Mage Tank

Chapter 340: Crafty Crafts 5: The Final Chapter (in this epic crafting montage)

Chapter 340: Crafty Crafts 5: The Final Chapter (in this epic crafting montage)

Mage Tank

The initial effect of the Heirloom Tradition was already incredible. My current evolutions made the defensive weaves I added to armor twice as strong, meaning each point of attribute requirements did twice as much work. Having those effects further boosted by the inherent Heirloom set bonus would be a chunky pump to the defenses I could stack onto gear.

For example, the bread-and-butter Physical DR mana weave was governed by Strength. With my first Smithing evo doubling defensive weave bonuses, I could smith +50 Physical DR onto an item with a Strength requirement of 25, which was my current score. I had three Smithing evolutions, counting the one I had yet to select, meaning I could make an Heirloom set with three total pieces. Wearing them together would boost that mana weave as though the Strength requirement were 15 higher without actually raising its requirements. That’d be another +30 Physical DR, bringing the total up to +80.

Not only was that a healthy jump just for wearing the item alongside its sister pieces, that big of a buff would normally be impossible for me to get since my Strength was 25, not 40.

That wasn’t even the most exciting part. I’d seen other types of set bonuses before, and my mind was doing flips trying to think of all the types I could learn to drop into stuff by studying under a master. The question was who would be considered a master for this tradition. Varrin often wore armor with set bonuses and had an evo specifically for buffing Ravvenblaq heirlooms he wore. Papa Junior was probably a safe bet, but people didn’t speak of the man’s Heirloom skills in hushed voices filled with awe. His was a legacy of innovation, creating specific items of legendary strength.

Papa Junior made Infernal Solution, Thunder Patriarch, and Heron’s Gaze. He made weapons that anybody who was anybody knew by name. Varrin’s armor set was fantastic, but it was called Ravvenblaq Heirloom Training Regalia II, not something awesome like Black Ichor’s Doom Carapace.

That’s not a real set of famous armor, by the way, I just made that name up. I could create it though, with this evolution. I probably wouldn’t want to wear something with Ichor in the name though. Doom Carapace was kind of cool, but that felt too short for a proper set name. I could workshop it.

Regardless, you know who had some damn fine armor? The only crafter alive who could potentially challenge Papa Junior for the title of absolute best.

Yes, the ancient, immortal ruler of red dragons worldwide, His Scarlet Majesty. AKA, my off-and-on smithing mentor, Hep. The man had more of an eye on Varrin’s progress, but the mountainous dragon could probably be convinced to teach me how to make some real quality sets of protective gear.

I picked Heirloom Tradition.

After that, I had just enough time to rope Xim and Varrin into helping me add the dreamforged property onto my wand and staff. Xim’s dreamscape summoning revelation was exceptionally useful for that process, allowing us to exist in the proper liminal state between the waking world and the Third Layer. This was nice for my wand, but the real prize was the shiny new two-handed casting implement that was the lovechild of all this crafting madness. Normally it would be impractical to keep bringing a staff in and out in place of my warhammer Somncres, but the Dreamforged property meant it could be done with functionally zero delay.

The Clockwork Lifewarden

Heirloom Staff

Requirements: STR 25, INT 40, Physical Magic 40, Mystical Magic 30, Dimensional Magic 10

+25 block value

+85 bonus to to all Shielding you apply

+85 to all Sonic attacks

-25 to Stealth

Dreamforged

This item is part of the ??? set.

You gain an aura out to a radius in feet equal to your FOR. Whenever you apply Shielding to an ally within the aura, they become Life Warded by you for so long as they have that Shielding.

Sonic spell attacks cast while using this staff as a focus have Penetration.

On hit, Sonic spell attacks cast while using this staff as a focus cause entities to become Stunned for 3 seconds.

Mana Capacity: 170/170

Stored Spells: 3/4

Arlo’s Lifewarden

Explosion!+

Elemental Barrier

First, the staff could be used to block attacks pretty well. Using it alongside Gracorvus would let me block even more abuse, which was neat but more of a tasty garnish than a main dish. A bonus of 85 to all Shielding was pretty fat overall. I had some outrageous evolutions that let me get up to a bloated Shielding value in the thousands, but that was only useful if I had it prepared beforehand. It was way too resource intensive to be practical in a fight.

However, I could also throw out rapid-fire Shielding buffs mid-combat from my Aura of Persistence and every time I blocked a hit. This buff doubled or even tripled those Shielding values.

The bonus to Sonic damage was self-explanatory, enhancing Explosion! and the Sonic edition of Elemental Barrier. The staff sang as I held it and rang out with a rising swell when I cast a spell. It was like having a crowd of people with singing bowls following me around, adding dramatic flair to every spell I fired off. It got loud as shit and made it super obvious who was fucking you up with their magic. I loved it to pieces.

Related to the Sonic buffs were the final two effects, which made Sonic attacks ignore half of a target’s Physical defense and also landed a solid stun. Another debuff to add to the pile. Sadly, Stunned was not a debuff that would trigger Razzle Dazzle. Alas.

Dreamforged let me instantly swap it in and out with Somncres, although I needed to make contact with the staff using two hands for it to function. That could be accomplished with feelers from Therianthropy or by simply sending Gracorvus into hover mode, freeing up my left. Dreamforged would also keep an enemy from taking the damn thing or knocking it away.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

The staff granted an aura, which, you know, awesome. The effect, however, was both potent and dangerous. Right now I could apply Life Warded to an ally through my Lifewarden skill, which reserved 20 mana per target. I could apply it to multiple allies, but it had to be done sequentially, meaning that buffing a ton of people mid combat was too slow to be worth it. The staff made that a non-issue, letting me spread the Life Warded buff to everyone within a huge range all at once. Because of Auradilato, the buff would hit my party members no matter where they were, so long as I was giving them Shielding somehow.

That was all nice and good, but if I applied Life Warded to a whole platoon and we got hit with a devastating AoE attack, I’d by eating a ton of combined damage. The saving grace was that it was limited to the Shielding value I’d granted to each protected target, and the damage would be reduced by my Physical Magic skill level, presumably for each individual instance of damage transfer. Life Warded also only transferred Physical and Dimensional damage, but that was really more of a downside. I’d prefer to provide max-protect whenever I could.

Regardless, between the +85 boost to the Shielding I granted and the Life Warded buff effectively doubling its value against a healthy array of damage types, the staff brought my Shielding game to another level entirely.

I’d gone ahead and made the staff an Heirloom, but since it was the only item in the set, the description was partially blank. It wouldn’t do anything for the moment, but my next crafting spree would make the staff even mightier than it already was.

With that done, it was time for me to get back to my camping trip with the Littans. It was nearly time to push deeper, and I couldn’t wait to take my new toys for a spin.

*****

“Tavio: All teams are clear to proceed.”

We’d been inside the Less Than Habitable Forest for a little over two weeks and were finally ready to push through the outer ring of combat Dungeons. Charl’s blood attacks had been mostly absent ever since we’d stocked everyone up on wands, but every couple of days one of the scout teams ran into a detonating horde of enraged wildlife. So far, our preparations had kept us from taking any more casualties, although I expected the random attacks were meant to damage our nerves more than our bodies.

I’d taken regular breaks from my work crafting to portal people and supplies around for the Littans, but had mostly been absent from the camps. My party members were building a lot of goodwill with their contributions to the campaign, and seemed to have formed some good rapport with everyone present. As for me personally, those Littans I wasn’t already familiar with were fairly stand-offish.

Around one-third of the Littan company had made it to the third perimeter and after the handful of people we’d lost because of Charl, 30 remained. That was in addition to Fortune’s Folly and Ishi’s party, Two of Crowns. Of those 30 Littans, half would remain behind to monitor the perimeter, those being Golds with an average level around 14.

As for the 15 Littans moving deeper, their average level skewed closer to 20, with the mysterious Tomomaru leading the pack at the Gold soft cap of Level 26. Of course, I suspected the man’s actual level to be higher given his clown-car soul situation. Next was the lieutenant colonel himself, Tavio, who continued his miraculous trend of trading Gold to Platinum in his soul and was now up to Level 25.

I still didn’t know how he was doing that, but had gotten a couple of hints during the close contact we’d been keeping with the Littan military over the last six months. It didn’t happen randomly. Tavio would travel, purportedly to the capital, and would have another level when he returned. Also, he always earned another streak of violet along with the fresh Platinum, leading me to think that a Special Delve of some kind was involved. I’d never heard of a Special that could be used over and over like that, but I hardly had a comprehensive grasp of everything going on with the System.

If the hidden master Tomomaru and the military science experiment Tavio weren’t enough, we also had backup available. General Tyvus Connatis was theoretically on stand-by, although the empire’s grand general had plenty of other places to be. Our company was to dive deeper and establish a fourth perimeter before the Level 35 planned to have a significant presence. Surgeon General Olivia Bavecista, also Level 35, was the most powerful individual maintaining a full-time presence in New Krimsim, so if anything shook loose that we couldn’t handle she was there to step in.

Although Olivia’s role was primarily that of a healer, I got an extremely dangerous vibe from the woman. Level 35 meant she should be more than a match for something like the Hierophant of the Abductor, which had taken all of Fortune’s Folly and Team Pio to bring down. That was before we’d all gotten an absolute shitload of skill levels, but that was the best reference I could come up with for how potent somebody like her might be.

Once Tavio gave everyone the order to move out, we mobilized five full parties worth of Delvers who were either on the Platinum track or had made it into the upper end of the Gold level range. It was an impressive force, albeit one that was spread out across a thousand miles of wilderness. After the abandonment of Camp 1 to our north, the Littans had kept themselves split between camps 2 and 3. One large group left from each camp, both of which then split into smaller groups based on where they planned to cross through the combat Dungeons.

I was currently hanging with the group planning to move through the Heavy Armor Dungeon, consisting of Sergeant Guar, Major Kai, Varrin, Grotto, and myself. It wasn’t a popular Dungeon, owing to it being a pain in the ass, and everyone else with the Heavy Armor skill had opted for a different crossing. Tavio wanted at least one group to push through since it was dead center of the other planned passages, and I was plenty happy to volunteer since my Heavy Armor skill was at 39. I was eager to grab the next evolution. I even had a good idea of what one of my options would be, and barring the unexpected offer of something outrageous it would be an easy pick.

Major Kai roamed a little out in front of the rest of us. The brooding officer made no attempt at moving quietly like a proper scout, but the man had a decent array of perception skills, not that any of us were slacking. Varrin had picked up Reconnaissance over the last year in addition to dropping some points into Wisdom, my own WIS was fairly stacked and combo’d with Soul-Sight to grant me a competent amount of awareness, while Guar also had Recon and could turn his eyes into godly orbs delivering True Sense for a short duration.

Despite our vigilance, or perhaps because of it, our journey to the Dungeon was eerily uneventful. There were already few enough birds in the forest that it was weird, likely because we’d exterminated a massive chunk of their population while defending Krimsim. Beyond that, the cacophony of buzzing insects and chittering tree-dwellers that I’d grown accustomed to was absent. There was no rustle of larger animals scrambling away or prowling closer to hunt, and nothing yowling in the distance or squealing overhead. Soul-Sight revealed a scattering of ordinary creatures hiding nearby, but no mana monsters of note.

The classic film-buff response to this would be to assume that it heralded the arrival of something big and bad enough to scare everything else off. The truth was that, without Charl agitating the creatures into attacking us, we were the big, bad thing scaring everything else away. As we trampled loudly through the underbrush, the forest dwellers made the wise decision to get out of our way. Our movements were cacophonous in the absence of these other noises, only broken by the occasional gust of humid wind rustling up the vegetation. None of us spoke, an unconscious acknowledgment of the animal silence.

While we made our way deeper, my Coordinated Thinker evolution was constantly giving me a sense of unease as the ongoing spatial distortions in the sky above the canopy grew steadily worse. Eventually the relative distances more than 200 feet above us were folding in and out like an accordion, changing rapidly enough that if I were to fly up there it would take my height from 6 feet and change to 6 miles and change in an instant. Then, before my body realized it needed to explode from the stress of being spaghetti-fied, I’d be crushed back down into a pancake thin enough to be called a crêpe.

The threat of being smooshed so hard I became a French was unnerving, but the thing making me most concerned about the sky was that I’d been this deep into the Forest several times and the spatial weirdness had never been so bad. I’d been to the Heavy Armor Dungeon before, along with Blunt and Shields, all of which were a similar distance from the forest’s edge. While the sky had always been unwilling to commit to being in any one place, the spatial folding was now several times more severe than I’d ever felt.

And it was only getting worse with every step.