Asheron's Fall: The Power of Ten, Book Six

The vestige inside of me goggled in disbelief, while I just raised an eyebrow.

She’d been level 30! Barely high enough to get off her Copper spells reliably! Level 100 was incredibly high, archmage level. I should be strong enough to use Gold spells, the highest spells known!

Buuuut I’d not invested anything of what was probably an incredible Karmic Harvest from doing something really nasty to something that deserved it all. Quest awards for the win!

I didn’t know how Levels translated over between the systems, but Level 100 was incredibly advanced, according to her memories. Legendary champions and the like were in the 100’s. I was basically sitting on the steps of legendary power.

Huh. What I could recall of ‘legendary power’... didn’t really impress me, and being a four-school archmage of basically a system where one of the Classes (Creature Magic) was two spells, the third, Life Magic, was one school of magic (necro/vivimancy), and the fourth was another school (evocation), ‘legendary power’ didn’t really shake me at all, which just impressed my vestige all the more at my blasé acceptance of the fact.

Have some Karma, I thought, and threw some at the vestige.

There was a swirl and pop in my head, almost like something breaking out of its shell, blinking, taking a look around, and then staring at me inside my skull.

Feeling awkward?, I inquired of her, while I wondered what to do. My soul. You’re a part of me, now.

The fact I remembered having multiple thoughtstreams both made her reel and calmed her down, as I didn’t consider this situation all that unusual.

-I can remember seeing the old me die...-, she /whispered back, and was startled she could even think and say that.

Well, we’re both operating off my soul, so this is me and you, we’re an us together, mishmashed and all. I’ll put it out there that together we’re Devra, but since we both have different origins, you can call me Ry, Ryin, or Ryinth, as you prefer, and I’ll call you Sham, Mira, or Shamira, as you like.

She thought that over, knowing I wasn’t being condescending or anything, just taking the situation as it was and moving on instead of obsessing over it. We were both essentially copies of someone else, so she couldn’t even have a crisis of identity, as here I was sitting over here knowing I wasn’t who I was modeled after, and basically, neither was she.

Plus she wouldn’t exist without me, so there was that.

-We need to invest the Karma you earned!- she /spoke up urgently, moving up next to me mentally to study the Assess results.

Strength, Endurance, Coordination, Quickness, Focus, Self. I raised an eyebrow, and filtered it down.

Strength, affected damage with hand-held weapons and carrying capacity.

Endurance, affecting magically-invigorated Health and stamina in general, with some lessening of magic attacks implied.

Coordination, affected dodging ability, damage with very light weapons and missile weapons.

Quickness, speed both afoot and in combat.

Focus, representing Intellect, with memory, agility of thought, and comprehension implied. Used in everything magical and to perform most crafts well.

Self, representing depth of spirit, harmony with nature, and resilience of character. Notably, contributed to magical ability and the size of the mana pool.

Health, which Mira was startled to see me subdivide. Ah, yes, invisible unless you looked at it, but Endurance-derived Health was the physical body, while directly-derived Health was actually Soak, or magical protection against damage, the very frustrating ability to ablate tons of punishment without actual physical harm.

Stamina was the same way. If it came from Endurance, it was ‘real’, a result of a stronger body and physical conditioning. If it was boosted directly, it was magical, an extra reserve of energy... which was how their vivimancy could tap it.

Mana was Arcane energy reserves. I noted the Self half was held in the spirit, and the Mana half was held in the mind.

Also, the spell helpfully colored the bars indicating how full they were red, yellow, and blue in turn, which was highly amusing to me. I could literally set them up inside my head as a reference point, which I proceeded to do.

Strength currently at 30, Endurance at 60, Coordination at 30, Quickness at 60, Focus at 210, and Self at 140. Base Scores were... 10/50/20/50/140/100.

-Focus 210!- she blurted out, and then gaped. -Our mana pool is 250 already!-

I looked it over casually. I’m a Sage Sorcerer. I use Intellect for all my bonus spells, instead of Wisdom or Charisma, which map to your ‘Self’ Stat. Since you’re using Arcane energy, the effect is swapping over to your side through the pools. We’re using Focus instead of Self for bonus Mana.

Okay, that was amusing. I couldn’t ignore the Stat, since it was the foundation of her magic, but Focus was definitely a god Stat, and I had it in spades.

I waved up the Assay on my side of things.

Strength/Coord/Constitution, Intellect/Wisdom, Charisma.

Base Stats, 8/12/14/22 (18)/16 (12)/16 (18).

Current Stats, 10/14/15/25 (19)/18 (14) /18 (19). Mira had a naturally higher Charisma than I did, but just barely above-average starting Wisdom.

Health and Stamina were also interacting weirdly. Because they were a Stat and not derived from Class Levels, which the Stats on my side affected, the magical effects were a bit screwball.

She saw the same thing. -Our Health and Stamina are higher than they should be!-

I had five things affecting that. Arcane Prodigy, which started the Arcane Toughness Mastery and let me use Intellect instead of Constitution at my first Class Level. Arcane Toughness increased Health by the scale of the Metas I knew, so only +3 for now. Arcane Toughness II added my Will Save to my Soak, which at this point was only +11.

Toughness added either Character Level to Health, or +3, whatever was higher. Toughness II added Fortitude Save to Soak, which was +7 at this time. Favored Class bonuses added +3.

So... +5 Soak from Arcane Prodigy, +11 Arcane Toughness II, +7 Toughness II. +26 over expected by Karma... which was spot on.

Health should be +3 and +3, for +6. Also spot on... sort of. There seemed to be a partial investment in the Health Stat? As if Karma was pushed up from below?

Ah, one Human Level, maxed, 8 Health Points. Those would be ‘free’, and so paid for by the Level. The Karma she had spent on them would thus be pushed up the scale... not even adding up to the cost of one more point.

She’d invested 30 points each into Health and Stamina, and 40 into Mana. So, we should have been at 60 and 90, and 180. Instead, we were at 93 and 100... and 250.

Ah, the Great Fortitude Feat granted +10 Stamina as a side effect of a higher Fortitude save.

The vast majority of her Karma was practice Karma. She’d invested only moderate amounts into her Stats, but her Skills were up around plus-ninety points, the magical ones the highest of them. Learning Karma had gone straight to them, obviously, with hundreds of hours spent practicing spellcasting behind her getting her to that stage.

In other words, she was a civilian mage increasing her proficiency by repeated Casting cycles, not a combat mage going out and earning experience Karma in combat she could apply anywhere.

Nothing wrong with that. She was a teenager, shouldn’t be out there fighting... or Summoning eldritch abominations as shortcuts to power.

-If you think about it, in one way, it worked, right?- she actually /managed to get out. I turned a mental eye on her, rolled my eyes, and she snickered at me, us, and herself. I doubted any of that was planned by the creature she’d brought in, which, I’d been informed, was somewhat snakily called a ‘slithyr’.

Of course, she’d only seen her end of it. My end of it indicated just how huge and massive the thing was, likely with tentacles extruded into and across countless worlds...

Whatever. Her eyes drifted over to the utterly massive pile of over a billion Karma, in their nomenclature, waiting to be allocated.

I kind of blinked as she went crazy on her side of things, things blinking and pinging and doing all sorts of stuff as wandering Karma was sucked down into what she was doing.

I appropriated some and sent it into my Mark. I felt the allocation hit, but I could only input two goldweight equiv, so nothing happened right now. At Renewal, I could do it again, and I told her to reserve another batch at that time, as I wanted to get that up, and only earned Karma would work.

It would only be +1 (2) Sacred bonus to Intellect now, but another boost to magic skills and mana was not going to be ignored.

The pings stopped rather abruptly, and she glared at the results.

One point into each primary Stat. One point into each derived Stat. One point into each Skill.

I shook my head in something resembling disbelief. Well, it appeared that it didn’t matter how fast you Leveled up here, you still could only improve yourself so quickly.

I had no doubt whatsoever that by their standards we would be Leveling like crazy. Why, who knows how much further we could take this in but a month, or a season?

Which helped me at all right now not in the slightest.

“What have you found?”

The sharp voice rolled through both of us, and I narrowed my eyes as I turned my head.

My Assay was still there, and went out to look at her.

Mira’s mentor, Calli... wah.

Xunidira? Milantean Sorceress 87?

Fury began to bubble up as I perceived a layer of magic over her that would fool an Assessment, but she’d not resisted a basic Assay.

Which didn’t mean she didn’t sense someone doing so, her head snapping around and looking in my direction. “Who is there? Who dares to probe me?” she called out sharply.