Anything ~ 46!

- Andre -

Everything hurt in the absolute best way, as if he was taking a nap after a particularly strenuous pre-dawn workout. For a long moment, Andre didn’t want to let his mind do any work, simply exulting in the fact that he felt amazing. He wanted to look at the notification that was playing behind his eyes-

Then the rest of his body let him know that he was in a whole lotta pain.

“Ahh!” The Druid’s eyes flew open and he looked around in confusion. “What… how am I in my Grove? I should be the only one that can get here?”

His eyes landed on Zed, who was lying on the stone floor with a stupid grin on his face, and Luke, who was staring at him with his dead-fish eyes. The Druid surged upward, his power racing out to bring the whole place down on the man. “You bast-”

*Tonk.*

Andre only saw a bottle for an instant before darkness took him once more.

The Druid slowly swam to the surface of consciousness, his nose itching slightly for some reason as his blood sang to him. He didn’t move, not wanting to lose this moment of truly being one with the world around him. As the minutes passed, he kept expecting the feeling to fade… but it didn’t. In the next moment, he knew it never would.

Mana Channels upgraded: High-quality -> Extreme High-quality.

Mana Channels upgraded: Extreme High-quality -> Forged.

Your Mana Channels have become Forged! CAL scan in progress to determine changes. Re-scanning brainwaves to establish a new baseline for standard. Unnatural hold found: new baseline set at peak of late thirties, moved from initial baseline previously set at initiation of Sigil.

“You must be joking.” Andre opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. “My Sigil was set to stay in a place where I was barely in control of my mind, like a hormone-rampaging teenager… and it never fixed itself?”

“That would explain the depressive episodes!” Zed’s cheery voice made Andre’s ears twitch. “Welcome back, Forged Channels buddy! Hey, did you know that I’m the first known Bard to get Forged Channels in the entirety of this world? Got an achievement and a new Mastery out of it!”

“You got a…?” Andre looked over to Luke, who was holding a bottle in his hand, ready to swing for his temple. “Please… don’t hit me again? Can we talk about whatever is going on?”

“Good. Yes.” Luke’s bottle vanished as if it had never existed, and he reached a hand out to help the Druid to his feet. “Looks like the book was right. I should find some more self-help books. They seem to do the trick.”

“That book was ‘The War of Art’, and you know it. I found a ‘copyright’ in it, whatever that means, and it clearly tells us what that book is.” Zed pretended to chastise the Murderhobo while practically dancing in place. “Andre. Andre. Guess what my new Mastery does!”

“I don’t even know what’s going on. Can someone please explain how we got here?” The Druid stumbled across the room and onto the roots of the tunnel, his headache rapidly fading now that he was regaining health.

“Luke blew open the way here through your closed portal, cause apparently he doesn't need mana to do that anymore. Then he’s been dumping purified unicorn horn into us so we can start becoming… useful, or something!” Zed held out a thumbs-up as he finished his explanation, then looked at Luke to make sure he got it all correct.

“Friends are useful just by being friends. But,” Luke paused and pulled his book out of Zed’s hands, then skimmed through the early sections, “Here. ‘Consumable gifts can go a long way toward repairing a damaged friendship. They can’t rebuild trust, but instead show your friend that you had been thinking about their needs’. Then there’s like… a whole chapter on being careful about not accidentally becoming a ‘sugar daddy’, but they never actually tell me what that is.”

“They didn’t? Oh, good! In that case,” Zed came over and gave Luke a huge hug, “wanna buy me some Perfect Mana Channels, you beautiful, murderous, filthy rich man?”

Andre watched everything that was going on with absolute shock. It was just starting to hit him that he had gotten an utterly massive upgrade, and he didn’t even know what it did. He hadn’t even been awake for it. He certainly hadn’t thanked the man that had likely just made him a contender for ‘most potentially powerful’ as a Druid on their planet. “Luke… why did you give me enough catalyst that a Kingdom would be bankrupt if they tried to pay for the same amount?”

“Your mind was wrong.” Luke poked the Druid in the center of his head, rocking him backward hard rough to fall over. “I only know one way to fix that.”

“Any Enchanter employed by the Kingdom can adjust the Sigil.” Andre told him firmly. “We could have told you that. Taylor should know… oh, abyss. Taylor. Luke, we need to go get her. My plants… they grow into the person inside them. They burrow through skin, and wrap around the Mana Channels to get the mana they need to continue functioning. She’ll have been awake for all of it.”

“How long does that take?” Luke eyed the Druid coldly. “Also, how long did it take you to give in to making that kind of thing? Don’t you think a clean death is a better way to go?”

“She never forced…” Andre let out a long exhale as he thought over all the interactions he’d had with Taylor, and amended what he was going to say. “Listen… I think that all of us were trapped in a certain headspace for a long time, entirely by accident. Do you guys remember when we were first tested for mana? They said that they usually test older people, because their minds worked a certain way. What if the Sigil makers just… never took that into account for our generation?”

“You think everyone that made it through has been trapped as a teenager mentally even though they’ve lived for decades?” Zed quizzed him directly before nodding slowly. “That would make a lot of sense. I haven’t had that problem, for obvious reasons. You all have like… decades more life under your belts than I do. So, I actually am still a teenager, and I just thought old people were jerks all the time. Cool, cool.”

“Andre. How long does it take for the nasty bits of your Lotus Coffin?” Luke pressed as the conversation got further off-base. “We’ve only been here a couple hours. At six times speed…?”

“We should be able to get back in time.” The Druid let out a huge breath and deflated in relief. “If we get going soon, that is.”

They started walking down the tunnel, then Andre froze in place as a notification he had been hoping for forever appeared.

The natural world is attuning with you as you become more in tune with it! A new Ability is germinating!

“That’s… new?” Andre tried to shake off the text, but it was superimposed no matter how he tried to get past it. “Have you guys ever gotten messages in a new way?”

“Too many times, Andre.” Luke stated just as Zed hummed a happy ‘no’ to the question.

Brute Migration (Tier 8, level 0.)

Effect 1:  Inserting a half pound of flesh into a double circle will allow you to use mana to summon a creature within 10+n miles with flesh similar to the flesh used for summoning. (Maximized at 20 miles). Travel time based on distance. Strength of beckoning based on mana input.

Bonus 1, at range: Range of summoning has been tripled. Current range: 60 miles. (Maximized.)

Effect 2: You are now able to exert control over the summoned creature. There is a 50+5n chance of controlling the creature. (Maximized at 100%).

Bonus 2, Multitarget: You can summon up to 10+n creatures of the same type. (Maximized at 20 creatures.)

Effect 3: You can choose up to 10+n locations the summoned creature will move to before being pulled to the location of the summoning. (Maximized at 20 locations.)

Bonus 3, AoE: You can now directly summon the desired creature to your side no matter the travel distance, so long as they are within 60 miles and on the same Plane. (Maximized.)

Effect 4: You can now set a territory for the creature, where they will roam for at least 10+5n days. This can be resisted if the location chosen is unsuitable. (Maximized at 60 days.)

Bonus 4, Multitarget AoE: By attuning both earth and vegetation, you are able to create a beacon that will determine both the quantity and quality of creatures that are drawn toward it. Doing so will allow for rapid migration and biome shifting. The variance in your beacon will decrease at 10n%, where a maximized Ability will guarantee the exact quantity and quality of creature so long as they are within range.

“I just got a Tier eight Ability.” Andre whispered aloud, nearly falling over as he hastened to read the information.

“What?” Zed barked in a rage, literally stomping his feet a few times out of sheer frustration. “All I got was a Tier seven for getting Forged Mana Channels! How is my luck this bad?”

“This is a war Ability.” Andre muttered as he took in the wall of information that he both read, and had engraved on his very being. “I could summon all the mounts a Kingdom is riding… I could create a trap for the dogs from the dynasty, funnel them to one spot, and swallow them into the earth.”

“You could even… tell us what you got.” Zed spoke in the same dreamy tone Andre was using, to mock him, then flashed a grin when the Druid glared at him. “How about we both share? I’ll start! My Mastery allows me to create copies of myself that have my exact knowledge at the time of creating them, then they can go out and find a tavern to work in. I gain Potentia based on how good of a job my clone does, then they pop like a soap bubble when no one is looking. It’s… I might love this Mastery. It’s a ‘world first’ Mastery. I know it is. I’m going to be the only Bard in the world when I’m done with this; and there’ll be a Bard at every tavern.”

“More… of you.” Luke snorted hard enough that snot shot out of his nose and left a trail down his chin for a moment before he wiped it away. “That’s just great.”