B5 C46: Eternal Armor

In some ways, my first successful summoning didn’t change all that much. It wasn’t as if Cezerra suddenly let me go, after all. Whenever I w

In some ways, my first successful summoning didn’t change all that much. It wasn’t as if Cezerra suddenly let me go, after all. Whenever I was awake, I was still at her beck and call, and whenever it was time to sleep, I continued to claim the ritual chamber as my makeshift bedroom.

Still, in smaller ways, the difference was clear. For one, my sparring sessions came to an abrupt halt. Ostensibly, their original purpose had been to get me more levels in Spatial Magic by using my portals in actual fights. Now that I had the requisite level, Cezerra had no reason to keep wailing on me, even if I suspected she kind of enjoyed the exercise.

Not that I really wanted to fight the demoness these days. The most notable change was the steadily growing gaggle of drudges which followed her around. I was confident I could take the brutish beasts, at least in a one on one, but if they joined in to my already disadvantaged fights with Cezerra, I had little hopes of coming out on top. With their constant presence setting me on edge, I couldn’t help but wonder what Cal had been thinking.

Which led quite naturally into the next change: another visit from Cal. Whether she’d been lying in wait until I succeeded or it was a coincidence, I wasn’t sure, but the rogue-turned-warrior made her appearance only shortly after I summoned my first drudge. In true Cal fashion, she’d waited until I’d fallen asleep, choosing to wake me by poking a dagger into my side. Or, at least she tried to.

Reactive Armor activated!

Damage blocked!

Instead of a flare of pain, it was the dull clink of metal on metal that woke me up, my class skill summoning my armor to automatically block the attack. The unrepentant grin that awaited me did not prevent me from letting out a weary sigh, nor did the cheery wave that followed.

“Morning, Tess.”

Once again, she’d somehow pulled Cezerra away, along with her hanger-ons, though neither of us knew how long that would last. We speedily moved through the pleasantries, and Cal assured me that Verin was doing fine, all things considered. More pressingly, she updated me on her master plan to free me from Cezerra’s clutches.

“All right. Weird demon stuff, but it’s honestly not that complicated. You told me she said she’s considered a ‘Knight’ which is the highest demonic rank you can be before you earn a nobility title. She’ll want to upgrade to a Baroness if she can.”

Ideally, we should keep her from doing that, I thought. It would probably give her some sort of powerup, but that wasn’t my main concern. Between Cal and Verin, there’s already enough royals and nobles around. One more was pushing it.

“Except, the system won’t upgrade her rank unless she leads a group of demons in a few successful battles against a worthy foe. So once she has you summon as many drudges as she can control -- probably around 15 if she’s a low-ranked knight right now -- she’ll have to go hunting in another region. Might try to actually clear a boss, too.”

An unexpected boon if we wanted to clear as many regions as possible, although that was hardly the main point.

“Anyway, I considered trying to ambush her while she’s fighting the boss, but the more I think about it, the more she’s probably going to leave you here. The drudges can’t fly, so she’ll have to walk through the entirety of the region, and you’d get sick if you came with. Plus, she won’t want you nearby while she’s fighting the boss and vulnerable, and she seems confident that she can find you again if you run away while she’s gone. It would be kind of fun for me to follow her and assassinate her by myself, but from what you’ve said, she’s too tough to take out with a single surprise attack.”

A shame. Everything would have been so much easier if I could let one of the dungeon bosses do most of the work for me. Then again, I had a feeling Cezerra would have little trouble with half of the bosses we’d fought, especially with a pack of drudges reinforcing her.

“But we know she’s weak whenever she spends too much time outside the region, so, here’s the plan. Stall for a bit longer. Slow down the summonings, and I’ll go grab Verin. Once the demon leaves to go fight, Verin and I sneak in and meet you here. We set up an ambush, and then once she returns…”

We went into the specifics for a while after that, but the gist was surprisingly simple. I gave Cal Tal’Ket’s summoning disk -- thankfully still operational despite the untimely death of the last summoned copy -- and we worked out the exact time tables. In two weeks, she would return with Verin, and by then, I needed to summon a full 15 drudges.

Truthfully, I could get it done faster, but it wasn’t a lie to say that the summoning rituals took a lot out of me. The mana alone took time to recharge, but even without the backlash of a failed summons, my core felt wrung out after pushing past the dungeon’s spatial barrier. Worse yet, it wasn’t as if I’d only needed to break it once. The second time had been just as trying as the first.

To that end, it worked out nicely. As long as I told Cezerra I could only summon about one drudge a day, the timelines would match up. 

In only a few weeks, everything would come to a head.

Cal left shortly thereafter, leaving me to my own devices. Which was good, in fact. If I was expected to fight Cezerra in less than a month, I would need to grow a lot stronger.

Thankfully, I had exactly what I needed to make that happen. Pulling up my character sheet, I smiled as I read the most important line there.

Class Points: 17

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In a weird way, repeatedly battling Cezerra was better for my class quests than anything else I’d done in the last year. When weighed against all the time I’d spent on Drawing, Architecture, Construction, Smithing, Gardening, Enchanting, Cooking, and a few other professional skills besides, that should have been obvious. As glad as I was to have delved into all my newer hobbies, they weren’t exactly relevant to my class.

Even the subsequent few regions we’d all cleared were less about skill training and more about blitzing through the dungeon to wrack up some experience. They’d been good for a few levels in my weapon skills and some less frequent levels for my magic, but not much else. 

And that was normally fine: It wasn’t like I’d had any urgent need for class points until recently. With a deadline in place, though, I’d managed to hit the next rank in Axes, Heavy Armor, Medium Armor, and Swords. With the first two hitting level 20, they’d given me a collective four class points, and with the latter two hitting level 10, they’d given me two for a total of six points.

Two more I’d kept tucked away from back when I was level 17, and another, I’d gained once I hit 18, for a total of nine. In and of itself, that would have been a hefty windfall, but the true winner had been the most recent. Pulling up my notifications, I scrolled back to my latest skill level.

Spatial Magic has hit level 40!

Congratulations! You have reached the Adept rank in Spatial Magic!

Based on your actions, you have earned a skill augment for achieving a new skill rank.

Augment of Spatial Freedom

Gain heightened resistance to all spatial locks and restriction effects. Your magic naturally acts a full rank higher when breaking through spatial barriers of all varieties, and acts two ranks higher when teleporting yourself with short-range teleports.

Without a doubt, it was the strongest augment I’d ever seen, but that should have been expected. Despite the skill being one of the newer additions to my character sheet, it was the first to ever hit the Adept rank. Without the spatial tonic and years of focusing on it to the exclusion of most of my other magic schools, it would never have gotten there, either.

And even then, it was only because the skill was class-aligned. Not that I could rely on that any longer, as I received a devastating notification immediately afterwards.

NOTE: You have reached the maximum rank for which Spatial Magic is considered class-aligned. As of now, your skill is no longer considered aligned, and future leveling speeds will be drastically reduced.

I’d known in theory that not all of my skills would be permanently aligned, but it was another thing to see it in practice. I wasn’t entirely sure if all my other spell schools would stall at level 40 as well, or if that was a product of Spatial Magic being an Advanced mana type, but it put a bit of a damper on any archmage aspirations I might have had.

Of course, if I wanted a pick-me-up, I only had to look one line further.

Class Quest Completed: Raise an Advanced school of mana to level 40 (Repeatable)

+8 Class Points

+10000xp

I would have greatly appreciated a new spell to go along with my new rank, but for now, I’d have to settle for some class skills instead. With a full 17 points to spend, I focused on my class space, letting the world fade into a mass of gray fog before I was spit out into my usual armory.

Naturally, I’d already given some thought on what I would buy, but with so many points, I wasn’t able to plan everything out. Ideally, I’d unlock a few new choices along the way, which was doubly true when I scanned my existing options. To put it lightly, I found them… wanting.

Arcane Weaponmaster Options:

Enhanced Weapon Skills - 0/5

Weapon to Wand - 0/1 (3 points)

Armor Penetration - 4/5 

Magic Penetration - 2/5 

Melded Maladies - 0/1 (5 points)

Arcane Armorist Options:

Mana Sink - 3/5

Arcane Supremacy - 0/1 (10 points)

Overload Resistances - 0/1 (3 points)

As had been the case for quite some time, there were no new augmenter skills, leaving me to pick between more offense or defense. Where I’d once been daunted by how many class points I would need in order to fill out my class trees, though, I now found myself running into the opposite problem. I had plenty of points, but not enough good skills.

In fairness, that wasn’t entirely true. All the skills were good, but either they weren’t what I needed right now, or I hadn’t properly tailored my powerset to mesh with them.

Enhanced Weapon Skills, for example, would let me augment stamina-based special attacks with mana. Great in theory, but I’d never learned any special weapon attacks, making the skill useless for now. Likewise, Melded Maladies provided a nice boost in damage and persistence to damage over time and other secondary effects of my attacks. As most of my toolkit focused on raw, upfront damage, the skill wouldn’t have much to boost.

Still, there were two class skills that I considered decent for how much they cost.

The first was a weaponmaster skill. As much as I’d focused far more on defense than offense up till now, that was coming back to bite me. My strongest blunt attacks couldn’t break Cezerra’s bones, and my strongest severing attacks couldn’t cut through them. If I wanted to do more than survive, I needed something new. 

And one such skill offered that. One of the very earliest options to appear, I’d skipped over it time and time again because I hadn’t had any compatible spells to use it with.

Weapon to Wand

Allows the user to cast their spells from their weapons rather than their body. Spells cast this way benefit from a small portion of the user’s weapon skill levels and physical stats.

And in fairness, I mostly still didn’t, with one major exception.

Mental Spike. Out of everything I’d thrown at Cezerra, my mental magic was probably the only thing that had truly fazed her. If I could attach the spell to my hammer and deliver an empowered spike with every hit, I at least hoped that I could stun her, if not better.

Would you like to spend 3 class points to unlock Weapon to Wand?

A quick confirmation was all it took to spend the points, with only 14 now remaining. As an unexpected bonus, it looked like unlocking the skill gave me better details on how it worked, too.

You have learned a new class skill: Weapon to Wand

When attaching a spell to a weapon, add a quarter of the corresponding weapon level to the corresponding level of the magic school in use. Based on the weapon type, add a quarter of your Strength or Dexterity to your Intelligence.

I ran the math, pulling up short once I realized just how big a boost I was looking at.

Let’s say I attach a Mental Spike to my hammer. My Hammers skill is at 24, so that’ll temporarily add six levels to my Mental Magic, bumping it up from level 25 to 31. 

Then, hammers are definitely Strength-based, so that should add 25% of my Strength to my Intelligence. With my Strength at 36, that was a whopping nine points of Intelligence, bumping me up from 42 to 51. 

By no means was the class skill going to suddenly double the power of my spells, but that was still a pretty big bump! Hopefully, Cezerra wouldn’t know what hit her.

With how low the skill was on the class tree, it was no surprise when purchasing it unlocked a new option on the next step. I scanned it quickly, finding a new Overload skill that would let me apply Overload Weapon to spells cast with Weapon to Wand. 

Useful, but before I could get sidetracked, I ran over to the armorist room to make my second selection. No amount of offense mattered if Cezerra would just cave in my armor with a single punch, and I wanted to make my most important choices before I started branching out.

Already, both my physical and magical defenses were incredibly robust, but that meant nothing if Cezerra’s magic intrusion could pierce through Arcane Armory. I wouldn’t be shocked if a later class skill popped up that took care of that issue, but for now, my only defense was my Intrusion Resistance. Naturally, I wanted to empower that resistance as much as I could, and there was only one skill that could do that for me.

Overload Resistances

Overload Armor now enhances the effects of Enhanced Physical Hardiness and Status Resistance, boosting your resistances and reducing the potency of non-physical status effects.

Much like my last expenditure, the skill cost three points as well, but I didn’t hesitate to buy it.

You have learned a new class skill: Overload Resistances

This time, I didn’t get a detailed breakdown on the math, but hopefully that was nothing some trial and error couldn’t fix.

While the skill itself was pretty solid, the secondary reason I’d wanted to buy it was to see what new options appeared. Considering most class skills built off those beneath them, I was optimistically hoping for another resistance skill. And lo and behold, a thick purple line formed beneath the armor stand for Overload Resistances, traveling up to the room’s 7th step to reveal a brand new skill.

Stranger yet, it looked like I’d unlocked more than one new option, as a second line appeared beneath my Perpetual Armor skill, traveling upwards to light up my first 8th-step skill. Why exactly, I couldn’t say. Either the new skill had Overload Resistances as a prerequisite, or perhaps I’d been barred from the 8th step until I’d spent enough points in the room.

Either way, I’d take it.

The first skill, stemming off of Overload Resistances, was attached to a thick set of plate armor that had a certain sense of robustness to it. The metal had a strange iridescent sheen that made it look far fancier than most of the other offerings in the room, and on a hunch, I first asked for the price tag.

Unlock Omni Resist for 15 class points?

I blanched, discovering the skill to already extend past my price range. More out of curiosity than anything else, I read the description, discovering what could justify such a high total.

Omni Resist

+10 to all resistance skills

These levels benefit from other class skills and bonuses such as Enhanced Physical Hardiness, Status Resistance, and Overload Resistances.

This includes resistances you have not yet learned, as long as they are Rare or lower in rarity.

All resistance skills are considered class aligned for ten additional levels.

All resistance skills receive a 20% boost in leveling speed and are easier to pick up.

Hell. Admittedly, some of the lines were more about long-term growth. The leveling-speed boost and the change to class alignment wouldn’t help much right now. But the static boost? That was huge.

Let’s see. If I take something like Poison Resistance, it’s currently at level 22. The first Constitution threshold enhances that by (Constitution/2%), which is 19% right now. Then, Enhanced Physical Hardiness grants a (25+Intelligence)% boost, which is 66%. The two were additive rather than multiplicative, so that was an 89% increase. While the levels didn’t scale perfectly linearly, especially with augments at play, that effectively put my Poison Resistance at level 42.

Respectable, if not life-changing. On the flip side, if I add the extra ten levels in, that’s a baseline of 32, and that goes all the way up to… level 60? Higher if we wanted to count Overload Resistances. That was a full 18-level bonus from just one skill! And on top of that, it would be boosting every other resistance I had -- and even the ones I didn’t.

Cal had mentioned learning Sonic Resistance and Electrical Resistance during her travels, and she’d earned them the hard way. It sounded like even without the skill, the system would act as though I was already at the Initiate tier of both. Of course, it wouldn’t help me with the Curse Resistance she’d earned earlier -- that was apparently Epic rarity -- but still. I’d have a bit of resistance to just about everything.

Considering it would have boosted Intrusion Resistance too, I would have gladly snatched it up if I had the points. Half of me wanted to exit my class space and save up for it, but I knew I didn’t have time. Reluctantly, I turned to the second new offering, a thin set of blue armor conjured entirely from mana. It glowed brightly, looking far sturdier than anything my own skills could create.

Eternal Armor

Your defense is eternal. Gain greatly heightened resistances to effects which break or remove your armor.

For a second, I thought that was all I would get, but an itch in my head made me sense that I could focus on the skill for additional details. Doing so thankfully brought up a much more in-depth addendum.

Eternal Armor largely protects from effects which fall into two categories: Destruction and Dispellation.

Destruction effects cover all skills which modify the shape and durability of your armor. This covers:

• Non-force-based armor penetration and piercing skills

• Corrosion damage

• Direct metal manipulation

• Metal liquefaction or melting

Dispellation effects cover all skills which deactivate your defenses or prevent you from summoning them in the first place. This covers:

• Most standard dispels or buff-removal skills

• Skill-lock curses

• Mana Intrusion

• Directly teleporting your armor off of you

This skill does not increase your armor’s durability to sheer brute force, nor does it defend from any attacks which entirely bypass your armor, such as mental, spiritual, or soul attacks. This skill does ensure that your standard defenses can almost never be removed.

In a way, it was a very straightforward evolution from the Perpetual Armor one step below it. Both made my armor “permanent” in different ways.

To be honest, before meeting Cezerra, I would have passed over the skill. It was rare that I came across anything that directly affected my armor. Better yet, if the effect was slow-acting enough, like a weak corrosive agent, I could briefly unsummon and resummon my armor to restore it to mint condition.

To that end, if I was making these choices for some game character, it wouldn’t be worth it. As this was real life, though, it only took one death to kill me for good, and Cezerra had made me realize just how weak I was once my Arcane Armory was dealt with. Better yet, the skill explicitly called out mana intrusion, so I knew it would protect me during my upcoming fight.

Would you like to unlock Eternal Armor for 10 class points?

A part of me wanted to curse the high cost, but I knew that wasn’t fair. My class had pulled through for me, offering me the perfect skill to fight against Cezerra. Even if it would deplete my savings, I could only be thankful, and I confirmed the prompt without reservations.

You have learned a new class skill: Eternal Armor

No new options appeared, not that I could have afforded them if they did. In fact, I doubted I’d be spending many points in this room for quite some time. I still had a few ranks of Mana Sink left, but otherwise, the only two remaining skills were Arcane Supremacy and Omni Resist, costing 10 and 15 points respectively.

Probably some other expensive options after that, but it kind of feels like I’m maxing the room out. Is that supposed to happen? I knew people could evolve and upgrade their classes at level 25. Similar to how Arcane Storage only showed up after I learned Spatial Magic, maybe there were other skills that would show up once I fulfilled their requirements, but it kind of felt like I was reaching the end of my offerings until I upgraded my class.

Hard to say, but also not something I needed to worry about for now. With no particularly great way to spend my last class point, I opted to save it for now, exiting my class space.

Only shortly thereafter, Cezerra barged into the ritual chamber.

“Look at you, lazing about. Come on! Another summoning! Just a few more drudges left!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As the next two weeks flew by, I realized just how much my mind had changed in the past two years. At the start of our dungeon excursion, I would have been perfectly content to laze about for two weeks with nothing to do. Now, it was torturous.

Cezerra no longer had any reason to spar with me, and just as importantly, I had no desire to spar with her in case she noticed my new Eternal Armor. As for other ways to pass my time, I was evidently far more reliant on my garden, workshop, and kitchen than I’d imagined. 

Even for my hobbies that didn’t involve any physical equipment, there wasn’t much more I could do. Most of my materials were stored in my workshop, and I was rapidly running out of the small amount of paper, stone, and wood I kept on hand.

It was, then, a relief when Cezerra came to me shortly after the fifteenth drudge was summoned. Was it not for Cal, I would have been surprised by what she said next, but with the forewarning, it was expected.

“I’m going on a hunt,” she began. “You’re staying here. Don’t try to run. Worst case, you die from taking in too much demonic mana before you escape the region. Best case, I hunt you and your friends down and show you what it looks like when I’m unhappy.”

Thankfully, she didn’t belabor the point, waving a hand as she began to walk out of the temple. “I’ll be back when I’m back. You’ll probably need to summon a few more drudges for me after that. Be good, and don’t try anything funny.”

It was a shame for Cezerra that her back was already turned to me, or else she might have noticed the glint in my eyes. If all went well, the demon would have no idea what hit her when she finally returned.