Chapter 56: Works Like a Charm
I followed Diane out of the cave, and the two of us walked into a clearing not far off from where we had been staying. "We'll be moving right after this." Diane spoke up calmly. "We want to be out of the spider territory before night falls again."
I gave a small nod at that, deciding to take these in order. "First, there is the skill that I fused yesterday, Thunderbolt. That was the source of the rain you saw earlier." Stretching out my arm, I cast the Homing Thunder enchantment, creating a black cloud roughly six meters in diameter, and four meters tall. "I reduced the size of the cloud for the enchantment, in exchange for increasing its damage and allowing me to control where it strikes."
Diane narrowed her eye slightly in thought, before gesturing for me to continue. "The next one was a combination of Sand Lance and Fireball, Scorching Spear." I stretched my arm out, and the enchantment fired off, a spear of molten earth exploding against the nearby rocks. "I thought that this could give me a few more options to deal more damage, as well as level up multiple skills at once."
"Is that what made you fail so many times?" Diane asked, and my brow twitched slightly at that.
"N-No… that was the next one. Though, admittedly, this was my first time doing Fusion Casting, so that probably didn't help. But the next one…" I focused, and a pitch-black clone of myself appeared next to me, carrying a large bow in one of its arms. "This is the Shadow Archer enchantment that I made. I thought that it could use my stealth to help while fighting things from range."
Diane narrowed her eye again as she looked at the archer. "Are you able to spam it? Like the wolves."
"Unfortunately…" I shook my head with a sigh. "I had to sacrifice the ability to repeatedly cast it, focusing more on giving the shadow increased combat power. That's why I kept failing so much. At first, I wanted to make it a four-skill fusion, one that I could rapidly cast to create an army of archers."
"That… didn't go so well, as you saw. It might be the skill level of my Myriad Strikes-X limiting me, but I can't do that high level of an enchantment right now. However, this shadow is able to operate independently in battle, as long as I give it enough instructions to train it. It can also fire either shadow arrows, arcane arrows, or ki arrows, and has access to all of my martial skills."
I was fairly certain that if I managed to evolve my Animate Shadow skill again, I would be able to give it more complex commands. "Is it able to loot enemies?" Diane asked, to which I nodded my head.
"I tested that about a month ago, I think? My shadow was able to loot defeated enemies, as long as I gave it the command to do so." Diane blinked when she heard that.
"You could make it auto hunt, then?" She asked, and I looked at her in confusion. "Auto hunting means that your shadow will go out, find enemies, kill them, loot them, and then find more enemies to repeat the process. This is a common hack in games that have summoning skills, and the easiest way to prevent it is by making the summon unable to loot enemies."
I thought about that, but ultimately I didn't think it was possible. "Not right now. It doesn't have that much awareness yet. Maybe in another evolution, it'll be possible. Or if the spell is specifically cast to do that. But something tells me that you will threaten to stab me if I disabled the enchantments to start over and try to get that."
"I don't threaten." She said, half-glaring up at me. "How long do you need to give your shadow the commands?"
"Just a few minutes." I explained, before focusing on my connection with my shadow. It had been a while since I had a shadow that I kept around for any substantial period of time, so I wanted to make sure that I did this right. First, I made sure that it had all of the 'toggle' skills on, whether they were physical enhancements, or even Ghost-X. Diane didn't flinch when she saw the shadow disappear in front of us, no doubt having expected it.
Next, I tried to have the shadow itself use Myriad Strikes-X, but found that it wasn't possible. The shadow could only hard cast a skill, and not channel it, so having it enchant something was simply not possible.
After that, I had it test out the three arrows that I designed it to be able to use, just to make sure that it had all of the abilities I aimed for. Sure enough, it fired off three arrows in succession, one being black, one yellow, and one blue. If I went through all of that, and the shadow was somehow not able to use the skills that I designed it for, I was going to be very upset.
With that out of the way, I began to give it very basic instructions. It was to follow behind us at a distance of twenty meters, watching the nearby area with Scout active. If it sensed anything approaching us from the back, it would fire a black arrow near my feet. If something was coming from the sides, it would fire a yellow arrow, firing it to the side that the creature was approaching from. And if it saw something ahead of us, it was to not do anything, as we would have likely spotted it, as well.
When in a fight, it was to shoot the enemy with alternating arrows, to ensure that it didn't exclusively shoot an arrow that the target was resistant against. However, no matter what we were fighting, it was forbidden from taking any shot that had a high chance of hitting Diane. Friendly fire was not friendly. If an enemy approached its position, it was to find a new location within twenty meters to begin shooting again. I couldn't expect it to be smart enough to know what an 'ideal shooting position' was, though, so I just made sure to tell it to move.
Once I was done issuing the commands to the archer, I turned to signal to Diane that I was ready to go. She turned, leading the way, and soon glanced back to ask. "If you wanted to make a shadow archer, why didn't you just use a modified Animate Shadow enchantment? It would have saved you a lot of trouble."
I simply chuckled, shrugging my shoulders. "I wanted to make sure that the arrows fired packed a bigger punch, and wouldn't be canceled out if a target was immune to a certain damage type. Shadow Spear empowers the normal arrows it would shoot, and makes sure that they register as a magic skill in case we fight more ghosts. Arcane Arrow is good for those that are resistant to shadows, and my Empty Bow Expertise can fire martial arrows for enemies that are strong against magic in general."
Diane let out a long sigh when she heard that, turning to face forward. "You mostly wanted to level three skills at once, didn't you?"
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"That's… part of it." I admitted. "I don't get many chances to level up my magic skills. I'm trying to hold back on enchanting the last few slots on my bow or sword until I get a third tier skill to put on them."
Diane simply nodded her head, and we kept walking. "How long are you planning to keep these enchantments?" She asked, and I cleared my throat before answering.
"Well, I'll need to refresh them after I get enough skill levels. Sand Lance and Thunderstrike are only level one right now. Animate Shadow is thirty-nine, Shadow Spear is forty-two, and Arcane Arrow is thirty-four, so I probably won't need to worry about those until one is ready to evolve."
"But you can't just disenchant one." Diane pointed out, and I regretfully nodded my head in agreement as we walked along. Every now and then, an arrow would come flying at my feet, signaling the start of a fight. Since we were walking along the base of the mountain, most of these fights came from the forest, but there were a few times that a monster approached from the right, where the mountain was.
This was my first time getting to see how much the shadow was able to reproduce my combat power. Although I had put an emphasis on the strength of the shadow, I wasn't too confident how much that would give me. From what I recalled, of the shadow enchanted onto my Forest Charm, it was able to reproduce roughly half of my own strength with any skills that were used.
Naturally, I wasn't able to compare how strong its Arcane Arrow or Shadow Spear was in comparison to myself, not without receiving death threats from a very angry rogue. However, I could compare its ki arrows to my own.
Once we got into a fight where it launched a ki arrow, I followed that up by firing my own from my bow. The results showed that the arrows fired by my shadows were slightly weaker than mine, but certainly not only half as strong. With that, I was satisfied that it would make for a good assistant in difficult fights.
Unfortunately, Wyr was too low level to properly fly around in this area safely, so Diane wasn't able to bring him out of the pet inventory. Still, between the two of us and my shadow, we were able to safely hunt any wandering giants, golems, and satyrs that we came across. There was even a wyvern nest that we exterminated on the second day of our hike, which appeared to be guarding a dungeon.
We briefly considered clearing the dungeon, but decided to wait for that until after we dealt with the dragon. At nights, I would have my shadow stand watch, indiscriminately killing and looting anything that approached our camp.
Eventually, the third day of our walk back to the east arrived, and we awoke to see a black dragon flying high in the sky, as if stretching its wings. I couldn't tell if he was logged in or not when we saw him, but we didn't draw attention to ourselves just yet. Knowing that he was in the area would be enough for now, so we could find where he stayed to ambush him.
Before we could start to follow him back, however, Diane quickly held up a hand, focusing. "Wisteria's contacting me." She said, taking a step back after a few moments. "It looks like they've prepared whatever item it was that they were working on."
I arched a brow, but nodded my head, curious to see what they had come up with. Between the two of us, space seemed to warp in on itself for a long moment, before shuddering as Wisteria appeared, wiping the sweat from her brow. "Sorry that it took so long, you two. These items aren't easy to create."
"What is it?" I couldn't help but ask curiously. Wisteria smirked, pulling two charms out of her inventory. These charms had the logo of the League of Assassins on them, a hooded black cloak with red eyes.
"We call these Status Charms. Typically, you have to spend a lot of contribution points to get one of them, so we don't keep them in stock. However, this incident was the fault of the league, so the master bore the expenses personally."
"While you are wearing the charm, they have a few functions. First, you can disguise them to look like other charms, or hide them completely. If they are hidden, others won't be able to touch them. Secondly, you can use them to alter the information that others see when they look at your status. This should allow the two of you to hide your identities more easily, and avoid any bounty hunters that might come find you because of your abilities."
Diane's eyes widened at that, taking one of the charms. "Does it have any spare enchantment slots?" She asked, but Wisteria shook her head.
"That's one of the problems with crafting them. We need to use all of the available enchantment slots to set up various safeguards and allow the charm to function. If even one enchantment fails, or the charm is not created with the maximum number, the entire item has to be scrapped."
Diane gave a nod of understanding, unequipping her previous charm to attach this one, causing it to disappear. "It is an incredibly valuable tool. How common is it for there to be skills that can see through it?"
Wisteria couldn't help but laugh at that, bringing a hand up to her mouth. "The status concealment placed on these items is a grandmaster-class skill enchanted onto them by the master personally. If you encounter a royal knight or inquisitor, it is possible that they may have a detection device enchanted by a similarly skilled spymaster. However, it will be quite some time before a player personally possesses the skill to see through it. And I have not heard of a suitably powerful trait that could do so."
"Thank you for this." I said, unequipping the Forest Charm to instead equip this. Once I did, a window came up to allow me to customize my status. Using it, I set my name as 'Lester', adjusted my level to be eighty, and set my stats to be a bit more inconspicuous. "Is there anything we need to do?"
Wisteria thought about it for a moment, looking around. "The two of you are already in the area, it looks like. So, I have an optional mission for you. If you don't want to do it, the master will give it to someone else, but he said to make the offer to the two of you first."
The two of us looked at Wisteria curiously, almost expectantly. "When the Black Dragon, Drake appeared in Shadowbane, he killed six NPCs as a show of force, and threatened to cut off the trade routes between Shadowbane and the neighboring cities. This act is in defiance with the league's code."
"Your mission is to find and kill this Drake. When you kill him, make sure that he is within five meters of this object." She said, pulling out a white stone from her inventory, with an archaic rune inscribed on it. As she did, a quest appeared before the two of us, which we both accepted immediately.
"Is that a respawn anchor?" I asked in surprise upon seeing the rock. I had seen Kelly use one before, but it looked… different from what Wisteria had presented.
Sure enough, she shook her head. "No, this is a Respawn Reset Rune. If you die within range of this, your respawn point is reset to the place where you were first selected as a Chosen. We use this to make sure that monsters like him don't have their own respawn points set nearby, since their methods work slightly differently than ours."
Diane nodded her head in agreement, reaching to take the stone. Since Wisteria looked like she was getting ready to leave, I couldn't help but speak up. "Wait, I need to ask… how can I stop my trait from being taken? Traits can be looted from boss monsters without them losing it, and Erebus said that I qualified as a boss now, but my trait was still in danger, so…?"
"That option isn't available to you." Wisteria said simply, the space around her already beginning to warp. "When one loses their sense of self, and devolves to the point of a mindless entity governed by the world's laws, that is when they no longer fear death. Any item, skill, or trait they drop does not vanish, but they will no longer have the freedom to use it for themselves."
After she said that, Wisteria disappeared, leaving me stunned as I tried to process this information.