Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

The undead were a silent, attentive crowd, watching with actual unblinking intensity as the two sparred.

At Princess Kristie’s call, I’d Infused the Mick’s pyreal Blade, newly named Bunita, with Mercy so they didn’t have to hold back when sparring. The Mick seemed to find that wonderfully liberating, and went at her with everything he had... and he had a lot.

He was indeed impressed when he found out she was at least as strong as he was, was definitely more graceful, and was faster afoot. Her swordplay was unreal in its complexity and depth, whereas his was clean, efficient, pragmatic, and incredibly brutal in its application.

And... simple. Remarkably simple.

To put it in our terms, he was a One Strike Swordsman, his blade as much defense as offense, moving to find an opening and then plunging for it with merciless opportunism. He was very, very good at finding those openings, leaving me hissing at the speed at which he exploited the tiniest gaps in defense, and his almost surreal ability to block the gaps in his own defense against similar attacks.

His style had both flowing surety and grim finality behind it, an intimidating psychological edge to it that said this was someone who had fought and killed a lot, and he was going to slowly overwhelm you, outlast you, and beat you dead, as everyone who tried to do the same to him had failed.

And he was running into a cutting whirlwind that wasn’t giving him the respect he’d earned with blood.

Princess Kristie was a Seven Dragons Swordswoman. Like the Sama I knew, she was a Natural Swordsman, and moved like she was born to the blade. On top of that, she’d meshed all Seven Dragon weapon styles, and dozens of Feats and Techniques on top of that, and so she was fighting far, far above her level, just as Quaver was a vastly superior Sword to his Bunita.

She was also a full Flurry Swordswoman, not a One Striker, although she could certainly fight in that style if she wished to. Quaver moved with the agility of an épée, the brutal chopping power of an axe, the echoes of a crushing hammer and thrusting spear, gutting knife and bashing mace. The length of the Blade Morphed from long to short as needed to surprise and unsettle him, alternately matching his reach or suddenly very inside it with appalling speed.

Her ability to pierce his defenses wasn’t pure raw skill, it was sublime mastery. Way of Fire III meant -6 to Dex and Dodge defenses. Way of Air III meant -6 to immaterial, magical defenses. Way of Water III meant -6 to total Armor or Natural Armor.

The combination of Profound Skills was plainly beyond his ability to deal with, and he was having real problems overcoming the swirling deflective force sparkles from Quaver’s Lost Light defenses.

Kris had adapted to the new ability of her Sword with ease and aplomb, as befitted her Talent, the manifestation of it giving her a defensive edge of incredible depth, something that only grew deeper when she swapped ability to hit for an even greater defensive edge with Expertise. His ability to land a blow on her shrank ever further.

Rule of Valus, swapping brute force for controlled precision, also made sure her Sword moved faster than a striking serpent, keeping pace with his own.

One of my jobs was to do a Deep Assay of him and his Stat line, figuring out how things conflated. It wasn’t that hard to do, although working out the equivalencies in the system was... interesting, as the Isparian system was much simpler than that of the Power of Ten, lacking much of its depth and versatility for pure brutal power to Level.

An Ironskull system, I abruptly realized. Strip away all the non-essential stuff, and drive the basics towards the moon, while avoiding anything which might actually be threatening to the forces behind all of this.

Under the Power of Ten, the Mick was basically a stripped-down Melee/20. He had the Melee Attack Bonus of a full +20, far above what Kris had, hers in the +9 or so area. However, that bonus had been stripped of multiple attacks, and he had none of the supplemental Feats, Techniques, and Masteries of combat that a Power of Ten combatant normally would have, and his skill seemed restricted to blades as his specialty and martial weapons as a side effect of that skill.

His Strength and Dexterity were at a solid 30 each, his Constitution was 28, his Intellect, Wisdom, and Charisma solid 22-23’s. By any measure, he was an incredibly well-rounded and foundationally solid individual, and he could doubtless succeed in any Power of Ten Class.

The martial training and style that he used did not really emphasize multiple rapid attacks at all, relying instead on quickness of the mind and body to deliver single blows more quickly and decisively. Kris was basically slamming him at three blows to one in furious counter-assault against his careful strikes, and it was clearly unbalancing him. He tried to adapt to them, swearing and cursing as she slid past his parries and blocks and counters with what must have seemed like boneless arms and a flexible Blade, for all that when their Swords met, his gave way to the superior weight of hers, and her superior heavyfoot always left her better braced.

Subtle things. It was clear the Mick had a much better straight swordplay foundation than she did, but the breadth of what she was unleashing upon him he simply wasn’t equipped to handle.

Even cursing up a black storm of frustration, he was grinning madly. It was plain he hadn’t had a challenge quite like this ever, and even if he lost, he didn’t care. She’d told him that not only would she teach him, she would be teaching a whole lot of people, and she’d be gravely disappointed if he didn’t learn it all properly!

With that Stat line, there was no chance he wouldn’t be able to suck it all in. The Mick was fully capable of mastering just about every aspect of the Power of Ten, all at once!

The only thing that had held him and the other Isparians back was that Level cap, which was an absolute vertical limit... and there was no horizontal spread. The Isparian route had one road of advancement, that was all, and once you weren’t allowed to master any new skills, that was it. You were done!

You rammed your head into the Eternal ceiling and literally could go nowhere else, the magic of the system that empowered you also forbidding you from the chance to grow more widely, even as it capped how good you could be.

The Isparian System also had no true Class distinction. Certain sets of skills often earned sobriquets, such as Archers with specialization in a missile weapon and Fletching, Soldiers with their heavier weapons and shields, War Mages with their skill at Mana Conversion and War Magic, and so forth and so on.

But there was nothing exclusive or unique about any of that. The Mick could have gone off and learned War Magic if he desired, giving up some other skills from the finite pool allowed him.

Importantly, the only social skill allowed was Leadership, which wasn’t a social skill at all, but a function of how good an organizer one was, and how strong the relationship with one’s Vassals were. Skills like Diplomacy, Intimidation, Bluff, and similar things for social interaction were not part of the Isparian System, although Deception, with all its emphasis on concealment, misdirection, and misrepresentation, was often considered part of it.

I supposed if Leadership could be considered Diplomacy, Deception could be considered Bluff.

Tellingly, mundane arts and professions had almost no representation in the Isparian system. Even the mundane skills allowed, like Fletching and Cooking, had magical edges to them, interacting with at least Alchemy.

It was amusing that the Lockpicking skill was also the study of gearmaking, such as it was, but smithing of any kind was not a guaranteed part of the Isparian system, even though it definitely should have been.

It seemed that the System didn’t want the people using it to actually make their own Arms and Armor. That had been true on Ispar, too... smithing and Artificing was far more hit or miss when you couldn’t readily improve it, like you could the Tinkering trades that were actually in the System.

The Power of Ten was open-ended and flexible. Discover a new Trade? The system accepted it, evolving and growing as the trade or craft itself did, recognizing new tiers as they were discovered, adjusting over time as Ranks of a Skill compressed as the height and breadth of the skill increased, so someone with ten Ranks in a medieval society might find themselves only possessing four in a more modern one. The specialized and unique knowledge and skills they had developed in a low-tech society were, instead of being greatly advanced and unique, merely foundational knowledge in a higher-tech one.

The Isparian system here was bleeding out and also being infiltrated... something that had also been happening on Ispar, I slowly realized.

The key effect was probably armor, I considered, watching the two start dancing over the rooftops they had bounced onto, using the terrain and striving for any edge, move and counter-move in a sophisticated dance of skirling steel too smooth and fast for most eyes to appreciate.

In the Isparian system, use of armor was not a skill, although, very amusingly, using a shield masterfully was. A master shield wielder was very difficult to hurt in combat, such that using martial techniques to avoid the shield entirely was a whole branch of martial study, and one of the reasons flails existed, and scythes could actually be useful in a fight.

Armor, armor was like wearing clothes in the Isparian system. As long as you were skilled in avoiding damage in martial combat, you could wear any kind of armor!

In the Power of Ten system, wearing Armor was a Proficiency, a form of Martial Feat. Bleeding into the Isparian system, that meant it now cost Skill Points to learn to move freely in armor. Melee Defense skills merely made you eligible to learn the wearing of armor!

Chief MacNiall had related how War Mages used to run around in full armor as heavy as any a full knight might wear without problems, and how that had ended up after the Fall, with them unable to Cast any spells at all while in armor. The resulting vulnerability had to be adapted to very quickly, as suddenly the most defensive, enspelled tankers in combat were now horribly vulnerable!

Add on their sudden lack of high-end functioning defensive magic, and the cocksure confidence of many an arrogant War Mage had often ended with them stuck on the end of a tumerok’s spear in some disbelief at how easily they’d just been killed. It turned out that enchanted robes and underwear barely at Copper and Silver Levels just wasn’t doing the job they were used to it doing, and not having those heady tiers of magic around as Buffs was very detrimental to the previous tactical thinking of the junior magi who’d lived through the instant death of The Fall...

The fact there was a Stealth skill now, not merely Deception, and the Mick had been using it to survive moving around in a very dangerous land, meant that the translation of the Isparian system was continuing. Elements that weren’t there before were opening up, and it was plain that people were going to be able to do ever more and different things and Level them up in so doing.

It wasn’t the Power of Ten system that everything was translating to, but there was clearly a lot of overlap, and perhaps just by having us here the evolving field of magic was settling into something different and similar.

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“That was quite a show!” I told the two of them, clapping slowly as they made their way back, both of them sweating freely at the tremendous amounts of calories they’d just used. “You, down the beach to the sea, and bathe.” I pointed at McMikal, who grinned and headed off that way at an easy trot, his somewhat ragged breathing evening out as he did.

I turned to Kris, who sort of rippled, and her Vajra repelled her sweat from her and dropped it on the ground in tiny beads.

“He’s as strong as I am,” Kris said brightly, pale violet eyes shining after the show. “And definitely the best fundamentals fighter I have ever met! He’s going to be an utter monster after I’m through with him!”

“Uh huh. Here’s his Stats.”

I popped up the Holo, and we both examined them mutely.

“Wow. That is a LOT of bio-enhancement,” the Princess commented, her eyes sparkling. “Did you know all that was possible?”