Ch: 14 Taking (Patreon)

Edited by Aldous

In California currently, in July, during a heatwave, while staying with family in the Mojave desert a stones throw from death valley. Fun times. The Grand Canyon is awesome btw. I ate in the Teddy Roosevelt room in the restaurant there. It was really cool. The new DM will that is due Monday, will be out on Wednesday because I'm having a hard time finding the internet in the high desert. Sorry for the delay. 

Sage of Humanity

Chapter 14

Talking

“So, let me get this straight. Aside from today, it’s been over a year since you’ve been to a System Hub?” Amber asked, as she sat in the middle of Lily’s living room while Lily was hanging mana crystals that Amber had sold her.

“Yeah, something like sixteen months or so.” Lily said as the mana crystal sank into the wall. She was using a very early version of Cut Stone. It didn’t cut stone, but it kind of molded some hard objects. It was perfect if you wanted to stick a mana crystal into a cement block wall.

“And the penalty, did it say start over or regain your levels?” Amber asked her.

“Is there a difference?” Lily asked, pulling her hand away from the crystal. Amber had a bunch on her that she had bought for some home project she wanted to do, but she was more than willing to sell them to Lily. Amber had tried to give them to her, but Lily insisted on paying her.

“If it said ‘start over’ then it literally means start over, but if it said ‘regain’ then that's a huge penalty because you start over where you left off, experience-wise. But instead of levelling by getting enough experience like normal, at level one you have to gain whatever experience you would’ve needed for the level you used to be to level up. That penalty remains with you forever.” Amber told her. “They’ve only used it for the worst kind of crimes, like murder and stuff like that.”

“I think it said start over.” Lily replied, feeling a little worried.

“You sure?” Amber asked, looking concerned. “Not that it matters. You were still at level one, right?”

“Yup.” Lily said, grabbing another crystal and moving off to set it into another wall.

“Good, but seriously the loss of twenty-six unclaimed levels is killing me.” Amber said as Lily sunk the crystal into the wall. “Who does that? Just sit on all those levels?”

“I got a bit distracted.” Lily said, as she stepped back and looked around her room to check her progress.

She had already measured where the crystals needed to go, and marked them with Amber’s pen-thingie that she summoned with her Grimoire. All Lily had to do now was just sink the last two crystals into the wall of her kitchen and then cast her protections on them. That would be the biggest pain in the butt. She had to do each one by themselves, which wasn’t bad, but she had to place the correct spell on the correct crystal or there would be holes in her defenses. Luckily, her home was small enough that she could set it up as one defensive grid instead of doing each room separately. That would be far more expensive and annoying.

“Leveling up is not really that important to me.” Lily told her as she opened her cabinet and crouched down so that she could get a closer at the back of it. “I cast all my spells manually, anyway.”

“That is pretty badass.” Amber admitted. “I don’t know any low-levels who can do that. I do know a few mid-levels who can, but it’s usually just one skill or spell. For you, I guess if you create your own spells you wouldn’t really care about getting more spells as you level. Well, until you get to tier 2, that is. Mages at your tier rely on the spells you created to survive. Hell, I still use them a lot when I’m out with my team. I’m just able to use my class spells to round out the edges that your spells can’t cover. To be honest, I use your spells more often than my class spells. They are just easier and faster. So...ah, thanks for that, by the way.”

“Hmm.” Lily replied, on her knees inside the cabinet, as she used Cut Stone to carve a small hole in the wood in the back of the cabinet so she could get access to the cement blocks behind it to sink her mana crystal.

“I guess the only thing that is worth it, for you, when leveling up is the stats.” Amber told her. “Please tell me you have used your stat points.”

“Nope.” Lily told her new friend as she backed out of the cabinet and stood up. “I was waiting to read the System help book before I did that. I don’t want to put my points in willy-nilly.”

Amber started chuckling then said, “I love how you talk, sometimes. Willy-nilly. Besides sounding really funny in French, what does that mean in English?”

“Without thought, I think.” Lily replied, after taking a second to think about it. She had used the phrase all her life and never really thought about it.

“You should use the 4, 3, 2 method. It’s a combat method of allocating your stats. It means for every four you put in your main stat, which is Mana of course, you should put three in your secondary stats, which are Thought speed and Memory, then you put two into the rest. Which are Strength, Agility, and Bio shield. There is a subset of people that believe that mages should consider agility as a secondary stat, but that really depends on your Tier 2 mage class. Witches normally don’t care about agility that much because we suck at fighting. Fire witches are different. While, yes, it takes us a bit of time to cast our spells, just like any normal witch, we can keep our spells going much longer than, say, a fire wizard, if we are spec'd for fighting. Agility does help with your spells though. Makes our hands go faster, and I don’t have to tell you just how important that is.”

“What do you mean by spec’d for fighting?” Lily asked, feeling awkward about the compliments on her spells. She looked behind her as she spotted Amber had followed her into the kitchen.

“You level up your spells that you use. Someone spec’d for fighting just means that they’ve spent a lot of time fighting and that their combat spells are higher than their non-combat spells. Some of the fighting mages I know don’t bother getting too many non-fighting spells.” Amber replied, shrugging. “They just really focus on fighting. I think that’s stupid, because you never know what spell you’re going to need when you’re fighting. Jules agrees with me and she’s pretty high for a mid-leveler.”

“So what would you consider a mid-leveler?” Lily asked, as she opened a cupboard above her and climbed up onto the countertop to get access to it.

“Anyone in tier one or two is considered a low-leveler. Mids I would consider tier three and four, and of course anyone five or above is a high-leveler.” Amber explained.

“So back to stats. What do they do for you?” Lily asked, as she cut a small hole in the back of the cupboard.

“Okay, so everybody starts at one once you get your nanos, right?” Amber said. “So, it’s like your experience. Level one means that you are one percent stronger than you used to be in that stat. At one-hundred percent you double your strength in that stat. For mages, Mana is a huge stat for us. The more Mana we have, the more spells we can access from the System’s store and the more we can do with them, but you can’t gimp yourself by ignoring everything else.”

“Sure, you should focus on the primary and secondary stats, but if you ignore the rest then you’re leaving yourself wide open later on in life. It really doesn’t matter that much for tier 1, but at tier 2 it gets important, and very vital at tier 3.” Amber warned her. “Take Bio shield: a low Bio shield could mean death against anything that has a wide effect or AOE skill. A low Agility means you can’t dodge that good. Low Strength means you can’t run too long or fast. Stuff like that.”

Lily pulled back, a bit worried about something Amber said. She pulled out her phone and pulled up the app that showed her Status screen then pointed it at Amber. She looked at it then jerked back, looking surprised. She gave Lily a shocked look afterwards.

“Why are.. You don’t show people your status screen.” She told Lily. “It lets others know your strengths and weaknesses.”

“Oh, sorry.” Lily said, feeling her cheeks getting warm. “It’s just that I don’t have a Mana stat.”

“Really?” Amber asked, looking confused. “You’re human right? Not an elf or something like that right?”

“It says human but evolved in parentheses.” Lily admitted, looking down at her phone.

“Oh, okay then.” Amber said, nodding in sudden understanding. “While I’ve never heard of an evolved human, some races like elves and the like don’t have Mana stats. They'll have something else somewhere in their status page. Check your skills. But it might be a passive ability, so it might be somewhere else.”

“I have an XXL Mana well in my skills section.” Lily told her, but kept the number part to herself.

“There you have it.” Amber said, smiling. “If it’s in your skills section, that means you can use skill points to level it up - which is both good and bad. Good in that you can use stat points on other things, but bad in that it’ll be harder to level your spells if you are putting your points in your mana as well. Not impossible, though, as you can level your skills naturally if you get someone to train you or you have a breakthrough and learn on your own. It’s just a lot slower.”

“What should my mana be at?” Lily asked, looking at her mana well.

“Well, if you follow the 4,3,2 method, you should have 29 mana at level one hundred. That’ll let you buy the beginner spells for most tier 2 mage classes except some prestige classes. They tend to be really mana-intensive.”

“What are those?” Lily asked, as she turned back to the cupboard and started placing her crystal into the wall behind it.

“Rare classes that you can’t just pick in the System’s store.” Amber told her. “They’re normally classes that focus on killing demons. Kotodama, onmyoji, shaman, right-hand and left-hand witches. Classes like that, although a right-hand witch’s class is more a healer class, but their healing spells can kill demons. And those are just the mage classes. The other class groups have them too. People who get them tend to stick with them as they go up the tiers.”

“I met a paladin before.” Lily said, as she cast Grimoire while kneeling on the countertop. “She was kind of nice.”

“Priest prestige class.” Amber said, nodding. “They tend to focus on fighting and priest skills. They are really good at protecting people from demons. I’ve never met anyone who had a prestige class before, but Jules has. Said he was a mystic gunslinger. A real psychopath. She did not like him.”

Lily stopped talking for a few seconds as she consulted her grimoire. She checked to make sure she had the correct spell then, using her book as a reference, she cast her first protection spell on the crystal in the back of the cupboard. A couple of seconds later she was done.

“You know that’s a tier 3 spell?” Amber told her. “You shouldn’t have the mana to cast that. But I bet it has something to do with your Mana Well skill. It’s such a cheat.”

“Yep.” Lily said as she slid off the countertop, crouched down onto her knees and shuffled into the cabinet to get at the other crystal in the kitchen. She repeated the steps and cast her second protective spell on the crystal. Then she shuffled out of the cabinet.

She walked back into her living room and went to the crystal near her door. “Is Ms. Turner’s riflewoman class a prestige class?” She asked, as she consulted her book for the next spell.

This crystal was tricky. She didn’t want to kill anyone she allowed into her apartment. Normally she would have just put her third protective spell here, but she had to change things up and put the fourth one on the crystal instead. That meant that she had to place the third one nearby so there were no holes in her defense. Putting the spells out of order meant she needed to use more mana on the crystals she put the sixth protective spell on, which would be annoying, but there was no helping it. It had to be done.

“Oh, you’re using the fourth spell here.” Amber said, leaning to get a closer look at the crystal. “I usually put the fifth one there. It saves having to put more mana in the sixth ones. But, doing it this way, if you can get away with it, would make it a stronger ward.”

“Hmm.” Lily replied, as she walked towards the next crystal.

“To answer your question: no.” Amber finally replied. “The riflewoman class is a tier 2 class that she just kept as she tiered up.”

“What’s the benefit of keeping a tier 2 class?” Lily asked, as she looked over the next protective spell.

“For some classes, it means learning more advanced skills or spells, for other classes it’s learning how to create your own skills. There is no real benefit for mages to keep their class after having it for a tier. You can pretty much buy all the spells you want, if you have the mana for it. If you didn’t get it when you had the class and wanted to go back later on then you can still buy it, but it will cost you extra. You are the only mage on Earth to create a spell, so most mages don’t bother.”

“Extra storage space.” Lily said, right after finishing casting the spell.

“Yeah.” Amber said, nodding. “Something about allocated resources. You only get so much, but if you have the credits you can pay for more. No, wait, the System allocates room for your tiered class spells, but it doesn’t give you enough for others. Or something like that. It’s been forever since I learned this in school. I just know that you have to pay extra for out-of-class spells and skills.”

“Why?” Lily asked, frowning. “I thought the System wants us to survive and help fight in their war. Seems like it would be better if they just gave us the skills we wanted or needed to survive.”

“Okay, it's been a while. Bear with me.” Amber said, looking up at the ceiling with a serious expression on her face. “So the System has only so much resources then it’s out? Or something like that. It’s prioritising people that it thinks will survive or something. It gets more resources when people leave to go to their war with the demons off Earth, I think. We have to prove we are worth the price to save. I kind of remember my teacher saying something like that.”

“People are leaving to go to their war already?” Lily asked, frowning. She thought her double said that no had done that yet, but were getting close.

“I have no idea.” Amber said, shrugging. “I think so, but I could be wrong. It’s in the book.”

“The System help book?” Lily asked.

“Yeah, that one.” Amber said, nodding. “We had to read it cover to cover in highschool. I forgot most of what’s in there. It’s not important to us low and mid-levelers. You have to be, like, tier 10 to get to go, or something like that. Long way off for you and me, anyways. If you have questions, ask Jules - she’s the smart one. If anyone paid attention in school, she would be the one. I’m the one who sets things on fire.”

Lily stopped as she thought about something Amber had said. “Amber, you said that the System is prioritising people who it thinks will survive. What exactly does that mean? Does it stop helping people? What about babies who are sick?”

“Yeah, if you get banished you lose access to the System. You keep your skills and stuff, but you can never get stronger. You also lose access to the System if you're too lazy. After all, everything costs credits so you get nothing if you don’t do something to help people out. Kids under the age of sixteen get free System potions if they’re sick. If the kid is six or older, they can go to the Hub to get their own potion. It’s one of the few things they can buy in the store until they reach fourteen. If they're younger, anyone can go. The potion won’t work for adults. There were plenty of times where I had to go. One time, I was out with my friends shooting things when my best friend shot me right in the head. This guy was passing by, ran to the Hub and got me a resuscitation potion. Picked me right up.”

“You died!” Lily asked, shocked and horrified.

“Just the once.” Amber said defensively. “The System won’t sell potions that will work with anyone over the age of sixteen, but there are plenty of high-leveler Alchemists who sell it on the crafter side of the store. You have to use it on a person within six or seven minutes after they die or it won’t work. They're expensive though. I didn’t start seeing them in the teams I was running with until I joined Tier 3 teams. Most team leaders have us chipp in to buy one, now.”

“I didn’t know that was a thing.” Lily said, shaking her head and turning back to her protective spells. “So, do you pour it on a person, or make them somehow drink it?”

“Depends on the potion.” Amber said, following Lily around as she went to the next crystal. “Some you pour into their mouth and tilt their head back, and some you just pour on the wound. It won’t heal a person completely, so, if you use one, you are going to have to go find a healer pretty fast or that person is going to die again.”

“Why not use another potion?” Lily asked as she finished and moved on to stand on her unmade bed to get at the next crystal, which was on the ceiling.

“Two reasons. The biggest is potion sickness. Take too many potions together and they can react with each other. Resuscitation potions are the worst when it comes to that.” Amber explained.

“And the second one?” Lily asked as she finished her spell.

“Potions only work to keep a person alive. Take too many and they cause cancer. They also don’t work all that great. If you break a bone, and it’s not in place, you’re better off going to a healer or it won’t heal right if you use a potion. Cut an artery and a healing potion will stop the bleeding by sealing it off. You can lose a foot if that happens. Potion keeps you alive. Healers make you better.” Amber said, like she was quoting something.

“What about the kids taking potions?” Lily asked. “What's to stop them from taking too many? The System?”

“Yup. Plus if the kid needs more than just a potion then it will call for a healer, but the System's potions for underage kids are so much better than the crafted ones. They can fix a broken bone, no sweat. Plus their resuscitation potions will heal you completely unlike the ones we use, which just heal you enough to bring you back.” Amber told her.

“That doesn’t seem fair.” Lily said, walking towards the next to last crystal.

“I guess.” Amber replied, as Lily cast her protective spell. “Some people say it's a resource thing, but Jules thinks that the System wants us to use our crafters so they level up more.”

“In the meantime, people are dying.” Lily said, shaking her head as she cast her last spell. Once she was done, she looked at Amber, who was standing just behind her, watching her work. Amber shrugged in response.

Shaking her head at what she learned of the System, she walked into the living room and sat down to look at her work. She quickly dropped into her soul and looked around with her physical eyes closed. She looked over at all the different protective spells and how they overlapped. It was like bubbles all around her apartment that overlapped each other. Some of the bubbles disappeared into the walls, but Lily was okay with that as long as there was one of each of the spells overlapping inside her room. Looking at all the spells, she felt like she went a little overboard with them, but she had to admit there were no holes in her spells. Not even a little bit. She dropped out of her soul and smiled.

“All done?” Amber asked, still standing by the bedroom door.

“Yup.” Lily replied with a smile. “You want to look?”

“The soul thing?” Amber said, looking a little nervous.

“Yup.” Lily replied. “Here, sit beside me. You know how to meditate?”

“No.” Amber replied, shaking her head and looking down. “Jules tried to teach me, but I didn’t get it.”

“It’s simple.” Lily said, patting the very thin carpet beside her. She led Amber through a relaxing exercise before she explained how she meditated. It wasn’t hard and Amber picked it up pretty fast. Lily was pretty proud of herself at how fast the woman picked it up.

“I see it.” Amber said a few seconds later. “It’s beautiful. Like flowers all over your rooms.”

“The biggest thing about protective spells is to make sure there are no holes where the spells overlap. Something as small as a few inches could let something in.” Lily told her.

“I can see that.” Amber replied, her eyes still closed. “But they would be trapped. Whatever got in wouldn’t be able to move in any direction. If it did then it would die.”

“That is true, but what about a bee with a poisoned stinger? If it hits you at the wrong moment, like when you were walking barefoot right through the hole, then you’re dead.” Lily told her.

“Okay, you’re right.” Amber said, after a few seconds. “You know you could make a fortune setting defenses like this up.”

“I have other plans to make this obsolete.” Lily said, looking down.

“The ritual.” Amber said, after a few seconds.

“Maybe.” Lily said, shrugging. “I can probably cast the normal force field by myself, but there is no way I can do the ritual without help.”

“I’d like to help, but I’m not high enough tier to help.” Amber told her. “Plus that thing is super expensive. There’s no way I can afford it.”

“I can give it to you, since, you know, I created it.” Lily replied with a sly smile.

“First, stop giving away stuff like that.” Amber told her. “You can trust me and Jules, but there are so many people out there that would take advantage of you or worse. Don’t even think about giving away anything else, it’s not safe. What you have inside your grimoire is a treasure trove of spells, and information.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Lily said, feeling embarrassed, and a bit sad at the same time. She silently cursed herself as she realized she had fallen into the same trap that she fell into with Corrina. She wondered why she kept doing that.

“Oh, honey. You don’t have to be sorry. The world sucks.” Amber said, with a small, sad smile. She reached out and hugged Lily. Lily flinched a bit at the sudden hug, but after a second hugged the other woman back.

“I’ve got to go.” The other woman told her. “Jules should be closing the diner up right about now. Thanks for the lessons, and please come by tomorrow for breakfast. We’ll save you a table.”

“I’ll think about it.” Lily said with a smile as she opened the door to let her new friend out.

She closed the door behind the woman, and turned around to look at her defenses. They looked good, but she wanted to adjust a few. They weren’t quite right, yet. Sure, there were no holes, but she did spot some weaknesses. They were really minor, and if she left them alone she didn’t see that they would ever be a real problem, but she would know they were there and it would get on her nerves after a while. Twenty minutes later, she was done.

She then started to put things away and make her bed. She didn’t have a lot of stuff, so it wasn’t long until she was done. She placed Ms. Turner’s curtain up on the wall, not daring to use it as a shower curtain. It was, she had to admit when she finished hanging it on the wall at the end of her bed, truly an amazing piece of needlework. The flower looked amazing.

Then she had nothing to do and she wasn’t tired yet. Looking around, she spotted her grimoire on the edge of the bed. She absently went through it, looking at all her spells that she had created. She smirked when she realized that the spells weren’t in order anymore. They were listed by tiers. She wondered if the System did it or if she unconsciously did it knowing where the spells landed now.

She came to the new spells that she bought from the System. She found the Mana Control spell and read what it had to say. It was a short description, only two paragraphs, but it all boiled down to saying that she needed to change how her mana worked to infuse runes. The worrying part about it though was that there was no shortcut to use it. There were shortcuts for all her runes on the next several pages, but none for the skill itself.

She passed over the skill, guessing she needed to actually cast a rune to see it in action. She read the paragraphs on the runes which, surprisingly, had whole pages for each rune. After taking time to read each rune she realized that they were far more powerful than she had thought. She thought over what they could do.

The fire rune, she theorised, could start fires or just be light by itself. If she added the up rune then she could aim the fire or light upwards. It was very basic, but the class was extremely limited by the runes that were there. Like her spell, the runes had to have an intent. One had to add the intent while adding the mana to the rune which, she guessed based on the wording of the runes in her book, had to be physically carved into something.

She picked up her old junk-metal knife then moved to the edge of her bed, next to the wall of her room. She thought about what she wanted to do and started carving the fire rune on the wall. As she did, she slipped into her soul and activated the rune’s shortcut. The very first thing that happened was an outline of the fire rune appeared on the wall. She slowly traced the rune, making sure that she followed the outline. Once she was done, she felt like it was too shallow. She traced it again and then once more before the feeling went away.

Next, mana shot out of her well. It was a bit disconcerting not doing it herself. It made her feel very uncomfortable not being able to control what was happening. She knew she could stop it at any time by canceling the shortcut, but she left it alone. She needed to learn how to cast the rune, and this was the only way she could.

She watched her mana rush up to her hand as she hovered her knife over the rune. The mana paused at her palm and she got the sudden desire to add an intent to the rune. She thought about what she wanted. She wanted a soft light that would come on when it was dark. Immediately, she knew the rune would fail. She would need to add more runes for that to work. Right now she was only using the fire rune. She changed her intent to just a soft light all the time. The shortcut seemed to accept her intent and the mana started pouring into her knife from her palm.

She had never seen mana go into anything in her life aside from spells and crystals. This felt different. The mana seemed to flow into and through the knife. It became thicker, somehow, during the process. She watched it happen and had no clue what was happening. She watched as the odd-looking mana seemed to collect at the tip of the knife, then the mana seeped out of the knife’s tip. After a second or so, a droplet of mana formed at the tip. Then it dripped sideways like it was attracted to the carving. She watched it fall into the carving of the rune. She watched, fascinated, as more mana formed at the tip and the process continued. Each time the droplet would form and drip into the rune, slowly filling it.

It seemed to take forever. She was much slower than André had been. He had poured a small stream of mana while she was dropping a single drop every few seconds. She kept at it while at the same time trying to figure out how the mana turned into liquid. On top of that, she had to keep her intent going at the same time. It wasn’t hard though. She just had to think about a soft, low light that would shine all the time. While thinking, she simply watched the mana enter the knife and turn into liquid form.

Then she got the feeling the rune was getting full. She felt like she could stop here or add more mana to make the rune last longer. She decided to end it, but she got the feeling that all was not done yet. She needed to seal it. She pulled her knife back and got a sudden desire to push her intent into one last mana drop. She followed the feeling, thinking of nothing but a soft light. The mana droplet formed at the tip and it seemed to be thicker than the others. It looked almost like it was made out of pudding, it was so thick. Then she watched the droplet fall sideways into the carving.

The moment it hit, she saw through the rune like it was a doorway to something else. It was like she was standing on land and the rune was at the edge of a huge ocean. She forced herself to ignore the rune and look at what was beyond. What she saw was an ocean of spell balls. She felt wet warm dirt drip on her face as her gaze followed one of the spell balls.

The spell ball wasn’t blurry like the spell balls she saw when she looked into the white light. It was crystal clear and she could see the pattern inside the ball easily. She tore her gaze from the spell ball and looked at another. To her surprise, it had the same feeling and pattern as the first one she tracked. She followed another one and to her surprise it was identical to the other two. Looking away from the last spell ball, she looked at the ocean and knew that they were all the same. Each and every one was the same spell ball.

She pulled her gaze away from the ocean and looked at the rune again. It was, she decided, like she was standing on the surface of an icy pond and the rune was a hole where she could look past the ice. Then she thought about it and thought the ice must be reality and the ocean was…

“The ocean is what?” She asked herself, staring at the rune. “Mana? No, that doesn’t feel right. What is it?”

She had no idea how long she stared at the rune before giving up, for the time being. She let herself fall out of her soul and looked at the rune, which was glowing fainty. She pulled her grimoire closer to herself and added the runic design to the book and her thoughts and insights about what had happened when she cast it. She still had no idea how to add mana to an object other than a crystal or spells, but she knew it was possible now.

She closed her book and sat back, thinking about the rune. What had she seen? What was a rune? Was it a scratch on the surface of reality like she thought? She wished she had some way to look it up. She looked down at her book then her eyes spotted her message phone thing she had bought back when she was living in Woburn.

“Help manual!” She shouted wanting to kick herself. Picking it up, she unlocked the screen. She quickly moved to a messaging app and, for the first time, opened it. A message popped up on the screen. The notification said, ‘You have 64,291 unread messages.’

“Whoa!” She muttered as she read the notification.