A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
[X] The Quickest Route
[X] Conservative
[X] The Forebear's Blade
I have a plan. Thousand Cuts, Fall of Night, and Echos. 9 Arete, significant offensive power and a bunch of physical stats. Being able to use blade wind more easily is really good for combat tactics since it lets us play at range. The sheer multiplicative offense of these choices is downright crazy.
[X] Conservative
[X] The Forebear's Blade
I have a plan. Thousand Cuts, Fall of Night, and Echos. 9 Arete, significant offensive power and a bunch of physical stats. Being able to use blade wind more easily is really good for combat tactics since it lets us play at range. The sheer multiplicative offense of these choices is downright crazy.
Rihaku
The Internet
That would be ++Progresion!
Hm, it's not hemokinesis really. Think of it like Vilya, if Vilya's domain was blood, and its power more focused. You don't bleed out. Your enemies bleed profusely. Your blood sings with vigor and strength; theirs quails before you, weakening their resolve and possibly their vitality. Sufficiently vulnerable enemies might be struck dead with a gesture, their hearts giving out before your will. On larger timescales and greater scope is where it really shines. You could basically elevate a species of ordinary mortals into the Dunedain, or suppress and weaken the lands of your enemies, unleashing plagues of the blood against which they have little defense. With sufficient mastery you could boil the blood of their armies in their veins. Most importantly, all these effects have high conceptual weight, so they're harder to stop than more overt magics cast by someone of your Rank.
In terms of relevance to dungeoneering, it would give you a major edge against any living enemy with blood, and would improve your resilience and healing capabilities enormously, though combat-speed healing would only be moderate without a feat of exertion.
Ber is totally going to take them hostage once we're finished with the Temple, isn't he?
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
I doubt it. It won't have even been a week and he's an Isekai protagonist. We've got at least a month before he's leveled up sufficiently.
I was actually unsure if ++ was tenfold or hundredfold. In hindsight, I guess i confused it for Amplification.
Still, ~3 times progression remains being really powerful.
Want
It's a
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think we need to be ready in 2 weeks
He doesn't need to level up sufficiently, he just needs to strike at the right time. His original target was Versch, so aiming at the robot while we're busy in the Temple makes sense. Then he can indulge his revenge boner by capturing the ladies and forcing us into an impossible moral dilemma or even trying to see whether we're willing to sacrifice ourselves. He can always escape if things don't go according to plan after all, or so he thinks.
[X] The Ring of Power
Iridescence seems like it would've been a solid pick but it would mean our build is totally built on a guess about how the dungeon works. Going full Passion on a ring build should have it apply to most of the dungeon I think? If we maintain the frenetic energy of I am the Danger.
I've become more interested in Really Scenic again but still can't really say it makes sense from a risk/reward standpoint so I won't vote for it. Accretion as a system is really good at taking the natural tendency to want to take the dangerous path and amplifying that desire... We will still have to get some intrinsic +Rank eventually even if we skip it here.
Iridescence seems like it would've been a solid pick but it would mean our build is totally built on a guess about how the dungeon works. Going full Passion on a ring build should have it apply to most of the dungeon I think? If we maintain the frenetic energy of I am the Danger.
I've become more interested in Really Scenic again but still can't really say it makes sense from a risk/reward standpoint so I won't vote for it. Accretion as a system is really good at taking the natural tendency to want to take the dangerous path and amplifying that desire... We will still have to get some intrinsic +Rank eventually even if we skip it here.
Last edited:
Rihaku
The Internet
Why would he do that? Walking XP bags exist to become XP reified!
The greatness of the Dunedain was not in strength of arms alone, but also the glory and cunning of their craft, their indomitable will (Aragorn stalemates Sauron in a palantir duel) and quickness of mind, and wisdom to navigate the travails of their world!
The effects are still fairly diffuse, however. It's not going to raise up a supercombatant (relative to your own strength) or allow you to directly overwhelm a superior foe. Still, the applications are countless and the powers do have a certain intangible quality to them...
Seize the rank up while you can! It's free rather than costing 2 picks, after all!
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
How would he know that? He didn't even know about us until after he arrived. Whatever warnings he gets cant account for us, so he has no way of knowing when we are or arent there.
Hmm, I might have overestimated how much he dislikes us after that last fight. Maybe just killing us is revenge enough.
He knew Versch's precise location and abilities. Might be scrying abilities, might be his Quest system, but he seems cocky enough to give it another go.
- Location
- Omniverse #1345
Exactly. He knew that but nothing about us. That says we are a blindspot to him and he isnt going to try challenging us till he's finished at least one training montage.
I don't think he actually dislikes us at all. He's just mad he lost to an "npc".
Last edited:
It's a similar argument to what we've had in last iteration of quest. A couple of stats(or about 1/3 of Might) is not much on our own level, but spread about hundreds of thousands of combatants it starts mattering. Besides, perhaps we could use this ability to target our Decimator? After all, it controls life forces itself, and Hunger is artifact focused on mitigating Decimator..
Ability to buy EFB piecemeal is really shiny, and 2/3 of purchase have great deal of value of their own.
Rihaku
The Internet
Hm... but will Ring win this vote, I wonder? Its powers are not as specialized, not so adroitly suited to pure combat as the Forebear's Blade! Once this upcoming build vote and/or boss battle are done and the Arete's depleted, all EFB-equivalents will look equally far away...
- Location
- USA
[X] The Really Scenic Route
[X] Conservative
[X] The Ring of Power
Ring seems very good. Unlike the other voters I'm thinking we go Chief Domain, it seems to work with our build pretty well. We are tanky, so if we are continually strengthening ourselves and weakening them the longer we hold out the more the battle tilts in our favor.
[X] Conservative
[X] The Ring of Power
Ring seems very good. Unlike the other voters I'm thinking we go Chief Domain, it seems to work with our build pretty well. We are tanky, so if we are continually strengthening ourselves and weakening them the longer we hold out the more the battle tilts in our favor.
Mhm, does it matter? It will win some vote. Scaling Rank is just way too good to pass up, and once you go Ring you can't go back. Will we really refuse to spend 2 Arete for 0.25 scaling combat boost? And then we get there bit by bit.
Fanwork#1621 Words
Reaction: "Synchronization Complete"
No, Letrizia, you haven't been isekai'd yet despite this Realm being conductive to such things.
As for getting transposed into its Astral shadow, does this mean at some point we'll get to see a fight on both levels simultaneously? After all, it's not like the Astral Realm lacks for aggressive denizens.
Would be interesting to see if we can remote-pilot Versch after we fix him up. That's like having our cake and eating it too!
Or maybe Versch can simply enter his Final Form and show them all.
[X] The Quickest Route
[X] Risky
[X] Evening Sky
Reaction: "Synchronization Complete"
I'd almost forgotten we still had to get in the robot with all the recent discussions. Our synchronization will certainly be over 9000 in time, the question is by how much!
Even Apocrypha knows when to stop it seems. Or it is so amused by our decision to run headlong into danger that it decided to stand by and watch. What a wonderful means of Curse Mitigation! Just do stupid and suicidal things on your own instead of forcing the Curse to make things 'interesting'. The Curse can't really make things worse if we're our own worst enemy!
Too bad we don't know anything about flower arrangement, or we would have learned some of the other levels of teasing Gisena prepared for us. Surely a noble Lady such as her wouldn't limit herself to mere words!
Well, her Sorcerous enhancements probably contribute quite a bit to that all-encompassing competence. Much easier to be a genius when you've got findross buttressing your Wits. Not the whole of it, of course, speed of thought does not produce brilliance on its own, at most its semblance. And Gisena is quite brilliant.
I don't know, she was quite willing to do everything in her power to help humanity in AST 1.0 despite being nigh-certain that the fight was hopeless. Much as we hated her for depriving us of our Accursed-gifted Remittance, from her point of view she had done her best in the circumstances allotted to her, spying on the orcs and looking for ways to help humanity despite how tightly Jotarun had her nailed down. Even her final sacrifice killed a great number of orcs, though I can't quite find it in myself to feel grateful.
That's only until we create other Sorceresses! H-hmph, it's not like we like her or anything. She can't bribe her way into our graces that easily.
What a nice feeling it must be, to have some of his health restored once again. Hopefully we'll get the magics necessary to restore the Hero to full health at some point, or we'll keep getting options to permanently sacrifice our limbs for power.
Second Stage is quite the neat power, staying relevant even as we grow in Rank and power. After all, even the gods can die, and having the ability to continue the good fight after shedding off the mortal coil for a while is fairly useful. Also, it's not wraith, it's Heroic Spirit! Get your terminology straight if you want to maintain your image, Hero!
Hmm, the power is much more effective than I'd thought. We'd been told it would be several weeks or something? Not that I'm complaining, I'm just pleasantly surprised.
'Where am I? Who am I? What am I doing here?'
No, Letrizia, you haven't been isekai'd yet despite this Realm being conductive to such things.
That's all the more reason to keep teasing her! She just keeps walking into it, how is our Hero supposed to resist?
Oho! I didn't think about it, but is teasing Gisena with our ability to heal perhaps our final chance to strike back against Gisena's Tyranny? After all, there can only be one Tyrant in this party, and it certainly won't be someone that doesn't even have the associated Doom!
Is this foreshadowing? Letting others borrow our Artifacts especially such 'nice' ones (in comparison to the others) sounds like a sensible path of development.
Well, it all started with getting isekai'd and ended with us missing half our body parts, on the verge of death. But we got better, with a little help from the Accursed! She could try praying to him, she's as pure as cinnamon rolls get.
What's that, is our apprentice in the arts of teasing baring her teeth at us? How daring! This is surely Gisena's fault, we shouldn't have let them spend so much time together. Now she's irrevocably corrupted and might be beyond salvation! It's a different sort of cuteness though, how vexing...
Ah yes, our Bad Ideas Generator is with us once again. I can guess who suggested going to the Temple now. It almost certainly wasn't our fault!
Stalking is not an attractive trait, no matter what yandere fetishists would tell you, Gisena. Unless there's something we don't know about the Hero's former relationship with his wife?
Quite ironic given we're about to leave her behind to enter the Temple.
Be it in appearance, powers or narcissism, that fake could never stand up to the real deal!
One wonders what sort of life she'd lived to end up like that. We'd been told she was grown from birth for this purpose, but it is hard to imagine something like that. Maybe she's an artificial human, grown in a tube and infused with the knowledge necessary to accomplish her task? Age and Treachery would become even more telling if she's just a few months old.
Hopefully Hunger learned better lines after a while. Reading that had been painful.
These adventurers were quite explicit about being in it for money and glory. Given how entitled they were, they would have harped on about their moral superiority during the entire fight if they knew about Decimation.
We could put it off for a few more chapters. There isn't even a single Angel attack in sight, how could we possibly get in the robot when there is no dramatic tension?!
The retribution is swift and unexpected - one could say we specialize in Vengeance. You have much to learn before you can challenge the master, Letty.
With every fight fixing Versch becomes ever more troublesome. I'm still impressed by the Foremost's craftsmanship, for their Armament to survive the rigors of time and combat despite everything it had been put through. Or was it the Foremost? Hard to believe that given the Armaments' connection to the Cursebearers...
So she doesn't have a kitchen sink stashed away in this mysterious space. How disappointing. Apropos family pictures, is she by chance not an orphan?! What a ridiculous lack of a tragic backstory for a mech pilot and heroine aspirant that would be.
Yet we haven't seen her do it previously. Is it because Verschlengorge is too broken or because she doesn't have the required skills?
As for getting transposed into its Astral shadow, does this mean at some point we'll get to see a fight on both levels simultaneously? After all, it's not like the Astral Realm lacks for aggressive denizens.
Maybe Shine Bright would have been better suited to the task and we could have healed up Verschlengorge some. Might have been too difficult and costly to bother though.
How interesting, its creators have chosen some version of Huntress' Moon as Mitigation too, one with even more broadly defined targets than our version by the sound of things. Maybe that's why she was so unconcerned about the Curse before - with the support of their entire civilization, hunting powerful opponents regularly would have been within the realm of possibility.
It would surprise me quite a bit if they could understand something that has to do with Curses and Cursebearers. They barely understand Rank, never mind higher spheres.
I don't like other things mucking around in the Hero's soul, but I suppose Versch gets a free pass this once for being such an awesome mech. He better not make it a habit though!
The shining tomorrow evokes images of Odyssial's projects. Was the Accursed perhaps more involved in this project than we'd thought?
This is really strange. Not that I expect silly notions of energy conservation to apply to Curses, but given how disgustingly clingy and unequivocally vicious they are, I didn't expect one of the Curses simply to disappear after a merger. Is it a case of 'there can only be one'? Well, I doubt it's as easy as that, so likely some kind of super-mitigation option built into them instead.
Would be interesting to see if we can remote-pilot Versch after we fix him up. That's like having our cake and eating it too!
If this conquering business doesn't pan out, we can get a lucrative job as a Foremost translator! Would be quite an advantage in Foremost ruins too.
...what a painfully honest guy. He has much more personality than I believed when we first saw Versch.
Of course it couldn't be that easy. Maybe even fixing Verschlengorge won't be enough. Will we have to go spelunking in Foremost dungeons to get those permissions?
He's getting more annoying by the minute. So he can't even tell us what the key to unlocking all that critical information is? Though maybe we're simply too weak to know anything about that, it's not like learning the answers would help us right now.
Always looking for silver linings. Thankfully our party members didn't get subjected to double Decimation for too long.
A bit bland after taking the Temple option, but there is something to be said for not rushing into danger every single time we have to choose. Maybe we'll even pass Gisena's relationship milestone with this!
Quick and furious, steamrolling over everything in our path on the way to our destination. Sadly we're not the baddest boy in the neighborhood, but we're getting there!
Please stop encouraging our bad habits, Gisena. Choosing a path that is even more dangerous than the destination doesn't seem like sound reasoning. Those tasty rewards though...
Thinking about it, can't we like, swear to revive Letrizia after we get more powerful should she die? That's what we did for our wife! The Forebear might despise us for such wishy-washy resolve though.
Or maybe Versch can simply enter his Final Form and show them all.
[X] The Quickest Route
[X] Risky
[X] Evening Sky
Talace
It must be raining somewhere else!
[X] The Quickest Route
[X] Conservative
[X] The Evening Sky
The seven-cost for Evening Sky scales with experience and overall makes us more capable of taking risks. I find that not having to worry about scaling up protection for a good bit of the quest to be greatly beneficial-- in addition, the two-cost is useful in being able to weaken novel magic systems that we have no other counter for.
[X] Conservative
[X] The Evening Sky
The seven-cost for Evening Sky scales with experience and overall makes us more capable of taking risks. I find that not having to worry about scaling up protection for a good bit of the quest to be greatly beneficial-- in addition, the two-cost is useful in being able to weaken novel magic systems that we have no other counter for.