unfortunatly i think your marker was already called by someone. Fortunately i think they had the same vote lol
A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
- Location
- US
Oh derp. Well, that's a convenient concordance.
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
Arch Wizard is a moderate-to-high pick in my eyes, but far from the worst.
There's better avenues to consider, and I'm not even referring to his Unique Classes or Adventurer; Thief would go a long way to avoiding nasty surprises while taking his sixteen-hour long naps. No one can bother you if your bedroom is as trapped as a secure, paranoid lich's dungeon and you've learned how to maintain Lurk while asleep.
Anyhow, the only real issue with Arch Wizard is if his Mana can keep up with the demands, but that shouldn't be an issue. So long as you take Discount, he starts with a half-kilo of highly pure manatite which, so long as he uses it sparingly and only for real needs, should last him a good while. Being a magic caster sure is expensive.
Not much to talk about. Unique Classes, both of them, but Unique isn't the same as super-powerful.
Fateweaver is basically an advancement of Wizard/Fortune Teller that unlocks a handful of destiny and chaos-themed spells and skills. At basic levels, it lets Kazuma see a little into the future or self-boost with a very, very, very, very diminished version of Fortune's Smile for a duration of minutes, with a limit of one casting every couple of days. For offense, it includes things such as cursing opponents with comically bad luck or, at higher levels, with luck so bad they become the protagonists of the latter part of a Final Destination movie. Similar stuff.
If you ever manage to level as Fatweaver into the 200s, which I need not say is a very ridiculous figure for the Konosuba-verse but not unthinkable for a Progression-type, it might come in handy with mitigating the Affliction of Misfortune, but that's unnecessary because mitigating it is already easy as fuck for Kazuma. If he doesn't reach the equivalent of Stage III-IV Mitigation in the next two centuries (probably much less, especially given Aqua's existence), you're doing something wrong.
What's notable about it is that its main prerequisite is having insane Luck, so you can only take it as a Class while you have Fortune's Smile active.
Cursebearer is similar in a lot of ways, but you're one constantly and therefore, can change to it at any time. Mechanically, it's not that much of a mark-up from Adventurer: boundless versatility and eventual power, but you suck more right now at the start. It does, however, provide aid with the curses (not mitigation, it just offers abilities that can help live with them more easily and not get fucked too bad,) and eventually, at very high levels, it can provide abilities that draw inspiration from actual Remittances or lets you impose Curses on people. These are explicitly not the actual thing, just a baby-sized imitation of the actual thing, meant to look and behave like one.
It might let you get the actual Praxis if you level it into the 200s, though.
Also, everyone is voting for my vote. Insert the emotionally touched, "Everyone...!" as I wipe my glistening eyes and smile determinedly.
Last edited:
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
Favor is ahead of the third place boon by 2, with some dramatic omake power from Birdsie equalizing (some of?) the residual from DSB's CYOA.
I do think we're sleeping on the Signs vote a little bit
@Rihaku will Birdsie's omake power from the subquest be enough to let Exaltation overtake Defer? Because I'm currently tactically voting for Favor to avoid Defer winning, but prefer his Guidance/Grace/Exaltation combo over that.
Birdsie single-handedly winning the vote (20k omake sheesh). The favor guys (myself included) didn't have the will to fight for it with everything they have.
I thought I had it in me but old age come to us all. I will leave the fighting to the youngsters+
RIP OaF 3 and 4 - you were not meant to be once and future picks
I thought I had it in me but old age come to us all. I will leave the fighting to the youngsters+
RIP OaF 3 and 4 - you were not meant to be once and future picks
Don't discount your position. Darksidebard has 46k in the CYOA he made, and is voting for Favor. The only reason Birdsie can even compete is that subquests are more highly valued than other things, but a CYOA might get that bonus too.
- Location
- US
Rihaku's argumentation looks solid enough to me, tbh.
[KonoSuba] Rihaku
[KonoSuba] Rihaku
Last edited:
You know what? I'm going back to it. I'll trust we have the Omake power to beat Defer if we manage to overcome Favor.
[X] Birdsie
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
All I need to do is simply to cut through, old man. You better believe it!
Now, then... Let's see if I can get another 5k-word omake up before the final tally!... Just kidding, I'm productive; I'm not insane.
That said, I do have some sloppy leftovers from that old, ancient dusty thing of a, "Friend Insert," that Gabriel and I attempted... Wouldn't you know? I just checked and it's worth almost exactly 5k words.
I have no link for the first one, though. I have no idea which page it is on. What matters is that I'll cut through, relentlessly, until victory is had.
(Spoiler: I don't actually care all that much about the outcome of this vote. I'm doing this to prove that I can, and to be called a madman for it.)
Gabriel did his best to pretend like nothing was wrong for the remainder of the birthday party.
It was spent chatting, joking, and laughing. The celebrations ended late in the night, when the moon was a bright luminescent yellow, hanging over their heads like a dismal but joyous reminder to cheer and laugh while they still could.
Perhaps it was his own dismal perception of things, but it was hard to keep optimism when you'd been told your universe is besieged by a multiversal monstrosity.
It was when he arrived home that he allowed himself a breather. Coming into his room, he couldn't help but feel a spark of sudden, gut-dominating irritation that made his knees almost buckle with anger, as he had just found out that this 'simple transaction' was only the beginning of his frustration.
Next to the large bookshelf in Gabriel's room stood - and there was no other way to describe this - a curious skeleton, one hand grasping a soft-cover copy of '1984,' while the other tapped the chin repeatedly, analyzing the book. The skeleton's robes were a pale, almost bleached cyan in most places, with traceries of fine gold string and blue silk.
He also appeared to notice Gabriel's entry into the room. Clasping the book closed with a clarion bang, he started to speak.
And boy did he speak. It wasn't mere speechcraft or oratory prose, but something else entirely. Unbounded and flowing excitement, honeyed with a vibrant charisma that snapped in tune with Gabriel's sudden entry and gushed forth a veritable font of opinionated information. There was no other good term for it: It was verbal diarrhea.
"Ah! There you are, I've amused myself with the books in your room and house, I hope you don't mind. Human civilization in this ontological verse is so interesting! Especially electoral colleges, how is that supposed to work? Hah, they need to file that under 'ideas that don't work' as opposed to 'societies and civilizations,' that's clearly a poor administrative oversight. But what else can I say, I've always been one to believe in the might of absolute dictatorships and autocracies, that's what my old master used to say. But what am I saying, I forget my manners! Prolessarch! Always a pleasure-"
Gabriel bound forward at four times his usual reaction times, reaching for the yellow knife that rested upon his desk. He turned around, with the knife held tight and firm in his right hand, and frowned at the skeletal figure. "Who the hell are you?!"
The skeleton appeared to be faintly unamused. His bones clanked as he took on a pose of vague offense, the hand with the book resting on his hip, the other on his chest. "Why, how rude! I've just introduced myself. My name, or at least a moniker you could apply, is Prolessarch. I've been called many things, however. Prolly, Pro, Proless, Sarch, Arch… Lessarch. Mix and match as you please!"
Straight from unamusement, he went back to gushing excitement, turning around to the bookshelf and placing '1984' back into its slot neatly, before pulling out the first installment in the Witcher series. "We have a lot of work to do, you and I, you know?"
"L-look, I've had a long night." Gabriel lowered his stance, returning to an exhausted appearance. He didn't care much for it, and the… skeleton didn't appear to be harmful either. If it wanted him dead, it'd have attacked already. "Which graveyard did you walk out of?"
"Rude," Prosselarch accused. "I'd never stoop so low as to sleep in a dirty grave. Do you know how filthy it is down there? The earth's uppermost layer is full of bugs, such as maggots and cockroaches. Furthermore, I dislike the dirt itself."
"I am genuinely asking, because I have legitimately no idea why you're here, and… how, for that matter." Gabriel scratched the back of his head in puzzlement, moving that same hand underneath his chin. "That said, I apologize for my crass comments. Who let you in?"
"I manifested in this room, approximately thirty-seven minutes ago," the Prosselarch responded with a very crisp and succinct voice, closing the book in his palm with a faint trace of disappointment in his movement.
"Mere alchemy from a bunch of novices..." he mumbled, reaching for the next tome in line, which was Gabriel's music theory book.
The skeleton continued to speak, "In that span, I have reviewed the contents of almost every book in the house. Fear not, your neighbours are unalarmed and unaware of my presence, or - indeed - my existence, as amusing as scaring them would be. I have taken the liberty of placing a basic privacy ward over this room, to ensure that if someone troublesome should desire to wander in, you and I will be alerted at least ten seconds prior."
That'll come in handy, Gabriel thought.
"As for the question of how I'm here, that's actually an amusing story, if you'll deign to hear me out," the Prolessarch said, closing the music theory book with a quiet comment on how much music has developed in the absence of medieval cultural ethics and magical tonality.
The boy nodded, letting himself fall back on his office chair. "Go ahead."
The Prolessarch turned to face him, after placing the book into its slot. He always made sure the title on the spine was visible, as opposed to the pages. It was a thing of very minor note, but he appeared to respect books.
"You see, I am actually not a skeleton, but a lich. Big shocker, I know, I surprise even myself, except when I don't," Prolessarch began comically, before looking outside the window. Gabriel hadn't noticed this either before, too focused on repelling the intruder, but the lich had a pair of blue ember-dots in his eye sockets. Blazing, soulfire dots resting at a sedate level. "I was also a magician of rather considerable power. Crushed by daily boredom, I enacted a spell that tossed me across the multiverse in search of new adventure, except, ah… hehe, something went terribly wrong."
The lich began to step in the window's direction, peering outside in curiosity of the modern world. Since Gabriel's computer hadn't been turned on, he naturally assumed that the lich was incapable or unwilling of using it for looking for information. Prolessarch said he'd only read books, so far.
The lich, nevertheless, continued his tale, "My resplendent aegis spell fizzled out on contact with some, big, slimy eldritch creature that appears to have put this entire universe under a blockade, so now I'm stuck here. As I was floating in the astral level of this reality, I couldn't help but notice you making a rather conspicuous deal with a rather suspicious bloke. I happened to spy on the entire thing, and after it was done, said bloke actually spiritually chokeslammed me into the ethereal equivalent of a wall and interrogated me rather brutally, if I do say so myself. After a short negotiation, I decided to comply with his gentle request of aiding you on your quest."
The lich turned on his heel, arms spread wide with a calcified ringing sound. "I mean… I came here in search of adventure, didn't I? This sounds like prime material! Especially since the big monstrosity sucked up most of my magical powers, so now I'm kind of, ah, how do they say this?" The lich clicked his fingers with an attuning snap, causing Gabriel to flinch. "Weak! Right, that's the word. I'm weak and need to work back up to where I was."
Gabriel's eyebrows rose at the end of his explanation. He didn't consider the Accursed to be so violent, but nevertheless, it was to be expected of this exceedingly powerful being to be wary of anything even remotely resembling its peers, or unknown forms of danger.
"Anyway, that'd be it for my explanation. I guess I'm stuck here now." The lich's arms flopped to his sides, as he leaped back and made himself comfortable on Gabriel's own bed. Robed bones pressed into the mattress far more lightly than a human body would. The lich turned his skull to address the Cursebearer. He pointed a finger-gun at Gabriel's heart in a manner that the boy subconsciously categorized as an attempt at being a fresh party dude. "Also, that eyeball in the drawer? Very cool."
"I've got to put that on. Do you reckon it'll hurt?" Gabriel asked, nibbling on his lower lip in anticipation at the pain.
"It's a magical Vitalism artifact with multiversal networking functions, and aah... " Prolessarch looked up at the ceiling. His soul-ember eyes turned around in their sockets, lazily drawing loops before he whistled somehow, and said, "Yeah, prooobaaablyyy. But if it does, it'll probably stop in a couple of seconds."
He snapped his fingers again. "Probably. I like the use of that word, because it absolves me of any guilt or wrongdoing if something goes wrong. I once told a king that, yes, his son will probably be fine if he bathes in the Waters of the Red Lotus, and here we are! I'm now wanted in six countries in another dimension."
Gabriel disregarded his comments in favor of focusing on the eye itself. The idea of taking out his own eyeball and slotting in a new, magical one wasn't... very comfortable, especially since this entire 'magic' and 'multiverse' stuff was new to him. Literally, he'd learned about it only a couple of hours ago. There was no time to get acclimated or used to it.
But the Accursed said what he said. Gabriel needed to man up, puff out his chest, and walk with his head held high if he was going to do this.
"I won't ask you to hold my hand, because I'm afraid I might shatter your bones," Gabriel said, shaking his head. He walked up to his nightstand and opened it. Inside of it were a golden ring, and a red-crystal orb, roughly the size of an eyeball. As expected.
"Ha! Keep cracking wise, kid." Prolessarch sounded amused and challenged, but also arrogant in his position. "I'm a Solarilannex-damned lich, got that? Your meager flesh cannot produce enough force to make me budge, let alone give me a hairline fracture."
Once again, Gabriel mostly elected to ignore him, but appreciated the humorous sentiment if nothing else.
Gabriel inhaled, reaching for the eye. He turned it in his hands, feeling it on his fingers.
"You should probably get an eyepatch first," Prolessarch advised sagely from the comfort of the bed. "Or your parents will ask awkward questions, like why you decided to stuff a red anal bead into your eye socket. It sure as hell doesn't bring out your hair color. It'll be easier if you excuse it as having your eye stabbed out and needing an eyepatch, or something. Are there lots of stabby people in this neighborhood?"
"Funnily enough, I've already got an eyepatch from an old carnival I attended, so… I'm good," Gabriel stated, holding the crystal in front of his face.
"Haah, now I wonder if I'm still good enough to disguise myself as an apothecary to feign giving you medical attention when the parents arrive…" As was natural for the lich, he began to consider and ruminate things that weren't relevant. "What does an apothecary even look like, in this reality? One of your parents must be a nurse or a doctor, because I found a white outfit with a funny cap, and white is usually a medic's color."
Gabriel put the eyeball on his desk and turned the office chair so that he faced the computer. He tapped a few keys on the keyboard, clicked, and a picture of a doctor came up as the screen lit up. Gabriel slowly turned the monitor in Prolessarch's direction.
"Wow, that's how it works?" Prolessarch turned around, staring at the computer in wide-eyed wonder - inasmuch as he could be wide-eyed. "I tried rituals and gestures, but it did nothing. I was just about to go hunt a chicken for some blood magic when you came in!"
"The entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips. Both right and wrong," Gabriel noted, almost proud of his species' biggest achievement: the Internet. "With this machine, you can access millions of articles and bookloads worth of knowledge produced by people worldwide, and communicate instantly on a global scale. Among other things."
"Hah, the doctor's dress." The lich seemed amused, as he began to pick the image on the screen apart, "How interesting. The metal device is for… hm, detecting vibrations, perhaps? It appears the tubes lead into the ears, so perhaps it operates as a hearing enhancement? If so, it'd probably be for measuring heartbeat and pulse, as those factors show significant deviations when afflicted with disease or suffering from blood loss. That object on his head, though, I'm not sure."
"Prolessarch, that's a hat," Gabriel said, frowning playfully. The skeletal lich was slowly growing on him, in a positive way.
"Oh. I'll check out this computer later, for now, I'm gonna rest," the Prolessarch declared. He turned back on the bed, smooshing against the pillows in a more comfortable formation. "So what's the plan with the Ring and the Eye?"
"Use them. Can't train if I'm dead or crippled, and those two objects will greatly increase my chances. The Eye grants me knowledge for knowledge, and… honestly, with you around, I feel like my chances to use it efficiently are tripled," Gabriel explained, picking the Eye back up.
"The Eye is utterly infallible, the first thing I've done aside from reading books was to analyze the artifacts. Even as a shadow of my former glory, I'm not that shabby of a magus. I've memorized the contents of your Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition rulebook, and the best comparison is that I am currently a level ten wizard with a stupendously illegal amount of spell slots. It's stupid, though - the game makes a lot of idiotic preconceptions about wizardry, like daily reminding yourself of the spells you can cast. What kind of shitbrain would you have to be to forget a spell you've been studying only a day after doing so? At that point, you should check in with the clinic to see if all the oil hasn't flooded out of your head… I swear, some people. It's so easy to find ignorance if you look hard enough, and I can definitely say the contents of literature in this reading session have been frustrating on average, amusing at best, but not even slightly educational! It's like this universe's humanity is anathema to good ideas or something-"
"Magic doesn't exist in this reality, by the way. Just a heads up," the Cursebearer noted dryly, resting the Eye on a soft handkerchief.
"Ho?" Prolessarch tapped a finger against his chin. With a brief double-motion of the hand and a quiet word, he created a blazing torchflame in his palm. The flame danced quietly for a second, before Prolessarch closed his palm and it winked out, crushed by his skeletal fingers. "No, I'm pretty sure it exists."
"I'm pretty sure you draw on some extra-dimensional energy that natives of this universe cannot access," the new young adult theorized, shrugging helplessly.
"I can teach your mother and father how to cast 'magic missile' by the end of the week, if they're willing, and in a week and a half if they're not," Prolessarch stated with dangerous certainty. "I'll bet you my robe for your crystal eye."
Gabriel chuckled, feeling a twinge of playful fear in his heart.
"No, thank you. But you could teach me how to use this… Pentex magic? It was part of the deal," Gabriel said, remembering its addition to his spirit. Even now, he could feel the fringes of its activation: a collective of five empty slots, waiting to be filled.
"Ah, the knock-off- I mean, hah, the new magic," Prolessarch said, fumbling over his own words for a flash. "Yes, I saw the foundation while I was snooping around the astral layer," Prolessarch said. His head crinkled as it turned. "You know, when that beast threw me in here. It appears to be introducing fresh layers of metaphysical systems on a sub-astral scale into the universe, and I'm not sure if that's safe or stable. We should probably ask it to stop."
"It appears that it is our first quest, then. Kick that big asshole out of my reality."
"Good luck. We're fighting, what did that Lovecraft guy call it…?" The lich snapped his fingers. "Aaho, we're fighting Cthulhu!"
"And we'll become Yog-fucking-Sothoth."
"I have no idea what that is," the lich responded as casually as someone talking about the weather. He proceeded to explain, long-windedly, "I read only the books in the house, not the repository of his life's works. I'm sure it's equally stupid as Cthulhu, however. You can't be half-man, half-octopus, and half-dragon. That makes you one and a half of something, unless you're telling me this Cthulhu's existential weight somehow defies the basic principles of mathematics."
"Lovecraft was a racist writer who had no idea how science, geometry or mathematics worked. Don't bother trying to understand his reasoning," Gabriel scoffed, waving Prolessarch off. "He thought non-Euclidean meant that space was being bent."
Prolessarch didn't seem to have an immediate response to that, shrugging and looking up at the ceiling.
After a moment of silence, Gabriel reached into his drawer and took out the ring.
"You wanted to learn the Pentex, right?" The lich scratched a finger against his cheek briefly, producing a low noise. "I've gotten started on learning it, it's pretty simple. We'll do some basic magical exercises first, though. My old mentor believed in fundamentals, so I'll teach you like he taught me."
"Yes, but it might be better for me to put on the ring first. It grants me dominion over skill, teaching, learning, training, and so on? Yes, that's it, if I remember correctly."
"I know what it grants you, and yes you remember correctly." The lich cracked his knuckles, and then neck, in preparation for the teaching session. He looked almost vitalized to act, as if excitedly tremulous. Gabriel didn't share many of those feelings. As excited as he was to quite literally be tutored in magic by a friendly undead arch-wizard, he was also equally apprehensive of the fact that such things now decided to exist, just as he was putting his life together without the alluring fantasy of them.
"Put it on and let's begin, unless you'd rather give it to me," Prolessarch eventually said, once Gabriel didn't respond for long enough.
"I'd rather wear it myself. I'm not the best at the whole 'learning stuff that has to do with the mind thing,'" Gabriel said.
At once, he inserted his finger into his right middle finger, past the segments, and down to the base. It snapped into place with a bell's toll, a loud noise of distant brass, like the promise of eternity. The length of the golden metal shone for a brief moment, flickering with the halcyon sweet-yellow of summertime sun, before dimming and storing itself once again within the ring.
It was the Ring of Prowess, he understood on an instinctive level, and it would have certain requirements of him. It wouldn't submit to a master who was subpar, and wouldn't allow mediocrity. There would be Prowess, or there would be Nothing.
This wasn't a deal between wielder and ring, however. It was the incontrovertible truth. The moment he slipped it on, he accepted this universal truth. It would simply be.
"Fascinating. Activate its power, then pay attention," the Prolessarch declared, apparently deciding to teach from the bed, with both hands below his skull.
Gabriel had no issue with the command. By instinct, he tapped into the Ring's power, and he felt its energy fill him to the brim. Like a balloon inflated with oxygen in seconds, he was filled with sheer, radiant brilliance. A faint chrysalis of golden light surrounded his body, too dim to be noticed by a casual observer in daylight, but still there.
With its mere presence, his mentality skyrocketed. He understood the room around him in new and interesting ways, but he also found ways of… no better word for it, he found ways of leveraging the room, that he'd never considered before. He could quantify the materials of the bed that Prolessarch was lying on, and imagine a rough plan for reshaping it into a catapult for a siege. Pulling it apart, instead, and cutting the planks into impromptu spears. Skill, improvisation, adaptation - the starting domains offered to him by the ring, with more awaiting elsewhere.
"Aha." Prolessarch didn't even bother looking up, as he began to drop the revelations, "It won't enhance the rate of learning, at least not yet. But it will enhance skills you already possess. It's better than nothing, and in fact, better than a lot of somethings. Can you use it on me?"
Gabriel wanted to extend his hand forward, but the ring cut off that foolish motion before it could even begin. The depth and understanding of skill applied even to such basic actions - an extension of the arm was superfluous. An unnecessary, and unsightly, outright disgusting activity. The antipode of efficiency, in this case.
But even so, the ring instinctively reacted to his command, and Prolessarch was filled with the same golden radiance.
"Interesting, interesting. I don't have to try to know that I could cast my spells more easily." Prolessarch's voice was a pleasant, charming lilt, easy to listen to. He appeared to be, if not satisfied, then happy with how fascinating the situation was. "It's as if though the scant gaps in my knowledge have been filled out, techniques refined automatically. It doesn't seem to improve mentality, I am quantifiable or qualitatively not any smarter and I can sense that kind of thing, it extrapolates its own knowledge and adds it to the target's own base. Your ring is a useful toy."
"Let's start," Gabriel exclaimed, a determined smile adorning his features.
"What do you know of unstructured and structured magic?"
"Well… from fiction, I know that there is-"
"Fiction doesn't apply. All of the books I've reviewed so far on the topic are rubbish," the Prolessarch interrupted with a scoff. "Unstructured magic is no different from a superpower. You think about something and it happens, and we call it magic because it has something that connects it to magic as a phenomenon. Structured magic is something that, as I said, calls upon structure. You are utterly incapable of performing unstructured magic, but the Pentex would fall under a structured magical system. Do note, this is theoretical knowledge. We'll get onto practice soon..."
It was a good forty minutes before they actually went to practice.
The Prolessarch drove Gabriel through a highway of esoteric topics, including the universe, the formation of magic as a conceptual system, the relevance of grand universal systems such as the collective unconscious or the astral realm, and the carving of new structural magical systems upon the universe.
After that, the Prolessarch explained what he'd already learned of the Pentex from his brief, ten-minute foray into it, before Gabriel had arrived.
It was a magical power that favored versatility and immediate power, over arcane heights and discoveries. It was a selfish system, in that using it in order to change society or civilization in the long-term would be impossible outside of the caster's personal intervention in events.
The user received what Prolessarch decided to call, for the purposes of the demonstration, sigils. The sigils were a rough conceptual representation of the essence of anything the user encountered in the past, especially things they were intimately close with. By combining anywhere from one to five sigils, a user can then form a spell, which is inventoried and ready for later deployment.
Gabriel followed the instructions to sense his own sigils, and found it surprisingly easy to see what it was all about. He possessed exactly sixteen sigils marked as 'friendship,' four sigils marked as 'love,' five marked as 'happiness' one marked as 'undead,' six marked as 'study,' four marked as 'skill,' and scattering of other, minor ones. They were reflections of situations, especially ones that Gabriel focused on, especially in the recent past; the last couple of weeks in particular.
Prolessarch immediately claimed most of the sigils that Gabriel already possessed were utter garbage. The system favored in-depth study and exploration.
If he wanted impressive sigils related to, say, nature, he'd need to snap a branch of a tree and meditate over it for several minutes. In theory, this should accumulate into a stronger, more significant sigil that could then result in a better spell.
Nonetheless, Prolessarch encouraged Gabriel to use the system anyway, and create a spell using the sigils he already had.
"Okay, here goes nothing," Gabriel said, closing his eyes. He took a friendship sigil, a love sigil, an undead sigil, one skill sigil, and a study sigil and pushed them all into a single spell: a crystallization of his experience.
It created a spell that'd… draw on the skills of a single undead target, sapping them from the target in question and passing them onto the user. It was quite weak, and required close proximity - he could cast it from this range.
"What did you get?" Prolessarch queried.
"Skill-theft," Gabriel answered, leaving out the part about where it could only target the undead. No need to get grandpa riled up.
"Well, I'm not giving you mine, so keep those hands to yourself and cast it on some annoying pest later," the Prolessarch cautioned, before considering. "Well… This is basically it, as far as using the system goes. I'm sure there are ways of refining it - oh, yes, of course there are. There always are, but I don't really care. It's a pretty bad system to begin with, and I won't indulge in it."
"I can always learn new systems, can't I?"
"Not with the ease of this one, though I suppose your Prowess Ring may help with that issue at least slightly in the future," Prolessarch admitted. He stood up from the bed in a single, fluid movement, saying, "Well, since I have nothing better to do, I'll go visit the library and see what I can learn. We'll need to begin work on extricating our tentacled friend sooner or later. Especially before one of those nasty Curses of yours has a chance to throw an equally nasty wrench into our plans."
Gabriel's memory provided him with a brief flash of his negotiations with the Accursed. "The Accursed mentioned a 'Praxis,' and referred to it as a magic system. Anything you can tell me about that?"
"Never heard of it. Sounds like snake oil crap, I wouldn't buy into it," Prolessarch rebuked with a glimmer of irritation at the mention of the Accursed. Clearly, the entity wasn't as gentle with the lich as the cantankerous skeleton claimed. "It's probably something he came up with on his own, and is now trying to peddle to novices. Such an arrogant name, too."
"It means 'Action' in Ancient Greek," Gabriel informed him, nodding.
"I have no idea what Ancient Greek is. I'm using a translation spell, so whatever you're saying isn't carrying over properly," Prolessarch responded, shaking his head. "I was referring to the concept of transforming thought into existence. Naming a magic system after that suggests that you believe it'll be able to do anything, no matter how impossible. It's a childish dream."
"I see."
I should've gone for that, on second thought, but this is fine too.
"Anything else before I go to the library?" the Prolessarch asked. He began to perform a complicated series of hand movements, muttering quiet incantations.
"It's three in the morning. I might just go to sleep for now, I'm exhausted."
He interrupted the incantations, but not the gestures. "Is the library closed at three in the morning?" He inclined his skull curiously.
"It opens at eight. Two and a half hours after the sun rises."
"Sucks for the librarian. I'm opening it at three in the morning," the Prolessarch said. He stopped the spell casting, just as a dark ring formed over his head. It went down, trailing purple smoke after it, and soon covered him like a curtain. The smoke had a vague smell of blueberries, and soon abated, to reveal a sixteen-year-old man with bored eyes and dirty blonde hair, cut short. His eyes were a brilliant azure, almost as if hiding the soul-embers was impossible.
"Start from Stephen Hawking," Gabriel proposed, curious what conclusions the Prolessarch would come to.
"Is he a great scholar?" Prolessarch curiously requested, raising a now-animated eyebrow. His illusionary face was surprisingly expressive.
"Smartest man to ever live. The greatest scholar in matters of physics, astrophysics, and astronomy, despite his terrible disease. Completely paralyzed, forced to communicate through an eye-controlled computer."
"Ooh, physics and astronomy! Those are some of my favorite school subjects," the Prolessarch reminisced. With a pleased smile, he walked over to the mirror and fixed the jacket on his chest a little. "Do you think I'll be able to meet him later?"
"He died two years ago, I'm afraid… but-"
"Hah." Prolessarch didn't even say anything else. He didn't even have to bother. "I'll see you tomorrow."
With that, he walked out through the door of his room, which creaked slightly, followed by a dry thud as it slammed shut. Another, deeper thud as the main door closed.
"Jeez," Gabriel sighed, letting all the air escape his lungs to make room for a fresher breathful of oxygen.
He stood up from his office chair and let himself fall face-first into his pillow.
It had a vague scent of calcium and burnt incense.
"Damn it."
It was spent chatting, joking, and laughing. The celebrations ended late in the night, when the moon was a bright luminescent yellow, hanging over their heads like a dismal but joyous reminder to cheer and laugh while they still could.
Perhaps it was his own dismal perception of things, but it was hard to keep optimism when you'd been told your universe is besieged by a multiversal monstrosity.
It was when he arrived home that he allowed himself a breather. Coming into his room, he couldn't help but feel a spark of sudden, gut-dominating irritation that made his knees almost buckle with anger, as he had just found out that this 'simple transaction' was only the beginning of his frustration.
Next to the large bookshelf in Gabriel's room stood - and there was no other way to describe this - a curious skeleton, one hand grasping a soft-cover copy of '1984,' while the other tapped the chin repeatedly, analyzing the book. The skeleton's robes were a pale, almost bleached cyan in most places, with traceries of fine gold string and blue silk.
He also appeared to notice Gabriel's entry into the room. Clasping the book closed with a clarion bang, he started to speak.
And boy did he speak. It wasn't mere speechcraft or oratory prose, but something else entirely. Unbounded and flowing excitement, honeyed with a vibrant charisma that snapped in tune with Gabriel's sudden entry and gushed forth a veritable font of opinionated information. There was no other good term for it: It was verbal diarrhea.
"Ah! There you are, I've amused myself with the books in your room and house, I hope you don't mind. Human civilization in this ontological verse is so interesting! Especially electoral colleges, how is that supposed to work? Hah, they need to file that under 'ideas that don't work' as opposed to 'societies and civilizations,' that's clearly a poor administrative oversight. But what else can I say, I've always been one to believe in the might of absolute dictatorships and autocracies, that's what my old master used to say. But what am I saying, I forget my manners! Prolessarch! Always a pleasure-"
Gabriel bound forward at four times his usual reaction times, reaching for the yellow knife that rested upon his desk. He turned around, with the knife held tight and firm in his right hand, and frowned at the skeletal figure. "Who the hell are you?!"
The skeleton appeared to be faintly unamused. His bones clanked as he took on a pose of vague offense, the hand with the book resting on his hip, the other on his chest. "Why, how rude! I've just introduced myself. My name, or at least a moniker you could apply, is Prolessarch. I've been called many things, however. Prolly, Pro, Proless, Sarch, Arch… Lessarch. Mix and match as you please!"
Straight from unamusement, he went back to gushing excitement, turning around to the bookshelf and placing '1984' back into its slot neatly, before pulling out the first installment in the Witcher series. "We have a lot of work to do, you and I, you know?"
"L-look, I've had a long night." Gabriel lowered his stance, returning to an exhausted appearance. He didn't care much for it, and the… skeleton didn't appear to be harmful either. If it wanted him dead, it'd have attacked already. "Which graveyard did you walk out of?"
"Rude," Prosselarch accused. "I'd never stoop so low as to sleep in a dirty grave. Do you know how filthy it is down there? The earth's uppermost layer is full of bugs, such as maggots and cockroaches. Furthermore, I dislike the dirt itself."
"I am genuinely asking, because I have legitimately no idea why you're here, and… how, for that matter." Gabriel scratched the back of his head in puzzlement, moving that same hand underneath his chin. "That said, I apologize for my crass comments. Who let you in?"
"I manifested in this room, approximately thirty-seven minutes ago," the Prosselarch responded with a very crisp and succinct voice, closing the book in his palm with a faint trace of disappointment in his movement.
"Mere alchemy from a bunch of novices..." he mumbled, reaching for the next tome in line, which was Gabriel's music theory book.
The skeleton continued to speak, "In that span, I have reviewed the contents of almost every book in the house. Fear not, your neighbours are unalarmed and unaware of my presence, or - indeed - my existence, as amusing as scaring them would be. I have taken the liberty of placing a basic privacy ward over this room, to ensure that if someone troublesome should desire to wander in, you and I will be alerted at least ten seconds prior."
That'll come in handy, Gabriel thought.
"As for the question of how I'm here, that's actually an amusing story, if you'll deign to hear me out," the Prolessarch said, closing the music theory book with a quiet comment on how much music has developed in the absence of medieval cultural ethics and magical tonality.
The boy nodded, letting himself fall back on his office chair. "Go ahead."
The Prolessarch turned to face him, after placing the book into its slot. He always made sure the title on the spine was visible, as opposed to the pages. It was a thing of very minor note, but he appeared to respect books.
"You see, I am actually not a skeleton, but a lich. Big shocker, I know, I surprise even myself, except when I don't," Prolessarch began comically, before looking outside the window. Gabriel hadn't noticed this either before, too focused on repelling the intruder, but the lich had a pair of blue ember-dots in his eye sockets. Blazing, soulfire dots resting at a sedate level. "I was also a magician of rather considerable power. Crushed by daily boredom, I enacted a spell that tossed me across the multiverse in search of new adventure, except, ah… hehe, something went terribly wrong."
The lich began to step in the window's direction, peering outside in curiosity of the modern world. Since Gabriel's computer hadn't been turned on, he naturally assumed that the lich was incapable or unwilling of using it for looking for information. Prolessarch said he'd only read books, so far.
The lich, nevertheless, continued his tale, "My resplendent aegis spell fizzled out on contact with some, big, slimy eldritch creature that appears to have put this entire universe under a blockade, so now I'm stuck here. As I was floating in the astral level of this reality, I couldn't help but notice you making a rather conspicuous deal with a rather suspicious bloke. I happened to spy on the entire thing, and after it was done, said bloke actually spiritually chokeslammed me into the ethereal equivalent of a wall and interrogated me rather brutally, if I do say so myself. After a short negotiation, I decided to comply with his gentle request of aiding you on your quest."
The lich turned on his heel, arms spread wide with a calcified ringing sound. "I mean… I came here in search of adventure, didn't I? This sounds like prime material! Especially since the big monstrosity sucked up most of my magical powers, so now I'm kind of, ah, how do they say this?" The lich clicked his fingers with an attuning snap, causing Gabriel to flinch. "Weak! Right, that's the word. I'm weak and need to work back up to where I was."
Gabriel's eyebrows rose at the end of his explanation. He didn't consider the Accursed to be so violent, but nevertheless, it was to be expected of this exceedingly powerful being to be wary of anything even remotely resembling its peers, or unknown forms of danger.
"Anyway, that'd be it for my explanation. I guess I'm stuck here now." The lich's arms flopped to his sides, as he leaped back and made himself comfortable on Gabriel's own bed. Robed bones pressed into the mattress far more lightly than a human body would. The lich turned his skull to address the Cursebearer. He pointed a finger-gun at Gabriel's heart in a manner that the boy subconsciously categorized as an attempt at being a fresh party dude. "Also, that eyeball in the drawer? Very cool."
"I've got to put that on. Do you reckon it'll hurt?" Gabriel asked, nibbling on his lower lip in anticipation at the pain.
"It's a magical Vitalism artifact with multiversal networking functions, and aah... " Prolessarch looked up at the ceiling. His soul-ember eyes turned around in their sockets, lazily drawing loops before he whistled somehow, and said, "Yeah, prooobaaablyyy. But if it does, it'll probably stop in a couple of seconds."
He snapped his fingers again. "Probably. I like the use of that word, because it absolves me of any guilt or wrongdoing if something goes wrong. I once told a king that, yes, his son will probably be fine if he bathes in the Waters of the Red Lotus, and here we are! I'm now wanted in six countries in another dimension."
Gabriel disregarded his comments in favor of focusing on the eye itself. The idea of taking out his own eyeball and slotting in a new, magical one wasn't... very comfortable, especially since this entire 'magic' and 'multiverse' stuff was new to him. Literally, he'd learned about it only a couple of hours ago. There was no time to get acclimated or used to it.
But the Accursed said what he said. Gabriel needed to man up, puff out his chest, and walk with his head held high if he was going to do this.
"I won't ask you to hold my hand, because I'm afraid I might shatter your bones," Gabriel said, shaking his head. He walked up to his nightstand and opened it. Inside of it were a golden ring, and a red-crystal orb, roughly the size of an eyeball. As expected.
"Ha! Keep cracking wise, kid." Prolessarch sounded amused and challenged, but also arrogant in his position. "I'm a Solarilannex-damned lich, got that? Your meager flesh cannot produce enough force to make me budge, let alone give me a hairline fracture."
Once again, Gabriel mostly elected to ignore him, but appreciated the humorous sentiment if nothing else.
Gabriel inhaled, reaching for the eye. He turned it in his hands, feeling it on his fingers.
"You should probably get an eyepatch first," Prolessarch advised sagely from the comfort of the bed. "Or your parents will ask awkward questions, like why you decided to stuff a red anal bead into your eye socket. It sure as hell doesn't bring out your hair color. It'll be easier if you excuse it as having your eye stabbed out and needing an eyepatch, or something. Are there lots of stabby people in this neighborhood?"
"Funnily enough, I've already got an eyepatch from an old carnival I attended, so… I'm good," Gabriel stated, holding the crystal in front of his face.
"Haah, now I wonder if I'm still good enough to disguise myself as an apothecary to feign giving you medical attention when the parents arrive…" As was natural for the lich, he began to consider and ruminate things that weren't relevant. "What does an apothecary even look like, in this reality? One of your parents must be a nurse or a doctor, because I found a white outfit with a funny cap, and white is usually a medic's color."
Gabriel put the eyeball on his desk and turned the office chair so that he faced the computer. He tapped a few keys on the keyboard, clicked, and a picture of a doctor came up as the screen lit up. Gabriel slowly turned the monitor in Prolessarch's direction.
"Wow, that's how it works?" Prolessarch turned around, staring at the computer in wide-eyed wonder - inasmuch as he could be wide-eyed. "I tried rituals and gestures, but it did nothing. I was just about to go hunt a chicken for some blood magic when you came in!"
"The entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips. Both right and wrong," Gabriel noted, almost proud of his species' biggest achievement: the Internet. "With this machine, you can access millions of articles and bookloads worth of knowledge produced by people worldwide, and communicate instantly on a global scale. Among other things."
"Hah, the doctor's dress." The lich seemed amused, as he began to pick the image on the screen apart, "How interesting. The metal device is for… hm, detecting vibrations, perhaps? It appears the tubes lead into the ears, so perhaps it operates as a hearing enhancement? If so, it'd probably be for measuring heartbeat and pulse, as those factors show significant deviations when afflicted with disease or suffering from blood loss. That object on his head, though, I'm not sure."
"Prolessarch, that's a hat," Gabriel said, frowning playfully. The skeletal lich was slowly growing on him, in a positive way.
"Oh. I'll check out this computer later, for now, I'm gonna rest," the Prolessarch declared. He turned back on the bed, smooshing against the pillows in a more comfortable formation. "So what's the plan with the Ring and the Eye?"
"Use them. Can't train if I'm dead or crippled, and those two objects will greatly increase my chances. The Eye grants me knowledge for knowledge, and… honestly, with you around, I feel like my chances to use it efficiently are tripled," Gabriel explained, picking the Eye back up.
"The Eye is utterly infallible, the first thing I've done aside from reading books was to analyze the artifacts. Even as a shadow of my former glory, I'm not that shabby of a magus. I've memorized the contents of your Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition rulebook, and the best comparison is that I am currently a level ten wizard with a stupendously illegal amount of spell slots. It's stupid, though - the game makes a lot of idiotic preconceptions about wizardry, like daily reminding yourself of the spells you can cast. What kind of shitbrain would you have to be to forget a spell you've been studying only a day after doing so? At that point, you should check in with the clinic to see if all the oil hasn't flooded out of your head… I swear, some people. It's so easy to find ignorance if you look hard enough, and I can definitely say the contents of literature in this reading session have been frustrating on average, amusing at best, but not even slightly educational! It's like this universe's humanity is anathema to good ideas or something-"
"Magic doesn't exist in this reality, by the way. Just a heads up," the Cursebearer noted dryly, resting the Eye on a soft handkerchief.
"Ho?" Prolessarch tapped a finger against his chin. With a brief double-motion of the hand and a quiet word, he created a blazing torchflame in his palm. The flame danced quietly for a second, before Prolessarch closed his palm and it winked out, crushed by his skeletal fingers. "No, I'm pretty sure it exists."
"I'm pretty sure you draw on some extra-dimensional energy that natives of this universe cannot access," the new young adult theorized, shrugging helplessly.
"I can teach your mother and father how to cast 'magic missile' by the end of the week, if they're willing, and in a week and a half if they're not," Prolessarch stated with dangerous certainty. "I'll bet you my robe for your crystal eye."
Gabriel chuckled, feeling a twinge of playful fear in his heart.
"No, thank you. But you could teach me how to use this… Pentex magic? It was part of the deal," Gabriel said, remembering its addition to his spirit. Even now, he could feel the fringes of its activation: a collective of five empty slots, waiting to be filled.
"Ah, the knock-off- I mean, hah, the new magic," Prolessarch said, fumbling over his own words for a flash. "Yes, I saw the foundation while I was snooping around the astral layer," Prolessarch said. His head crinkled as it turned. "You know, when that beast threw me in here. It appears to be introducing fresh layers of metaphysical systems on a sub-astral scale into the universe, and I'm not sure if that's safe or stable. We should probably ask it to stop."
"It appears that it is our first quest, then. Kick that big asshole out of my reality."
"Good luck. We're fighting, what did that Lovecraft guy call it…?" The lich snapped his fingers. "Aaho, we're fighting Cthulhu!"
"And we'll become Yog-fucking-Sothoth."
"I have no idea what that is," the lich responded as casually as someone talking about the weather. He proceeded to explain, long-windedly, "I read only the books in the house, not the repository of his life's works. I'm sure it's equally stupid as Cthulhu, however. You can't be half-man, half-octopus, and half-dragon. That makes you one and a half of something, unless you're telling me this Cthulhu's existential weight somehow defies the basic principles of mathematics."
"Lovecraft was a racist writer who had no idea how science, geometry or mathematics worked. Don't bother trying to understand his reasoning," Gabriel scoffed, waving Prolessarch off. "He thought non-Euclidean meant that space was being bent."
Prolessarch didn't seem to have an immediate response to that, shrugging and looking up at the ceiling.
After a moment of silence, Gabriel reached into his drawer and took out the ring.
"You wanted to learn the Pentex, right?" The lich scratched a finger against his cheek briefly, producing a low noise. "I've gotten started on learning it, it's pretty simple. We'll do some basic magical exercises first, though. My old mentor believed in fundamentals, so I'll teach you like he taught me."
"Yes, but it might be better for me to put on the ring first. It grants me dominion over skill, teaching, learning, training, and so on? Yes, that's it, if I remember correctly."
"I know what it grants you, and yes you remember correctly." The lich cracked his knuckles, and then neck, in preparation for the teaching session. He looked almost vitalized to act, as if excitedly tremulous. Gabriel didn't share many of those feelings. As excited as he was to quite literally be tutored in magic by a friendly undead arch-wizard, he was also equally apprehensive of the fact that such things now decided to exist, just as he was putting his life together without the alluring fantasy of them.
"Put it on and let's begin, unless you'd rather give it to me," Prolessarch eventually said, once Gabriel didn't respond for long enough.
"I'd rather wear it myself. I'm not the best at the whole 'learning stuff that has to do with the mind thing,'" Gabriel said.
At once, he inserted his finger into his right middle finger, past the segments, and down to the base. It snapped into place with a bell's toll, a loud noise of distant brass, like the promise of eternity. The length of the golden metal shone for a brief moment, flickering with the halcyon sweet-yellow of summertime sun, before dimming and storing itself once again within the ring.
It was the Ring of Prowess, he understood on an instinctive level, and it would have certain requirements of him. It wouldn't submit to a master who was subpar, and wouldn't allow mediocrity. There would be Prowess, or there would be Nothing.
This wasn't a deal between wielder and ring, however. It was the incontrovertible truth. The moment he slipped it on, he accepted this universal truth. It would simply be.
"Fascinating. Activate its power, then pay attention," the Prolessarch declared, apparently deciding to teach from the bed, with both hands below his skull.
Gabriel had no issue with the command. By instinct, he tapped into the Ring's power, and he felt its energy fill him to the brim. Like a balloon inflated with oxygen in seconds, he was filled with sheer, radiant brilliance. A faint chrysalis of golden light surrounded his body, too dim to be noticed by a casual observer in daylight, but still there.
With its mere presence, his mentality skyrocketed. He understood the room around him in new and interesting ways, but he also found ways of… no better word for it, he found ways of leveraging the room, that he'd never considered before. He could quantify the materials of the bed that Prolessarch was lying on, and imagine a rough plan for reshaping it into a catapult for a siege. Pulling it apart, instead, and cutting the planks into impromptu spears. Skill, improvisation, adaptation - the starting domains offered to him by the ring, with more awaiting elsewhere.
"Aha." Prolessarch didn't even bother looking up, as he began to drop the revelations, "It won't enhance the rate of learning, at least not yet. But it will enhance skills you already possess. It's better than nothing, and in fact, better than a lot of somethings. Can you use it on me?"
Gabriel wanted to extend his hand forward, but the ring cut off that foolish motion before it could even begin. The depth and understanding of skill applied even to such basic actions - an extension of the arm was superfluous. An unnecessary, and unsightly, outright disgusting activity. The antipode of efficiency, in this case.
But even so, the ring instinctively reacted to his command, and Prolessarch was filled with the same golden radiance.
"Interesting, interesting. I don't have to try to know that I could cast my spells more easily." Prolessarch's voice was a pleasant, charming lilt, easy to listen to. He appeared to be, if not satisfied, then happy with how fascinating the situation was. "It's as if though the scant gaps in my knowledge have been filled out, techniques refined automatically. It doesn't seem to improve mentality, I am quantifiable or qualitatively not any smarter and I can sense that kind of thing, it extrapolates its own knowledge and adds it to the target's own base. Your ring is a useful toy."
"Let's start," Gabriel exclaimed, a determined smile adorning his features.
"What do you know of unstructured and structured magic?"
"Well… from fiction, I know that there is-"
"Fiction doesn't apply. All of the books I've reviewed so far on the topic are rubbish," the Prolessarch interrupted with a scoff. "Unstructured magic is no different from a superpower. You think about something and it happens, and we call it magic because it has something that connects it to magic as a phenomenon. Structured magic is something that, as I said, calls upon structure. You are utterly incapable of performing unstructured magic, but the Pentex would fall under a structured magical system. Do note, this is theoretical knowledge. We'll get onto practice soon..."
***
It was a good forty minutes before they actually went to practice.
The Prolessarch drove Gabriel through a highway of esoteric topics, including the universe, the formation of magic as a conceptual system, the relevance of grand universal systems such as the collective unconscious or the astral realm, and the carving of new structural magical systems upon the universe.
After that, the Prolessarch explained what he'd already learned of the Pentex from his brief, ten-minute foray into it, before Gabriel had arrived.
It was a magical power that favored versatility and immediate power, over arcane heights and discoveries. It was a selfish system, in that using it in order to change society or civilization in the long-term would be impossible outside of the caster's personal intervention in events.
The user received what Prolessarch decided to call, for the purposes of the demonstration, sigils. The sigils were a rough conceptual representation of the essence of anything the user encountered in the past, especially things they were intimately close with. By combining anywhere from one to five sigils, a user can then form a spell, which is inventoried and ready for later deployment.
Gabriel followed the instructions to sense his own sigils, and found it surprisingly easy to see what it was all about. He possessed exactly sixteen sigils marked as 'friendship,' four sigils marked as 'love,' five marked as 'happiness' one marked as 'undead,' six marked as 'study,' four marked as 'skill,' and scattering of other, minor ones. They were reflections of situations, especially ones that Gabriel focused on, especially in the recent past; the last couple of weeks in particular.
Prolessarch immediately claimed most of the sigils that Gabriel already possessed were utter garbage. The system favored in-depth study and exploration.
If he wanted impressive sigils related to, say, nature, he'd need to snap a branch of a tree and meditate over it for several minutes. In theory, this should accumulate into a stronger, more significant sigil that could then result in a better spell.
Nonetheless, Prolessarch encouraged Gabriel to use the system anyway, and create a spell using the sigils he already had.
"Okay, here goes nothing," Gabriel said, closing his eyes. He took a friendship sigil, a love sigil, an undead sigil, one skill sigil, and a study sigil and pushed them all into a single spell: a crystallization of his experience.
It created a spell that'd… draw on the skills of a single undead target, sapping them from the target in question and passing them onto the user. It was quite weak, and required close proximity - he could cast it from this range.
"What did you get?" Prolessarch queried.
"Skill-theft," Gabriel answered, leaving out the part about where it could only target the undead. No need to get grandpa riled up.
"Well, I'm not giving you mine, so keep those hands to yourself and cast it on some annoying pest later," the Prolessarch cautioned, before considering. "Well… This is basically it, as far as using the system goes. I'm sure there are ways of refining it - oh, yes, of course there are. There always are, but I don't really care. It's a pretty bad system to begin with, and I won't indulge in it."
"I can always learn new systems, can't I?"
"Not with the ease of this one, though I suppose your Prowess Ring may help with that issue at least slightly in the future," Prolessarch admitted. He stood up from the bed in a single, fluid movement, saying, "Well, since I have nothing better to do, I'll go visit the library and see what I can learn. We'll need to begin work on extricating our tentacled friend sooner or later. Especially before one of those nasty Curses of yours has a chance to throw an equally nasty wrench into our plans."
Gabriel's memory provided him with a brief flash of his negotiations with the Accursed. "The Accursed mentioned a 'Praxis,' and referred to it as a magic system. Anything you can tell me about that?"
"Never heard of it. Sounds like snake oil crap, I wouldn't buy into it," Prolessarch rebuked with a glimmer of irritation at the mention of the Accursed. Clearly, the entity wasn't as gentle with the lich as the cantankerous skeleton claimed. "It's probably something he came up with on his own, and is now trying to peddle to novices. Such an arrogant name, too."
"It means 'Action' in Ancient Greek," Gabriel informed him, nodding.
"I have no idea what Ancient Greek is. I'm using a translation spell, so whatever you're saying isn't carrying over properly," Prolessarch responded, shaking his head. "I was referring to the concept of transforming thought into existence. Naming a magic system after that suggests that you believe it'll be able to do anything, no matter how impossible. It's a childish dream."
"I see."
I should've gone for that, on second thought, but this is fine too.
"Anything else before I go to the library?" the Prolessarch asked. He began to perform a complicated series of hand movements, muttering quiet incantations.
"It's three in the morning. I might just go to sleep for now, I'm exhausted."
He interrupted the incantations, but not the gestures. "Is the library closed at three in the morning?" He inclined his skull curiously.
"It opens at eight. Two and a half hours after the sun rises."
"Sucks for the librarian. I'm opening it at three in the morning," the Prolessarch said. He stopped the spell casting, just as a dark ring formed over his head. It went down, trailing purple smoke after it, and soon covered him like a curtain. The smoke had a vague smell of blueberries, and soon abated, to reveal a sixteen-year-old man with bored eyes and dirty blonde hair, cut short. His eyes were a brilliant azure, almost as if hiding the soul-embers was impossible.
"Start from Stephen Hawking," Gabriel proposed, curious what conclusions the Prolessarch would come to.
"Is he a great scholar?" Prolessarch curiously requested, raising a now-animated eyebrow. His illusionary face was surprisingly expressive.
"Smartest man to ever live. The greatest scholar in matters of physics, astrophysics, and astronomy, despite his terrible disease. Completely paralyzed, forced to communicate through an eye-controlled computer."
"Ooh, physics and astronomy! Those are some of my favorite school subjects," the Prolessarch reminisced. With a pleased smile, he walked over to the mirror and fixed the jacket on his chest a little. "Do you think I'll be able to meet him later?"
"He died two years ago, I'm afraid… but-"
"Hah." Prolessarch didn't even say anything else. He didn't even have to bother. "I'll see you tomorrow."
With that, he walked out through the door of his room, which creaked slightly, followed by a dry thud as it slammed shut. Another, deeper thud as the main door closed.
"Jeez," Gabriel sighed, letting all the air escape his lungs to make room for a fresher breathful of oxygen.
He stood up from his office chair and let himself fall face-first into his pillow.
It had a vague scent of calcium and burnt incense.
"Damn it."
Last edited:
Be a madman then and vote for Favor - if you do this I promise you a central spot on the next AST times as the MADMAN Birdsie - the one who held the thread in the palm of his hand
Last edited:
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
We are titans? Is that so? In that case, I propose we settle this at once... Through a rap battle! The thread votes on whose burns are sicker, and ultimately, that person gets assigned additional omake power.
Or, I can just post more Konosuba subquest to auto-win, but where's the fun in that?
EDIT: Coincidentally, how much would a full, anime opening for AST be worth? If a very shitty one.
Last edited:
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
Holy fuck gg no re
Also, some feedback on Gabriel part two: I really liked that you use "respects books" as evidence of being a good person. That is a very valid conclusion. However, merely putting books on a shelf isn't enough on its own to convince me that a character respects books. That is just the bare minimum of decency.
Now, if you wanted to quickly show that a character is an irredeemable villain, putting books on a shelf with their spine hidden would do it for me. Instant berserk button!
- Location
- Louisiana
He's got a point you know, the real madman move would be to steamroll so much omake power you prove your might, and then switch votes. Show that it was never about the results, it was about sending a message. To test your abilities.
If I wasn't a struggling college student I would attempt to shitpost some omake power but alas I have no free time to fight this war. Hopefully in the next important vote I'll have the freedom to lead the charge.
If I wasn't a struggling college student I would attempt to shitpost some omake power but alas I have no free time to fight this war. Hopefully in the next important vote I'll have the freedom to lead the charge.
Rihaku
The Internet
That only works if you have a foolish little brother...
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
A Foolish Transaction: Shardcraft-Curse Interactions
Crowning Curses
The Apocryphal Curse - Fortune's Shard: Sporadically, good events will occur to you at a random interval. These events are generally minor, but sculpted to be beneficial in spite of your other curses. For example, The Shattering Entity may find a random beached whale, or come across abandoned battlefields which are filled with available targets for reanimation. This power scales to the degree of mitigation done to the Apocryphal Curse. A completely mitigated form would be as the Apocryphal Curse turned wholly to your benefit.
Major Curses
Affliction of Slumber - Emissary: You may empower others with weakened versions of your power (up to the level of the Noble Praxis), as well delegating to them fragments of your full power. For example, you could initiate all your spectral allies into Shardcrafting, and they would then be able progress in Shardcrafting with their own innate talent and capability in it (although nowhere as fast as your own growth in shard-crafting due to general incompatibility, lack of King's Scepter boost, etc).
Brand of the Wretched - Fell Shard: A form of energy similar to the destructive half of Shardcrafting. Bolts, rays, destructive shrouds; It is the energy of hate, and can be utilized towards effects such as destruction, amplifying Shardcraft's conceptual assaults, or more esoterically, inciting nations to war as well as disrupting magical effects. Defensively, can cause conceptual radiation, create retaliatory-type defenses, and so forth. Overall, a weaker and less versatile version of your own Shardcrafting.
Brand of the Champion - Loyalty - Gain an instinctive sense for the loyalty of your subordinates, and what must be done to improve said loyalty. Brand of the Champion tasks occasionally are aligned with said actions, but not always. Empowers loyal subordinates in proportion and connection to you; Stacks fully with Emmisary if desired. Somewhat works on your spectral entities; Generally, proper intelligence is needed for the power to function at it's full potential.
Sign of the Crab - Form of the Crab - Gain access to a monstrous, crab-like warform. Your strikes are as a force of nature, your movement the destruction of nations. Physical attributes are dramatically improved whilst in your warform, mental attributes are unaffected. Causes extreme collateral damage, in contrast to the precision of Shardcraft or Fell Energy; Abilities you use while in the Form of the Crab have their potency dramatically increased at the cost of precision; Nature unbounded cares not for the ants crushed under her wrath. Passively improves your constitution to a minor degree.
Doom of the Tyrant - Awe - Gain access to the world's magic: Accretion. A relatively 'passive' magic based around personal legend, fame and narrative. Completing perilous tasks will empower Accretion, as will general acts of villainy and/or heroism if you are unwilling to complete tasks for some reason. Sort-of mitigates the other Brands: Most notably the Brand of the Wretched will instead act to nullify the positive effects of Awe (which would otherwise be able to inspire awe to the degree of subservience), in addition to presenting yourself as unworthy of fear/terror/awe, as opposed to an entity of to be detested.
Geas of Indenture - Plot Armor - The intended slayer of the Hero is no nobody; The world-conqueror ought not to be slain by a nobody before his time. Protects from untimely deaths to an extent, as Fate accords you importance in the vein of your position. Does not protect you against the target of the Geas itself; For example, the Hero can slay you perfectly well, and his allies would be barely impaired at all. When having successfully conquered the designated area for a conquest-mission, protection lifts. These limits may be circumvented by further mitigation.
Minor Curses
Affliction of Carnivore - Hunger - Gain improved attributes whenever eating the flesh of a foe or animals killed. Also provides improved predator-like abilities, such as improved scent, hearing, sprinting, etc.
Affliction of Leprosy - Rot - Entities hostile to you are afflicted with decay, in proportion to their hostility. May be toggled. Resistible. Effects similar to amplified version of the Affliction of Leprosy; Can be lethal.
Brand of the Kinslayer - Murder - Acquire stealth abilities and a variety of powers well-suited to assassination, mostly 'knife to throat' style of killing, although poisoning and similar are acceptable.
Brand of the Chaste - Purity - Ameliorates all negative effects, bindings and like applied on you. Provides modest magic resistance. Against the Curses of the Accursed, applies a 5% external mitigation.
Doom of the Sailor - Oceankin - Gain water-breathing, improved swim speed and a variety of ocean-themed powers, such as instinctive understanding of marine biology and oceanic weather patterns.
Crowning Curses
The Apocryphal Curse - Fortune's Shard: Sporadically, good events will occur to you at a random interval. These events are generally minor, but sculpted to be beneficial in spite of your other curses. For example, The Shattering Entity may find a random beached whale, or come across abandoned battlefields which are filled with available targets for reanimation. This power scales to the degree of mitigation done to the Apocryphal Curse. A completely mitigated form would be as the Apocryphal Curse turned wholly to your benefit.
Major Curses
Affliction of Slumber - Emissary: You may empower others with weakened versions of your power (up to the level of the Noble Praxis), as well delegating to them fragments of your full power. For example, you could initiate all your spectral allies into Shardcrafting, and they would then be able progress in Shardcrafting with their own innate talent and capability in it (although nowhere as fast as your own growth in shard-crafting due to general incompatibility, lack of King's Scepter boost, etc).
Brand of the Wretched - Fell Shard: A form of energy similar to the destructive half of Shardcrafting. Bolts, rays, destructive shrouds; It is the energy of hate, and can be utilized towards effects such as destruction, amplifying Shardcraft's conceptual assaults, or more esoterically, inciting nations to war as well as disrupting magical effects. Defensively, can cause conceptual radiation, create retaliatory-type defenses, and so forth. Overall, a weaker and less versatile version of your own Shardcrafting.
Brand of the Champion - Loyalty - Gain an instinctive sense for the loyalty of your subordinates, and what must be done to improve said loyalty. Brand of the Champion tasks occasionally are aligned with said actions, but not always. Empowers loyal subordinates in proportion and connection to you; Stacks fully with Emmisary if desired. Somewhat works on your spectral entities; Generally, proper intelligence is needed for the power to function at it's full potential.
Sign of the Crab - Form of the Crab - Gain access to a monstrous, crab-like warform. Your strikes are as a force of nature, your movement the destruction of nations. Physical attributes are dramatically improved whilst in your warform, mental attributes are unaffected. Causes extreme collateral damage, in contrast to the precision of Shardcraft or Fell Energy; Abilities you use while in the Form of the Crab have their potency dramatically increased at the cost of precision; Nature unbounded cares not for the ants crushed under her wrath. Passively improves your constitution to a minor degree.
Doom of the Tyrant - Awe - Gain access to the world's magic: Accretion. A relatively 'passive' magic based around personal legend, fame and narrative. Completing perilous tasks will empower Accretion, as will general acts of villainy and/or heroism if you are unwilling to complete tasks for some reason. Sort-of mitigates the other Brands: Most notably the Brand of the Wretched will instead act to nullify the positive effects of Awe (which would otherwise be able to inspire awe to the degree of subservience), in addition to presenting yourself as unworthy of fear/terror/awe, as opposed to an entity of to be detested.
Geas of Indenture - Plot Armor - The intended slayer of the Hero is no nobody; The world-conqueror ought not to be slain by a nobody before his time. Protects from untimely deaths to an extent, as Fate accords you importance in the vein of your position. Does not protect you against the target of the Geas itself; For example, the Hero can slay you perfectly well, and his allies would be barely impaired at all. When having successfully conquered the designated area for a conquest-mission, protection lifts. These limits may be circumvented by further mitigation.
Minor Curses
Affliction of Carnivore - Hunger - Gain improved attributes whenever eating the flesh of a foe or animals killed. Also provides improved predator-like abilities, such as improved scent, hearing, sprinting, etc.
Affliction of Leprosy - Rot - Entities hostile to you are afflicted with decay, in proportion to their hostility. May be toggled. Resistible. Effects similar to amplified version of the Affliction of Leprosy; Can be lethal.
Brand of the Kinslayer - Murder - Acquire stealth abilities and a variety of powers well-suited to assassination, mostly 'knife to throat' style of killing, although poisoning and similar are acceptable.
Brand of the Chaste - Purity - Ameliorates all negative effects, bindings and like applied on you. Provides modest magic resistance. Against the Curses of the Accursed, applies a 5% external mitigation.
Doom of the Sailor - Oceankin - Gain water-breathing, improved swim speed and a variety of ocean-themed powers, such as instinctive understanding of marine biology and oceanic weather patterns.
Last edited:
Gabbie
That One Writer
- Location
- Italy
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I know something about that. He and I have written, in a little less than a year, a fanfiction on par with the entire Harry Potter saga in terms of word count. Our biggest work yet.
EDIT: It's a Worm fic, for anyone wondering.
Last edited:
I understand you, you simply fail to impress with your arguments. Better luck next time.
@Birdsie if a certain Adevnturer is befriended and we choose a compatible class with theirs (i.e. Megumin and Arch-Wizard), can we expect to have them give us valuable tips like Chris would have done for Thief if she was chosen as Companion? Also, can we know the secrets behind Sword and Ring or are they spoilers?
Birdsie
Sharp Talons Cleave The Worthy
- Location
- Poland
Of course! Giving each other advice to avoid death is a part of friendship.
Eh, I don't see why not, you probably won't see either at this point.
The Ring was the ring that Iris gave to Kazuma in the canon timeline (or to be more accurate, the ring he shamelessly stole while disguised as a gentleman thief and which she permitted him to keep because she had a crush on him.) At base, it would be equivalent to a ------Heartlessness and +++Willpower for Kazuma. It would have three advancements, each one with three stages:
- One that upgraded Kazuma's Willpower at first stage, upgraded Willpower again at second stage, and culminated in the equivalent of a 2-pick 7-Arete upgrade that increased his Willpower by 50% permanently and gave him the equivalent of A-Rank Battle Continuation.
- One that upgraded Kazuma's natural healing slightly at first stage, upgraded it further at second stage, and culminated in the equivalent of a 2-pick 7-Arete upgrade that made it so that Kazuma permanently regenerated 1% of his body mass per second for as long as he had mana to spare for it.
- One that upgraded Kazuma's Charisma slightly at first stage, upgraded his Wisdom at second stage, and culminated in the equivalent of a 2-pick 7-Arete upgrade that increased both by 50%.
Acquiring all of the upgrades for the Ring would result in unlocking the equivalent of a 25-Arete pick that offered one-stage mitigation to the Brand of the Wretched, unless it was already mitigated in which case half-stage mitigation, quarter-stage, etc: whatever level is appropriate and improved all of the previous stages slightly.
The Sword was Chunchunmaru from an alternate (and much, much darker,) timeline diverging from the canon one where Beldia managed to run away from the initial fight and warned the Demon King about the threat that Kazuma's party posed, (such as it containing a bona fide Goddess and a crazy explosion girl whose interest in Explosion Magic rivals that of Wolbach. Also a creepy masochist.)
Events diverged heavily from there: The Crimson Demon village got a visit from three Demon Generals at the same time and half the people there got actually killed resulting in Megumin going away and also getting killed because she hadn't power-leveled Explosion enough by that point to defeat Wolbach. Hans never got killed because Kazuma and Co., didn't have enough time to go to Alcanretia, so he poisoned the waters and 2/3rd of Aqua's worshippers went to shit, crippling her powers as a goddess and rendering her near-comatose. Darkness' father called her back, because he didn't want his daughter risking her life in face of the war. The Demon King sent Ragcraft to assassinate the Royal Family of Belzerg and he managed to kill both Jatis and heavily wound the king, resulting in a spiral of chaos that only kept developing.
In a way, the Kazuma of that timeline would have been almost like Hunger, in the way that most of his companions either died or left, and he was left alone with nothing but a sword to remember Megumin by in a constant war against an ever-escalating threat that couldn't be controlled. He'd probably get crippled too, eventually, because the Demon King had enough money to fund Vanir's dungeon, which means Vanir wouldn't train Kazuma, which, in turn, means Kazuma would never become so overpowered as to take down the Demon King. Kazuma's lack of companions also meant no other Demon Generals would get taken down. It's a timeline where the Demon King wins and the Heavenly Bureaucracy burns.
As for the alter-Chunchunmaru's advancements, I haven't decided when I thought of it. Presumably, something much darker than the Ring, and appropriately grim for a Kazuma who's forced to escalate. Maybe the sword would be laced with a poison that causes a mental effect equivalent to Tsukuyomi in the victims, or something equivalent.
In summary: a Ring that represents Kazuma's (platonic) love towards the princess, and a Sword that represents a complete shitshow.
Last edited: