of fire protection the dwarves had given him grew stronger. Even his arm flashed a low, dangerous blue for a moment before dimming back down. Though he quickly realized that unless he focused on pulling the energy back into the mana gem powering his arm, he now had small, bright electric blue lights radiating out from his knuckles and the spots where the ball-joint wrist met the hand and arm.

Great. One more reason for people to stare at it. Despite his inner grumblings, Vin grinned as he flexed his prosthetic arm, causing the entire thing to flash. He could feel the power radiating through the artifact, and he actually grew a little concerned as the sheer amount of mana he could sense coursing through the limb. Resolving to go back to his painstaking grip-training exercises before he shattered any more hands, Vin turned to reveal his choice to Lumel, before pausing as he picked up on a strange sensation that hadn't existed mere seconds before.

He could feel the artifacts she was hiding in another dimension.