Chapter 151: Connection

As I sat and meditated in the early morning twilight, I considered what might be waiting for me in these Spell Upgrades. Sanguine Bond was the first, but it wouldn’t be the last. And neither would the rest of the three Arcane Spells that I could use this Crystal on. Over the next few days, I’d of course work to Rank them up, but then after that, I still had Crippling Chill, Ray of Frost, and Expedite waiting on me. Those would have to come next, and hopefully it wouldn’t take long to find out where I could get their Crystals.

The ten minutes I had to meditate seemed to pass rather quickly as I imagined all the incredible things I might be able to do in the future, and I hurriedly opened up the Spell Upgrade Choice in my Status.

Okay, I thought, some interesting choices here.

The safest option, it seemed, would be Unbreakable Bond. It was pretty much just a strict numerical upgrade to Sanguine Bond, making it much harder to prematurely end and giving me much more value for my Mana spent. That time increase from 10 to 20 seconds was what really stood out to me; giving me some more range was nice, but I could always prevent that from happening by just using the Spell in a skillful manner. The extra time meant the Spell was, effectively, half the cost.

Of course, while it had double the Mana efficiency, it wouldn’t actually do anything more quickly, so that was still something to keep in mind—it wasn’t the same as, say, doubling all of its effects, since that would drain twice the amount of Health in the same amount of time. This, rather, would take half the amount of Mana, but still require the same time investment.

Still, it was a very nice Upgrade. The Mana regeneration, which was now up to 4.88 per second, would have double the returns on a successful cast, meaning that, in ideal situations with Light Plate on and everything, the Spell would end up net costing me…I did the math in my head. Like, 70 Mana or something? Some really solid value, considering everything it did.

Those other two Upgrades, though, went in some crazily different directions. They both had that same basic condition of requiring me to touch the target for an additional amount of time in order to get a bonus effect. But those lines of text in the Upgrade boxes described quite the effects, each enamoring in their own ways.

First, though, I thought, Index, can you give me some insight on that requirement? When it says I need to be touching a being for some number of uninterrupted seconds…

“Yeah, yeah, so first of all, casting the Spell comes after touching the being, not before. So if you’re already grabbing onto something for a while, and after the required time has passed, then you decide you want to cast Sanguine Bond, you can do so immediately.”

Great. That seemed to work well with Noxious Grasp. If I was already holding onto someone to drain them with that, and then fifteen seconds happened to pass, I could go straight into Sanguine Bond without needing to do something like cast the Spell beforehand and then try to complete that touching requirement. And I assume they don’t get any notification when I begin touching them about Sanguine Bond, only after I’ve already cast the Spell?

“Exactly.”

Okay, sounds good. The requirement was pretty steep—especially with Soul Bond, with its absolutely staggering sixty-second prerequisite before I could actually use its effects—but at least I could do things like use it in secret. Especially with Hypnotic Bond, I could imagine doing something like nonchalantly holding onto someone outside of a hostile situation, waiting the fifteen seconds, and then activating the Spell and putting them out of commission for the next ten seconds. Great, if I ever needed to sneak into somewhere or something like that.

And as for Soul Bond, its use-case was more…opaque. It was obvious what the Upgrade encouraged me to do. Somehow, it wanted me to gather a bunch of super powerful beings and establish permanent bonds with them so I could steal their regenerations. But those two limiting factors were massive when it came to doing that. First, they all needed to be within 1000 paces of me at all times, and second, I couldn’t have any more bonds active than my Rank in the Spell—currently 10. Though, technically, my Soft Cap was at 11, so I could presume it would be at least at that point.

Still, those two limitations got rid of quite a few ways it could be used. The 1000 paces condition meant I’d need to keep these bonded beings at least somewhat near me at all times, and of course they’d lose half of all of their regenerations, meaning they wouldn’t be very friendly to me if I established that bond. So presumably, I’d need them to be weaker than me so I could cart them around in captivity wherever I went. I could imagine some cage of rabid monsters I dragged around through the forests with me, all of them boosting my own Status.

But then, that second constraint kind of restricted me there, as well. Since I couldn’t have more than around a dozen of these bonds active at any given time, and the regeneration I got from the bonds depended on their own levels of regeneration, I’d obviously want to ensure I had as powerful monsters bonded with me as possible. So I’d want powerful monsters, but not so powerful that I couldn’t keep them in captivity and with me at all times. Quite the predicament.

I could think of some monsters that’d be decent to work with; Stripeks had high Stamina/Minute compared to their Levels, so if I could take half of that for myself, it could work pretty well, and there were plenty of monsters with a solid Health/Minute, but really, increasing my passive Health and Stamina regeneration wouldn’t really do much for me in a fight. It felt like this Upgrade was trying to push me into a certain build, but it was kind of difficult to identify what exactly it wanted me to do to maximize those gains.

Index, am I missing something?

“Well, you are missing the main use case for this Upgrade. To start with, that idea of keeping some cage of monsters with you at all times is missing out on one main point that might reveal the best strategy here. None of those monsters have a Mana/Minute.”

Well, yeah, only a few monsters have Mana at all. So I suppose it’s more about the Health and Stamina then, right?

“Not necessarily. You said the answer there yourself, right? Most monsters don’t have Mana, but Humans do.”

Oh. …Oh. The Spell’s supposed to be used with—

“A bunch of slaves, yes. The idea would be you just fit a group of Classed Humans with some Enchanted gear to ensure they can’t betray you, hit them all with a permanent bond, and then boom. Free regeneration in all three areas. And since they’re Humans and can be reasoned with using, say, threats to themselves or their family, you wouldn’t even need to keep them in a cage or anything. Alternatively, this could be used by a leader of a country or something, stuff like that. But most optimized uses of this Upgrade would involve using on your fellow Humans, yes.”

That’s…less enticing.

“Yeah, yeah, you probably don’t wanna keep a bunch of slaves around or whatever. Thought you’d object to something like that. Though I do need to say it—don’t get mad at me here—if you use it that way, it is extremely, extremely good. Assuming you can get around legal restrictions—”

No.

“Fine. Again, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t tell you.”

Well, it could be possible to use it in other scenarios, so maybe it could still have some sort of use for me. But for now, what about Hypnotic Bond?

“That one’s pretty neat, too. Got quite a few use cases, as far as I can identify.

Yeah, Index was right. It was obviously nice to have in a fight. In the cases where I could manage fifteen full seconds of contact with an enemy, the Upgrade would effectively allow me to paralyze them for ten more seconds. And, yes, the Hypnosis would end prematurely if I ever damaged them, but there were still plenty of ways it could be used regardless. I could get away from them if I needed to, I could move out of their sight and, since they couldn’t turn and keep looking at me, hide while they couldn’t see me, or hells, even just getting a ten-second break so I could regain my Mana for a bit, maybe activate Regenerate. Which would be phenomenal at times.

“That’s not all,” Index cut in. “Again, pay very close attention to the wording there. It’ll end if you damage the being ‘from a source other than any already-active Status Afflictions.’ So, obviously, that means Sanguine Bond’s own Health drain won’t end the Hypnosis, but also any other Curses you’ve already put on the target. So, if you hit them with a Crippling Chill and then with Sanguine Bond’s Hypnosis, then both of those curses will be allowed to run rampant on them for ten full seconds while you just get to sit back and watch.”

That was true. The way this worked, if I could touch something for fifteen seconds before I used Sanguine Bond, then that meant I could get the full ten-second effect of the Spell without having to worry about fighting back, plus the full effects of any of my other curses. That certainly moved the Upgrade up in my mental ranking of the three options.

And then there were the non-combat applications. Like I’d considered before, there was certainly something about being able to use this for stealth. Sneak up behind someone, just barely touch their arm or something for a bit of time, and then boom—they can’t do anything for ten full seconds afterward. I wouldn’t even have to sneak, honestly. If I just walked up and shook someone’s hand for a bit longer than was normal, they wouldn’t have any idea until it was too late that I was stalling to activate this ability and effectively paralyze them. Quite the Spell to be able to use on an unsuspecting victim. Sure, in combat, I’d only really be able to maintain fifteen seconds of contact with certain enemies. But outside? If social conditions allowed, I could touch a Level 50, and it’d have the exact same effect. Always useful.

So, what was best out of everything here? …Well, that was a difficult question to answer. I’d gotten a bit distracted by the flashy effects of Soul and Hypnotic Bond, but Unbreakable Bond was certainly not out of the running. A strict numerical increase in effectiveness was nothing to overlook, especially when it was something as extreme as doubling the duration of the Spell’s effects, plus making it way harder to actually break.

And, while Soul Bond wasn’t really something I wanted to use with what Index seemed to think was the “optimized” use case, it still had some interesting applications that I could envision maybe finding some way to exploit for way higher regeneration values.

Between the three, though, I couldn’t get Hypnotic Bond out of my head. Once a person was Hypnotized with it, you could move them around and everything as long as you didn’t damage them, so it served as a phenomenal nonlethal way to completely incapacitate someone, which seemed very nice to have now that I was integrating myself back into Human society. As a Classer, there would be a lot of conflicts where I’d want to subdue someone without killing them, and as things were, I didn’t really have many ways to do that. So increasing my options in that respect was great. And even in high-stakes combat, the Upgrade could buy me precious seconds of stall time where I could deal damage to my opponent, drain their Stamina, regenerate my own Health, Stamina, Mana, and also have quite a bit of time to rack up triggers with my newly-gained Talent, Cumulative Catastrophe. With Crippling Chill and Sanguine Bond active, plus Noxious Grasp if I wanted, ten seconds of effective paralysis meant thirty triggers, which meant thirty percent more powerful Spells. Very powerful, indeed.

That fifteen-second requirement was steep, but still doable. Maybe tough now, but as I Ranked my Spells up more? Crippling Chill and Ray of Frost, if I could get them Upgraded and pushed to Rank 20, would be much more powerful—and that was ignoring the fact that it was possible their Upgrades would most likely have options to help reduce the mobility of my opponents even more.

And, at the end of the day, even if it wasn’t as good as I hoped in combat, there were still the non-combat applications. Not that I fancied myself as a career criminal, but if I ever needed to steal something…well, there were a lot of ways that were worse than freezing the shopkeeper in place for ten seconds while I did whatever I pleased. Ten seconds was a long, long time if you used it wisely. A lot of applications there.

So I felt like that settled it. A decent increase in power while in combat, plus a solid increase while out, this felt like it turned Sanguine Bond into the perfect versatile tool I’d need while trying to navigate the tricky social landscape of being a foreigner in a new country, while fleeing for your life from the one neighboring it.

Sanguine Bond has gained the Upgrade Hypnotic Bond.

I opened my eyes and stretched, having been sitting somewhat strangely against the tree while I’d been meditating. Damn, I was looking forward to finding a decent place to sleep.

And speaking of sleep, I looked over at Erani, who was just beginning to stir. I’d done my best to move her into a somewhat comfortable position when I’d woken up this morning, but doing so without waking her up was a challenge, and it was clear just by looking at her face that she felt like shit.

“What is…where…why…ugh, I have such a hangover,” she muttered as she attempted to blink her eyes open.

“Yeah, I think we both had a bit too much to drink last night,” I nodded. “Kinda went overboard, with that being the first time I’d had anything other than dirty river water in what felt like forever.”

“Mhmm,” she said, still in a daze. “Where’s…oh.”

She looked around and found Ainash, who was now asleep, herself, after staying up all night keeping watch over us.

“You doing alright?” I asked. “I think you had a lot more to drink than I did.”

“Yeah, just need some time,” she groaned. “What…happened? Did you…did you punch Jannin?”

“Bon,” I laughed, “but yeah, I think I did. Definitely took things too far. Sorry for, y’know, getting us kicked out of the first building we’d entered in weeks, by the way.”

She laughed weakly. “Yeah, yeah, you’re fine. Uh, why did you punch him? I think I was asleep until he hit the floor, so I didn’t really catch the leadup.”

“Uh…” I thought back, remembering the interaction. I didn’t really remember his words, but I did remember that Bon had said some pretty awful stuff about Erani and her injury. I obviously regretted taking things as far as I did, but…well, he definitely deserved to get hit for that, at the very least. “He was just being a little shit. Someone needed to knock some sense into him.”

“Hm. Well, whatever. Didn’t really like those guys anyway,” Erani shrugged. “Hells, I really drank a lot. Headache.”

“I really wish we had some healing magic we could use, or something,” I frowned. “Maybe antagonizing the group that had Jannin in them wasn’t the best idea.”

“No, no, I doubt it’d help all that much, anyway. Like I said, just need some time.” She rubbed her eyes with her palm, one after the other. “Distract me. What, uh…what did you get for your Level-ups?”

“Oh, well I moved up to Level 20 from killing Xhag’duul, so I got quite a bit.” I explained all of my new abilities that I’d gotten to her, as well as the fact that I’d gone ahead and done the Spell Crystal plan we’d discussed beforehand and Upgraded Sanguine Bond.

“Damn, I’m out for just a single night and you’re getting all kinds of stuff,” Erani chuckled.

“What about you? What all did you get?”

“Oh, um,” Erani suddenly looked embarrassed. “I haven’t actually…made my choices, yet?”

“What? Why?”

“Just, sort of, y’know…” she absentmindedly rubbed the stump that her left arm ended in. “Distracted.”

“Oh, uh, right,” I blinked. Of course she’d have been distracted. I was such an idiot. “Sorry. About, y’know, all of that. I probably could’ve handled that fight with Xhag’duul better, and—”

“No. Don’t.” Erani shook her head, then sighed. “It’s not your fault. Just…y’know. Um, thanks for talking with me last night. When I was, y’know, drunk and hysterical.”

I laughed and reached around her, pulling her into a side hug. “You weren’t hysterical. And it’s no problem. I meant what I said, too.”

She nodded silently, leaning her head on my shoulder.

“Anyway,” I said, “Ainash is taking a break to sleep for now, since she was up all night watching us.”

“She was? Ugh, poor girl.”

“Yeah, we probably need to watch ourselves drinking so we can at least stay sober enough to not pass out on her like that. But I was thinking we could just stick around here for a bit while she gets some rest, and then head out to that nearby town. Shouldn’t take more than half a day to walk there with Expedite.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll go ahead and go through my Level-ups. Need to grab a Spell and a Talent.”

“Nice. You know what you’re gonna choose?”

“Absolutely not.”