Crystallization
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
--- 24 - Crystallization ---
A console in the middle of the captured Ancient Void Lab was playing one of the first videos made by Void Entities who had managed to get some Void Grafters. As they mostly expected it was only moments after the announcement that every single high end Void Entity still playing had started to form large groups to take on the larger sites of the ancient bastion networks, although it did appear that Flamescale's group had also only been the first by a few minutes at most. Possibly even not the first at all if someone else had finished while they were only starting the mission to save the civilian Entities.
"So, here we have one of those things I never expected the developers to actually put in, but that everyone has been saying they should add," RedStarScribe said from the screen. The deep orange/red furred lion man was looking directly at the screen, with the special tools to let you share menus enabled so it could reveal the Void Grafter stats and menu more clearly. "The good news is that my worst case of a swap of one skill between trees at a time didn't happen. Or re-rolls of existing branches like most people thought it would be.
"The Void Grafter at least has an acceptable challenge to get one, you need to get into a group that goes up against what is basically a warship fight without your own warship. I have been on three attempts at getting an Advanced Ancient Computer down, and I only have one Grafter to show for it so far."
"I'm guessing they weren't all Void Labs?" Flamescale paused the video to question. "Because I would expect someone getting captured to come up if they failed to take one of those." She was present with the entire group that had taken the lab, and honestly it had only been five or six hours. The video was practically brand new, but it was also clearly someone who had not spent that time getting civilian Entities and locals calmed down after an ancient invasion.
"From my understanding it is not a reward for all inner spoke facilities," Yellow-Glow answered. "The original size I showed you is only a 'Main Ancient Computer', ten Skill Tree points per kill but no Grafter. Initial reaction is that they are valuable for leveling a modified ST, but should only be attacked after the fact. Five points for a cleared and captured site instead of ten as well."
"One day, I will be brave enough to ask how easily he analyzes that much information so fast, but that day is not today," Jovian joked tiredly. "Start it back up."
"Now, there are two modes to this thing. One where it switches around entire Branches of your Skill Trees, yes more than one despite the description text, and another where it turns a single Branch, just one for this one, into a new kind of Skill item I'll go into later," Red continued as Flamescale let the video play again. "Let's start off with the first mode." He selected the item and then chose the modification mode marked Skill Tree, instead of Skill Vine, and was presented with the ST selection menu. "First select the Skill Tree you want to move a branch out of," he picked a Liquid Crystal tree. "And then we need to cover the limits."
This time it was Yellow-Glow who stopped the video, and simply glared at Sledge. "I did not say he made good guides, just that I had watched them before," the pangolin defended his suggestion to take advantage of this video instead of just trying things out themselves.
"He at least tries out all sorts of STs," ThunderFang noted, but the dragoness' dark tone sounded like she agreed with Yellow-Glow's assessment of the guide's quality. "A real ST collector."
Yellow-Glow then resumed play, his point apparently made. "There are three limits to moving around branches," Red completely changed topic now that there was the action to select a branch to move on the screen. "The first is the reason this isn't just a way to make any ST into the perfect ST. There are two types of branches on any ST, primary and secondary. Primary branches are the ones where the ST gives you a level of the first skill on the tree just for putting it on, while secondary is everything else. The limit there is that primary branches cannot be moved off of the ST they come from, so this nice Crystalline branch with the regeneration skill and the damage boost for Crystal Weapons is currently something we can't get away from Liquid Mobility."
Flamescale did not like the guide maker's tone with that last statement, but if they stopped the video for every problem they might as well just test the things themselves instead of watching it at all. Which she was seriously considering. Then RedStarScribe took a moment to switch to a rather large six branch fungal zombie ST.
"So we weren't wasting our time finding all of our really rare STs, because you now need a good set of primary branches to start with and then to get other STs with those nice secondary branches you can finally add to something that actually uses them," RedStarScribe joked. "I for one am looking forward to seeing what I can pull off, although the second limit does mean you still want multiple STs. Each ST now has a limit of nine branches." He paused for effect, and then laughed. "Yeah, nine is the limit. I don't think I've seen one with seven and they're giving us nine to start. Although there is a trick there I will be covering later." Flamescale had opened the menu long enough to know she was at eight out of nine for her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree, so she actually had to consider that limit.
"The final restriction is also the most obvious one, but it does have some nice features along with it, you cannot move a branch somewhere to make a tree that doesn't have the required skills for a branch. So for instance I have a Mass Infection branch here, and if I try and move that one over to this other tree on its own," He selected the branch, then smiled with great amusement at the camera as he selected a Fluid Pestilence ST. One that turned out to be four branches Liquid Mobility, Ice Toxin, Enhancement, and Multiform. "Like my worst and rarest ST, then you can see that it is complaining that I don't have a Contagion branch or another way to get the skills it needs. This works the other way too, but in a much nicer way." He went back, and this time selected the Contagion branch that was above Mass Infection. The menu then seemed to take both branches instead of just the one selected. "As you can see, this is where that ten limit matters. We can in fact move more than one branch at a time, as long as the extra ones have a hard requirement of the one you start moving. Honestly just adding these two to my Fluid Pestilence here would make it almost worth it for someone, if they could handle the real downsides there." Flamescale glared at the half insulting way that was said.
"Now, there is another thing to point out," Red continued as he re-opened the Fluid Pestilence tree. "While it does let you just move into an open slot, if you have got close to nine then you can select to swap two branches between STs. So I could replace this useless Enhancement branch with actually valuable Contagion skills with a single Grafter."
Red then paused to go back a few menus, and Flamescale could feel Yellow-Glow's unhappiness for that awkward moment of silence in the middle of the guide. "Now, I promised a couple of friends who weren't around for the successful run that I would go over what a Skill Vine is before I started to speculate on what we can do with switching out branches, and honestly it is really worth it to do that," he finally explained once they were back to the mode selection. "Now, a Skill Vine is a single branch from a Skill Tree that you have split off onto its own using a Grafter. It has the limitations that you cannot make a primary branch into a Vine, and you cannot select a branch that has another branch that needs it for the tree to still work." He demonstrated the second one using the same fungal zombie ST and a show of how it did not let him try and select the Contagion branch now.
"The rest of the information I've got is from another friend who already used one to make a Vine. You see, the reason we have an odd limit of nine for a Skill Tree, is that we are also getting a single slot to add one Skill Vine at any given time. The things can only be equipped when you have the skills to unlock at least one of the Vine's skills, and they don't start with any points when you make one, but whenever you earn points for a Skill Tree you get the full amount for your Vine too, so those are going to level really fast. I can already advise that you should find a solid starter branch, I've got a few videos linked in the description on some options, and then level it up as something to keep on hand when you are building up a ST-"
Flamescale paused the video, hopeful that it was a good stopping point before the next topic. It was possible that he would get back onto the information they wanted later, but that was enough to at least know what was known. "So, what does everyone think?" she asked, then thought better of her phrasing. "About the Grafters, not the video or RedStarScribe's ability to inform people."
"I hate to admit it, Boss, but we probably want to start with some kind of bio-weapon stuff. Like the crystal things," Squeaky surprised Flamescale by answering before a Void Entity could reply, with Sixteen nodding in uneasy agreement. "We just can't keep solid weapon stocks for that kind of fight. We drained a tanker and a half with your plasma guns, which isn't too strange for a fight like that but we also can't afford for that to happen again. Not unless we're building our own ammo depot to make the gas ourselves."
"We have the same issues with the guns," Sixteen clarified. "We lost almost half of our heavy plasma rifles, including two of the ones you made giant however that works. I want to say we should get something to let us travel with stuff, but having a backup is more important right now."
"Well, I'm going for getting giant myself," ThunderFang laughed at that set of replies. "For pretty much the same reason. I'd like to start with a bio-shield branch, but I need a way to actually fight something as big as the monster Mucin we just went up against."
"I believe that we all can make use of these, but a better guide than that is my first priority once we have a method to take on the threat effectively," Yellow-Glow specified dully. "We should start by trying to clear as much of the civilian instance's ancient bastion network as we can. While we are clearly not ready to capture a Citadel, we do know that enough damage should be able to destroy one. Preferably after having tried to gather some data once the likely soon to be completed translation is ready."
"I'm probably going to start with those Skill Vine things," Stone admitted, the short human one of the few who did not seem unhappy with the guide. "My ST is already fairly well rounded, and I want to test things out before I try adding anything to it."
"I have to worry that some Entities are going to get caught trying to get these," Sledge noted with a sigh, the pangolin clearly not as interested in the reward compared to the other consequences of it existing. "It is good that there is a reward worth the effort, but I hope we get more successful missions than failures."
"Not to mention they're going to need to top this if we ever hit another problem this bad," Jovian pointed out even as the three tailed fox clearly was going through his own skill menus. "I'm not sure what is worse than being trapped in pods forever that didn't leave any way out, but I don't think we want to find something worse and not have another reward. More of these might work for a while, but it has the risk that we lose people we need to keep doing this or that stay just doing this instead."
"I mean, it isn't going to be that bad right?" Wolf asked uneasily. "I know this is real, even if you guys haven't actually explained anything yet," That explanation was their next topic to cover. "But that doesn't mean it wouldn't just be getting stuck here until we die right?"
Flamescale looked over at ThunderFang to see how the dragoness thought on that topic, only to see that ThunderFang was nervously looking her way too. "Since this is all real, that means Synch-Tech is actually Void-Tech," ThunderFang started, to Wolf's clear surprise. "And even if it wasn't, we were already at least stuck here until the servers were destroyed, even if we died as humans, or AI." Flamescale blinked at that last addition, which was for some reason directed at Stone.
"If there ever were servers," Jovian pointed out seriously. "I've heard from some of the first players before that the first few weeks had some messages about server downtime, and I can't imagine that they haven't been told to go to extreme measures to shut it down."
"Those messages did appear," Yellow-Glow admitted, which might be the start of an argument if Flamescale didn't keep things in check. "If the servers ever existed in the first place is something I question myself, despite having been here to see them."
"I think Wolf would prefer a clearer answer," Sledge then cut in. "I am dead, Wolf. I know, very well, that I died with no hope of recovery. I can even give you the details to look up the accident, including some that are harder to fake, although anything that can be proven can be found at this point. I am dead, and I am still here, and I will continue to be here for at least as long as Void Strike exists."
Wolf looked at Sledge carefully during the brief speech. "Ah. Okay, I have no idea how I'm explaining that to my family," he admitted. "I mean, half of them signed up when I started to make sure it wasn't too bad of a game."
"My whole family is here," ThunderFang reminded him. "Although now I am worried they all didn't tell me for some reason."
"I am currently near death, and also using Synch-Tech robots commonly," Yellow-Glow agreed. "I have the risk of dying right in front of them and not realizing it until they realize I am still talking despite that."
That drew attention from everyone but Flamescale and Sledge. "Okay, better question, is everyone else who I didn't already know is possibly dead doing alright? I can't do much from Jupiter, but I've got some resources to throw around while I'm alive," Jovian questioned looking between everyone but Sledge, Stone, and Yellow-Glow.
"I'm fine as a human," Flamescale admitted tiredly. "No issues with my life."
"No, I don't need anything as a human," Wolf said with a huff, but he seemed to be growing more uneasy. "Ugh, I have to say 'as a human' now, don't I?"
"So, what I'm hearing is that we can still use Synch-Tech robots back home when we die there," ThunderFang mistakenly focused on, shifting the concern again, this time towards the dragoness. "Hey, mars needs people with jobs to help support the colonies. We aren't just a couple of days from earth like the moon is, and it hasn't even been a hundred years since we first landed a settlement yet."
"Okay, I'd say that is insane, but I am currently dealing with that being our plan A if anyone critical to the station dies suddenly," Jovian sighed and flopped down over dramatically. "I made the mistake of talking about this with my manager, and next thing I knew the whole research team was ordered to get accounts. Turns out we might be slightly short staffed." He paused for an instant. "Do not tell anyone I said that, we do not need the investigation."
"I get the feeling my talk about this sort of thing went better than the rest of yours," Stone said with a shake of his head.
"Wait, if your relatives know you're still here, how do you not know if you're dead or not?" Flamescale questioned with considerable confusion.
"Maybe he has a backup that is lost somewhere?" Sixteen suggested. "I know you think this is strange, but backups are a thing."
"I don't think people outside of the 319 usually have backups, Sixteen," Squeaky countered.
"You are DeepStoneMiner Three, right?" ThunderFang questioned, once again to Flamescale's confusion as it sounded like the dragoness agreed with the two former 319. "The martian auto-mining rig that got lost in a cave in after getting a Synch-Tech comm system to keep in contact. I know they gave that one a Void Strike account for entertainment, and you look like the character they associated with number three."
"Ha," Stone laughed while they all looked at him with confusion. "Would you believe you're the first person to actually ask me about that? Yeah, still trying to figure out if my hardware is destroyed or just offline."
"Wait, you've known why you don't know if you are alive or not this whole time?" Jovian asked unhappily. "You've had me worried about finding a way to talk to your relatives from Jupiter this whole time!"
"I'm not sure what to think about the only human of our group not being one normally," Flamescale sighed, now completely lost on what they were talking about. The plan to talk about how this was real seemed to have not worked out.
"He's a dwarf?" ThunderFang suggested with confusion, which also confused Flamescale and Wolf. Although Jovian started to laugh and Stone just looked vaguely boggled. "You know, short people who mine stuff in the ground."
"They're lunar," Jovian started to explain, laughing all the way. "Go on, tell her what a 'dwarf' is for you guys."
"Short unless you count the ears," Yellow-Glow described tiredly. "Fuzzy all over." He clearly ran out of ways to describe it without just saying it. "Like small rabbit people who really like big hammers, digging holes, and making that paste stuff I don't like much. We usually don't see much on the moon that uses the older variation on the concept. A lot of games and books actually give a lunar makeover to their dwarfs for us. I think they replace 'beards' with 'ears'. It is beards, right?"
"You need to ask if it is beards," ThunderFang grumbled, while Jovian laughed harder. "Wait, there is a lot of stuff they can do with their beards. What does that even look like when you use ears for it instead?" It honestly did get rather impressive. Shiny trinkets of both gemstones and raw metal were very common, often with fantastical brilliance. Although Flamescale didn't like the more horrible stories about cutting them off, which sounded just strange if it was only beards instead, even if dwarf ears grew back.
"So, they do have a lost backup then?" Sixteen asked with confusion. "Because I was kind of joking. Backups never work that well, and I didn't think Entities needed them?"
"I'll try and explain later," Flamescale reluctantly promised her combat leader. "I think we're going to get distracted too often if I tried now."
"On the topic of the little snakes who are apparently people," Wolf then specified, looking unhappy to end the brief amusement. "Have I been killing people? Because I'd like to know if I have an actual body count." ThunderFang huffed out sparks at that, and there was a pause for everyone to figure out how to answer the question.
"Well, that says a lot about what you guys are if he actually needs to ask if he's killing people at all," Squeaky said before a kinder person could talk. "Yeah, you definitely have been killing people if you've been killing people."
"You get used to it if you keep going," Jovian said bluntly in addition to that now that the silence was already broken badly. "Many do not when they learn of this. This instance is not the only one where those who cannot handle our nature live."
"We mostly just go after targets that we feel are better off dead than alive for the instance as a whole, or at least try to," Flamescale admitted with the best she could say about the topic. "We don't always manage that, but the alternative isn't for me at least."
"I have got to talk to my family about it," ThunderFang said somberly. "I'm going to help you guys with this ancient thing. They're at least a target I don't mind killing, but after that... I need to know if my family realized what I have been doing and didn't tell me, or if they were acting like these locals were people without knowing somehow."
"Honestly, I'm not that picky," Stone admitted gruffly. "I do things to get stronger and pass the time, and generally just avoid the really messed up stuff." The short human, Flamescale refused to think of something with ears that short as a dwarf, then shrugged. "Well, not if the idea is to fight the messed up stuff, that's always good fun."
Unfortunately none of their clarifications seemed to actually help Wolf out, as the wolf shaped Void Entity seemed to get only more and more horrified as they went on. "I- I can't do this," he said with a break in his voice. "I can't, I'm not. I gotta go." Flamescale made sure that he picked the right direction to flee towards the civilian arcology, but otherwise nobody stopped the wolf man on his quick retreat.
"I think he expected us to say he had not," Yellow-Glow said sadly.
"It probably says worse things about us that the rest of us are not stopping than about him since he's deciding to stop," ThunderFang said and relaxed notably. "Nothing good about us at least."
"I thought you needed to talk to your family?" Sledge questioned with some concern.
"My family already went over the basics when I got them home again," the dragoness rumbled. "They apparently 'weren't sure' about letting me keep killing people before, but now they are 'very glad' I was and 'proud' of me for having 'an actual body count' as Wolf just put it." Sparks literally flew out along with spit at the word 'proud' and the quote of how Wolf had put it. "I need a break from them and some acceptable targets right now, so I hoped going easy on him would keep him from panicking and give me an excuse why I wasn't staying with them right now."
"Well, there is an option I didn't know to worry about when I have to explain my own 'body count' to my family," Flamescale admitted, finding it even more uneasy that they might take her kills that way. It was one thing for her family to be disappointed, but proud was another thing entirely.
"Are we part of the body count, the family, or both?" Squeaky had the audacity to ask. "Because we do need that explanation too."
"Squeaky, I understand that you have a point, but you are about to lose speaking privileges," Flamescale said tightly to her creature.
"How about we change topic back to getting ready for our next step?" Jovian suggested. "Maybe try out our Grafters now to see if we can make the next one easier to get, even without Wolf."
"What exactly is the plan for the next step?" ThunderFang asked as Flamescale got started with looking at her best options for moving branches. "I think I'm the only one here who wasn't part of your group before, so I don't actually already know."
Flamescale paused in her comparison of Light Bio-Weapons, Heavy Bio-Weapons, and Crystal Weapons to consider that reality. Wolf had honestly not been given the full details yet either, but they were at least planning on him if things had worked out better. A part of her had mistakenly discarded that thought when Wolf left, probably because ThunderFang had so quickly joined the rest of them in their explanation to Wolf.
"There are three primary objectives for our group at this time," Yellow-Glow helpfully started to explain, probably with the speech he had ready for Wolf. "The first is to identify the critical parts of an ancient bastion network that need to be a priority to destroy for the safety of Void Entity operations in associated instances. Once that is done we then must ensure that all civilian Void Entity instances such as the one your family dwells within have had those critical components destroyed or captured. Finally, we must create proper guides, actual ones worth using, that allow for other Void Entities to safely engage these targets on their own to make any instance they are operating within safe."
"First thing we do in practice will probably be to clear the rest of the inner ring of this meta-instance," Sledge added with a nod at the dragoness. "Find out if we missed any other Void Labs that people might have been taken to, see if there is anything else on the ring that gives a Grafter, and I personally want to see if we can simply destroy a Citadel with a few megaton scale nuclear weapons. To make sure that this civilian instance at least is safe before we move on to the others."
That prompted a more detailed discussion of their typical combat requirements that Flamescale had heard before, so she went back to her own choice. A Skill Vine would probably be the best option if she wanted to get as many points as possible if it really did get the full amount rewarded with the ST, making it so you effectively got double the skill points. However, it also would start without any points, and would be limited to just the single branch. At the moment she needed extra firepower now, not after another few missions, so instead of the optimal path she was going to directly add a branch to her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree.
Light Bio-Weapons had Chitin Spikes, Acid Sprayers, and a shotgun like Fragment Cannon, along with other skills to upgrade each of them in a variety of ways. She would need to deal with the weapons only reloading when she was solid, but she would also have access to the reload rate skills and damage improvement skills that would make that less of a complication. The main downside was that it would take many points for them to equal heavier weapon systems.
Heavy Bio-Weapons had the Bio Missiles, Bio Cannon, and powerful Bio Laser skills, along with their own improvement skills. Heavier weapons that cost more points to upgrade, but came with more combat ability. However, even at their best they would not have as short of a reload time, and that could be very limiting with the reload resetting whenever she or her creatures liquefied.
The two ranged Bio-Weapons branches also both had the downside of being exposed weapons. She would have to leave the skills unused, or add the Hidden Bio-Weapons tree as well to hide the few that could be hidden without losing access to them for a time.
Crystal Weapons by contrast did not have any direct damage upgrades to the weapons it provided, although it did use only a single skill to reduce the reload speed for all the weapons instead of needing a specific skill to speed up each one. It also had more of a mixture of weapons, with a melee focused Crystal Blade skill that was possibly similar to some skills from the Melee Bio-Weapons branch that she outright was not considering, the Crystal Shards launcher skill that was similar to Chitin Spike although without as many levels or upgrades, a Crystal Cannon that did have its own damage upgrades but could only stack to two cannons, and the Crystal Missiles skill that again did not offer as many missile launchers as the Bio-Weapons variant. However, both the Shards and the Missiles came with a skill to hide the launchers, and the blade skill seemed to be somewhat hidden as well.
Really it wasn't a choice, Crystal Weapons did everything she wanted for after this rush to fight was over. It wasn't perfect, she personally did not like that the cannon did not come with a hidden version and would have liked the ability to make the Shards explosive the way the Chitin Spikes could be augmented by a skill, but it was good enough for her needs. Using the Grafter to move a Crystal Weapons branch from one of her many Liquid Crystal Skill Trees to her Fluid Pestilence was just as easy as the video had implied, with the only minor complication being a message that had her confirm an automatic removal of the one-off skills that would now be part of her current Skill Tree.
A part of her expected to feel some form of change to altering a Skill Tree, something special for such an unusual new effect, but there wasn't anything different immediately but the lack of her one-off skills. She had forty two points unspent from the assault, and she immediately sank most of them into the new branch.
Bio and Crystal Weapons branches all broke from typical skill costs in that getting multiple levels of some weapons had a flat cost for every level instead of an increasing one, but that was balanced by the other skills that actually improved their stats being costly. Crystal Shard launchers cost one point per launcher, and could be stacked ten times in total, less than the fourteen times that a Chitin Spike skill could stack to at the same cost per level. Up to six of them could then be improved with a two point per launcher skill to allow them to hide, making it so she could only have six if she wanted them hidden which was also four less than the hidden version of Chitin Spike. With that in mind she spent six points right now to get used to what would be the full quantity she could hide later.
Crystal Missiles were more expensive, but still had a flat cost per launcher of five points. They also had a max limit of six launchers, again four less than the bio variant capped at, and only two could be hidden for the large cost of ten points to hide each launcher. All six launchers would cost the same thirty points as just having two hidden missiles. Ten of Flamescale's points went in now to get back her now typical two launchers.
After that she looked at the two other weapons. Crystal Blade allowed her to turn part of her body into a sharp crystal blade, although it would need more levels to do more damage and have greater durability, and it had a fairly long time before she could forge another. One point to have it as an option was all she put into that melee option.
Crystal Cannon was powerful, but could not be hidden and was a base cost of five points, with another ten point skill to get a second cannon. Like the blade this skill increased in cost per level normally to improve damage and area of effect. Unlike the blade she didn't add this skill, as while it could be helpful she had not had good luck with getting the bio-weapon version to actually fit on her body in a reasonable way. She did not want to look silly with a giant cannon on her, especially when she could instead just get more missiles for the same cost as the first cannon skill level.
The final skill of the branch was strange for a Bio-Weapon branch, but welcome here. Crystallization Speed was a flat reload time reduction for every single one of the Crystal Weapons at the same time. Two points for the first level with an increase of two points per level was somewhat costly, but paying twenty points total for the first four levels of ten was worth it. That investment nearly cut half the reload time off the Crystal Shards, and almost a quarter off the missiles. Which told her that there would be very little reload time at all for the shards at the max level of ten, and half the time for the missiles.
That left her five points, which could have gone to another missile or a cannon, but instead were invested into her other skills that did grant some bonus damage. A third level of Infectious Strikes impacted those weapons as well for the biggest bonus she could get out of what she had, then the last two into a second level of a skill to increase the damage of the Fire status effect. All together it gave a nice boost to her combat ability for their next operations.
"Wait, you guys are going to be doing this right now?" ThunderFang fully realized just as Flamescale finished. "Not that I mind getting my family safe sooner, but I didn't think we had a reason to rush right now."
"We do not know for sure that we found everyone who was taken," Flamescale repeated, just in case ThunderFang had not realized why they wanted to see if there were any other labs on this meta-instance. "I don't know if anyone had a full list of everyone who lived in your family instance, and we also don't know if there is another instance that is connected, or if you missed some of those who were traveling with you that got caught."
"We do, I made sure to check in with all of them I could remember," ThunderFang corrected thoughtfully. "But I guess we didn't all get there in time to know we didn't miss anyone else who might have gotten caught." Then the dragoness grew in size quite a bit, from five meters to fifteen. "Okay, that will help, but forty points for the next level is a bit more than I expected."
"Your next level is equal to my five headed form," Flamescale pointed out dryly. "I spent one hundred to get there."
"You have five of those slithering around, I just get the one," ThunderFang joked back, with Jovian and Stone both seeming rather amused with that counter.
---
[Author's Note]
Here we have a more complete explanation of the new capability for changing skill trees around.
A console in the middle of the captured Ancient Void Lab was playing one of the first videos made by Void Entities who had managed to get some Void Grafters. As they mostly expected it was only moments after the announcement that every single high end Void Entity still playing had started to form large groups to take on the larger sites of the ancient bastion networks, although it did appear that Flamescale's group had also only been the first by a few minutes at most. Possibly even not the first at all if someone else had finished while they were only starting the mission to save the civilian Entities.
"So, here we have one of those things I never expected the developers to actually put in, but that everyone has been saying they should add," RedStarScribe said from the screen. The deep orange/red furred lion man was looking directly at the screen, with the special tools to let you share menus enabled so it could reveal the Void Grafter stats and menu more clearly. "The good news is that my worst case of a swap of one skill between trees at a time didn't happen. Or re-rolls of existing branches like most people thought it would be.
"The Void Grafter at least has an acceptable challenge to get one, you need to get into a group that goes up against what is basically a warship fight without your own warship. I have been on three attempts at getting an Advanced Ancient Computer down, and I only have one Grafter to show for it so far."
"I'm guessing they weren't all Void Labs?" Flamescale paused the video to question. "Because I would expect someone getting captured to come up if they failed to take one of those." She was present with the entire group that had taken the lab, and honestly it had only been five or six hours. The video was practically brand new, but it was also clearly someone who had not spent that time getting civilian Entities and locals calmed down after an ancient invasion.
"From my understanding it is not a reward for all inner spoke facilities," Yellow-Glow answered. "The original size I showed you is only a 'Main Ancient Computer', ten Skill Tree points per kill but no Grafter. Initial reaction is that they are valuable for leveling a modified ST, but should only be attacked after the fact. Five points for a cleared and captured site instead of ten as well."
"One day, I will be brave enough to ask how easily he analyzes that much information so fast, but that day is not today," Jovian joked tiredly. "Start it back up."
"Now, there are two modes to this thing. One where it switches around entire Branches of your Skill Trees, yes more than one despite the description text, and another where it turns a single Branch, just one for this one, into a new kind of Skill item I'll go into later," Red continued as Flamescale let the video play again. "Let's start off with the first mode." He selected the item and then chose the modification mode marked Skill Tree, instead of Skill Vine, and was presented with the ST selection menu. "First select the Skill Tree you want to move a branch out of," he picked a Liquid Crystal tree. "And then we need to cover the limits."
This time it was Yellow-Glow who stopped the video, and simply glared at Sledge. "I did not say he made good guides, just that I had watched them before," the pangolin defended his suggestion to take advantage of this video instead of just trying things out themselves.
"He at least tries out all sorts of STs," ThunderFang noted, but the dragoness' dark tone sounded like she agreed with Yellow-Glow's assessment of the guide's quality. "A real ST collector."
Yellow-Glow then resumed play, his point apparently made. "There are three limits to moving around branches," Red completely changed topic now that there was the action to select a branch to move on the screen. "The first is the reason this isn't just a way to make any ST into the perfect ST. There are two types of branches on any ST, primary and secondary. Primary branches are the ones where the ST gives you a level of the first skill on the tree just for putting it on, while secondary is everything else. The limit there is that primary branches cannot be moved off of the ST they come from, so this nice Crystalline branch with the regeneration skill and the damage boost for Crystal Weapons is currently something we can't get away from Liquid Mobility."
Flamescale did not like the guide maker's tone with that last statement, but if they stopped the video for every problem they might as well just test the things themselves instead of watching it at all. Which she was seriously considering. Then RedStarScribe took a moment to switch to a rather large six branch fungal zombie ST.
"So we weren't wasting our time finding all of our really rare STs, because you now need a good set of primary branches to start with and then to get other STs with those nice secondary branches you can finally add to something that actually uses them," RedStarScribe joked. "I for one am looking forward to seeing what I can pull off, although the second limit does mean you still want multiple STs. Each ST now has a limit of nine branches." He paused for effect, and then laughed. "Yeah, nine is the limit. I don't think I've seen one with seven and they're giving us nine to start. Although there is a trick there I will be covering later." Flamescale had opened the menu long enough to know she was at eight out of nine for her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree, so she actually had to consider that limit.
"The final restriction is also the most obvious one, but it does have some nice features along with it, you cannot move a branch somewhere to make a tree that doesn't have the required skills for a branch. So for instance I have a Mass Infection branch here, and if I try and move that one over to this other tree on its own," He selected the branch, then smiled with great amusement at the camera as he selected a Fluid Pestilence ST. One that turned out to be four branches Liquid Mobility, Ice Toxin, Enhancement, and Multiform. "Like my worst and rarest ST, then you can see that it is complaining that I don't have a Contagion branch or another way to get the skills it needs. This works the other way too, but in a much nicer way." He went back, and this time selected the Contagion branch that was above Mass Infection. The menu then seemed to take both branches instead of just the one selected. "As you can see, this is where that ten limit matters. We can in fact move more than one branch at a time, as long as the extra ones have a hard requirement of the one you start moving. Honestly just adding these two to my Fluid Pestilence here would make it almost worth it for someone, if they could handle the real downsides there." Flamescale glared at the half insulting way that was said.
"Now, there is another thing to point out," Red continued as he re-opened the Fluid Pestilence tree. "While it does let you just move into an open slot, if you have got close to nine then you can select to swap two branches between STs. So I could replace this useless Enhancement branch with actually valuable Contagion skills with a single Grafter."
Red then paused to go back a few menus, and Flamescale could feel Yellow-Glow's unhappiness for that awkward moment of silence in the middle of the guide. "Now, I promised a couple of friends who weren't around for the successful run that I would go over what a Skill Vine is before I started to speculate on what we can do with switching out branches, and honestly it is really worth it to do that," he finally explained once they were back to the mode selection. "Now, a Skill Vine is a single branch from a Skill Tree that you have split off onto its own using a Grafter. It has the limitations that you cannot make a primary branch into a Vine, and you cannot select a branch that has another branch that needs it for the tree to still work." He demonstrated the second one using the same fungal zombie ST and a show of how it did not let him try and select the Contagion branch now.
"The rest of the information I've got is from another friend who already used one to make a Vine. You see, the reason we have an odd limit of nine for a Skill Tree, is that we are also getting a single slot to add one Skill Vine at any given time. The things can only be equipped when you have the skills to unlock at least one of the Vine's skills, and they don't start with any points when you make one, but whenever you earn points for a Skill Tree you get the full amount for your Vine too, so those are going to level really fast. I can already advise that you should find a solid starter branch, I've got a few videos linked in the description on some options, and then level it up as something to keep on hand when you are building up a ST-"
Flamescale paused the video, hopeful that it was a good stopping point before the next topic. It was possible that he would get back onto the information they wanted later, but that was enough to at least know what was known. "So, what does everyone think?" she asked, then thought better of her phrasing. "About the Grafters, not the video or RedStarScribe's ability to inform people."
"I hate to admit it, Boss, but we probably want to start with some kind of bio-weapon stuff. Like the crystal things," Squeaky surprised Flamescale by answering before a Void Entity could reply, with Sixteen nodding in uneasy agreement. "We just can't keep solid weapon stocks for that kind of fight. We drained a tanker and a half with your plasma guns, which isn't too strange for a fight like that but we also can't afford for that to happen again. Not unless we're building our own ammo depot to make the gas ourselves."
"We have the same issues with the guns," Sixteen clarified. "We lost almost half of our heavy plasma rifles, including two of the ones you made giant however that works. I want to say we should get something to let us travel with stuff, but having a backup is more important right now."
"Well, I'm going for getting giant myself," ThunderFang laughed at that set of replies. "For pretty much the same reason. I'd like to start with a bio-shield branch, but I need a way to actually fight something as big as the monster Mucin we just went up against."
"I believe that we all can make use of these, but a better guide than that is my first priority once we have a method to take on the threat effectively," Yellow-Glow specified dully. "We should start by trying to clear as much of the civilian instance's ancient bastion network as we can. While we are clearly not ready to capture a Citadel, we do know that enough damage should be able to destroy one. Preferably after having tried to gather some data once the likely soon to be completed translation is ready."
"I'm probably going to start with those Skill Vine things," Stone admitted, the short human one of the few who did not seem unhappy with the guide. "My ST is already fairly well rounded, and I want to test things out before I try adding anything to it."
"I have to worry that some Entities are going to get caught trying to get these," Sledge noted with a sigh, the pangolin clearly not as interested in the reward compared to the other consequences of it existing. "It is good that there is a reward worth the effort, but I hope we get more successful missions than failures."
"Not to mention they're going to need to top this if we ever hit another problem this bad," Jovian pointed out even as the three tailed fox clearly was going through his own skill menus. "I'm not sure what is worse than being trapped in pods forever that didn't leave any way out, but I don't think we want to find something worse and not have another reward. More of these might work for a while, but it has the risk that we lose people we need to keep doing this or that stay just doing this instead."
"I mean, it isn't going to be that bad right?" Wolf asked uneasily. "I know this is real, even if you guys haven't actually explained anything yet," That explanation was their next topic to cover. "But that doesn't mean it wouldn't just be getting stuck here until we die right?"
Flamescale looked over at ThunderFang to see how the dragoness thought on that topic, only to see that ThunderFang was nervously looking her way too. "Since this is all real, that means Synch-Tech is actually Void-Tech," ThunderFang started, to Wolf's clear surprise. "And even if it wasn't, we were already at least stuck here until the servers were destroyed, even if we died as humans, or AI." Flamescale blinked at that last addition, which was for some reason directed at Stone.
"If there ever were servers," Jovian pointed out seriously. "I've heard from some of the first players before that the first few weeks had some messages about server downtime, and I can't imagine that they haven't been told to go to extreme measures to shut it down."
"Those messages did appear," Yellow-Glow admitted, which might be the start of an argument if Flamescale didn't keep things in check. "If the servers ever existed in the first place is something I question myself, despite having been here to see them."
"I think Wolf would prefer a clearer answer," Sledge then cut in. "I am dead, Wolf. I know, very well, that I died with no hope of recovery. I can even give you the details to look up the accident, including some that are harder to fake, although anything that can be proven can be found at this point. I am dead, and I am still here, and I will continue to be here for at least as long as Void Strike exists."
Wolf looked at Sledge carefully during the brief speech. "Ah. Okay, I have no idea how I'm explaining that to my family," he admitted. "I mean, half of them signed up when I started to make sure it wasn't too bad of a game."
"My whole family is here," ThunderFang reminded him. "Although now I am worried they all didn't tell me for some reason."
"I am currently near death, and also using Synch-Tech robots commonly," Yellow-Glow agreed. "I have the risk of dying right in front of them and not realizing it until they realize I am still talking despite that."
That drew attention from everyone but Flamescale and Sledge. "Okay, better question, is everyone else who I didn't already know is possibly dead doing alright? I can't do much from Jupiter, but I've got some resources to throw around while I'm alive," Jovian questioned looking between everyone but Sledge, Stone, and Yellow-Glow.
"I'm fine as a human," Flamescale admitted tiredly. "No issues with my life."
"No, I don't need anything as a human," Wolf said with a huff, but he seemed to be growing more uneasy. "Ugh, I have to say 'as a human' now, don't I?"
"So, what I'm hearing is that we can still use Synch-Tech robots back home when we die there," ThunderFang mistakenly focused on, shifting the concern again, this time towards the dragoness. "Hey, mars needs people with jobs to help support the colonies. We aren't just a couple of days from earth like the moon is, and it hasn't even been a hundred years since we first landed a settlement yet."
"Okay, I'd say that is insane, but I am currently dealing with that being our plan A if anyone critical to the station dies suddenly," Jovian sighed and flopped down over dramatically. "I made the mistake of talking about this with my manager, and next thing I knew the whole research team was ordered to get accounts. Turns out we might be slightly short staffed." He paused for an instant. "Do not tell anyone I said that, we do not need the investigation."
"I get the feeling my talk about this sort of thing went better than the rest of yours," Stone said with a shake of his head.
"Wait, if your relatives know you're still here, how do you not know if you're dead or not?" Flamescale questioned with considerable confusion.
"Maybe he has a backup that is lost somewhere?" Sixteen suggested. "I know you think this is strange, but backups are a thing."
"I don't think people outside of the 319 usually have backups, Sixteen," Squeaky countered.
"You are DeepStoneMiner Three, right?" ThunderFang questioned, once again to Flamescale's confusion as it sounded like the dragoness agreed with the two former 319. "The martian auto-mining rig that got lost in a cave in after getting a Synch-Tech comm system to keep in contact. I know they gave that one a Void Strike account for entertainment, and you look like the character they associated with number three."
"Ha," Stone laughed while they all looked at him with confusion. "Would you believe you're the first person to actually ask me about that? Yeah, still trying to figure out if my hardware is destroyed or just offline."
"Wait, you've known why you don't know if you are alive or not this whole time?" Jovian asked unhappily. "You've had me worried about finding a way to talk to your relatives from Jupiter this whole time!"
"I'm not sure what to think about the only human of our group not being one normally," Flamescale sighed, now completely lost on what they were talking about. The plan to talk about how this was real seemed to have not worked out.
"He's a dwarf?" ThunderFang suggested with confusion, which also confused Flamescale and Wolf. Although Jovian started to laugh and Stone just looked vaguely boggled. "You know, short people who mine stuff in the ground."
"They're lunar," Jovian started to explain, laughing all the way. "Go on, tell her what a 'dwarf' is for you guys."
"Short unless you count the ears," Yellow-Glow described tiredly. "Fuzzy all over." He clearly ran out of ways to describe it without just saying it. "Like small rabbit people who really like big hammers, digging holes, and making that paste stuff I don't like much. We usually don't see much on the moon that uses the older variation on the concept. A lot of games and books actually give a lunar makeover to their dwarfs for us. I think they replace 'beards' with 'ears'. It is beards, right?"
"You need to ask if it is beards," ThunderFang grumbled, while Jovian laughed harder. "Wait, there is a lot of stuff they can do with their beards. What does that even look like when you use ears for it instead?" It honestly did get rather impressive. Shiny trinkets of both gemstones and raw metal were very common, often with fantastical brilliance. Although Flamescale didn't like the more horrible stories about cutting them off, which sounded just strange if it was only beards instead, even if dwarf ears grew back.
"So, they do have a lost backup then?" Sixteen asked with confusion. "Because I was kind of joking. Backups never work that well, and I didn't think Entities needed them?"
"I'll try and explain later," Flamescale reluctantly promised her combat leader. "I think we're going to get distracted too often if I tried now."
"On the topic of the little snakes who are apparently people," Wolf then specified, looking unhappy to end the brief amusement. "Have I been killing people? Because I'd like to know if I have an actual body count." ThunderFang huffed out sparks at that, and there was a pause for everyone to figure out how to answer the question.
"Well, that says a lot about what you guys are if he actually needs to ask if he's killing people at all," Squeaky said before a kinder person could talk. "Yeah, you definitely have been killing people if you've been killing people."
"You get used to it if you keep going," Jovian said bluntly in addition to that now that the silence was already broken badly. "Many do not when they learn of this. This instance is not the only one where those who cannot handle our nature live."
"We mostly just go after targets that we feel are better off dead than alive for the instance as a whole, or at least try to," Flamescale admitted with the best she could say about the topic. "We don't always manage that, but the alternative isn't for me at least."
"I have got to talk to my family about it," ThunderFang said somberly. "I'm going to help you guys with this ancient thing. They're at least a target I don't mind killing, but after that... I need to know if my family realized what I have been doing and didn't tell me, or if they were acting like these locals were people without knowing somehow."
"Honestly, I'm not that picky," Stone admitted gruffly. "I do things to get stronger and pass the time, and generally just avoid the really messed up stuff." The short human, Flamescale refused to think of something with ears that short as a dwarf, then shrugged. "Well, not if the idea is to fight the messed up stuff, that's always good fun."
Unfortunately none of their clarifications seemed to actually help Wolf out, as the wolf shaped Void Entity seemed to get only more and more horrified as they went on. "I- I can't do this," he said with a break in his voice. "I can't, I'm not. I gotta go." Flamescale made sure that he picked the right direction to flee towards the civilian arcology, but otherwise nobody stopped the wolf man on his quick retreat.
"I think he expected us to say he had not," Yellow-Glow said sadly.
"It probably says worse things about us that the rest of us are not stopping than about him since he's deciding to stop," ThunderFang said and relaxed notably. "Nothing good about us at least."
"I thought you needed to talk to your family?" Sledge questioned with some concern.
"My family already went over the basics when I got them home again," the dragoness rumbled. "They apparently 'weren't sure' about letting me keep killing people before, but now they are 'very glad' I was and 'proud' of me for having 'an actual body count' as Wolf just put it." Sparks literally flew out along with spit at the word 'proud' and the quote of how Wolf had put it. "I need a break from them and some acceptable targets right now, so I hoped going easy on him would keep him from panicking and give me an excuse why I wasn't staying with them right now."
"Well, there is an option I didn't know to worry about when I have to explain my own 'body count' to my family," Flamescale admitted, finding it even more uneasy that they might take her kills that way. It was one thing for her family to be disappointed, but proud was another thing entirely.
"Are we part of the body count, the family, or both?" Squeaky had the audacity to ask. "Because we do need that explanation too."
"Squeaky, I understand that you have a point, but you are about to lose speaking privileges," Flamescale said tightly to her creature.
"How about we change topic back to getting ready for our next step?" Jovian suggested. "Maybe try out our Grafters now to see if we can make the next one easier to get, even without Wolf."
"What exactly is the plan for the next step?" ThunderFang asked as Flamescale got started with looking at her best options for moving branches. "I think I'm the only one here who wasn't part of your group before, so I don't actually already know."
Flamescale paused in her comparison of Light Bio-Weapons, Heavy Bio-Weapons, and Crystal Weapons to consider that reality. Wolf had honestly not been given the full details yet either, but they were at least planning on him if things had worked out better. A part of her had mistakenly discarded that thought when Wolf left, probably because ThunderFang had so quickly joined the rest of them in their explanation to Wolf.
"There are three primary objectives for our group at this time," Yellow-Glow helpfully started to explain, probably with the speech he had ready for Wolf. "The first is to identify the critical parts of an ancient bastion network that need to be a priority to destroy for the safety of Void Entity operations in associated instances. Once that is done we then must ensure that all civilian Void Entity instances such as the one your family dwells within have had those critical components destroyed or captured. Finally, we must create proper guides, actual ones worth using, that allow for other Void Entities to safely engage these targets on their own to make any instance they are operating within safe."
"First thing we do in practice will probably be to clear the rest of the inner ring of this meta-instance," Sledge added with a nod at the dragoness. "Find out if we missed any other Void Labs that people might have been taken to, see if there is anything else on the ring that gives a Grafter, and I personally want to see if we can simply destroy a Citadel with a few megaton scale nuclear weapons. To make sure that this civilian instance at least is safe before we move on to the others."
That prompted a more detailed discussion of their typical combat requirements that Flamescale had heard before, so she went back to her own choice. A Skill Vine would probably be the best option if she wanted to get as many points as possible if it really did get the full amount rewarded with the ST, making it so you effectively got double the skill points. However, it also would start without any points, and would be limited to just the single branch. At the moment she needed extra firepower now, not after another few missions, so instead of the optimal path she was going to directly add a branch to her Fluid Pestilence Skill Tree.
Light Bio-Weapons had Chitin Spikes, Acid Sprayers, and a shotgun like Fragment Cannon, along with other skills to upgrade each of them in a variety of ways. She would need to deal with the weapons only reloading when she was solid, but she would also have access to the reload rate skills and damage improvement skills that would make that less of a complication. The main downside was that it would take many points for them to equal heavier weapon systems.
Heavy Bio-Weapons had the Bio Missiles, Bio Cannon, and powerful Bio Laser skills, along with their own improvement skills. Heavier weapons that cost more points to upgrade, but came with more combat ability. However, even at their best they would not have as short of a reload time, and that could be very limiting with the reload resetting whenever she or her creatures liquefied.
The two ranged Bio-Weapons branches also both had the downside of being exposed weapons. She would have to leave the skills unused, or add the Hidden Bio-Weapons tree as well to hide the few that could be hidden without losing access to them for a time.
Crystal Weapons by contrast did not have any direct damage upgrades to the weapons it provided, although it did use only a single skill to reduce the reload speed for all the weapons instead of needing a specific skill to speed up each one. It also had more of a mixture of weapons, with a melee focused Crystal Blade skill that was possibly similar to some skills from the Melee Bio-Weapons branch that she outright was not considering, the Crystal Shards launcher skill that was similar to Chitin Spike although without as many levels or upgrades, a Crystal Cannon that did have its own damage upgrades but could only stack to two cannons, and the Crystal Missiles skill that again did not offer as many missile launchers as the Bio-Weapons variant. However, both the Shards and the Missiles came with a skill to hide the launchers, and the blade skill seemed to be somewhat hidden as well.
Really it wasn't a choice, Crystal Weapons did everything she wanted for after this rush to fight was over. It wasn't perfect, she personally did not like that the cannon did not come with a hidden version and would have liked the ability to make the Shards explosive the way the Chitin Spikes could be augmented by a skill, but it was good enough for her needs. Using the Grafter to move a Crystal Weapons branch from one of her many Liquid Crystal Skill Trees to her Fluid Pestilence was just as easy as the video had implied, with the only minor complication being a message that had her confirm an automatic removal of the one-off skills that would now be part of her current Skill Tree.
A part of her expected to feel some form of change to altering a Skill Tree, something special for such an unusual new effect, but there wasn't anything different immediately but the lack of her one-off skills. She had forty two points unspent from the assault, and she immediately sank most of them into the new branch.
Bio and Crystal Weapons branches all broke from typical skill costs in that getting multiple levels of some weapons had a flat cost for every level instead of an increasing one, but that was balanced by the other skills that actually improved their stats being costly. Crystal Shard launchers cost one point per launcher, and could be stacked ten times in total, less than the fourteen times that a Chitin Spike skill could stack to at the same cost per level. Up to six of them could then be improved with a two point per launcher skill to allow them to hide, making it so she could only have six if she wanted them hidden which was also four less than the hidden version of Chitin Spike. With that in mind she spent six points right now to get used to what would be the full quantity she could hide later.
Crystal Missiles were more expensive, but still had a flat cost per launcher of five points. They also had a max limit of six launchers, again four less than the bio variant capped at, and only two could be hidden for the large cost of ten points to hide each launcher. All six launchers would cost the same thirty points as just having two hidden missiles. Ten of Flamescale's points went in now to get back her now typical two launchers.
After that she looked at the two other weapons. Crystal Blade allowed her to turn part of her body into a sharp crystal blade, although it would need more levels to do more damage and have greater durability, and it had a fairly long time before she could forge another. One point to have it as an option was all she put into that melee option.
Crystal Cannon was powerful, but could not be hidden and was a base cost of five points, with another ten point skill to get a second cannon. Like the blade this skill increased in cost per level normally to improve damage and area of effect. Unlike the blade she didn't add this skill, as while it could be helpful she had not had good luck with getting the bio-weapon version to actually fit on her body in a reasonable way. She did not want to look silly with a giant cannon on her, especially when she could instead just get more missiles for the same cost as the first cannon skill level.
The final skill of the branch was strange for a Bio-Weapon branch, but welcome here. Crystallization Speed was a flat reload time reduction for every single one of the Crystal Weapons at the same time. Two points for the first level with an increase of two points per level was somewhat costly, but paying twenty points total for the first four levels of ten was worth it. That investment nearly cut half the reload time off the Crystal Shards, and almost a quarter off the missiles. Which told her that there would be very little reload time at all for the shards at the max level of ten, and half the time for the missiles.
That left her five points, which could have gone to another missile or a cannon, but instead were invested into her other skills that did grant some bonus damage. A third level of Infectious Strikes impacted those weapons as well for the biggest bonus she could get out of what she had, then the last two into a second level of a skill to increase the damage of the Fire status effect. All together it gave a nice boost to her combat ability for their next operations.
"Wait, you guys are going to be doing this right now?" ThunderFang fully realized just as Flamescale finished. "Not that I mind getting my family safe sooner, but I didn't think we had a reason to rush right now."
"We do not know for sure that we found everyone who was taken," Flamescale repeated, just in case ThunderFang had not realized why they wanted to see if there were any other labs on this meta-instance. "I don't know if anyone had a full list of everyone who lived in your family instance, and we also don't know if there is another instance that is connected, or if you missed some of those who were traveling with you that got caught."
"We do, I made sure to check in with all of them I could remember," ThunderFang corrected thoughtfully. "But I guess we didn't all get there in time to know we didn't miss anyone else who might have gotten caught." Then the dragoness grew in size quite a bit, from five meters to fifteen. "Okay, that will help, but forty points for the next level is a bit more than I expected."
"Your next level is equal to my five headed form," Flamescale pointed out dryly. "I spent one hundred to get there."
"You have five of those slithering around, I just get the one," ThunderFang joked back, with Jovian and Stone both seeming rather amused with that counter.
---
[Author's Note]
Here we have a more complete explanation of the new capability for changing skill trees around.
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