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

“No. That’s energy vulnerabilities, the flip side of energy immunity and resistance. You don’t normally try to burn a Fire Elemental or shock a Lightning Elemental, right?”

“A total waste o’ time,” he agreed. “Ye haul out the Frost weapon for the first, or Acid fer the second, or just make do with hacking on the things.”

“Ryin wasn’t looking for it, but all those Shades had some level of DR/Magic,” Kris pointed out.

I pursed my lips at the comment. “Right, wasn’t looking for it,” I agreed, unsurprised her Null could sense that, more miffed that I wasn’t doing my Diviner job correctly for my Melees. She had all those Feats and Masteries to bypass Material DR’s and stuff, too. I stared ahead of us. “Fortuitous timing, here.”

The Deranged Shadow Phantom had clearly already seen us, but wasn’t reacting as we weren’t close enough, a good hundred yards away at the moment. It was not going to start shooting at us unless we entered its zone of control.

“It’s a Summons.” I glared at it, Reach Assay extending out as I burned some Mana on increasing the range.

It also noticed my attention, and promptly raised the shadowy bow in its hand to start shooting at me. Noticing the Assay was enough to trigger it, a magical ‘attack’.

Kris immediately broke into a sprint for it, while I just turned Invisible and deprived the shade Phantom of its target. It promptly switched to her, who was coming up on it with terrific speed in side-to-side evasive motions that avoided every arrow being shot at it. The Mick was barreling along behind her enthusiastically, splitting to the left as she glided ever-so-slightly right.

“You’ll feel the ablative field if you’re searching for it,” Kris went on conversationally, the Marks making normal speech totally possible despite being in combat. You just thought in the right direction, didn’t have to voice anything and waste your breath.

It had DR 20/+II. I wasn’t sure where the DR of the other shade-things had been, but he probably hadn’t noticed them because the Soulbound Blade he was carrying was strong enough to punch them, or he’d coup’d them and completely overridden that level of protection.

It was still ominous.

Quaver came out in a cross-cut blur and impalement that drove right into the center of the Phantom’s chest, somehow cutting its bowstring on the pass and sending it snapping from its hands. It reeled back at the Blade buried in it, and then the Mick’s Bunita arrived, coming around with a snap and arriving at the perfect time to punch right into the black humanoid’s face, right between its angry red slits for eyes, and knock the thing right back off its feet in so doing.

It was nailed to the ground by both Blades as it fell badly, but was somehow not quite dead. It quivered, and then my Shards shimmered in, trailing vivic fire, punched through its magic defense, and blew it apart in unwhite fire.

The grass was tall enough to hide most of it, but I hurriedly Shaped up the stone to conceal it from sight, regardless.

“Aye, felt something. It were actually pretty strong, but it touched the edge of Bunita and peeled away like it were no longer there,” the Mick confirmed, reaching down to yank his Sword out of the dissolving ectoplasm of the thing’s head. Quaver leapt up and back to Kris’ hand with a happy but faint ding! ting! and was promptly sheathed.

“20/+II. As you might recall, that’s the bonus your investing two points of Soul into Bunita gives it.” Kris had it spot on. “The Shadow Flyer? It was 30/+III. You wouldn’t have done much more than scratch it without a crit.”

The Mick closed his eyes and sighed. “And ye wonder why we hated fighting this shite after the Fall.”

“No, no, I’m not wondering at all,” she promptly disagreed. “They’ve got enhanced armor protection, too...”

I put a hand to my forehead as the Mick raised his eyebrows. “What now?” he asked fatalistically.

“Their armor acts as both block and ablation now.” She looked at me, and I threw up my hands.

“Six points of armor, I read. That’s, what, a base sixty on the Isparian side?”

“Item Magic goes up way, way beyond sixty on the armor side of things, lass,” the Mick reminded me. “It were one o' our biggest advantages against these creatures. When they got to Armor up or had actually decent Shields or the like, well, it were damn tedious killing them off.”

“Which I’m sure they also felt about you, but I don’t think that’s her point.”

“It’s not,” Kris assured. “The Isparian side of armor is about damage ablation, not blocking. Your damage is absorbed by the armor and diffused. The Matrix side, your blow just bounces and does nothing unless you go around or through its protection...”

“And even then you can have Damage Reduction going to ablate anyways, which is the mechanic it is using?” I asked.

“Yes. It didn’t overlap with the natural DR, so it wasn’t noticed, and the Mick used a head shot, which also nicely avoided the armor’s defense.”

“And you cleaved right through it with Way of Water III,” I sighed, and she nodded shortly. “So you’re saying they have Crystal Armor benefits with their armor, replacing their damage ablation?”

“It looks to be moving that way,” she nodded.

“Explain!” the Mick promptly demanded sternly. “This be important for us idiots who keep swinging about pointy bits o’ metal!”

“You remember the Crystal Dragon.” He nodded, as Kris had gone over it in detail as one of his avenues of growth. “The Crystal Shield disciplines have three aspects to them. Damage Reduction all the time, a passive, the Way of Iron; Natural Armor boosting, a passive, the Way of Stone; and Crystal Armor, which works when wearing armor. Basically, you gain additional Damage Reduction based on the heaviness of the armor you wear.”

He looked back and forth between us. “I’m gathering the armor in the Matrix system is… actually stronger in some ways than the Isparian System?”

“More armor in the Isparian system just increases your damage ablation, as I understand things. It doesn’t make you harder to actually hit. But the Matrix System basically ignores the whole Melee Defense skill mechanic unless you go with Parrying. Defense is something you raise by drawing from offense using Expertise or Defensive Fighting or Dodge or similar skills.” Kris waved her hand negligently. “You want your ability to hit things raised as high as possible because it’s the engine for raising your defenses. Giving up pure offense for a mix of defense and other applications is part of what warriors do.”

“Mechanics of it?” he asked reasonably.

“It works off the Armor Mastery of a Melee warrior or Crystal Dragon Warrior. A point of DR per Mastery level for light armor, two for medium armor, and three for heavy armor," Kris replied.

“A good reason to be wearing heavier armor once again, then,” he murmured wistfully.

“Armor Mastery includes rapid movement in armor, the Exoskeleton disciplines, and Second Skin and similar effects, along with potentially making Skinplate at higher levels, which moves about the same as wearing that leather you’re sporting now,” Kris pointed out. “It just means you’ve a lot of Feats and Masteries to take, Master Mick!” she said cheerfully.

He clenched his hand as we kept trotting along, moving away from the scene of the short fight. “What o’ the power of Rending in our Weapons? Can that be brought back?” he asked eagerly.

Kris looked at me, and I shook my head. “Vulnerability spells seem to be changing in their application,” I said, gliding along next to them since my Fly spell was still active. “They are inflicting Vulnerability to a specific Element on the target, which has a fixed damage effect, not a scaling effect. I’m guessing a higher Scarab just changes the duration now, and it probably won’t stack with existing Vulnerabilities. So, Casting a Fire Vuln on an Ice creature is pointless.”

“Oh, I wondered what were going on when ye did that on the Maelstrom back there, and nothing much happened...” he murmured. “I thought the princess would have one-hit the thing, an’ it didnae happen.”

She’d Firephased Quaver against the crazed dual Elemental, but it was innately Vulnerable to fire, and hadn’t gotten MORE Vulnerable with the spell.

“It can introduce a weakness where none was before, so that is still useful. I would have liked it to be a separate function… are there Matrix spells that do that, Ryin?” she asked quickly.

“There are spells that enhance your fire magicks. There are spells that increase the effect of fire spells in an area. There are Metas and Feats and Class Abilities that increase the potency of your flames. All of those can be reflected over to any Element, and there’s Curse-like transformative magicks which do exactly what that Fire Vuln was doing.

“I can’t recall anything that straight up doubles or more the damage you take from spells, even restricted by Element. On the other hand, there are the Paired and Echoing and Admixture Metas, which double the power of the spells they are attached to, but that’s a different effect.”

The Mick pursed his lips. “So, ye can tap power equal to a Render, but from the opposite way?” he asked.

“The mechanic raises the Valence of the spell it is attached to, or the Scarab, in Isparian terms,” I told him. “It’s basically the opposite of mana conversion, if you think about it. With Isparian magic, you are gradually able to get the full power out of the spell for less and less mana. With Matrix mana, you use the same or more mana, and get more and more power out of the spell.

“Unless you reduce the Scarab cost to nothing, most Metas don’t actually work all that well for Isparian magic, although they give it some great flexibility in other areas.”

“Aye, doubling the range, Chaining the spells, and the like ye alluded to, an’ far more complex and versatile War magic. It sounded even deadlier than the War magic I be familiar with, to be honest.”

“The upper end is, because it pushes the ceiling up, while Isparian Magic cheapens the cost of the floor. Shooting off a Gold spell for one mana is totally possible with Isparian Magic, but you’d need the equivalent of fifty mana to do the same for a Valenced spell,” I told him.

He grunted. “So the Isparian system has more staying power.”

“It’s also quite potent for what it does. The standard spells of Isparian War Magic can easily deal twice the damage or more of similar basic Matrix spells. They are incredibly deadly, as you well know.”

“Mana Scarab, Incantor spells be not working as they did once. But… how high do the spells go?” the Mick had to ask.

“No known limit, although they do branch at one point.” He looked at me in astonishment. “That should not surprise you. The default seems to be nine tiers, excluding Cantrips, before you hit a hard ceiling. Then you have a choice of pursuing higher Tiers once you break the Eternal Ceiling, or going after the Source Code of Magic, which is basically completely open-ended.” He gave me another hard look. “The Source Code is knowing all the components of magic and having a vision of a spell you want in mind. You research the various components and assemble the spell YOU want.

“You could make literally any spell you can conceive of, but the cost and difficulty of it may well be prohibitive.

“Higher Tiers of spells can be ones boosted by Metas from lower Levels, or possibly fixed spells designed within the tiering paradigm. We don’t know, as we weren’t taught by Eternals as yet, so it’s all just second-hand.”