[CYA] Chapter 177: Trade-Offs, Trade-Offs Everywhere (Patreon)

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mkrK193TxUAGW_igRRahOIW5ecUZDaZOXLkk_0GD4is/edit?usp=sharing

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<Alex, Real - Dorgon Calls for Aid, Innominate Quarters>

Alex tilted back his head and drained the last of his ginger beer before nodding to himself and storing the empty water bottle back in his Inventory.

I’ll need to figure out some easy cleaning skill, or get an item for that… But that line of thinking was yet another distraction.

He was experiencing decision paralysis and overanalyzing the choice before him.

No matter what he picked—including choosing not to choose yet—would be a trade-off, and he would have reason to regret the choice made.

So, he just needed to pick.

Alex looked into his Inventory and smiled as he found a coin.

Hmm. We’ll let fate decide, huh?

Heads, he would take Radix Translation.

Tails, he would take Basic Runecraft.

He placed the coin on his thumb and flipped. With a ting of impact, the coin spun through the air shooting toward the ceiling.

As it turned out, he hadn’t flipped a coin since the advent of the System, and he was much more powerful than he had been.

It bounced off the ceiling and spun toward the floor, bouncing once on the soft floor before settling.

Oh, I hope it’s tails. He grinned at the passing thought, the whole point of the exercise accomplished. Even so, he picked up the coin, finding that it was heads.

That didn’t really matter, though. This was a trick someone back in college had taught him.

Leave a choice up to a coin, and as soon as he flipped it, he would find that he naturally, unconsciously, hoped for a specific outcome.

Even knowing that it was a ploy didn’t break the power of the trick.

He could, of course, argue himself out of his instinctive response, but that was his own problem and not a flaw with the method.

He inventoried the coin and nodded. He really wanted Radix Translation, but it wasn’t where his heart and desire lay.

Alex chuckled, remembering how much his wife had laughed when he explained this method and how it had helped him gather the courage to ask her out.

He gave a contented smile, remembering happier, simpler times.

Then, with a shake of his head, he chose.

That, of course, wasn’t the end of things.

Choose skill variations:Basic Runewrighting (Simple)

OR

Runewrighting [Life] (Common)This comes from merging Life-Based Runewrighting (Rare), with the new Class Skill Basic Runewrighting (Simple)

Basic Runewrighting (Simple)Magically anchor script that you have imbued to an object to add basic magical effects to otherwise mundane items or alter existing magical effects on already magical items.

What you can create or modify is based upon your own spells, aspects, and knowledge of the language of power, if you can glean any.

You have a burgeoning understanding of how to make one-use items.You have a vague understanding of how to initialize permanent and semi-permanent magical items with various, triggerable effects.

This gives no increased chance of success, simply a basic understanding from which to build competency.

Note:This is not a means of creating the magical script, simply the ability to anchor it, magically, to a chosen item.

OR

Runewrighting [Life] (Common)Magically imbue and anchor scripts to an object to add basic magical effects to otherwise mundane items or alter existing magical effects on already magical items.

What you can create or modify is based upon your own spells, aspects, and knowledge of the language of power.

You have an understanding of how to initialize one-use as well as permanent and semi-permanent magical items with various, triggerable effects.

This gives no direct, increased chance of success, simply a basic understanding from which to build competency.

Mental and Magical Agility have a boost when using this skill.

Magical Fortitude has a boost when using this skill.

Life - If you use your own Life or health as fuel for or structure of the magical symbol, it has a lower cost and you will have a greater fidelity during the creation process.

Note:This is not a means of creating the script, simply the ability to imbue and anchor it, magically, to a chosen item.

Alex let out a whoop!, throwing his hands up in the air. “Yes!”

He immediately accepted the combined skill, a twitch rippling through his brain as bits and pieces of knowledge clicked into place.

It wasn’t like he could now make legendary equipment from scratch, but he was suddenly able to see how things connected to various strata of an item for both triggering and direct effects.

He could put in magical reinforcement that would actually make the material stronger in certain ways, instead of just making a marking that itself would be relatively hard to break.

Alex cleared his throat at that memory before moving on from the residual embarrassment.

This skill didn’t solve all his problems, nor give him a means of quickly creating what he wanted. After all, he still didn’t have an easy way to write out the runic language.

As the runewrighting struck him as being similar to shipwrighting, the analogy came to mind easily.

In the analogy, he now understood why the ships had to be shaped the way they were, how the various parts had to compensate for one another and how to tie them all together, but he didn’t suddenly know how to make rope, canvas sails, boards, or nails, if that made sense.

He understood all of those things, he could tell which were good and which were not. He could make intelligent selections and mesh them together, but he still couldn’t directly create those base pieces, at least not from this skill.

That’s why I have the carving skill and simple force blade spell.

He grinned, realizing that he might actually finally have a legitimate excuse to do something that he’d always wanted to: Carve statues.

It wasn’t exactly in line with creating the magical language, but it would help perfect the skills toward that usage.

I’ll have to drill as well as carve. I might be able to have my Life help carve some channels, but Life isn’t the most precise of tools on the best of days. After all, there was a reason that saying that something looked organic was short-hand for saying it didn’t have very many hard, straight lines.

Even so, with his knowledge of the language, there were dozens of one-off items he should now be able to create even with his current, somewhat limited, carving skill.

He found himself rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

Let’s do this!

Then he hesitated.

Wait… Stats. I need to use my nine unused stat points. He chuckled to himself. Let’s see…

He was going to need Agility of all types, but his Physical Agility was already plenty high… and it was a whole number, so he was inclined to leave that one.

Mental Fortitude would also be necessary both to help with specific concentration and for holding full schema in detail within his mind.

In the end, he decided to put one point into Mental Agility, three into Mental Fortitude, and five into Magical Agility, as that stat was lagging nearly ninety points behind his other Agility stats.

He briefly pulled up his stats and compared how they’d grown simply from the recent level-ups.

Alex Johnson

Physical Stats:Power: 208 → 227.5Agility: 322 → 406Fortitude: 301 → 322

Mental Stats:Power: 179.3 → 284.9Agility: 291.6 → 408Fortitude: 181.5 → 290.4

Magical Stats:Power: 220 → 286Agility: 220 → 324.5Fortitude: 209 → 275

Unused Points: 0

All told, he was quite happy with his improvements.

And with that he could finally dive into things.

<Alex, Real - Dorgon Calls for Aid, Innominate Duty Station>

Alex was grumpy, but he was not sulking.

He’d done very quick work, but it was still solid and useful, even if he did say so himself. As such, he did not appreciate how the entire crew had agreed that the results could be likened to a combination between a toddler’s plaster hand-print and the vague shape of an animal drawn by a kindergartner.

Alex had pulled out some of his remaining thin wooden slats and shaped and carved them before imbuing them with HP, given he had far more of that than mana, not to mention his massively higher regen rate.

It meant that the resulting items had no means of recharging—given there was no ‘ambient HP’ to draw upon—but he’d designed them as single-use anyway.

Effectively, they were ‘break in case of emergency’ healing.

They weren’t very efficient, but given Alex’s insane regeneration rate, he was able to put a thousand points of potential healing into the ‘snap healing’ items… True, that only translated to one hundred points given various inefficiencies and due to his inexperience. Moreover, it had also cost him ten thousand HP to imbue it to even that level, but even that only took him a couple of minutes per item.

Regardless, that was still something in case of emergency.

Besides, it was just his first idea… that was executed in a half-way effective manner.

Healing Animal ‘Crackers’ (Simple)These crude wooden shapes are destined for more than a basement shelf in a box labeled ‘to keep’.

Instead, these are reservoirs of HP which will impart themselves into the wearer when broken with the intent to heal.

Effective healing upon cracking: 100 HP, tier E

System snark aside, Alex was quite proud. He had actually created items.

Interestingly, they were unable to be stored, as it seemed that things with HP that was theirs counted as alive for Inventory skills and storage items, but that was fine. He’d made them into necklaces.

He assumed that his dadao might have the same storage issue if it hadn’t been bound to his Life, making the energies involved technically his rather than the items. Still, the weapon was better to keep out, so it didn’t really matter.

The storage limitation on the emergency healing was yet another limitation of Life and HP runecraft that he hadn’t known or considered.

Trade-offs, trade-offs everywhere.

He personally didn’t think that the HP should count as belonging to the item, but he supposed that since the item was able to impart it directly, he was splitting hairs. He’d also used his own Life Manipulation spell as a foundation, which did use his own life, so he supposed it made a sort of sense when viewed in that way. The item had to own the life, the HP, in order to use the spell to move it.

Regardless, every crew member now had a necklace—not just the Initiates—and they’d been impressed and grateful, likely because they’d clearly realized that they were first attempts.

It was merely the fact that he’d tried to make them all vaguely animal shapes that had caused the—likely intended as—friendly ribbing.

It was hard to convey a specific animal in what was effectively a silhouette, especially given that the face of it had to be covered with what most people saw as chicken scratched, dark red lines.

The result really did look like a kindergartner’s art project, but Alex was still really proud of them nonetheless.

Grant’s had already broken when the man tried to tuck it into his shirt, but that was fine. Alex had fully expected that he would have to iterate the design. There had to be a balance between sturdiness and the ability to be broken when the user was in a weakened state.

He didn’t care that the System considered them simple items. They were items! And that was quite the feat from his perspective.

Grant patted Alex’s shoulder in the Bridge view. “I’m grateful, I really am. Even with the status condition preventing any other healing from working on me for ten minutes, these are great! I can’t wait to see how you’re able to improve them.”

Alex turned a flat stare on Grant. “You’re negging me? Really?”

“No?” Grant blinked a few times. “What? What even is that?”

Alex’s tone remained flat. “It’s giving someone a back-handed compliment, with the intention of making the person unconsciously want to win your approval.”

Grant pulled back frowning. “Who would even do that?”

Kaylee patted Grant consolingly but didn’t say anything either to pile on or in his defense.

Natasha snorted a laugh. “You, right now.”

“What?” The man looked baffled.

She sighed. “You reminded him about the negative condition—”

“Debuff.” Grant corrected, earning a hard stare from the Russian. “...Sorry.”

She cleared her throat before continuing. “You reminded him of the debuff, then implied that he could get better and give you more free stuff. That definitely qualifies as negging.”

Grant looked affronted. “You made fun of the shape!”

“Yes, I did. These look ridiculous, but they also represent something potentially incredible. I don’t have any health potions, so the debuff isn’t a detraction for me at the moment. I’m willing to see what utility it can have.”

The others muttered similar things.

Grant rolled his eyes and walked back toward his station. “Fine. You are all clearly more socially adept than me. I apologize for trying to comfort the guy when he’s clearly grumpy about his toddler art-project.”

Alex growled. “I’m not grumpy.”

Everyone turned and gave him various forms of incredulous looks.

He cleared his throat. “Oh, look at that, we jump in fifteen, fourteen…”

Small smiles broke out as he continued to count down, but no one else spoke on that topic. Kaylee cleared her throat. “Alright, people. We’re jumping into a hotzone. A distress signal originating from the pirate staging system was just added a few minutes ago, so expect an ongoing fight when we arrive. This may even be a special event of some kind, so look alive!”

Lenka nodded. “Shields and point defenses primed.”

Pilar grinned. “Weapons hot.” Then, she gave John and Kaylee fiercely grateful looks. “And one aspect beam refactored to ‘consuming flame’.”

Alex smiled along with the others at that. They only had half their time remaining before they were expected on Dorgon, but the investment of valuable aspect should pay dividends for the remainder of the trip and increase their payout on the far end. He reached zero. “Jump.”

The universe was mud, and they were a pig, wallowing in it. At Alex’s request, the farmer came along, plucked them free and set them down in a different part of the pit.

The Innominate arrived two minutes after departure from an outside perspective, and Kaylee had been right.

Ordinance and magic were hot and heavy in the star system, barely an hour at non-warp speeds from where they’d arrived.

Alex immediately shifted the drives to warp, extending his senses and throwing the ship forward, striving to close the distance before they were noticed and had disruptive weapons pointed their way.

It was time to fight once more.

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