Rebirth of the Nephilim

During the rest of the two-day long trip to Glanum, Jay and Aila kept a running discussion going with Meli so that they could help the Dryad choose which passive skill would be best for her Salacious Transposition. Aila's careful notetaking meant that she had the full list available for perusal, but Meli still had some trouble deciding. Eventually, as part of their private talk, they ended up going over all of the skills that the other women had picked out for themselves, which were generally still pending since the rituals would need to be redone when they got some free time in Glanum.

Aila's choice of skill to replicate from the many available among the group was Paladin of Jadis' Boldness.

The Alex-sourced skill was just too good for a mage like Aila to ignore. There wasn't even much debate about which of her attributes it should be applied to. A fifty percent boost to her current Arcane stat would increase it from five hundred and twenty-six to seven hundred and eighty-nine. None of them were sure where such a high number would put Aila on the scale of power when compared to famous mages of history, but she had to be getting high on the list with how close she was getting to breaking the four-digit barrier. At the very least, the increase would put Aila's main magic stat in the same league as Jadis' Agility and Eldritch attributes were.

Eir's choice had been a little harder to make, since her Divine-based class synergized with a few more passive skills that Aila's Arcane class did not. Jadis' Boldness would work great on Eir, the passive skill she ultimately ended up picking was one from Severina.

By using the Shining Example on her Focus attribute, Eir's total magic pool went from a strong eight hundred and eighty, to an utterly staggering three thousand four hundred and twenty. The main reason for her choice was the fact that while her direct healing spells didn't cost her too much thanks to her high Divine attribute, many of her curative spells that dealt with poisons and parasites were far more expensive. By having a high Focus, Eir would be able to cast far more of those sorts of restorative spells without running out of reserves for her regular healing. The logic made extra sense since they were going to be heading into areas that were heavily corrupted by Demons, and blights that could cause serious damage to their health were a constant threat.

Kerr's options were even more varied than Eir's were, but none of them provided the absolutely massive boosts that the elf and Aila had been able to pick out for themselves. Kerr was a solely physical fighter and had no magic to boost her archery, and none of the available passive skills that gave insane boosts to attributes were for the physical side of the status sheet. Still, none of her options were bad, and Kerr eventually settled on one that would improve an attribute of hers that was lagging behind the others that she focused on.

Kerr wanted the skill for a few reasons. The first being, it was a lewd passive skill, and she took particular pride in getting to have another one of those as part of her arsenal. The second reason was that it let her put fifty points into her Agility attribute, which was an important stat that she hadn't been able to boost recently. Catalyst would take her Agility from twenty-five to seventy-five, which was a great increase when you weren't comparing it to the insane numbers that Jadis and Alex tended to throw around like free candy. The third reason was that if she wanted to, she could move the boost to a different skill later, which was a nice bit of flexibility that the experienced mercenary appreciated from a professional perspective.

Thanks to recently unlocking her tertiary class, which gave her access to Arcane magic, Thea had more big-hitting options open to her that Kerr did not. Even without becoming a Shieldmaiden, the quiet woman had the excellent potential choice of replicating Valtar's First Mandate from Severina. However, despite how beneficial a passive skill that boosted the defenses of lower CLR allies by some of her insanely high Fortitude and Resilience was, Thea had strong reservations about taking the skill. Mainly, it was a Paladin of Valtar's Mandate, and Thea wasn't a paladin of any god, much less Valtar. She felt as though replicating such an intrinsically religious skill could be seen as heretical. Eir assured Thea that Valtar would never punish someone for taking a skill that encouraged them to follow his divine path, but the shieldmaiden was still nervous about it.

The other big option that was on the menu for Thea was also Paladin of Jadis' Boldness, just like Aila. Since she had a magic class now, boosting her Arcane stat even higher would be highly beneficial. Thea's Aegis spell had a defense rating that was based off of her Arcane attribute, so the higher the stat was, the more punishment it could take before breaking. And, on a more humorous note, the Boldness passive was based off of Jadis rather than Valtar, so Thea felt like she was in the clear on asking for permission to use the paladin-based spell.

In the end, the deciding factor on which skill to take came from Severina. The Seraphim had explained to Thea that while rituals that semi-permanently replicated spells were highly unusual and exceedingly rare, there were spells out there that did basically the same thing on a much more limited timescale. Sev did know of a Paladin who had a spell that allowed him to pass the Divine Mandates that he had from Valtar onto other individuals for short durations, and no issues ever arose from those times. If Valtar himself was okay with a spell that granted people other than his paladin's his mandates, then there was no reason why Thea couldn't also take the mandate.

With Severina's encouragement, Thea selected Valtar's First Mandate, since it would provide a massive boost of defense to others around her. Well, not everyone around her, since they had to be a lower CLR, but that was still good. Bridget was almost always paired up with the shieldmaiden on the battlefield and the orc's CLR was lower, so she would be a direct beneficiary for most battles. Besides which, if the skill proved to be less useful than expected, they could always change it out for Jadis' Boldness later.

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Sabina, for her part, wasn't going to change her transposed passive skill. Follower of Jadis boosted experience point gain, and since the smith had the lowest CLR in the group, she needed that boost so that she could catch up to the others.

Despite having the passive skill active for the past couple of weeks, Sabina hadn't actually gained any levels in that time. Upon reflection, the lack of leveling wasn't too surprising. Jadis wasn't actively involved in what Sabina was doing around the workshop, and even though the half-elf was constantly working on new and powerful enchantments, she was already at a CLR that most crafters took years upon years of dedicated work to reach. Gaining more levels in just a week or two just by smithing and crafting was a bit unreasonable to expect. What Jadis did expect was that she would be boosting Sabina to much higher levels soon during their trip to Volto, which could hopefully unlock some amazing and interesting enchantment options for her lover, not to mention her tertiary class.

The thought of tertiary classes was also a deciding factor when it came to Bridget's choice of passive to replicate. She was at CLR fifty-eight, and thus would be unlocking her third class in relatively short order. The higher her attributes were when she unlocked whatever classes were going to be made available to her, the better her options were likely to be. So, to that end, Bridget also chose Paladin of Jadis' Boldness. Just like Aila, she put the boost in her Arcane stat, which took it from four hundred and sixty-six to six hundred and ninety-nine.

The main focus of Bridget's stats, other than Arcane, was Agility. She still needed to get her Endurance, Fortitude, and Dexterity up to at least twenty-six so that Exhibitionistic Accession could be used to get her Agility up to match her CLR. There were other passive skill options that Bridget could have used to that end, but boosting Arcane just made more sense for both the short term goal of her tertiary class, and the long term benefit of having massively increased magic power. With spells like Flame Aegis of the Ardent Light a part of her repertoire, increased Arcane gave her better defenses, too.

Stoke the Ardent Flame had been Alex's pick from several weeks back, taken mostly because she was the source of Paladin of Jadis' Boldness and so couldn't benefit from it being replicated. The passive skill had the extra benefit of giving Alex the boost she needed to her Endurance so that Exhibitionistic Accession could apply to her Focus, instead.

The four attributes that Alex had chosen to increase were Strength, Endurance, Divine, and Resilience, which increased each one by twenty-five points thanks to Jadis' weekly habit of pulling out two extra bodies for ritual purposes. There had been some discussion around Alex's choice and possibly switching it to something like Bonded Slut Sniper's Salacious Stamina Bank, but Alex had opted to leave the passive skill in place for the time being.

Fortunately, that meant that both Sabina and Alex didn't need to perform the ritual, which would cut down on the amount of time spent on rituals in Glanum. Unfortunately, that meant that Sabina and Alex didn't need to perform the ritual, and Jadis really liked performing sex rituals with her lovers at every opportunity. Jadis supposed they could still just… do the lewd deed and not activate the ritual, just for the fun of it, but that was a matter for a difference discussion.

Sorcha was in a similar position to Bridget when it came to her passive skill choice. She really needed a boost to her Focus, or possibly her will, but none of the passives would do much for her except one from Eir called Oracle's Reservoir, which was a thirty-point increase. While that would be helpful, it wasn't in the same ballpark as the kind of increase to her Eldritch stat she would get if she put Jadis' Boldness onto that attribute. Since she was at CLR fifty-seven and would be unlocking her tertiary class soon as well, the witch had also decided to go with the Boldness boost so that her Eldritch would be as high as possible for the options she would be getting to pick from soon enough.

The nice part about increasing her Eldritch so much was that Sorcha would have even more slots available to make new wands. The funny part was that she was still filling the slots from the last increase. The goblin really needed to get a wider variety of materials, since most of what she had experimented with had just produced lesser or alternate versions of what she already had. Sorcha hoped that the trip to Volto might help with that problem, since the distant nation likely had a variety of plant and monster life that wasn't readily available in the southern areas of the empire.

For Severina, the choice had seemed obvious. Paladin of Jadis' Boldness would be a huge increase to either her Divine or her Focus attributes. However, in a strange twist, the Seraphim became just as hesitant as Thea about taking another Paladin's skill whose focus was on a different… well, not deity, but patron, certainly. She didn't think Valtar would object, nor did it look like it would have any kind of interference, but the skill was a huge swing in Sev's currently completely Valtar-focused Divine power. The possibility that taking Jadis' Boldness might in some way interfere with her Paladin, or even Justicar, progression was a daunting thought. Severina and Eir spent hours discussing the issue and had even asked some of the high priests of the temple district what they thought without giving away too many of the specific details. The end answer had been a disappointing, "We don't know." There weren't any examples available in the easily accessed history books that compared to their situation.

The other strong option Severina had available to her was Heart of Love. The passive skill also came from Alex, but it wasn't Jadis or Paladin specific. Heart of Love boosted any damage Severina did to those who were attacking her loved ones by a third of her Divine attribute, so it was a powerful offensive option.

It was probably overly cautious, but Severina decided that Heart of Love was the safer option to pick, at least for the short term. She wanted to gain a few levels in her Justicar and Paladin classes, see what happened, and potentially change her choice later depending on what the results were. Jadis was on the side of thinking that nothing adverse would happen, but she understood Severina's hesitation, so she didn't argue the point. Besides, an extra one hundred and sixty-four damage on each of Severina's already powerful attacks when used against an enemy that was specifically targeting someone she loved was an astounding boost to her damage output in most circumstances. It was a useless passive if she was alone or making a first strike against a target, but those were negligible drawbacks when compared to the sheer power the skill offered under the right conditions.

All of those options were discussed as part of the process of helping Meli pick the passive she wanted to replicate. While they hadn't gone over the Dryad's full list of spells and abilities in detail, they had discussed enough to know that she would benefit most from skills like Paladin of Jadis' Boldness, Justicar's Shining Example, or Heart of Love. While Meli had an extremely high Agility stat, most of her power came from having a decent Divine stat and using spells that temporarily boosted her attributes. In many ways, she was similar to Sorcha in that she would benefit most from having a higher Focus stat so that she could cast more spells, which meant that Shining Example was the prime contender for replication. That said, it was hard to ignore the sheer numbers that Jadis' Boldness offered to the Dryad's main magic stat.

By the time Meli had made her decision to pick Shining Example for the boost to her Focus, the Leviathan had flown through the night and they had come within sight of Glanum. Unlike their first visit to the border city, there were no possessed birds or hordes of Demons attacking the walls. The morning sun shone brightly on the sacred tower, and if one ignored the blighted landscape that was visible across the river, the view from above was beautiful.

Standing on the airship balcony with most everyone crowded around her, Jadis scanned both the city and the sky. One set of eyes tracked the progress of Wilhelm's beautiful griffon, Taube, as the beast flew around them in lazy circles. Another set of eyes watched as a dark-winged figure, undoubtedly Noct, rose up from the city and flew towards them on an unhurried intercept course. Her third set of eyes gazed to the northwest, where dark and heavy clouds looked like they were gathering.

"I hope that storm doesn't cause us any delays," Dys murmured as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"I think they'll blow out to sea quickly enough," Wilhelm replied, his tone calm and outlook positive. "And even if they do not, I am certain that we will find something helpful to do around here while we wait for them to pass."

"Oh, we'll have plenty of things to do," Kerr grinned as she called out from nearby. "After all, Jadis has a bear she needs to fist into submission!"

"…she is doing what to a bear?" came the Hero's confused comment a few seconds later.