I stared at the set of armor sitting on the enchantment block. It was a mythic set, complete with a wicked heavy ax. There was also a heavy sword, bow, and staff but they were in my inventory. I'd spent more money than I had since I bought a crown, but I'd consumed enough of every type of food to allow my pets access to all of my classes. The modifiers I'd already used on the armor boosted it in all sorts of ways, but there wasn't anything about helping specific situations. I'd been staring at this damn helmet for the past four days! I couldn't think of any combination of abilities that would affect every pet favorably. At least they wouldn't need replacements or problems with giving the armor to others when they died, I'd already tested and made sure that my pets respawned with the armor they'd been given. There was no body to loot. That saved me from a big problem, but also made me want to create a specific set for each type of pet, which would make the war preparations take ten times as long as they would have otherwise. At least.
"Fuck it!" I snarled at the set and shoved it off of the block, allowing the massive web of magic to dissipate. Mythic items were something else. "Make replicas of this set that will fit whatever pet is being equipped." The set was amazing. It was the largest base increase possible, but I hadn't used any of the more potent abilities. I'd given them amulets that blocked the mana cost for maintaining spells, but I wasn't sure how effectively they could use that ability. Even with everything I'd done to the set, I hadn't even used half of the available slots.
Now I had another problem to work out. I had back slots for two heavy weapons while I wielded my heavy sword and one regular sword with my hands thanks to the Os'Minog, but I didn't have a spare heavy weapon to fill the slot. It made sense to use another staff, and buff the hell out of my magic. Maybe the shield, but it had a bunch of redundancies I didn't need and I'd never taken significant damage. Even in this war, I wasn't planning on being a point man. Even assuming a second staff, now the problem became what to buff. Did I fill slots with elements when I had access to all of them and situations could lend themselves to specific ones? Did I buff my mana regeneration so I could cast even more? Was simple amplification the best idea? Damn it! This was why I'd never tried to mod items! Items were meant to be things you found! Judging shit from gold was one thing, creating gold from scratch was a completely different skillset.
Then I realized a gap in my current abilities; I had no bonuses to my passives. Auras were useable, but they reduced your overall mp, and that's not what I wanted. The auras themselves were potent, though. And they affected the surrounding allies as well. They could also overlap. I mentally ordered the skeleton carrying the base set to add aura cost reduction and effect increase to the primary set bonus before reproducing it. Auras…how did I want to work them? I wove magic through the altar into the item, feeling how much I could affect if I drew auras into the power of the item. I grinned as I found the result. I wouldn't gain half of the benefit I had been expecting out of the staff, but the auras would be so buffed I wouldn't need the rest. Increasing the area of effect to encompass the entirety of the world was one thing, but if I sacrificed half of the available slots I could reduce the cost to one point of mp. I could have a thousand active without noticing a difference. And the bonus affected all duration buffs. I could make myself into a fucking battlefield god!
The drain of my mp as I filled the staff to brimming with passive abilities was much more potent than I was expecting. I dropped to one knee as I tried to recover my balance. Losing so much so quickly was disorienting. I hadn't felt such a massive draw since I created the species, but this time felt more significant. When I'd made the species, I'd recovered almost instantly thanks to using the keep.
I stopped caring as I slid the second staff into its place on my back and started activating auras and other support spells and abilities. The rings of magic appeared one at a time and burned their mark into reality before I felt the power flood into me. My range for almost all of the auras was bigger than Zezhria, so I doubted anyone in town didn't notice. Each one had a small cosmetic effect for the caster, but when you overlapped too many on top of each other, it just started to look like chaos. My form was a whirling maelstrom of colors. If all of them were red or black, that would have been fine. They weren't. One aura that built a shield of mana around everyone in the active radius was purple. One that increased assault speed gave my weapons a pink glow. That one definitely needed to become invisible. How to do it, though.
I needed a spell that would completely deactivate passive cosmetics. An illusion duration buff that showed me as myself without the auras and another one to make myself invisible. Good thing I'd just buffed the hell out of my duration abilities. I looked through my abilities and found two that were promising. The base spells were what I wanted. Almost. Invisibility was easy, but creating invisibility without affecting illusory doppelgangers was hard. Illusory doppelgangers weren't hard, but making them occupy the same space as the caster was. Maybe if I combined them like I'd made the animate shadow spell. I wrote the spells out into the air and bound them together with magic. I didn't want one modifying the other, I wanted them to coexist. And I wanted to be able to manipulate the doppelganger, so it had to be an aura, which would stay active instead of being cast and having an effect over a period of time. I could feel it as the magic tried to bend away from what I wanted. It was so much more in depth than last time. I was actually feeling the magic and what it would do. What it could do. I was feeling it as the magic moved almost like it was alive, resisting my will. It didn't want to form the spell I wanted it to.
Was WWO alive inside the magic? Was that where she existed? I'd thought she existed in the physical world since she came from the ground every time, but it would make almost as much sense for her to exist in the magic and just make a body to act on the physical realm. Was she resisting me?
Whatever it was, I wasn't going to win. I hadn't finished recovering from making the staff, and the draw was nearing a dangerous point of mp consumption. I didn't want to know what would happen to me if I let a spell pull me to zero while still being active.
Just when I was about to pull out of the spell, it snapped into place like it hadn't been resisting in the first place. I would have stumbled if I'd been walking, but the disorientation didn't show while I was on one knee. The spell's activation felt amazing. I could actually feel the other body filling the same space as my own. I made it stand and walk around while I remained as I was. I glanced down and couldn't see my body at all. I could see my body wandering around, though. As I felt through the spell, though, I realized that it was even more perfect than I'd imagined. It was me. I could shut my eyes and look through the eyes of the doppelganger. I could cast spells from the doppelganger's position. It was a second body while my original body became invisible! This wasn't a spell to hide cosmetics, this was a spell that would allow me to sit on my ass and conquer the world at the same time. It was like a game! My real body could be safe in my keep while the other one acted in the world! Did it have a range limit? I teleported to my bedroom and switched my consciousness entirely into the doppelganger.
That was dangerous. Someone could kill me while I wasn't paying attention. It wasn't like a game, because my real body was the one my enemies wanted to kill. I cast a warning spell that would tell me if anyone came in the room and widened it to include the whole floor after telling my skeletons to keep anyone outside of my family on the outside of the spell. I moved my doppelganger around for a while, and realized it felt exactly the same as my real body with the exception of one thing. I could teleport at will without casting a spell or using a skill. It made sense, as this body was in and of itself a spell. I felt at my new spatial sense for a limit. An area of effect. There wasn't one. I couldn't go anywhere I hadn't explored, but that was hardly a limitation. I could go attack Arthur right now without leaving my keep! If I'd explored Camelot, anyway. I'd never been there, neither had any of my pets or guild mates. I had all the power of my keep embodied in this doppelganger! It even acted as a conduit to allow me to cast my spells without a distance penalty! This world fucking loved me! I'd created a spell that would make me invincible! Unless someone could defeat me in my own keep.
My keep. I had nearly infinite duration on my spells. I grinned as I considered the perfection of my new plan. My keep would become my body. And every attacker would have to dig through a ridiculous immune system developed of magic to get in. But first, I needed to purge everyone that wasn't me. Or my family.
"Void Hall is now off limits. Anyone who is still here in two hours will be executed." My voice rang through the drafty building like the voice of god. As far as this place was concerned, I was god. I opened a chat to my family to tell them to meet me in the main hall and teleported there immediately. I was so excited I was pacing. Both of me were pacing. I'd teleported the doppelgang…avatar into a corner of my keep, but it was pacing.
"You're totally going to burn out. Nobody can maintain that many auras at once." Lethe's remark was dry. There was something to it, though. Some hidden tone that I didn't quite understand. I knew she was mocking me, but there was that edge to something else as well. It wasn't jealousy or anything. An emotion I didn't understand. "Did you evict everyone so we can go to war? Doesn't seem necessary."
I made sure everyone had gathered before I explained. "Nothing to do with the war effort. I'm turning the keep into a real fortress. Traps everywhere. Magic traps in every hallway, doorway, crevice, and cranny. Nobody is going to be able to survive in here without me guiding them." I caught a look from Lethe to Edge that was pointedly ignored, but I didn't understand that any more than I had the hidden tone when she remarked on my auras. "I was thinking of assigning guards to each of you anyway, but now they're necessary to walk around the keep."
"I need a babysitter now? Since when did you not trust us to watch our own backs?" Of all of them, Lethe was the last one I'd expected to whine about guards. She didn't have covert meetings with her subordinates like Edge and she didn't have the issues with proving her dominance that Htaed did. I'd even been expecting resistance from Phyx just because children weren't supposed to be okay with being watched by their parents or people paid by their parents.
"I was thinking of it as more of an elite retinue than anything else. I didn't think you had any combatants as dangerous as mine in your organization." But her aversion to the idea was…interesting. Would it be so bad to have a couple of my pets follow her? I knew normal couples that had constant supervision over each other weren't considered healthy in the old world, but I was an emperor. Control issues kind of came with the package.
Her immediately relaxing when she realized it wouldn't have to be my pets guarding her was also interesting. So it wasn't aversion to having a retinue. It was aversion to having those controlled entirely by my will as her retinue that was problematic. "I have many that are more than capable of protecting me from every direction, though having a retinue kind of defeats the purpose of having a spy network. Retinues are a lot easier to track than people."
Except for the fact that her informants weren't really hiding. None that she would meet in person, at least. Having a spy network that you manned yourself was kind of self-defeating. Without subordinates, it might as well be just the one person with a few friends. Had Lethe's organization not grown beyond Edge's? Edge still needed to meet with people in person because it wasn't a large organization and she didn't trust anyone in it yet. Did Lethe not trust anyone in her organization, or was it too small for delegation? Was she hiding how fruitless her efforts had been from me? Edge's sharp look toward her mother showed some sort of understanding of the situation. I'd need to talk to her about it. "Well, someone will need to watch you in the keep. Unless you want to blow up. It's easier if they follow you everywhere, but I guess I could leave them at the gates with orders to guide you."
"This is my home as well, Void." Lethe's voice betrayed her anger. So she didn't want to feel unsafe in her home? That's the purpose of the guide. "I should be aware of the defenses. Not just where it is, but what it is." So she had some control issues as well? Or was her plan to assassinate me and she wanted to know what the defenses were in order to make that easier? I was getting ahead of myself.
I didn't know she was disloyal. This tension between her and Edge could be Edge's fault. How had they even had time to get mad at each other? I'd been entirely consumed with the war effort. It would have to be significant to make Lethe look at Phyx without wincing or growling at all, though. I really would need to confront Edge. Or maybe I should talk to Lethe first…except for the fact that she was the one doing all the whining. Maybe it was warranted, but I didn't see what she would need to know the function of the traps for. If there came a time when she would need to purposefully set off a trap with a delayed start to hit a pursuer, then it wouldn't work anyway. That was mechanical traps. Magic traps activated when the target was in the location, it had nothing to do with timing. Lethe would know that since she'd been a Necromancer in the beta. Maybe I was overthinking this.
"If the layout remains stagnant, insurgents could learn it. I'm planning on having it evolve and change every day as more layers are added to the defense by whatever pets I have in the area. Not something I could give you a map for. I'll be able to see it because they're part of me, but my pets will be casting the spells. Not me." It was awesome that my pets benefited from the keep bonus as well. The fact that they could hand the spell to me after so I was the maintenance force would allow my new staff to turn the keep into an absolute fortress. The only downfall was that the majority of my pets were undead and as such incapable of magic. I'd be casting the spells myself for a long while yet.
I couldn't see anything angry in Lethe's posture, but I knew she was mad. She hadn't gotten her way. She wouldn't know what the traps were and she'd still need a babysitter. "So when is this all happening? You going to vanish for a year again?" her voice was calm, but I didn't trust it.
It hadn't been a year…maybe a couple of times it had been. Maybe more than a couple. I really needed to start paying more attention to time. "Probably. I'll be moving around pretty fast, so don't bother trying to track me down. If you've got something urgent, message me. Same as always. The war is still on, but it will be a long time before the army is equipped and ready to go. That was true before I came up with this plan." Mythic components weren't exactly easy to find, and forging wasn't an instantaneous process. "I'd guess another two years or so, then we'll burn our names into the surface of Hell itself." I expected some sort of reaction, but none of them had any. Maybe I was the only one excited for the war. Maybe that's why they had time to pick fights with each other and have whole hidden conversations while we were talking.
I teleported to the deepest part of the dungeon so I could make my Dungeon. I needed it to be completely impossible to get to. I activated my Obsidiate ability to move through solid stone like it was water and sank into the depths of my keep. When I'd found the center of the foundation I stopped and started using magic to build my own personal cell. I doubted I'd ever leave this room again. Once I had the block opened up, I started warding the surrounding stone. I warded every direction with all the spells I could fit together that would work on earth. Some spells just wouldn't bind to rock.
When I was satisfied that even Bonehead wouldn't be able to survive digging into my prison, I started looking through the rituals. I had my absolute fortress and my pets were already starting to turn my keep into a mess of magical defenses, despite the fact that anyone who could face me in my own keep would find them trivial. I also had six more months before I got to the year mark. What would really make me happy was if I could find a ritual to strengthen the keep's influence. A spell or ritual that could warp the passive the keep gave me. It was far more powerful than any spell could be, and I wanted a way to make it even stronger. All of my auras took effect after the keep, so that would be a multiplicative increase with every single passive I had on my body. The effects…I couldn't even fathom the power that could be harnessed if I could warp that passive into something greater.