Lethe nodded. Had she thought I was just greedy? There was so much more to me than just my greed. I was also attractive, and powerful. And ambitious. "What happens when we get to Melasia?"
"We find Asha, and then I buy as much of it as I have the money for. The goal is to own every crown. When I get another crown, I'll be able to lend the gear to guild members. Once we four have crown gear, we won't need to hide in weak armor anymore." Speaking of which. Keeping up appearances was important, walking around in level on armor would give away the fact that I wasn't wearing my best gear. Players and npcs from Zezhria could probably identify me on sight, more so for the npcs, but that didn't mean all npcs had the ability to pick a king out of a crowd. "Imp, replace all current armor with level-appropriate gear."
I heard a squawk from Lethe. I glanced at her, but she'd vanished again. She really was a Shadow. She loved being stealthed. "Dude! What's with the nudity?" I glanced at Hell. What was he talking about? I looked down and realized I was completely nude. "Rocking a new style, or what?" he guffawed crudely. Blitz sniggered.
Well, one thing had been confirmed. "Now we know that if you take off your gear there isn't any underwear underneath it anymore. I'm providing you guys with valuable information. Feel free to thank me." It took a full minute for the imp to return with my new gear. Every second of which I spent nearly twitching as I desperately stopped myself from trying to hide like a blushing virgin. I didn't blame Lethe for remaining invisible, but I was a bit irritated that she was good enough at stealth to make it impossible for me to see if she was checking me out, though.
When the imp finally returned, I was faced with a choice I hadn't known I could make. Since I had multiple classes, each appearance was an option for me. I ended up choosing the Cultist look of a black hooded habit. It was a strange thought, that I could look thirty six different ways without changing my gear. I tried to change it while wearing it, and I confirmed both that it was possible and that I wasn't rendered nude in the process of changing.
After he lost interest in the joke, Hell sent his imp off as well. He didn't sell his current gear, though, so he was clothed while his imp was away. It would have been a funnier joke if he had to spend a minute in the nude as well. Just to show that he could take a joke as well as he could laugh at others.
Over the next few days, both Blitz and Lethe came out of stealth a few times, revealing that they had been even more private than Hell with their change of gear. Both chose to look like Shadows, though. Hell was wearing a Warlord gambison, with heavy metal pauldrons. He took joy in proving they were stronger than wood by shoulder rushing the occasional tree we passed, demanding bets on whether he could blow through the tree before it toppled.
Until it wasn't the odd tree, or maybe a copse, but a tree line that appeared two miles in front of us. This was a solid wall of trunks that just snuck up on all of us. Fog of war. Totally blocked until I'd explored it. I glanced back and by enhancing my vision with several dozen buffs I could see a tiny smudge on the horizon. So the world was flat. Good to know. Not that I'd ever doubted Ryne's word. Hail Ryne.
Time to make some more slav…pets. Who was I trying to kid? They were slaves. Monster slaves. And they were awesome. I grinned as I sprinted into the trees. The monsters here weren't what I was expecting. I saw nothing but a bunny and a bat that both fled my appearance. Damn. No monsters. Unless…the most dangerous monster in the most innocuous body. I blitzed forward and turned the bunny to pulp with a kick. If she didn't do it, I could. Later. I discarded the idea of a monstrous killer bunny until I had enough power to relax into my throne. A true pet project.
But…what was the other option? No monsters at all? In Ryne's world? Or…maybe they were just stealthed. Since it was a beginner area I doubted that they'd have complete stealth like skilled rogues or panthers, but I wasn't going to put the effort into finding their shadowy forms in the poor lighting of the forest. The trees were thick and alive, so their shade was almost perfect. A few lances of sunlight broke the cover, but that was the exception. Perfect ambience for the wispy shadows of stealthed amateurs to hide in. Maybe they were all assassins with massive backstab modifiers. "Lethe and Blitz, you're going to want to get behind me." I wasn't sure if she could hear me, but if she didn't that was on her. I wasn't being quiet. I knew my next spell would blast her into oblivion if she was in the area of effect, though. If the monsters were stealthed, I'd just have to destroy them without being able to see them. Gunning for monsters I couldn't see was a tricky business. I used area necromancy spells to fill the forest ahead of me with death-fog. Upping the level of the spells to make sure I could kill any monster weaker than a panther took a couple of minutes, but I wasn't going to risk the monsters being more powerful than I realized. I didn't want to die as soon as I entered the woods.
It wasn't quite as impressive as the lightning storm I'd used earlier, but the effect was much more devastating. It looked like a thick mist, from where I was standing. Just mist. But I could feel the death emanating from the mist. It was strange. I wasn't used to being able to feel the magic in the air. Or maybe it was usually too thin. I could see it, but this…it was almost a taste to the air. The game let you identify it, but it was a basic look-thought type system. This was a feeling. I could feel death in the air. Was I actually developing an entirely new sense? Connected to the one that let me feel the flow of my own mana? It was…surreal. Better than real.
"Not very impressive. I liked your lightning spell better." Hell grumbled. Maybe he was regretting not having more mage classes. I didn't blame him, but he hadn't seen how devastating a melee character could be in his own right. That spell probably wouldn't even kill him, and it was as powerful a spell as I'd been able to make. I'd needed to combine a death cloud spell with three other variations of the same spell and an acid mist spell to make it this potent. That was the point of tanks, to take the damage while the mages charged up the damage behind them. Their skills activated instantly and with extreme brutality. You never wanted to be without mages in a battle, but I'd bet on the warrior over the mage in a duel any day of the week. Maybe he'd lose if he was up against five, three if they had good teamwork and were willing to lose one or two.
The mist cleared to show barren dirt. Not even the corpses or the trees had survived. As with the last massive blast spell, I felt all the monsters that had witnessed the spell join my ranks out of fear. They were level fifteen. But, not only that. I could see them around us. Their images were wispy and transparent, but I could see them clearly. Had their stealth completely run out? They resembled my inventory imp, only bigger. And their horns were thicker. "Become visible." My pets did, but I could still see some that were wild. And stealthed. I could see someone while they were stealthed? Not just the wisps, but I could see them like their colors were a bit washed out.
I glanced at my skills and noticed I was a level one hundred visionary. It leveled so fast? I knew noticing something while stealthed improved the skill, but I hadn't even noticed them. I guess killing them was harder while not noticing them, but…that seemed a bit like an exploit that was way too easy. Especially with the population density of these monsters. They weren't quite as grouped up as the boars, but it wasn't by that wide a margin. Half, or so. Guess that would be a benefit for the original players that future generations would only be able to envy. Like my new permanent buff; the ability to see all stealthed units. Getting stealth to level one hundred would probably negate this, but it was still awesome! And I got more pets every time I destroyed something using ridiculous levels of overkill. That was an awesome ability. And incentive to go wild, which I hardly needed.
I still needed to give orders, though. That could become annoying as I got more and more of them. Could I give a blanket order to all of my pets? One that wouldn't supercede current or future orders…like a default pet action set. I grabbed the whole mental inventory and ordered them to eat boars and grass until they were level fifteen with their stats maxed out, then eat the imps and the grass of this forest as they explored. I added that when they reached level ninety and maxed out those stats to start hunting in the forest surrounding Zezhria for the panthers. I added to avoid npcs and players as a precaution. I didn't want all of my player subjects to get killed by my pets or pets to have to run all the way back to their farming because some godly npc was walking by. I felt the orders being accepted. Perfect. This system was really too convenient.
My new imps vanished as they accepted my orders. "How'd you know they were there?" Blitz asked. I was just unwilling to believe that Ryne would leave this area empty. Stealth was just the obvious tricky way to kill arrogant noobs. Not that I thought that was a bad thing. Hail Ryne. "And how'd you make them serve you like that?"
"I knew they were there because Ryne wouldn't leave an area peaceful. The monsters might be invisible, but they're always there. And as for the serving bit, the monsters can feel fear. And they can see the world around them. It wasn't as terrifyingly destructive as the last one I used, so I didn't get as many monsters ready to piss themselves. And the difference was that the lightning spell could've killed monsters ten levels stronger than the boars. The imps were only beaten by five levels or so in the basic level of the spell. Area spells aren't designed to get one-hit kills. Even using the best area spells I've got, I can't max out their fear unless they're close." At least, those were all the reasons I thought I'd gotten the pet yield I did. Unfortunately, it meant that this particular exploit wouldn't be particularly hidden. Lots of players liked hunting in areas that were really easy for them, even if the experience wasn't as good. There could be more factors as well, though. Even with all of the factors I'd figured out, I'd only gotten as many as I had because the perimeter of the spell was massive. The imps were more spread out than the boars had been. And the trees blocked visibility, too. You can't fear something you don't notice. Maybe lightning being more flashy played a factor as well. "Let's get moving."
"That was your strongest area spell? What happened to the lightning storm? Or a fire spell?" Hell demanded. Fire was a popular destruction spell, but I didn't want destruction. I wanted death. Destruction, lighting and blinding effects, stuns, burns, and other such status effects. Death usually had pure damage, unless it was a leech or curse but those were chosen modifiers instead of implicit ones. "Don't you have some massive fireball spell that could do more damage?"
Damage over time effects also had more absolute damage than instant damaging effects. "Fire is destruction. That cloud was death. The cloud draws its damage from the vitality it destroys. The mist only dissipated because it ran out of vitality to eat. If a dragon were to sit in that cloud, eventually it would die." it would cost more mana to keep it alive for so long, but way less than to cast it again. "Fire, and destruction magic in general, does a set value of damage and then is mostly gone. Death magic is a terrifying DoT because it does more damage when there are more targets. The strongest spells draw their power completely from the target itself and deal percentage damage, so even a lower level spell could debilitate a powerful foe if it doesn't get addressed. The more powerful the enemy, the stronger death magic becomes. That's why every successful battle party has at least one Necromancer in it." Speaking of which, I could use some skeleton slaves. I shot a raise dead spell into the dead area, but nothing happened. I'd destroyed the corpses beyond hope of raising. Too bad.
"Where can I get a staff like that?" Blitz demanded. He was looking at my staff with hungry eyes. I could tell that he'd checked out the stats when I started using massive spells. "And how the hell did you get one?" so he did understand the power of this staff? Why hadn't he noticed for the lightning? He was a hard wizard to figure out.
"Buying the crown of a race comes with a set of gear. This staff is mine because I own the crown of the Dark Elf Emperor. You have to own a guild to buy a crown, though. Don't worry, as long as you stay on top in my guild, you'll end up with some crown gear or another eventually. My plan is to buy all of them. Oh, yeah, and you can respawn. So don't sweat dying too much." I kept forgetting that Blitz hadn't been with us since the beginning like Lethe and Hell. He didn't even know who Ryne was. Was that a blessing or a curse? Of course a curse. Hail Ryne.
"You guys get tired?" Blazing hells, that came out of nowhere. Blitz was leaning against a tree, but was it that sudden of an onset? Had he been poisoned by something? I wasn't tired. "I'm totally drained. Been awake for almost a full year. You realize that? We've been in the game for a year."
Really? I glanced at Hell. Lethe was standing next to him. Neither looked as exhausted as Blitz, but they had circles under their eyes. Did I have circles under mine? It felt like a couple of weeks, at most. Then again…the days and night went by really fast. Were the days as long as they had been before? "I could sleep." Hell shrugged. He was the type that wouldn't admit anything was wrong unless he was about to fall on his face. Had it really been a year? Had we walked that much? I didn't really pay attention to time while we walked, I hardly even noticed the difference between night and day at all anymore. All elves had good vision in the night, so it was just the colors that changed and not the clarity. Maybe it had been a year.
"Alright. You guys sleep, I'll take watch." I wasn't even slightly tired. I couldn't feel the slightest desire to sleep. Could it have been a year? I wasn't the best at keeping track of the days while we were going through the pasture, but there had to be some sort of alarm that rang when you hit the year mark. A bonus event or something. An alarm that went off and made me realize I'd been asleep this whole time and I had to go back to school tomorrow. Something.
Maybe I was different because I'd been asleep when I started the game? Npcs slept every day in the beta. Would Ryne change sleep cycles? Was that the sort of detail she'd care to change? I didn't think so. Would the developers, prior to Ryne taking over…that was much more likely. Being in the game more fully probably wasn't it. Maybe because I was a full person and Ryne had used pieces of a few players to make all of the npcs and monsters combined. That wouldn't make the other players fall asleep first, though. Had more of my soul transferred? I didn't have any answers. I was leaning towards the developers, though. Maybe because we were elves. Or to implement a time dilation effect so players felt like they were playing for more than eight hours at a time.
Just thinking about it wasn't giving me any answers, though. Watching them sleep was also quite boring, so I started building spells. I combined buff spells. Those were silent and didn't produce much light, so it was unlikely that I'd wake anyone up. Every time I released a spell, I could make the next one faster. I started adding more and more layers to the spells. Adding in a dozen different types of support spells. I avoided healing spells because they were so bright, but most of the other support spells were both silent and dim. A few distraction spells were loud, but most support was meant to be felt, not observed. Temporarily increasing or decreasing stats didn't have much of a visual effect, but it could sway a battle.
Given the recent scare, however, I was now paying attention to the passage of time. After a week I started to worry that my companions had died. I checked their vitals, but they were fine. Just asleep. So long as I didn't get tired, I didn't need to wake them up to take a watch. I went back to my spell work.
A month passed before I realized my spells were materializing as fast as I could think of them. My cast speed was maxed out. As were my combining and overcasting abilities. I studied that buff and realized I could control the arcane circles around the spells. I whipped out a five-layer fireball to check. I could understand the arcane script! Most of it was regarding damage. One added an explosive blast and another induced burning. I added an empty ring and started filling it with blast script. The area of effect increased a hundredfold. As did the mp cost. That one fireball drained my mp to five points. I cast a warning charm and a bubble of silence around the three sleepers and rushed to test out my new spell.
I released it at one of the misty imps. The body of the imp was ripped to pieces, but so was everything within a dozen yards. The concussive blast knocked the trees over in a ring three times as large. I felt hundreds of the imps join my army. The blanket statement applied itself to them and they rushed for the pasture. Amazing! I had an automatic army creation system set up.
I laughed as I realized the power that my spells now had. I didn't need to combine them. I could create them. All I needed was a base circle and I could change it as I saw fit! Infinite possibilities. My only barrier was my vocabulary, and that would fill in as I gained levels. I was a god of magic! Immature, but a god was still a god even if it was a baby god.
But I was more than just a wizard. Could I do the same with physical abilities? Melee abilities didn't form the arcane circle…so how would I hold it just short of completion? I readied a leap ability that the Berserker had. So…how far could I leap? I tried to think of a double leap, maybe that would work.
I released it and didn't even move. So, that wasn't the way. I ran through all of the other leap abilities, and none of them worked when I tried to think of them twice in a row. I placed the tip of the staff against the ground and thought of another ability. Pulverize. A Barbarian could slam the ground with a two-handed weapon, making a stunning shockwave. I used it a dozen times before I tried stopping just before the ability executed. I lifted my staff over my head and thought of pulverization. My stamina went down, but I didn't activate the ability, just like a spell. I grinned as I thought of a simple blast spell. The spell itself formed in a blue arcane circle at the bottom of my staff. The one that formed over the head of my staff was a matte yellow. I couldn't see it, but it was slightly glowing, which provided enough light for me to see, like a firefly. The blue spell was much brighter, though. Then I added a significant number of blast phrases in the second circle, making it a good deal brighter, and I couldn't see the yellow light anymore. Giddy at my success, I couldn't hold back. Pulverize.
I slammed my staff against the ground, and the blast was memorable. Trees around me were reduced to splinters. I felt another twenty imps join my army. Now we were cooking with fire. Time to stack stamina charged abilities. If I could mix a stamina ability with magic, I could mix stamina with more stamina. I crouched and thought of the leap spell again. My stamina drained. This time, though, I could see the circle around my heel. Half of it, anyway. Could I add arcane script to a pure stamina ability? Ten failed attempts didn't deter me. I would figure this out! No matter how I worded the script, it wouldn't apply itself to the leap. Maybe I needed an arcane circle. One that drained stamina instead of mana.
I tried adding a ring and a yellow circle appeared at my feet. Beautiful! It drained my stamina and not my mp. But the staff blocked the drain of stamina just like it would for a spell! I'd be willing to bet that nobody had ever tried making abilities into spells before. Or using a staff to block stamina use. There was nothing wrong with having another unique advantage. I added another circle and filled it with distance and speed script.
I released the ability and felt myself burst from my position like a rocket. The wind whipped past me like a hurricane as I blew through trees like they were feathers. It was a struggle to keep my mouth closed, but I really didn't want to eat bark, so I clenched my jaw and pressed my lips together with all of my strength. I cleared the woods and was flying over the pasture at a speed that turned all of the boars to streaks of brown.
I touched down with a blast of concussive force that blew nearby boars to smithereens. Another hundred boars joined my army. I grinned and laughed as I turned around and repeated the exact same ability. This time I blew trees to splinters upon my impact with the ground. Only one imp joined my army.
I'd missed my exact return trajectory. I looked around for a second before I decided searching would be pointless. I thought of my alarm spell and felt it a great distance from my location. Damn, I must have missed my trajectory by ten degrees or more. So…how could I pinpoint my leap? I pulled out my map and zoomed in. I could see my warning spell on it. It was a pink circle around the cursors of my companions. I started my leap and waited for a target to come up. I turned every way I could think of and changed my distance script a hundred times. I couldn't make a target appear on the map. So it only showed active magic. That made sense, I guess. I put the map away and tried to figure out another way to target my leap.
Could I put a target in the arcane script? I activated it and tried to use Lethe as a script. And it worked! The stamina cost was ridiculous, but it worked. I could make homing attacks! As I studied the script, I realized it wasn't exactly homing, it had coordinates in the script instead of descriptions of what it should do. It took up two whole rings. I shifted it slightly so I wouldn't land on her and released the ability. I blasted through the trees and smashed to earth a hundred yards north of the camp. I jogged back to them and started activating chants and other physical buff abilities. That had to have some sort of skill attached to it that would make it easier. My mp use had gone down by fifty percent when I leveled up that skill to one hundred. Getting that as well as instant casting would be beyond valuable.
Lethe was awake when I entered the tiny clearing. "Where were you? I woke up and thought you'd rushed off without us." She studied my expression and frowned. Was she one of those people that could look at someone and read all of their thoughts like a semi-boring book? "And what did you figure out?"
I considered hiding it from her, but decided against it. She would be my lieutenant when my guild finally skyrocketed, I needed her to be undefeatable or she wouldn't be able to control the players. Besides, I needed to tell someone. It was too beautiful a discovery to keep to myself. "By combining spells to level one hundred, I unlocked the ability to control the script in the circles, but then I thought…why can't I do it with stamina-based abilities. I mean, the principle is the same. They're the magic of the physical classes. And it worked. I could leap back to Zezhria with one cast. The stamina cost might drain me for a day or two, but it would be worth it! Imagine, I could move back and forth between any city I wanted. I could go to Melasia right now, unlock the port pad, and get back here! Maybe even in under a month! It took us a year to clear the pasture area. Imagine how large this world is…travel would be so much easier. And I could work magic into every physical combat ability. Seriously, the possibilities are blowing my mind!" A sudden urge hit me. It was unreasonable and barely thought out by the time I accepted it as inevitable. I checked to make sure the other two were still asleep. Then I linked my mind with hers and taught her the rest of the classes. It happened instantly. That was new. Training was a skill too? "Don't tell them I can do that. As far as they know, the limit of learnable classes is fourteen." Ridiculous number for something to stop at. Who could only do fourteen of anything? Maybe ten or fifteen would make sense, but fourteen? I should have thought that through better.
She was getting tougher. Lethe was gaping at me like I'd just gone mad instead of crying or screaming. "You've had this much power the whole time?" she gasped. So she wasn't looking at me. That was just where her eyes had happened to be when she froze. I couldn't help my snigger. Sharing secrets was fun, and it also felt good to see someone recognize how powerful I was. "Why do you trust me so much? It doesn't make sense. You were friends with Hell long before I came along."
"Don't know, really. I just think that Hell is a player before all else. If he sees a chance to gain more power by betraying me, he'll do it. Nothing personal, just the way a gamer works. You seem to actually follow me. Not because I'm powerful, but because it's me doing the leading." That made sense, right? Hell was an opportunist, whereas Lethe had no real reason to follow me. She'd only met me once, and at that time I'd given her a full lecture, and yet she'd lined up to join me at the first opportunity. She wasn't like Blitz, either. She wasn't in my guild for promise of a formidable leader. "Blitz wants to hide behind me, Hell wants to use me, and you just feel like following me. I figure, you'll be the last one to betray me. Or, you'd be the last one to actively betray me. You might ditch my guild, but you'll do it with no hard feelings. Blitz or Hell would try to make sure I was destroyed when they leave. Fear of reprisals, and all that."
She vanished. Of course she vanished. That was her response to everything. I didn't mind. The more she was invisible, the less likely it was that Hell or Blitz would notice that she now had all of the melee and mage classes as well as her rogue ones. I decided not to tell her that I could still see her form, she was just misty now. And colorless. I could tell that she was hugging her knees, though. The image wasn't clear enough to read emotions, though, so it was still an effective way to hide your response to surprising information.
"I would also advise killing the stealthed enemies. Just a thought." I'd given her all thirty six classes, I might as well make her an equal. Or as close to one as I could. No matter how much I trusted her, there was no guarantee that she wouldn't betray me one day. Maybe she wouldn't make a clean break, like I thought. Maybe she'd be the type that worked in deep and then wrenched everything around. I would definitely die in that situation. Hell and Blitz were more straightforward. They'd bring an army to kill me. Lethe would be the one to dig a dagger between my shoulder blades if she felt the need to betray me. She already had, twice, but neither had been a serious attempt at murder. Hopefully. Had she known I could take it when she stabbed me in the back the first time? The future could hold any number of possibilities, though. Even if she was a potential assassin, maybe I could turn her into my assassin before she found someone she wanted to follow more.
Hell rolled over. From the way his mouth was hanging, he was probably snoring like a chainsaw too. He hadn't been snoring before I activated silence, but his mouth had been closed. I don't think his eyelids had even twitched while he slept, but his body was an entirely different question.
Lethe dropped her stealth, fully upright. She looked…focused. "How long was I out? Did any of them wake up and then go back to sleep, or anything? Any sleep walking or talking? You tired at all?"
I shrugged. I hadn't been keeping track after that first month. "I stopped keeping track after a month of waiting around. As for the rest…no? I kept a wide perimeter so I wouldn't notice snoring or talking. Nobody walked around, though. Hell rolls so much it could be called walking, but he just goes in circles. Turns out I don't need to sleep at all." So far. Maybe I was the type that was awake for a decade and then slept for a couple years.
"So guestimate. A month and three days? Another year? What would you say?" he wasn't groggy at all. So sleep was different in this world. I'd guessed that from the fact that they slept forever, but now I knew another way it didn't fit.
I frowned as I considered that. How long had it taken me to work out the magic pulverize? A month? Two? So, I'd say two. The leap had been faster. Half as long. One month. How long had I spent in the air, though? Multiple days, that much I knew, but was it weeks? "I don't know, four maybe." Sure. Why not? I was terrible at keeping track of time. Apparently.
Time was driven from my mind suddenly. Apparently, my panthers were going to work on their own kind now. I struggled to keep from screaming as I blasted up the levels. The power was a glowing sphere of agony in my head. I couldn't even concentrate enough to consciously lessen the pressure. All I could think of was the pain and keeping it from showing. This hurt way more than getting a hundred pets.
After a period that could have been minutes or years, I started dispersing the power. I looked through the abilities, knowing that the vast majority of them were useless now that I could make any ability do what I wanted. Especially with all of my classes. The melee fighters only had so many abilities. The basis of a few abilities were different, but most of it was just the writing of the arcane circles that most melee and rogue classes never noticed. The only real knowledge I was gaining was runes for the center of the circles and vocabulary to fill the rest. And colors. Spells changed color depending on their effect. Some of the more powerful spells had arcane script that I hadn't understood before that became clear, but that was just a higher level of amplification or a wider range for area spells.
I winced as I hit level ninety. It was a significant level for the Necromancer and the Conjurer. Level one hundred would have me rolling on the ground. I could feel it. Even if it came alone, it would be an agonizing level to reach. Level fifty had been the worst of this batch.
"Welcome back to the world of the living." Blitz chirped. So he was awake. Wonderful. "Thought you'd become a glowing corpse there for a second. Drained your hp so low your crown gear appeared. Terrifying stuff, I must admit." That was an effect? I didn't know it would auto-equip. I agreed with his opinion, though. The Dark Elf Emperor was not one to piss off. It was high-level plate-type gear, so there was no skin showing. I was a black metal weapon. I knew that the ridges and spikes were more for show than effective fighting, but I couldn't help but wonder how effective the spike projecting out of my elbow would be if I rammed someone in the face with it. More or less than a mace?
"Indeed. Badass, aren't I? You can praise me more, if you want." of course I was proud of my set. It was gorgeous. "Too bad mythic gear has so many modifiers. I couldn't remember all of them for one piece of this set. Good to know they auto-equip like that, though." I'd learned a few of my staff's, but that was one piece. I had no idea what massive bonuses I was getting because I was wearing the rest. I could see that none of my stats were the same as when I wasn't wearing the set, but I couldn't tell how much of which stat belonged to each piece of the set, or what came from equipping more than one piece of the set at once. Or what came from the raised levels. All of my stats had increased exponentially, so it could have been any number of the above. Honestly, I didn't care. Apart from a few abilities, like the staff stopping the mp drain, most were just passive effects that didn't change your style. Probably. I'd never had mythic equipment before, but it was probably the same principle as other gear, right? I equipped the basic gear I'd had the imp get. "Imp, replace my current gear. Get replacements, I mean." I wasn't about to spend another minute or more in the nude because I forgot to give explicit instructions to the imp.
If I was going to fight a monster worth my time, I wanted to do it without my armor being reduced to ash before the battle began. I was close to the level where I wouldn't need to hide anymore, though. And getting closer every second.
It would be more convenient if I was armored like a skeleton. Their armor was part of their body, so it leveled as they did, gaining both form and function. I loved skeletons. Especially the strong ones. Their armor changed as they changed their jobs, maybe they were unique monsters that had access to classes. Level sixty skeletons had looked totally badass, whether it was their warrior, rogue, or wizard variants. There was a reason my first class was Necromancer. "I really want some skeletons. Haven't had any since the start of the beta. Any ideas as to how I kill monsters I can't see without destroying their bodies beyond raising?"
"You're asking us for ideas? That never happens." Hell chuckled. I didn't think he minded not being in charge. It must be a relief for him, not having to worry about the result of his decisions. He'd been a guild master in the beta. And he'd hated it. I knew that much. "Why not use a weak area of effect spell, that'll make them release their stealth to attack you. Then you know where they are."
It was a good idea. I released a low level cone-type fire blast. I accidentally fried the imps to the point that their bones clattered to the ground. The trees were completely burnt. I had to remember I was level ninety now. That was way too powerful to be playing among the level fifteen imps. "Whoops." I'd done it, though. I could raise skeletons. Summoning was a strange one, as far as spells went. I could summon skeletons out of pure magic, but it would slowly wither away as the magic I'd given it ran out. They were much more powerful than raised skeletons, but they were temporary. Raising skeletons was different from summoning them. It had a whole different rune. I pointed at the three dead imps and made the rune appear. Circle after circle ringed the grinning skull. I slowly filled the circles with all of the script I could manage. Overlapping the spells wouldn't work. I needed one spell of immense power, and who knew what would emerge? I even managed to add a fire rune into the arcane script of the tenth circle. I couldn't fit more than the one, though. And it blocked all other script from that circle. A rune didn't fit in the eleventh circle.
"Good god." nah, buddy. Goddess was a crazy bitch. Hail Ryne. Blitz whispered as he saw the rings continue to expand. I could almost feel his desire to be able to match my magical skill. "If that doesn't make an uber-monster, I'm going to be surprised. I'll bet you ten grand."
"You're on. Uber-monsters are harder to come by than you'd think. Dragons are one thing, but the others are way worse. Making one should be impossible." Hell was confident. Who knew, maybe I might make an uber-monster. It could happen. Once I was level two hundred and fifty using a spell with a hundred rings or so.
"I'll get in on this." Lethe had reappeared. I heard no gasps, so I assumed it wasn't readily apparent that she'd become more than twice as powerful as she had been. She was back to being invisible, though, so I assumed she'd listened to my advice. And dealt with it. "I say he'll make npcs out of them."
That would never happen, would it? Skeletons were monsters, not npcs. I was making pets, so they couldn't be npcs. My mp drained from full to nothing when I added the twentieth circle. I waited for it to refill, thinking of the power magic had in this world. Could it actually change the quality of a soul? Supposedly, they were both fragmentations, could I make a player out of these skeletons? Could I combine the souls? That's what necromancers were supposed to do, in mythology. Maybe Necromancers could do it too.
"How will we be able to tell who's right?" Blitz asked. Was he really a beta tester? So inconsistent! "As far as I could ever tell, monsters didn't have a cursor. Uber or otherwise."
"Monsters don't. Pets do. They bear the guild seal of their owner as their cursor. Skeletons actually have a class, so these might have class cursors as the visible bit instead. Black means monster. Purple means uber-monster. Green means npc." See, even Lethe knew the answer to that! What kind of player noticed me running around with too much money but never looked at a Necromancer's skeletons? She wasn't completely right, though. It was actually the background of the guild seal that changed color. And I'd only ever seen it black. So the red scar and glowing eyes would be all that remained. Unless you looked close enough that you could see the difference between the black of the background and the black of the skull.
Blitz snorted. Did he not believe that was the way it worked, or was he revealing that he'd known all along? "Nothing has a cursor except a player. Those yellow floating pyramids over the npcs heads don't really count. They're just rotating pyramids. With color. They can't even show how evil a character has proved himself to be during his 'life' in the game." I almost lost control of my spell in stupefaction. How could a beta tester think that?
"Haven't you ever looked at the pyramid? When you do, your head fills up with the information in their cursor. All players have is their class cursor over their heads, so how is that better?" Lethe growled. She apparently didn't like how Blitz was playing so ignorant either. I got that losing the exclamation point would make them seem less useful if you didn't know that yellow meant quest giver, but still. As if he'd never actually looked into the npc giving him a quest before. Ridiculous. They were the best part of this world in how detailed they were. And they were valuable parts of my empire, even if they were weaker than monsters in their full potential. Especially since I controlled all of the Dark Elves in Zezhria. Maybe the crown let me control all the Dark Elves anywhere. That would be cool. My guild cursor was inside every npc that called Zezhria home, though they still showed the pyramids to the world first. It was a beautiful thing. "They're full people, just like everyone else. Same as players!" I wouldn't go that far, Lethe. Their loyalty was more valuable than players and their potential for backstabbing, but being level-locked was a big problem. "You might want to remember that now that nobody has a glowing question mark floating over their head. Yellow means they've got a life that needs helping! Not just stupid quests for your precious experience, they need help!" She won the argument with pure aggression. Blitz even held his hands up in surrender.
I released my spell. The blast almost knocked me on my ass. It did knock the rest of them down. Oddly, there wasn't a health penalty. Strange. The skeletons I'd raised didn't resemble the imps at all. They could have been human, elf, or orc from their size and proportions. A small orc or a large elf, but it was possible. I couldn't tell more than that, because they were covered from head to foot in black plate. They looked like knights, though they had no class cursor. Their cursors were my guild seal, complete with the crown showing they belonged to the master. That was what happened when I raised skeletons from imps? No, as I looked through their stats I realized that they were level two hundred. I dropped to my knees as I realized this. They were as powerful as skeletons could be. They started to wander off, following the general orders I'd given to my pets, but I stopped them with a mental command. They weren't going anywhere. Any of those three could kill me. My gear would make it hard, but they could do it. Without going under fifty percent life. Damn, I was good. Truly, a god of magic.