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MT 298 - The Return of the Bling
🕑 Added 2025-08-31 09:19:15 +0000 UTCI stared at Varrin’s dull-edged utensil like a man who’d discovered a new species of ultra-venomous spider infesting his breakfast cereal.
“Can someone else put into words how impressive that was?” I asked, still eyeing the knife. “Still ten words or less.”
Nuralie stood and examined the damage. “As impressive as a croissant smashing through a castle wall.” She paused for a moment, evaluating her own description. Then she sat back down, looked at me, and nodded, her job complete.
“It makes you better at cutting things with other things,” I said, taking my shot at describing the skill.
“His knives become even knife-ier and swords become even swords-ier,” said Etja.
“His Blades is so advanced, we can’t tell what’s changed,” said Xim.
I glanced over at the cleric. “Liberal use of contractions, but I’ll allow it. Are you saying that it’s like trying to figure out the difference between a bottle of wine that costs a silver note and one that costs ten?”
“That’s easy,” she replied. “It’s the label.”
“It predominantly has to do with the complexity of its chemical profile,” said Nuralie.
“Either way,” I said, “they taste the same to my uncultured palate. But in this case, I feel like the use of a butter knife to commit comprehensive violence is a measurable divergence from Varrin’s typical slicey-ness.”
Despite being the richest person there, Varrin had no comment on the spontaneous wine debate. “My blade meets no resistance unless my enemy has greater skill,” he said, providing a concrete mechanical description to lay the Blades debate to rest.
I waggled my finger at him. “Nope, that’s eleven words. Try again.”
He gave me a blank stare. “My blade is irresistible, lest my foe’s mastery is transcendent.”
“Okay, how does that work from a practical standpoint?” I asked, then pointed at the butter knife. “If that’s what you can do with something that only barely counts as a blade, what can you now do with a real sword, all gussied up with fancy materials and weaves?”
“Cut better,” he said.
“Uh-huh… And as far as your ability to slice through somebody’s shield with absolutely no resistance, what’s the counter to that? Asking for a friend.”
“Get better.” It was my turn to give him a blank expression. Once he’d taken his time to enjoy my irritation, he gave me a more reasonable answer. “It only affects the cutting edge. You could still deflect by striking the flat of the blade with your shield.”
“Right, mm-hmm. Did you know that I could barely see your arm moving?”
He shrugged his mighty shoulders. “Like I said, it is a skill issue.”
“I’m surprised you had to borrow a butter knife,” said Xim. “Figured you’d have your own in inventory.”
“I have two dozen,” said Varrin. “Asking for one beforehand made the demonstration more impactful.”
“Why the fuck do you have two dozen butter knives?” I asked.
“I have a full set of cutlery in the event of an unexpected formal dinner.” Varrin said this like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.
“What venue wouldn’t already possess sufficient utensils for such an occasion?” He replied by waving a hand at our surroundings. “I have utensils,” I said. “The proof is before your very eyes.”
Varrin picked up the butter knife and flicked it with a finger, making a dull ringing sound. “Stainless steel is barbaric in polite society.”
“It’s practical.” My tone was getting a bit defensive.
“What gives you the impression that a courtly feast is intended to be practical?” he asked. “The more refined one is, the less practical their life becomes.”
I drummed my fingers against the table, trying to imagine the least practical material a knife could be made from. That was worth about a half a second’s consideration before I realized I didn’t care. “Okay, who’s next?”
Nuralie was next.
The loson’s poisons now applied the Slowed debuff, she did more raw damage, had better senses, better perception, passively boosted everyone’s darkvision, was immune to the Blinded and Deafened statuses, was harder to poison or bleed, could apply an essence to anything she created with Tailoring without increasing the item’s requirements, and as I heard earlier that day, any machine she made gained self-repair.
A handy bundle of buffs.
As for Etja, the mage got more range, more damage, faster flight, and better dodge. She also got a 1-mile aura from Cooking that kept food from spoiling and let her know if anyone within it was starving. It even restored spoiled food back to being edible, which introduced some interesting questions about the bounds of that skill. At some point, spoiled food became compost. Could it rewind dirt into a banana? She promised to perform some tests and get back to me.
She also got a neat evo to Tailoring called Not-so-Mad Hatter, which gave any headwear she made an inherent buff to social defense. This further improved our capacity to deal with mental attacks of any kind, and it even resulted in a thoughtful gift.
“Nuralie and I worked together to make this,” said Etja, bringing out a gift-wrapped box and floating it over to me.
I raised my brow and placed a hand on my heart. “For me?” I said, genuinely touched.
“Don’t get weepy, open it, open it,” said Xim, leaning into my personal space to squint at the box. The wide ribbon was covered in little doodles of a bearded man flexing.
I delicately grasped the ribbon and pulled to undo the bow, taking care not to accidentally break it. Then I tore into the wrapping paper with all the grace and care of a candy-fueled six-year-old on Christmas morning.
Within was a pair of rose-tinted shades.
I reverently lifted the specs from the box and examined the item closely. Instead of metal temples along the side to hug the face and keep them secure, the glasses affixed themselves with a stiff, fabric band, molded to embrace the back of each ear. The color was violet with sparkling fuchsia patterns woven in, almost like something drawn with a high-quality glitter pen. There was a small rune on the side, and when I sent it a light touch of mana, there was a faint click, and the shades became utterly black. I held them up and could still see through them without trouble. Unlike the rose tint, these completely obscured my eyes.
After thoroughly appreciating their aesthetics, I shot the item an Identify and shared the description.
Arlo’s Ass-Dope Shades
“Hold up,” I said, stopping at the item’s name. “Ass-Dope?”
“You know…” said Etja. “It’s that thing you say!” She dropped her voice an octave and imitated my masculine drawl. “This is some ass-dope beard balm.”
I nodded, comprehending where the problem lay. “Dope-ass. The phrase is ‘dope-ass.’ As in, this is some dope-ass apple juice.”
“Right!” said Etja with a snap of her fingers. “That’s the one.”
I pursed my lips. “You literally have a perfect memory. It’s impossible for you to forget the exact phrase.”
Etja looked at me innocently and shrugged.
I pursed even harder, going full duck lips as I peered down my nose at her with fierce skepticism. Eventually, my eyes slid back to the item’s description.
Arlo’s Ass-Dope Shades
Headwear
A pair of shades lovingly crafted by two of King Arlo Xor’Drel’s boon companions, these shadetaculars are the result of abusing free affixes from multiple intrinsic skills.
Requirements: Leadership
Effects:
+15 Social Defense
Self-Repair
Polychromatic lens shifting
Titanic Presence: Your panache makes you the center of attention, but the authority you exude keeps you there. Your attempts to distract other entities can be modified by Leadership, instead of any other skill.
“Well, holy shit,” I said, finding that the item’s name had already grown on me. “Guys, this is incredible.”
“Put ‘em on!” Xim cheered. “Let’s see how they look.”
I equipped the shades and felt the band automatically adjust to a solid fit. Then the back melted away, so that I only felt the sides. I reached around and ran a hand over the back of my head. The band was still present, but without impacting the view or shape of my expertly barbered hair.
“I came up with the design and handled the fabrics, but Nuralie helped with making the raw materials,” said Etja. “Then she used the Titan essence we’ve had sitting around from our fight with The Pit to give it that Leadership affix, and she even added stuff so that they count as a machine. That way, they can self-repair, in case you get shot in the face again!”
“That’s… thoughtful?” I said, unsure how to feel about Etja’s morbid enthusiasm. My last pair of specs had been forcefully retired when a Littan sniper blasted a hole through my skull. I’d never added a new pair back to my usual fit, especially since I was using a full helm these days.
“Since they don’t have any real requirements, you can wear them without putting much strain on your mana matrix,” said Etja. “So you can have them under your helm and with the rest of your normal loadout if you want.”
The primary limiter on the amount of gear somebody could wear was based on the item’s requirements compared to a Delver’s total stats. If total requirements were higher than your total stats, it began to put strain on your matrix, and could result in some unpleasant outcomes like ever-escalating mana toxicity, extreme fatigue, or damage that could temporarily disable certain skills. I’d always brushed up against that limit, and even exceeded it temporarily here and there.
Skill requirements made that rule a little fuzzy, but Etja was right. A bare Leadership requirement probably wouldn’t have much impact.
Varrin hummed as he read the description. “You’ll truly be able to hold people’s attention now. Without resorting purely to dramatics.”
“Doubt,” said Nuralie. Pause. “He will always choose drama.”
“This does go a long way towards improving my distraction attempts,” I said.
My Charisma was only 10, but the evo doubled its effective score when trying to distract. I also had an achievement called This is Bullshit! that made it easier to taunt and distract enemies with higher levels or grades. That more or less meant somebody of a higher level would need a social defense greater than 30 to resist my infuriating charm. Without any bonuses, that was a pure Wisdom check.
However, my Leadership was at 35. Modifying my distraction attempts with Leadership would make it more than twice as hard for enemies to ignore my flair. It bumped that minimum required social defense up to 65, with some upward swing based on how devastating my sass was. That was higher than my own social defense, even with the bonus these new shades gave me.
I wouldn’t let that stand for long, by the way. Resisting manipulation was near the top of my build priorities at the moment. Sadly, none of my current options offered better social defense, but that dovetailed nicely into discussing the options I did have available with the group. After another round of thanks and appreciation for the amazing gift, I began my presentation.
Mystical Magic was first, and it was unanimously agreed that Wall of Force 1 was my best choice.
Wall of Force 1
With 3 seconds of concentration, you can spend any amount of mana and/or stamina to gain 5x that much Shielding.
“The doubled Shielding from Body of Asclepius makes this absurd,” said Varrin. “What’s your total combined mana and stamina?”
“One thousand seven hundred and ten.”
Xim leaned so far in my direction that she popped up out of her seat. “You could give yourself more than seventeen thousand Shielding?!” she asked.
I gently maneuvered her out of my personal bubble. “True, but Tavio let me know there’s at least one skill that could turn that against me. Plus, burning all my resources would temporarily neuter me. I figure I can walk around with an extra three k and call it a win.”
“That doubles your effective health,” said Nuralie. “I have eight hundred and six HP. You would have nearly eight times more than me.” She blinked and stared into the air like she was contemplating her life choices.
“Xim has the second-highest effective health,” said Varrin. He looked at the cleric. “With your Fortitude evolutions, you’re around 1620, unless I’m mistaken.”
“Yep,” said Xim. “So he’d be four times healthier than the next healthiest person. That doesn’t even consider defenses and regeneration.”
“It’s an easy decision,” said Varrin. I comfortably hit accept and moved on.
Next was Physical Magic, something that had hit 40 before my Shields training alongside Tavio. I’d been sitting on this one for a couple of weeks and was glad to finally have time to lock an evolution down.
Cryomancer
All cold damage is increased by an amount equal to your Physical Magic skill level. Whenever you deal cold damage to a target, they become Slowed for 6 seconds.
Echomancer
Your darkvision range is increased by a number of feet equal to 40 + twice your Physical Magic skill level. You have echolocation within your darkvision range.
You can target entities you can perceive with echolocation, ignoring obstruction. Whenever you make a Physical attack, you can make it from anywhere within your echolocation range as though you were there, causing the attack to become Sonic instead of its normal damage type.
You are immune to the Blinded status.
Razzle Dazzle
Whenever you apply one of the following status effects, you may apply any one other different status effect from the same list. This effect cannot trigger itself.
Blinded, Deafened, Ignited, Shocked, Slowed
“Looks like an opportunity to specialize,” said Xim. “Cold, Sonic, or debuffs.”
“You do prefer the Cold aspect on your Elemental Barrier,” said Varrin. “This evolution applies Slowed, but Elemental Barrier’s native ability does as well. That would take the debuff up to Immobilize with a single cast.”
“It also comes with a damage bump,” said Xim. “Freeze ‘em ‘til they can’t move and then die.”
“Echomancer is interesting,” Varrin continued. “But it has some overlap with your Coordinated Thinker evolution.”
“Yeah, that already lets me cast without sight lines,” I said. “And I have pretty good spatial awareness from it, too. Between that and Soul-Sight, becoming Blinded isn’t a big deal.”
“It still has some utility,” said Varrin. “It applies to any Physical skill, not just spells. You could convert Homing Weapon into a Sonic attack that spawns right next to an enemy.”
“Yeah, that’s cool… or I could just cast Explosion!”
Varrin pitched a few benefits of echolocation and improved darkvision. I nodded along politely and mentally dismissed the option. If I didn’t have abilities that already did most of what the evolution was trying to do, it would have been more appealing. But I did, so it wasn’t.
“I’m leaning towards Razzle Dazzle,” I said.
“Because of the name?” asked Xim.
“Like, ten percent because of the name.” She looked at me with the same degree of skepticism I’d earlier levelled at Etja. “Fine, twenty percent because the name has an appropriate level of pizazz. The other eighty percent is because it works with both of my Physical attack spells, and it buffs every element for Elemental Barrier, not just the Cold type.”
“No damage bump, though.”
“There are other places he could source improved damage,” said Varrin. “I think Razzle Dazzle is the best fit for our party comp at the moment. Elemental Barrier is already good control and area denial. By doubling the debuffs it applies, it becomes devastating.”
“Freeze ‘em ‘til they catch on fire and then die,” said Xim.
“Ignite them ‘til they’re blind,” I added.
“Blind ‘em so hard they go deaf.”
“Shock ‘em so good their central nervous system starts to shut down and they hobble around the battlefield.”
“And that is on top of the knock back and knock down the spell normally provides,” said Varrin.
Xim took a moment to contemplate the big guy’s observations. “Knock ‘em down so hard they catch on fire and have their eyeballs melted.”
“The options are endless,” I said.
“They are not,” said Nuralie. Pause. “There are ten combinations.”
“Still plenty.” I went ahead and accepted Razzle Dazzle, instantly feeling my flair improve by a significant margin. “Up next is Shields.”
Comments
Levi
Great dialogue; very well written chapter. Thanks 🌽 man
bcd051
This chapter was ass-dope
