Turned out the red-suited man had a long-standing rivalry with the decidedly plainer black-haired man he'd attacked. The latter had a word attached to his soul, an Epithet, Magician, which allowed him to access a large number of what operated like spells, despite technically not being Magic at all. That being the case, I elected to contain the collateral damage as I managed to piece together their history from comments weaseled out of them, in hopes of ending this feud before they did major damage. My main self had pondered slapping a bunch of extra powers onto my chassis, but felt that rather defeated the point of their excursions. Still, with 10.8 times what a human mage at their peak would possess, fueled by what little of the knowledge of the physical and metaphysical that remained understandable to a fragment such as myself, and a truly stupendous amount of inspiration from multitudes of multiverses, it wasn't that hard to essentially make up spells as I went. At least on the level of paltry tricks like shields that could stop a ton or two of force without issue that I could set up to cover whole buildings without bothering the people inside. I suppose it was more like reinforcement than a conventional shield, but doing it for the whole city block was a little taxing.
Of course, then the jerks left me to talk to the police. I sighed internally as I filled out some paperwork. Today was not a great start. Hopefully the other mes were doing better on average.
***
As a rule, the various mes were doing alright. We could sense each other, intended to act as an early warning system against anything targeting my avatars and possibly a means of detecting a handful of threats that could fly under my greater self's radar by whatever means while remaining detectable by what technically both was and wasn't me. We were moderately superpowered by the standards of most universes, and capable of rapidly adopting local magic systems if we really needed to gain a powerup. We'd been designed more with proliferation in mind than power, so we were adapted to the meta-ontologies of our respective Gigaverses, which was a little more complicated than simply Frankenstein-ing the component cosmologies together. Well, a lot more complicated, but at ISH 5, it really wasn't that hard. Some breadth could have been traded for more power, but even what they had could be rapidly escalated, given they were more than 10 times as intelligent, wise, and witty as the most potent normal humans and how easily that could be leveraged into massive growth with even a moderately abusable system of advancement. There were, however, a few exceptions. On the edge of my true self's influence, where the dimensional infrastructure had not yet been fully developed or was being actively contested, the projected avatars died with some frequency. Either from universes or timelines collapsing with their supports suddenly knocked out, or simply from sudden outbreak of hostilities. Odd, the greater me should have predicted this sort of thing and worked around it. Was he distracted by something...?
Well, it didn't matter much to me either way, specifically, given that I was now in a clearing staring at a small group of people surrounding perhaps the most cliche-looking Isekai protagonist I'd ever seen. Black hair, dark eyes, Japanese, the works. It was like the distilled essence of- wait. Looking closer, I was pretty sure that was exactly what was going on. While I couldn't do much about narrative tethers with my current paltry powers, I understood them and their rules well enough to trace them, like a Quincy following Spirit Ribbons. I staggered back when I followed the tethers to... well, it was one of the evilest things I'd ever encountered, like the cosmic force Eru generally operated as in the Tolkienverse, but of opposite morality and ultimate intentions, and from what I could discern his counterpart, as there almost always was for things like this, was most definitely dead. Evil could be considered an 'ideal' which meant that it had a lot of continuity relative to, say, souls between different Gigaverses, nevermind individual universes within a multiverse, but there were differences in manifestation that always made it difficult to discern which of the various Ultimate Evils of a given cosmology were objectively worse in the meta-cosmology of the wider Verse. It didn't help that it had parceled out a significant portion of it's power to accelerate this world's destruction, which I would assume had something to do with the summoned Hero and the usual narrative advantage he would possess being all screwed up and laden down with what seemed to be pretty obvious Curses, including a budget-Decimator, though it could just be pure sadism. I could use the narrative tethers to discern the general direction of them and triangulate from there, and I could tell that they didn't seem active yet, but anything further would have to wait for line of sight or dedicated spellcraft.
"Uh, hi." I began. One of them, the elderly man somewhere between a ghost possessing their own corpse and a lich, whose gaze briefly flicked between the Hero and myself, and who looked at me with open suspicion. The others just seemed confused.
"Greeting, Outlander." he said, tone not unpleasant, but certainly not pleasant either. Well, that wasn't good, he seemed to be under the impression I had something to do with all the terrible maladies afflicting the Hero. I assumed some aspect of Blood Sorcery, as I believed the local blood magic was called, allowed the undead man to discern the loss of fundamental essence he was being hit with. His apparent semi-deafness was also fairly obvious, and his dulled sense of smell would also become noticeable in little time. "What brings you here?" he asked, the elven girl and what seemed like a black mage, though he was both a fairly potent Blood Sorcerer and an angel-contracted Divine Sorcerer, content to watch the byplay for the moment.
"Ah, well, I was sent as a representative of sorts for a higher being." Technically correct. "You can call my Ilbgar. It's not my real name, but you learn to be careful about these things." Of course, with how much my chosen name was used to refer to me across massive sections of the local Verse, far in excess of my original name, it could be used as a moderate substitute for my real name in some of the spells that required such things, but any extra protection never hurt. "It wouldn't be wrong to think of me as somewhere between a Divine Sorcerer and a contracted spirit." I was drawing power from a patron who'd created me, but I was also a fully sapient being capable of making my own choices, for whatever that was worth when you were an ISH 1 being tied to an ISH 5 being. So I wasn't quite either.
"And why here, specifically?" the man asked.
"Ah, well, I think this a 'point of least resistance' situation. Either that, or my patron noticed what was going on with Airoy and decided to have me help you out."
"Airoy?" the elf girl asked, perplexed.
I decided I might as well bite the bullet. "The Darkness I'm sure you've sensed to one degree or another is essentially the anti-Yoria. Hence her name spelled backwards. I'm afraid there's quite a struggle ahead of us, seeing as Yoria is dead, presumably by his hand."
The girl gave a sharp intake of breath, the man grit his teeth but paused when the Hero nodded once in confirmation, and the mage sighed. "I was afraid of that. Kharmiel could tell something was wrong with the cosmic balance, but..." the mage explained.
"It's why our friend here is in such bad shape. The Darkness wanted to be absolutely sure he couldn't pose a threat, and without Yoria to oppose him, he was free to interfere in the summoning. First, he's afflicted with an essence bleed that can only be staunched by murdering others, which we should get on unless we want him to start losing powers, skills, memories and eventually ontological coherence in... 4-6 days by my estimation."
Once again, the Hero nodded, adding "He told me all about it."
"Second, a curse that causes anyone who interacts with him for more than a couple minutes to eventually betray him, due to a highly realistic vision of him doing so in an incredibly cruel manner first being inflicted on them. You three seem immune, and I have the benefit of knowing exactly what it's trying to do and some significant protection against hostile mystical effects, but if he interacted with, say, your patron in Divine Sorcery, you'd have to worry about... actually, direct associates like those only suffer the curse at 80% strength, but anyone not directly connected to you, and perhaps a handful of others possessing a natural immunity, would, well, frankly they'd be a constant risk unless you were willing to kill everyone in your path or keep him locked away from everyone else at all times. Basically? Don't expect raising an army to help. In fact, assume they'd be a hindrance sooner rather than later. Third, he seems to have had a tendency to show off implanted into him. He literally can't avoid monologuing, especially if it's an enemy or an attempted ambush. Expect a lot of heroic speeches. We might as well start keeping a mental list of how many times we hear certain phrases, because it's going to get old fast."
"Wait, the Darkness can just... alter people's personalities?" the elf girl looked deeply disturbed.
I waggled a hand. "Eh, not really. It would require a moment of extreme vulnerability, such as being outside of conventional reality as the summoned Hero was, or an injustice done to someone so extreme that most people, like 99% of people would seriously consider aiding the victim in extreme and horrific forms of revenge. Anyone with a conscience at least." I did have a couple spells for turning that off when I had considered intervening in various atrocities throughout human history, such as the Iron Age collapse, back when I was under the impression my timeline was still on course. It was a good thing my Willpower was so high when I had discovered all of that was for nothing.
"At any rate, the fourth is, well, direct interference in his incarnation into this world. His hearing and sense of smell are damaged. He's halfway to deaf and noseblind. It's also affected his willpower, from what his soul indicates." Given that his hearing problems had already become apparent, this caused the least reaction of any of what amounted to Curses I had listed off. While it didn't sound as bad as loss of essence, a gradual wearing on you via lowered quality of life could have extreme effects in the long-term. It all added up, too. Who knew when his compromised willpower might come back to bite him?
"Lastly, and in my opinion, worst of all, a curse that bears a very strong resemblance to one that I'd only heard about. He seems to have a weakened version of the Apocryphal Curse. It boils down to making one's life 'interesting' in the Chinese sense." the Hero winced at that. "Perhaps an enemy has an outrageous breakthrough in their study of their magic. Perhaps some unrelated threat emerges to drain our resources at the worst possible time. The good news is that from what I can tell, unlike the real deal, it's possible to outgrow it, as it won't eventually start dragging stuff from outside the universe to chuck at him if he outgrows everything here. It boils down to Airoy permanently tilting Fate against our friend here, rather than deeper forces being subverted at the semi-autonomous will of the Curse. It also, by it's nature, won't default to anything that absolutely can't be overcome, as dying suddenly and anticlimactically isn't interesting, unless it gets sufficient narrative weight to become so. Like someone who was obsessed with avoiding such a mediocre death being a valid target because of the irony factor." It also wouldn't return to The Accursed if the Hero died, but that wasn't really relevant to them.
"By my calculations, if nothing is done, magic as you know it will cease to exist in 6 thousand years, and the world will follow suit in at most 30." Not a lot of time by my standards. Sure, we Avatars kept True Immortality and attacking us along ontological coherence lines was an exercise in futility for any being incapable of obliterating an entire multiverse's ontology, but as mere fragmented copies, our Attributes were miniscule shadows of our greater self, and thus we effectively didn't have Growth. So unless I got lucky and my greater self decided to hyper-accelerate time to speed Growth along from my perspective, I would have to make do with local magics and anything I could scrounge up from elsewhere that was compatible. Perhaps use the local Mantle system in a manner similar to Diagram's Signs for various magic systems to incorporate them into the world? Thoughts for later.
"That's certainly... disheartening." the older man admitted. "Still, I can feel the raw power radiating from the Hero, and if nothing else, I'd quite like some measure of vengeance for Yoria. You may call me Aldrich."
"Bela." the elf girl followed suit.
"Eryc." the mage contributed.
"Yoria apparently knew that this time was different, so she left me quite a few powers." the Hero demonstrated a strange orange glow, which resolved itself into a simple iron bar.
"Joss? The power she used to set the very laws of the world?" Aldrich asked, flabbergasted. Huh. How did he know that? Prior history with Yoria?
"I think that's just an instance of it going to the most viable candidate, since it seems different from his other magics and empowerments." It wasn't tethered to his soul quite the same way, and worse, his vessel was ill-fit for it. Was this why the Darkness had done so much to screw up the Hero's vessel?
"I think we should take some time to work out the exact mechanisms of these powers. For one thing, we have no idea how Joss interacts with other Mantles, considering where most of them came from." Eryc suggested.
"I'd offer a nearby location owned by my House, but considering the issues the Hero is facing, there's no better time than the present." Aldrich agreed.
So we began testing, cataloguing, and in my case specifically, beginning work on copying for my own Advancement and an additional sample of the powers to work with in researching their techniques, the various abilities the Hero possessed, and their various interactions.
AN: So, the Hero's build looks like this.
[H] Cheat Mode: Doubled picks, take 4 Artifacts and all Companions. Half now, half later.
[H] Writer's Mode: 1K. +1 Empowerment.
[H] Writer's Mode: 3K. +1 Artifact.
[H] Writer's Mode: 5K. +1 pick in any section.(Mantle)
[H] Writer's Mode: 10K. +1 pick in Mantles.
[H] Writer's Mode: 15K. +1 pick in Sorceries, and then +1 pick in any section for every 2.5k words on top of that.
[H] Writer's Mode 17.5K. +1 Mantle.
I think I have enough cred to be confident in going for the 17.5K version. That's enough for me to get everything I want. I'm already more than a third of the way there anyway.
Immortality:
[H] Bet Seal: Dying-and-Rising.
[H] Azure Rose.
[H] Amulet of Unlife(Golden Ring).
[H] Shard of Imperishable Eternity.
Now, the Bet Seal and Azure Rose have a fair amount of overlap, but preventing energy from being siphoned to regulate the Hero's age/heal wounds is of benefit to Progression. Azure Rose also has synergy with a certain artifact. Especially when that artifact is boosted by Amulet of Unlife's general boost to said artifact. Between the endless replenishment of vitality being constantly burned by Golden Ring, which provides at least ++++++++All Stats according to Aabcehmu before the Amulet's boost, and the safety net provided by the Golden Ring's phylactery status if somebody manages to snipe the Hero while he's burning most of the vitality Azure is giving him makes it about as safe as it could possibly be. The Shard provides yet more protection if the bad guys get lucky or Apocryphal pulls something outrageous like Mordred, or both.
Mantle:
[H] Hero's Mantle.
[H] Mantle of Assiah.
[H] Mantle of Kephas.
[H] Mantle of Bria.
[H] Mantle of Mobius.
[H] Mantle of Joss.
Hero's Progression booster is very important, especially when Joss is so slow to learn. I should probably be able to rustle up some help, possibly a training dimension of one kind or another in Yoria's proximity. It might not be an original piece, but it should count about as much as an organ transplant does. Sure, 'I' won't be in a position to do it for a while, but the whole premise is that Transcendent me had this place right in the middle of incorporation when the Petaversal threat popped up, so there should be at least
some of the dimensional infrastructure in place. Alternatively, Mobius and the Rift Maker Empowerment should be able to provide some assistance in this regard. Either way, by year one's end, making it myself shouldn't be too hard regardless of whether or not the Hero can make one. Now, Joss can't be used to make Blood Sorcery-viable blood, at least initially, but it was always intended to be a fill-in for Yoria. Even just beating all the Scenarios would lengthen Yoria's lifespan enough that corresponding improvements from the Hero filling in for her would probably lengthen it enough to reach the next point of significant lengthening until either Yoria can be replaced, or revived. Plus, it can be used for just about any basic item, so working up to combat servitors shouldn't be too hard.
Assiah's conceptual cleaving and combination(fun fact, the technical definition of cleave can mean to cleave something apart or together) should be of great interest to someone who can access pocket planes via portals, because technically creating a permanent portal would combine the pocket plane with the greater one. A crude Close the Fist would also be available. Should be interesting seeing what a combined Eney and Scepter can do. A fate boost to Eney's boast-based buffs, or maybe the ability to manipulate fate via boasting? Turn Death Flag statements into active boosts to whatever action. The Golden Ring and Silver Pendant put together could also be quite good. Perhaps the ability to turn the +All Stats into a general power pool to choose different Stats to raise, or maybe outright drain certain Stats to improve others? Plus it could be a good way to combine the Amulet's boost with different artifacts. Later on, combining the two might grant an improvement to the buffs and make the boast buffs last some time outside of a given mission. Closing the Fist between Bela and Aldrich's artifacts should also be doable, plus the looted artifacts from the Archmages and Dark Lords. Kephas is mostly for raw Stats, though the boost to combat will be very helpful against the majority of Scenarios, especially when so much of the early game is going to be preoccupied with magic training and messing around with the cross-synergies of the magic systems as opposed to combat training, given the Beasts won't be up an running for a while to provide fodder. The Mantle of Bria and Arcana Sorcery combine very, very well. Not to mention the Int and Wits boosters. I suspect the connection to the sky would be of use against Fog of Ages as well. At least in terms of sensing it's progress.
Sorcery:
[H]
Arcane Sorcery
[H]
Divine Sorcery
[H]
Natural Sorcery
[H]
Blood Sorcery
I imagine 10.8 times normal human intellect will help a lot with Arcane Sorcery, even if I'm initially just advising. Betrayer and Divine Sorcery normally wouldn't play well, but a certain crown can change that. With Natural, when is alchemy not useful? Especially with Joss to provide at least some of the materials, even if it can't provide Blood Sorcery with blood initially, there's plenty of other stuff we could alchemize with mundane elements. As Fayhem noted, white phosphorous is technically made from natural materials. Similar, according to
this Live Science article, flourine technically does occur in nature, specifically in a radioactive florite. Making Chlorine Trifluoride shouldn't be too hard, since harvesting the former from salt shouldn't take much effort. This is a chemical so reactive it burns concrete on contact and makes water explode. Forget nitroglycerin, this stuff is way more explosive. Then there's FOOF, Dioxygen Diflouride. Oxygen was never going to be a problem, and this stuff makes
ice explode. What's more, the sheer environmental control is amazing for setting traps. Being able to erode a hill or cliffside a hundred years in 5 seconds and similar is going to be a very unpleasant surprise for anyone standing on it or next to it. Blood Sorcery when given one infinitely replenishing corpse is impressive. With two? The things we can't do with a few days prep likely consists mostly of things that would reshape entire continents. Massive advancement of the party's powers probably wouldn't take long.
Empowerments:
[H] Wind Waker
[H] Soul Eater
[H] Blaze Star
[H] Rift Opener
[H] Jade Mistress
[H] Fearsome Overlord
[H] Scattered Phantom
[H] Sky-Tearing Bird
[H] Thunder Runner
Cards on the table, while Astral Liege could be neat... Blood Sorcery is way too important to this build for it to be worth it. So the +1 Empowerment from Writer's Mode is unhelpful, to say the least. Still, if Soul Eater can let the Hero harvest some of my infinitely regenerating lifeforce for his own empowerment, then millions of my corpses should empower him a great deal, and if not then the baseline Stat boost and plethora of enemies to kill will soon resolve that problem. Wind Waker improving general mobility through flight is a welcome addition, and aerokinesis can act as makeshift telekinesis under the right circumstances, not to mention the physical and mental speed boost. Blaze Star grants yet more security, and a minor super mode. Seeing as my Avatars are crippled compared to the main me, Rift Opener allowing for use of the Zoom spell to go wherever is likely to be absolutely crucial to getting to places in a timely manner. I can probably pull a Jumper and make a spell to follow along via keeping the Rift open a little longer than it's supposed to be. Plus, it should have synergy with the pocket plane portals and creation of Mobius, which doesn't explicitly allow for conventional teleports like this, but it's not entirely dissimilar either. Jade Mistress' independent healing factor presumably allows some healing to persist even with Golden Ring, and I won't say no to the ablative armor and environmental control on offer for the Hero. Fearsome Overlord's weakness sense should be useful against almost all the Scenarios, and the further bolstered speed of thought certainly isn't a problem. Scattered Phantom provides yet more security. In some ways it's like a second Silver Pendant permanently set to physical damage. Combined with the normal Silver Pendant, and the magical knife slicing your stomach open via the enchantment or the knife itself not being blocked is no longer an issue. Sky-Tearing Bird and Nature Sorcery should combine well, and not being crappy at finding his way if the group gets separated by an enemy is a good thing for the Hero. Thunder Runner provides both a massive physical and mental speed boost, but also a powerful Desperation Attack.
Artifacts:
[H] Scepter of Oshirah(later)
[H] Sword of Eney(immediate)
[H] Silver Pendant(later)
[H] Golden Ring(immediate)
[H] Spirit King's Crown(bought via Writer's Mode)
Eney is not only for countering Gull, but also to expedite killing each other. A vorpal blade should cut my head off without issue, especially when a Hero with all these buffs does the slashing. Golden Ring is crucial for this build, as noted above. Silver Pendant can wait, though I wonder if setting it to Social can block Betrayer's visions of betrayal, as we're going to be spending the first week or so killing the crap out of each other. Similarly, we have plenty of Sorcery to study while we wait for the Scepter. The Crown and it's spirits are going to be a week, but I don't think they'd come any sooner if I picked it for one of my 'later' slots, and Eney and the Ring both have much more immediate use than it. This is what Divine Sorcery is to be used for, since Betrayer would mess it up with any other divinities.
Companions:
[H] Aldrich Elderlast(immediate)
[H] Bela Vista(immediate)
[H] Gilen(later)
[H] Aumelia Sunsworn(later)
[H] Eryc Noctazar(immediate)
[H] Po the Pretender(later)
So, presumably Bela sought out Aldrich for help with the encroaching Darkness, and he was quite willing to hear her out, as he was already working on the problem. He, in turn contacted Eryc for his special talent involving Blood Sorcery, and to see what his angelic friend knew. That seems like something he'd keep an eye on. Their knowledge of Blood Sorcery is very helpful here at the start. If we can take advantage of that special ability of theirs with a few million bodies to sacrifice, massive Attributes gains would probably be the least of our potential rewards. By that point it would probably be obvious that my own Attributes were rising on their own(I'll explain further down), so supercharging Joss and it's Progression would likely be what we burn at least the first month's charge of that on.
Gilen's proto-Mantle/Sorcery is best saved for when we've enhanced our Attributes and trained enough to gather the low-hanging fruit of our existing abilities. Of course, my Avatar is probably going to be incredibly good at building new Mantles and Sorceries thanks to sheer breadth of experience with Magic systems and knowledge therein and the Hero being right there with 4 of the 5 extant Sorceries and 6 of the 7 extant Mantles, so it's hard to be sure I wouldn't be able to do that relatively trivially. I sympathize with Aumelia's plight, but her war-making capacity isn't very useful to us at the start. Similarly, if Po's not willing to divulge the details of his artifact, then there's only so much we can do to help him with that. His talent for trickery and deception will be of use later on, once we're actually spending time in society and Alrich can't trivially secure us whatever we need.
I like to think that the first three are immune because they partook in his summoning, while the other three are different flavors of no-sell. Gilen just isn't from here, so he's got the same sort of issue that would negate the Hero's Immortality working in his favor here, Aumelia just straight up no-sells the betrayal vision because of how she treats even the most vile of people, and Po's special power offers protection. Though it's possible that there's some sort of marker the local me is using to discern these things, rather than just directly analyzing the Drawbacks in Curse format. Transcendent me did a lot of Curse analyzing in hopes of helping with Curse Mitigation, either mine or a Cursebearer I encountered. As an ISH 5, I could probably manage up to Stage 2 of most Curses without any real issue, and at least some of the Stage 3s.
Scenarios:
[H] The Dark Lord.
[H] Six Beasts.
[H] The Fog of Ages
[H] Archmage of Winter.
[H] Archmage of Flames.
[H] The Final King (requires The Dark Lord).
In this version of events, the Darkness is being a sadist and has elected to respond to the Hero deciding to try and fix things by a) enacting all of these Scenarios at once to drive him into despair, and b) inflicting all the Drawbacks on him, seeing as Yoria is in no position to protect him, just to ensure he can't pose a threat. Boy, is he in for a shock!
Drawbacks:
[H] The Slayer. +3 Enhancements.
[H] The Betrayer. +1 Mantle.
[H] The Gull. +1 Immortality.
[H] Sensory Aggravation. (3, 2.) +1 Immortality.
[H] Apocryphal Curse. +1 Sorcery.
Rolled hearing and scent for Sensory Aggravation, so the actual hero is, due to Cheat Mode, operating half-deaf and halfway noseblind. Infinite Corpse Works for Blood Sorcery should take care of that pretty quick. The Slayer and Soul Eater combine well, and Gull and Eney partially cancel each other out. Apocryphal Curse at half strength shouldn't be unbearable. Betrayer is the big deal here, but given that I a) know all about it, and b) have a number of options to defend against it with by the massive number of magics available, not to mention anything local that boosts my defenses. Protection seems to be a Stat unique to my Avatar here. If nothing else, I could 'Betray' him by simply not attempting to call up my greater self to deal with all this, under the logic that if my Avatars weren't all dead, he was probably fine, but the fact that something so malicious and yet so weak to even an ISH 5 being was allowed to persist would definitely raise alarm bells. While my usual strategy is to pull an Eru and just arrange things for a general uptick in positive emotions and actions, not the least of which is resolving most of the things that cause the opposite in one way or another, I am not above intervening directly if there's an unrepentantly bad actor like the Adversary screwing up whole universes.
So, just as Transcendent Ilbgar sent out the avatars, the Petaverse came under threat. Because of course it did. Various high-level entities of similar scope and power in it's component Teraverses have banded together to buy time enough for those who have not yet hit their peak to achieve yet greater heights. My Transcendent self being one of them, having finally bitten the bullet and locked himself away in a Hyperbolic Time Chamber where time passes a billion times more quickly to abuse Growth. While this effectively makes it impossible for him to react to much of anything happening, which leaves a number of avatars in the lurch in the short-term, each day from the perspective of an avatar, my main self gains 228,310 to all Attributes, which in turn provides a +2.2 to avatar Attributes per day. That's going to come out to 841.6 for the avatars and 84,166,666 for my main self, more than a hundred times as powerful even ignoring the exponential nature of the Attributes, though if anything further away from the ISH 8 of the main me. The massive difference is why the Avatars don't know much of anything about what's going with the main me, as they largely can't comprehend any of it in much the same way a quark couldn't comprehend the simplest of human thoughts. The reverse, despite their massive number, is not true, and a lot of entertainment value is derived from reading through their misadventures while he waits for Growth to push him further towards the infinite Attribute cap. Since 666 is infinite in a single cardinality, I assume that even with all 6 Scenarios and all Drawbacks, we've got a shot, especially when True Immortality and of course the Hero's own immortality can be abused to let the Hero Blood Sorcery it up with an endless supply of volunteer bodies/bloodbags to massively empower the Mantles including Joss, and if I'm a valid target for Slayer, he can store 7 kills up constantly.
Of course, I fully expect all 6 Scenarios and the lesser Apocryphal to leave me with significantly less than 10 years to prep the Hero and his Companions. Given Fate is bending over backwards even for a common Dark Lord, nevermind the Final King, and with backing from Apocryphal. I suspect a handful of months before the prep time is run out pre-emptively by Apocryphal deciding the training arc is boring. Still, that's more than enough time for my avatar to hit 100+ in my Attributes. Enough for Luck to start contesting at least the basic Dark Lords in their fate-bending even with Apocryphal backing. Perhaps I could shove them into a
Zero Infinity plane to buy time if necessary. Basically, a place between multiverses. The multiverse equivalent of the intergalactic void. The Hero might lose his Immortality if he leaves Yoria, and the Advisor might not be able to leave, but it doesn't say what happens if you shove a Dark Lord or whatever outside of this multiverse. Zero Infinity is a survivable location, though not pleasant, but I suspect at least some loss of power, given how invested in this universe the Adversary is. The fate-bending at least should degrade substantially. Transcendent Ilbgar generally has them made more habitable and connects them to their connected multiverses, in turn treated as a sort of rest stop between them along the travel route created by him/me, but as I've mentioned, the dimensional infrastructure in the area is of limited scope. Where it exists at all between my unfinished stuff and the Adversary killing the Goddess.
I wonder if this kind of assistance would be enough for a Hero to get through Accursed Difficulty? It takes months for the local me to ramp up, but I don't exactly start at baseline human even on day one. By the time one fifth of the allotted time until the world collapses under the existential weight of the Scenarios has elapsed, the smallest of infinities will be well within the reach of an Avatar across the parameters of Strength, Intellect, Vitality, Agility, Wisdom, Luck, Appearance, Willpower, Magic, Theft, Protection, Wits, and Prowess. Now, doubled Apocryphal with +30% spam, I mean attack speed, would be super-nasty, but it scales to the Hero, not my avatar. Heck, the Dark Lords and their Final King are the only Scenarios that actively grow worse with any speed, and I don't think even they grow this fast. The Accursed can't just go for super-strong people as Cursebearers, but can he pick out people who he can be sure will get significant outside assistance? In theory, I could just leave the guy in a lurch, but unless Apocryphal expends credibility on that, even Wretched isn't going to make me do that.
In total, the Hero's full strength at journey's start is +30 Strength, +14 Intelligence, +34 Constitution, +33(34 in Phantom mode, 43 with Thunder Runner active, 44 if both) Agility, +27(37 with Thunder Runner active) Wits, +9 Willpower, +10(14 with flora and fauna) Luck, +10(14 if Eney is drawn) Manipulation, +16(20 if Eney is drawn, 22 with animals, beasts, and non-sophont creatures, 26 if both) Charisma, and +13 Appearance(28 if this counts as a physical Attribute thanks to Kephas).
So, the Hero surpasses the Avatar in every way at the journey's start, assuming the Attributes are exponential here as well. However, a single week will add roughly 15.4 to all of the Avatar's Attributes. 8.3->23.7, and within 2 that's going to rise to 39.1, placing the local me well above what the Hero has before training, and it's not as if I won't be doing my level best to copy over any and all local magics for my own use. I'm going to be studying them anyway for common threads to use in augmenting the training of Joss, after all. Of course, Blood Sorcery makes this calculation difficult, given it's unclear how hard it is to do direct Attribute upgrades with it, nevermind bolstering Empowerments, Mantles, Sorceries, or Artifacts. While Mantles can explicitly be advanced, it's suggested by at least Blood Sorcery that there's a sort of 'muscle' that affects your capacity beyond what you sacrifice. Artifacts don't naturally improve on their own, but while waiting for Assiah to Advance to the point of Closing the Fist with Artifacts, improving the individual Artifacts can only help the end result of those mergers.
6135 words, discounting this line.
