NOVEL NEXT Chapter 220: Synergist
Gamma manages to contain the biggest part of her enthusiasm as Sam lets her look along with her skill window. “Looks like I’m mostly going to be spending most of my points into stats and maybe a couple of skill buffs.” She says.
“What about you, Amicia?” Gamma scoots over to me.
“Don’t know yet.” I open up my skill window as well. Throughout my journey I’ve accrued quite a few skills so it’s a bit harder to keep a clear overview of what I currently have. What I do instantly see, however, is that my stat boosts from my followers have grown considerably as opposed to the last time I’d seen it, and I even know those stats were increasing by the second. Looks like that explosion that I caused was accelerating the growth even more…
“What is that skill, Ami? The one with the notification next to it?” Gamma points at my User Interface.
“Uh… This one?” I read the title next to Gamma’s finger. “Synergist? I don’t know. Looks like it’s new.”
“What does it do?”
“Give me a second so I can read it…” I roll my eyes at the purple catgirl who just sticks out her tongue at me in return. “Through trial and tribulation have you trained your body to cope with enormous amounts of foreign energy. Your body is now able conduct elemental energies more efficiently.”
“Oh wow, that’s really good.” Veanya nods. “So we can imbue you with elements with a lot less risk now?”
“I guess?” I tilt my head slightly.
Before I can look further, Veanya scoots over to me and puts her hand on my chest, sending a wave of energy into me.
“Uhm, what?”
“Oh, interesting.”
“Veanya, could you not do that, please.” Sam takes Veanya’s hand and pulls her away from me. “At least not without her express permission.”
“Right… sorry.” Veanya looks truly apologetic, she must have just wanted to try something in the spur of the moment. “But I can feel that your body allows for a lot less resistance now. It’s immediately obvious when I channel magic into you.”
“What element did you imbue me with?”
“Just a bit of fire.” She replies. “Try holding out your hand with the palm facing upward, and then channel the energy you feel from your stomach to your hand.”
I nod and do as she says. The moment I do so, a flame, about twenty centimeters in height, erupts from the palm of my hand. “Oooooh! That’s cool.”
Sam looks at the fire in my hand. “How long does it last?”
Veanya shrugs. “I don’t know, I just put in a bit of mana, it shouldn’t last too long.”
I keep the flame up for at least a minute and it still doesn’t show any signs of diminishing, nor do I sense any magic in me draining. “Not this long, right?”
Veanya shakes her hand. “It should definitely have run its course now.”
“Maybe…” Sidolphus interjects. “Maybe you attuned Amicia to fire, giving her the ability to channel basic fire magic by herself?”
“Could you try to shoot it out of your fingertips into the fireplace, Amicia?” Veanya continues to ask. “Just mimic making a gun with your fingers, but without the thumb.”
Again, I do as she asks and just like that a stream of fire erupts and launches itself into the fireplace.
“Can I try once more, Amicia?” Veanya comes closer to me and readies her hands in front of my chest.
I give her a nod.
She swiftly follows my approval with a quick channel of magic into my stomach once more. This time it feels a bit more… energetic.
“Can you do the same now?”
“Finger gun?”
Veanya nods.
Once I do so, a wave of energy shoots out my fingertips, this time a combination of elements flow out all at once. This lasts for a few seconds before only fire remains.
“Okay, so I can still attune you with multiple elements at once, but apparently multiple elements do only last for a short bit, as opposed to a single element like fire.”
“That’s a pretty powerful ability, isn’t it?” Gamma asks.
“Seems to be, yes.” Veanya nods once more. “This means Ami can practically control one type of magic indefinitely as long as one of her party members attunes her to one.”
“So if I would take, for example, a wind element magic… could I imbue Ami with it?” Sam tilts her head slightly, putting her chin in her hand. “And how powerful would said magic then be? As I’m not really a mage at all?”
“Why don’t you try?” Gamma suggests. “Rangers have a wind magic affinity, do they not?”
“I have not really specced into it… But I guess the base skill doesn’t really cost too much.” Sam taps around on her user interface.
“You don’t need to specifically pick it for me.” I reply.
Sam shrugs. "It's literally only five points. It’s fine.” Sam closes her screen again and then looks at me. “So I just channel the energy I feel inside of me into Amicia?”
“Pretty much.” Veanya nods. “You will notice that it’s surprisingly easy. Even though you’ve never casted magic before.”
Sam nods back and holds out her palm first, closing her eyes for a second, making a teeny tiny whirlwind dance on top of her palm. “Oh. I can see why Nikki likes using magic so much. That’s actually rather fun.” Sam then puts her hand on my stomach and closes her eyes once more.
Almost immediately I can feel energy transferring to me, starting to swirl inside of my body.
“Did that do the thing?” Sam backs off just a little.
“I think so.” Just as before with the fire element, I hold out my hand as well and channel my magic to it. Just as expected a whirlwind appears in my hand but with a lot more force then the little whirlwind Sam summoned. So much stronger that the fire in the fireplace is almost getting sucked into it.
“That’s…. way bigger than my magic…” Sam looks at my hand in awe as I stop the whirlwind. “Or am I imagining things?”
“No, the spell is presumably set to Amicia’s power level.” Veanya replies. “So even if she gets attuned by a basic version of an element, the magic will be as powerful as Ami’s normal casting ability. It’s quite probable that the only person who can make her cast more powerful magic than she can cast at the moment is me.”
“So I just became the best all-rounder in existence?” I ask.
“As long as you have someone nearby who can cast the magic you need, it looks to be that way, yes.” V replies.
“Wow…” I take a second to reflect on all the possibilities that opens up for me. “In theory that also allows me to just hire a wizard to transfer magic to me so that we can fill gaps in areas we lack, right?”
“I suppose so.” Sam nods. “Would be a little bit hard to explain to a mage why exactly you want them to transfer their mana into your stomach, but I suppose it’s possible.”
“Does your skill mention how long you keep being attuned, Amicia?” Gamma asks, looking back with me at my skill windows.
“Let me see…” I read the description over a couple of times but there’s no mention of it to be found anywhere in the text. “I don’t see anything that mentions it…”
“Well, let’s see how long Sam’s wind magic holds then.” Gamma smiles. “If it doesn’t after a while I guess we’ll have our answer.”
“Ami, why do you always get the cool skills, huh?” Sam winks and gives me a little poke into my waist, tickling me.
“I don’t know, blame it on Veanya.”
“Hey.” Veanya pouts. “I know it’s true, but… you know…. I didn’t do it on purpose…”
I smile back and stare back at my skill window. There’s still quite a lot of skill points to be spent although a part of me is glad that apart from the new synergist skill, there aren’t really any other weird ones that have popped up for now. So in the end I decide to just spread the rest of my points around into my base stats, putting them primarily in health and strength while also upgrading my earth magic a little bit so I can raise sections of Earth faster so I don’t expose myself too much. It’s not really an offensive skill but when embedded in an army or when defending a position, it has proven to be rather useful on multiple occasions already. Definitely worth the point investment if you ask me.
After Sam and I have finally finished our little upgrade spree we pack up our final things to head out into the forest and towards the diaboli encampment. While now undoubtedly more powerful than during our battle yesterday, I still hope we won’t run into more of those purple devils and that’s already without the flyers that we’ll definitely face on our approach….