Chapter 355: INT 70 |
The attribute super evolution I’d just been awarded would give me an upgrade to an existing or future attribute evolution. The only limits were that it couldn’t be applied to an evo that had already been super’d, and it couldn’t apply to a Level 100 evo. That meant the highest tier it could affect was Level 70 and, oh look, I was about to grab a Level 70 INT evolution right now.
Most Delvers of your generation have never gotten a single stat to Level 70, yet here you are helping two of those big boys out of their pullups and into their grown-up undies.
Did you know that Level 70 is where most attributes were capped prior to the first ascension? We’ve figured out how to break some more rules since then, and you idiots are the ones who get to reap all the benefits and reality-bending hiccups created by that progress.
Why are we telling you this? Because this is an Intelligence evolution! Dangerous knowledge unburdened by the guardrails of context or foresight is only one of your rewards.
The second reward is a new evolution!
…
There are no other rewards.
Psychic Citadel
Whenever you are dealt damage by an attack, you deal Psychic damage to the source equal to your INT.
Super: You gain an aura that extends this ability to all allies within a number of feet from you equal to your INT.
Like with Fortitude 70, I was able to preview the effect of the super evo alongside the evolution option. This first contender had a lot going for it, most of which was going in a direction I liked. Having another source of Shielding wasn’t terrible, although the trigger for it was awkward. I didn’t do any Psychic damage normally, and while this would let me deal some thorns damage as Psychic, it wasn’t a huge amount on its own.
Psychic attacks were usually relegated to the Spiritual school of magic, which I couldn’t access with my Dimensional attunement. Of course, Grotto had Spiritual Magic and there was a chance I could borrow his skill, although we hadn’t tested that yet. Even if I could access his Spiritual Magic, the rest of my gear and build was focused on other schools, so it wouldn’t be as much of an advantage as it might seem at first blush. Regardless, I wouldn’t ever be maximizing that first part of the evo.
What was more impressive were the other aspects. While I had any Shielding, telepathic and mind affecting skills and abilities couldn’t even target me. That wasn’t quite the same as immunity or negation, but it would be better in some ways and possibly worse in others. It was still a solid defensive buff.
Even better, the super I could apply would make the whole thing an aura. Because of Auradilato, it would always apply to my party members, and both Grotto and Xim did enough Psychic damage to take good advantage of how it granted Shielding. Even if they didn’t, I could hand them some Shielding from one of my other skills and they’d still get the mental protections.
Altogether it was a solid evolution, and if it were my only choice I’d be satisfied. My only real hangup was that it was very defensive and I’d been hoping for some help with my offense. I already had a lot of places that I could get defensive buffs from, and Intelligence was a great source for both utility and offense.
While I was hoping for some of the latter, the next option was in the utility vein.
Mastermind
You are automatically aware of any act any of your allies perform, as well as the outcome of those acts, so long as they are on the same plane as you. (Allies must be willing targets for any ability that references them. An ally can choose to be excluded from this ability.)
Super: You also know the HP, mana, and stamina of all of your allies, regardless of which plane they occupy. If you are on the same plane as your allies, you know their exact location.
This evo took a little thought to understand how powerful it was and then a little more thought to understand that it wasn’t a good fit for me.
First off, it applied to all ‘allies’, which was kind of broken. I was allies with a lot of people; theoretically anyone who knew of me and was working towards dealing with the avatar threat. I had allies I’d probably never even met before, and given that Closetland created a legal framework for me to declare an entire foreign nation as an ally, the scope of this evolution could potentially be massive.
At the same time, talk about information overload. I didn’t know what the mechanism for limiting the information flow was, but there had to be one. My Intelligence was pretty stout, and when combined with my Speed and extra instances of focus, I could absorb a whole lot of info at once. But I couldn’t absorb a fraction of what this evolution was promising. The super just compounded that.
However, I could already do some of this stuff, at least with regards to my party members. Who Needs a Cleric? gave me an awareness of where my party members were and I could even see their surroundings if I focused on them. My HUD gave me their HP, mana, and stamina, although that wasn’t a cross-planar capability. There were plenty of times it had been interrupted. As for their actions and outcomes, Grotto’s usual psychic relay helped with that, as did my use of Reveal. While the revelation wasn’t naturally a two-way info sharing ability, I was working on developing its reciprocal capabilities.
So, as far as my party was concerned, I had most of this covered through a smattering of other skills and effects. As for everyone else who I considered an ally, this seemed useful but terrifying in scale and honestly kind of obnoxious to deal with. I wasn’t the guy in the van, coordinating and monitoring everything going on. I was the guy in the shit, coordinating some ass kicking and monitoring who I needed to block for.
Also, the evo didn’t give me an aura. At this point, adding a friendly aura gave me +5 to every attack and defense I had, along with nearly 400 more health regen. I needed a good reason not to take an aura if one was offered, and this evo didn’t quite make that grade.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The next option finally showed me an attack buff.
Self-Insert
You exude an aura out to a number of feet equal to your INT. All allies within this aura gain a bonus to their spell attacks equal to your INT. Additionally, if that ally’s spell attack is modified by Mystical Magic, Dimensional Magic, or Physical Magic, it gains a bonus equal to your own skill level in the matching intrinsic.
Super: This effect applies to all attacks, not just spell attacks. Replace the last sentence with “Additionally, whenever an ally within this aura makes an attack modified by any intrinsic skill that you also possess, it gains a bonus equal to your own skill level in the matching intrinsic.”
This would give my allies a bonus to every attack they made equal to my Intelligence. That was already a decent attack bonus. Further, if an ally made an attack using an intrinsic skill that I also had, like Blunt Weapons, for example, they’d get another bonus equal to my skill level. So, if Xim made an attack with her scepter, she’d get +70 from my Intelligence, and then she’d also get +40 from my Blunt Weapons skill for a total attack bonus of 110. That was on top of her own attribute and skill level, plus whatever other bonuses she had going on.
That was looking fine and dandy, but what if it got better? Etja’s spell attacks were usually spell combos that used multiple magic intrinsics, meaning that she could double dip. Her classic death beam was a combination of a Mystical spell and a Dimensional spell. Since I had both of those intrinsic skills, Etja would get +70 from my Intelligence, then +56 from my Dimensional skill, and then +40 from my Mystical skill, for a total bonus of +166.
That was great! But what if it got even better?
For a moment, I thought that there was no way the evo would interact with Auradilato in the way I thought it did, but the System was kind enough to anticipate my question.
Yes, this works with Auradilato in exactly the way you think it does. It’s so stupid that we double checked! There are no compatibility problems, which is weird, but, hey, it’s a surprisingly normal ability, so who cares?
It’s not like it gives you another deific skill or anything, it’s just a forearm-sized syringe full of steroids getting rammed into your damage output’s left ass cheek.
For reference, the text of Auradilato was:
Your allied party members and Minions are always considered to be in range of your beneficial auras unless you choose otherwise, so long as they are on the same plane. Your auras and aura bonuses treat you as an ally to yourself, but this effect will not cause an aura to affect you more than once. You gain +5 to all attacks and defenses for each aura you have active.
Additionally, you exude an aura out to a number of feet equal to 20 + your INT. Allies within this aura gain +5 to all attacks and defenses.
Of particular note was the sentence that read, “Your auras and aura bonuses treat you as an ally to yourself, but this effect will not cause an aura to affect you more than once.”
Since I was an ally to myself, I’d get the attack bonus from my Intelligence, but the wild part was that I would also get the attack bonus from my own intrinsic skills. For example, Oblivion Orb did damage based on my Intelligence and my Dimensional Magic skill level. Now, it would deal damage based on my Intelligence and my Dimensional Magic skill level with an additional bonus equal to my Intelligence and my Dimensional Magic skill level. The name of the evolution was Self-Insert, which I guess meant that I’d be inserting myself into my own attacks… somehow.
Once I saw the System’s note, I ran it by Grotto to get a second opinion.
[This represents close to a 50% boost to your damage output in addition to granting a substantial buff to everyone else you’re fighting alongside. Take it.]
As the Core pointed out, there wasn’t much of a competition between this evolution and the other two once Auradilato got involved. Psychic Citadel was great for defense, and Mastermind was great for situational awareness, but I needed the occasional damage buff to stay relevant in fights. That was especially true when our fights tended to be with things nearly twice our level. I doubted I’d ever get a better opportunity to buff my damage than this evolution, making Self-Insert an easy choice.
While my second mind worried over my upgrades, Rufio led us out of the cave system and into a clearing containing a dozen different wormhole platforms. Without any nearby trees to block our view, the raging clouds of the dark storm overhead drew my attention once more. They rushed across the sky at speeds that might have rivalled a commercial jet, and I took a moment to consider the spatial distortions going on.
I’d become convinced that what I was looking at was the sky over the opposite side of the planet. We’d been told by Hep that half the world had been made uninhabitable by out of control mana eruptions caused by a weapon created by a prior generation, which had been stolen and deployed by an avatar to devastating effect. As to why this Labyrinth twisted reality such that those storms were within view, I had no idea. A few theories were working their way through my mind, but I expected we’d find answers soon enough if we looked for them. Whether or not we should look was a different question.
Rufio skittered about between the platforms, whiskers twitching as he evaluated each one in turn. Occasionally he’d close his eyes and mutter something under his breath as he cast a spell, then mana would dance around in his body before he went back to studying the area. I bit my tongue while he worked, not wanting to slow him down with useless questions. Joma didn’t share my approach.
“I thought your skill just showed you the path,” she said. “Why are you sniffing at all the platforms like that?”
Rufio kept working as he answered her question, squatting down to investigate another one of the raised stone circles. “I need to know what I am looking for,” he said. “Before, my target was ‘the next closest obelisk’, and that brought us here. Using that same approach has now given me several paths to follow. I am checking what Dungeons each path takes us into, and trying other formulations of the request, such as ‘the center of the forest.’”
“Can you try ‘Anesis or Orexis’ to see whether they’re still following us?” I asked.
“The skill does not work that way,” said Rufio. “It shows me a path, it does not give me any further information. Also, I am not going to target a godly avatar with my divination skill. That is just asking to get counter-scryed.” He stopped to scratch his cheek. “There could be other blowback as well. I was there when one of our diviners tried to find an avatar and their eyeballs exploded. I do not wish to have my eyeballs explode.”
“Understandable,” I said. “It’s not a pleasant experience.”
“Then the hold up is that there’s more than one way to go?” asked Joma.
“Yes. It makes sense. These lead to different Dungeons, so people with different skills can all eventually find their way to the same obelisk. There are matching sets, you see.” He pointed at a few platforms. “These four lead to the next closest obelisk, while those four lead to the center of the forest.”
“Can you check for a Labyrinth control center?” I asked.
Rufio closed his eyes for a few seconds, then shook his head. “That is too vague.”
“There are a variety of arrangements the Cores could be using to administer this Labyrinth,” said Grotto. “For all we know, they could be operating out of a Dungeoneering Dungeon.”
I furrowed my brow and turned to the little octo. “A Dungeoneering Dungeon?” I said, skeptically.
“This forest has Dungeons for every skill imaginable.” His armor clinked as his feelers swished through the air. “It stands to reason there would be a Dungeoneering Dungeon.”
I turned back to Rufio. “Care to try it?” I asked.
The specialist looked concerned for a moment, then closed his eyes and cast his spell. He looked surprised when he opened them again. “I did not expect that to work.”