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The Gamer Chapter 1168 – Prep Grinding 9 – Familiarity with Skills
🕑 Added 2022-02-24 20:26:19 +0000 UTCJohn was looking at his four Artificial Spirits. All of them were in their full monster girl forms. Aclysia and Beatrice were covered in scales, fitting tightly to their curves. Some patches looked more like smooth snake skin than the pointy scales of most reptiles. Particularly on the front of their torso, the inside of their legs, and under the arms, the scales were generally less pronounced. Most of that was likely to avoid parts of them getting caught on themselves, but John couldn’t help but notice that it ended up looking weirdly alluring.
Their breasts were practically underlined by a path of scales underneath the smoother, almost leathery cover that hid their squishy bits. The effect was weakened by the fact that all varieties of scales shared the same colour. All black for Aclysia and all white for Beatrice, with only the texture creating differences with how the light bounced off them.
Just like Nathalia’s scales, the ones covering the two maids went up the sides of their neck and face, stopping at the hairline around their ears. Theirs hadn’t turned as long as those of the dragoness’, hovering around half-elven levels of pointy. Scales, horns, and blue gemstones above their sternums, they certainly looked the part of monster girls. Yet, in terms of being draconic, they appeared incomplete. Claws on hands and feet only did so much, especially with the latter remaining human in shape. Without wings or tails it wasn’t quite the same.
Nathalia could rock it, partly because she had the body language of a dragon in human form, partly because her eyes were glowing, and majorly because she didn’t care about being recognized as a dragon. All the dragoness cared about was looking attractive. Plus, she could (and did) manifest her tail and wings whenever she wanted.
Momo, of course, appeared outwardly normal. The more he looked at her, the more John got an inkling of what the more fairy-attuned members of his harem had been seeing. There definitely was something off about her. Like he could pinch her cheeks and accidentally peel her face back.
‘Damn fairy stuff,’ the Gamer thought. He hated it when he felt something instinctively aversive towards his women. Like with Nia, he would get attuned to it eventually.
Metra had changed the least of the four. As in: she hadn’t changed further at all. Her wolf ears were encased in stylized grey, the colour of her tail changed to match the rest of her armour, and the claws were more pronounced than before. All of these were changes that had occurred immediately after she had added the parts of Fenrir to herself as replacements for Tiamat’s scales.
John threw an Observe at all of them.
John had been working on getting Aclysia’s Agility raised. Even with the new breath attack unlocked, he would likely continue down that path. He liked balanced Stats and a tank that couldn’t keep up with the happenings on the battlefield was pretty useless. If the breath attack turned out to be powerful enough, he would reconsider.
Beatrice was in the process of getting her Wisdom raised so that she could spam with even less impunity. Considering recent developments, John would likely stick to that path. Her Agility was already incredibly high.
Momo was also getting her Wisdom raised, in her case because her mana regeneration was pitiful compared to her vast mana pool. A support tapped out of resources was an incredible drawback, so that was something that needed to be worked on. John would have loved to raise her Endurance further too. Compared to her fellow Artificial Spirits, she felt pretty flimsy. Calmingly, she was nowhere near Sylph levels of defenceless, being made from metal had that advantage.
Metra’s Stats were a bit all over the place, courtesy of John only having gotten manual control over them relatively recently. He had been working on getting her Intellect to 250, because mana had been such a valuable resource on her. Just because he was so close already, he would stick to it. Afterwards, he would likely invest into Strength.
Although Metra was now in the Artificial Spirit system, she did not acquire the dick-growth Perk (nor whatever would await them at 50 Libido). Just an observation John had been informed about one morning.
A more important dissonance between the systems was that Metra still levelled on her own, while the other three required Consumption. Beatrice managed to dodge that particular drawback thanks to Sunlight Ascension. The Attribute had granted her 3 bonus Perks and now only served to let her convert sunlight into Consumption. That sounded pretty unspectacular, but it actually saved Fusion literal billions of dollars (and tens of thousands of tokens, to take a less inflated currency).
The other two had to feast on materials provided by John and dungeon loot. In good times, the latter was enough to bridge the majority of the cost. Because he was unwilling to throw the void corrupted stuff down their throats, this definitely wasn’t the case at the moment. Luckily, he had remote access to the Guild Bank from within this Protected Space. Withdrawing additional metals wasn’t too much of an issue – aside from the sheer material cost.
‘If we level too much inside time dilation, we may empty the reserves again,’ John realized and held back a sigh. ‘One thing after another. Material reserves aren’t that important since the Guild Hall just magics materials into existence.’ “Aclysia, let’s start with you,” he said and gestured for the weaponized maid to take a step forward. “Cool down your body to the minimum temperature.”
“Yes, Master,” Aclysia said. Just as the process began, John pressed a timer on his smartphone. The other hand, he kept right next to his weaponized maid. Quickly, there was a pleasant cool. It almost made John want to cuddle up to her, to escape the heat of Rave’s preferred temperature. That swiftly changed. Having his hand right next to her started to become uncomfortably cold. Had he still been mundane, he would have pulled his hand back. Metal scales at -20 degrees Celsius were not something he wanted to expose his raw skin to. “…Minimum temperature reached…” Aclysia grumbled, clearly unhappy that her presence caused him discomfort.
John stopped the timer. “Fifteen seconds to minimum temperature,” he reported. “Kind of slow, for our combat speed, but not too bad. Alright, next, use your breath attack on me.” He toggled the friendly fire protection off. A Guild Perk had made it so his spells no longer hurt members of the Federation. Conveniently, that included himself, and Aclysia was, de-facto, one of his Skills. In order for the two of them to hurt each other, they either had to mutually will it or John had to manually disable the functionality. One of them made mutual willingness impossible.
“Must I?” Aclysia asked, pouting a little bit. “May I puni- test this attack on Siena instead?”
“No,” John answered decisively before Siena could derail them with a response. “I’ll just take mana damage, nothing drastic.”
Aclysia sighed. John expected a puff of mist from that, but it appeared the air wasn’t quite humid enough for there to be anything outstanding in terms of condensation. Most of the water in the area instead formed droplets on Aclysia’s skin, which quickly froze into thin layers of ice, cracking and dropping off her scales whenever she moved.
Miraculously, her face was exempt from this freezing treatment. The closest the water got to her gorgeous features were small icicles on her pointy ears. Her saliva also didn’t freeze. It was still a mystery what exactly that was made from anyway, considering Aclysia was all inorganic and solid materials.
“Must I?” Aclysia whiningly repeated her question.
“Yes,” John responded.
Sighing more deeply, she made big eyes at her Master, then finally surrendered. Inhaling deeply, the frozen maid followed her newly programmed instinct and blew frigid air at her creator. Ice blue particles of magically created snow surrounded John on all sides. His mana bar lowered gradually. By fidgeting with the cost settings for his elementals, he had gotten his real MP regeneration as close to 0 as possible. That allowed him to measure the damage relatively well.
When the cold wind abated, after about three seconds, John had taken 1’547 damage to his MP. That wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great either, especially since normal enemies would have moved around. Looking around him, John saw the fork of frozen grass to his left and right. His legs and torso had cast a shadow in the white path. ‘It’s alright for a free attack. Getting cold would also drain stamina, if it gets through defences,’ John thought. “How quickly can you repeat that?”
“Immediately, Master,” Aclysia responded and shifted her weight. A new series of icy cracks accompanied the small swing of her bubble butt. “Must I?”
“Measure twice, cut once,” John told her. He patted her pretty head despite the cold. “I’ll let you spoil me later.”
The damage number varied insignificantly on the second attempt. Telling her to use the breath attack at a higher body temperature, -10 degrees, resulted in the damage being halved. At positive degrees, she could no longer use the breath attack at all.
“Alright, that concludes the Aclysia experiments,” John stated and clapped his hands. Testing Juggernaut or Shieldmaid was unnecessary. Both were explicit in what they did in their descriptions and numbers.
Up next was Beatrice. “Scarlett, got any electronics you don’t mind frying?” he asked the technomancer. Typically, she was tinkering while the rest of them were raiding.
“I have a breaker test kit that I could modify,” the redhead answered and quickly went to fetch it from the workshop she had set up in their temporary home. It was a pretty basic piece of hardware, the kind students were allowed to screw together. A wire was screwed to a wooden board, with a slot for a battery on one end and a lightbulb at the other. A gap in the wire made room for a breaker. Currently, a simple wire extension sat in there, providing no additional resistance whatsoever. Scarlett pressed down on the battery sitting loosely in the socket and the lightbulb sprang to life.
“Alright, Bae, if you would,” John said.
“Affirmative.” Little bits of electricity began dancing inside the blue gemstone and the distinct sensation of charged air rose around her. The lightbulb began to flicker, the magic influencing the flow of power. Scarlett licked her finger and put it on top of the lightbulb. The glow stabilized.
“Meh,” the technomancer made an unimpressed noise. “Pretty minor effect. It’s like keeping up with a treadmill on the lowest speed setting. The only way I could fuck this up is if I got too bored to concentrate. Even without me, it wouldn’t be enough to fry a phone, it would just make it unusable while in range.” She moved towards and away from Beatrice. “Stops being a factor at all at three metres distance.”
“We shouldn’t take what is easy for you as a measurement for how useful something is,” John suggested with a dry smile. “I’d feel sorry for the poor technomancer that stands in stabbing range of Beatrice anyway.”
“Statement: I could end you in a second,” Beatrice added. “It would not be difficult.”
“Whatever you say, robo-cunt,” Scarlett said. “Light me a cigarette.”
“Comment: you prefer I kill you over the course of several dozen years?” Beatrice asked while reaching into her inventory. Naked as she was, Scarlett did not carry her nicotine fix with her. That she had convinced the passive maid to do it in her stead had happened without John’s knowledge. Scarlett had the cigarette placed between her lips and lighted.
“If you kill me, do it with your thighs,” Scarlett demanded on the exhale.
“Alright, move aside,” John chided the androgynous woman in a playful voice. “I want to test Bae’s lightning breath, not your cancer breath.”
“Do I need to keep explaining to you people that I’m a superhuman too?” Scarlett asked, shaking her head while taking several steps back. “As if my body couldn’t compensate for some tar.”
“Alright, hit me,” John requested and was immediately assaulted by a torrent of lightning. The visual part of the attack was just as dense as Aclysia’s, resembling video game logic much closer than proper physics. The many parallel currents of electricity filled the air with crackles and blue fire, scorching the ground. “3’135 damage,” John reported at the end of the, consistently 3 second, duration. “About double for about double the Stats. Nothing unexpected here.”
Next up was Chronoshift. The first test there was straightforward: when travelling back, did Beatrice assume the pose she was in back then or the one she travelled back in time in. Answer: the one she had when she stood at that point. Second test: what happened when the point was modified by environmental changes? Answer: she spawned on the same spot or extremely close to it if something was blocking it (like a massive pillar).
They also tested Pendulum Stop. From John’s point of view, it was incredibly odd. There was a sort of flicker in his mental connection with Beatrice, as if someone rapidly switched the light off and then on again. On her end, Beatrice was simply conscious in a frozen world, that then resumed moving after the effect ended.
Momo’s random happenstances could not be tested for, courtesy of them being random in effect and frequency. Fountain of White and the Firefae deserved some small attention though.
“This burns like half my mana bar,” Momo complained, after conjuring the construct. It looked like a pillar of shining marble. It primarily was white, with a few shifting black lines running down the edges, giving it a surreal look.
“Stand in its area and it might pay for itself,” John suggested. “Anyway, shield please!”
“I’ll add another ten minutes to the face-sitting time you owe me,” Momo grumbled and cast her White Barrier. The spell added a white area to his health bar, showing how much he was shielded for. “Works as predicted,” Momo commented when John stepped out of the area of the Fountain and the shield stayed at the same strength.
“Yeah,” John agreed. “Next, let’s see what your swarm can lift up.”
The answer was: very little. One of them struggled to lift a pen (about 8 gram). Between all fifty of them, they should have had a maximum carry capacity of about 400 gram, which was also pretty bad. However, small as they were, getting fifty fairies to hold onto one object that weighed that little was basically impossible. They would, however, be able to carry around pencils and documents. Further, they could read and speak, so they could support Momo in finding documents or relaying messages. If they were nice and obedient.
Lastly, testing Metra’s new Skills was fairly quick because they all behaved as they had previously. Rip let her hand shoot through a portal. Typically, she used that to grab someone and pull them in her general direction. It was a bit odd since the hand vanished back through the portal while the person was carried by raw momentum. Alternatively, she could use it to punch or shove someone. The skill said grab, but she was just shoving her hand through a tear in space. Nothing limited her from forming a fist in the process.
The maximum range of Rip equalled her combined Wisdom and Intellect, which was pretty solid and became even larger when she got angry. Tear’s maximum range was Wisdom + Intellect divided by 100 times the Fury spent. That Skill was a tad confusing, though. If Metra used it the normal way, she emerged on the other side with a one second delay. If she did it with Rex Magnar as her exit beacon, there was no such delay. Something like that should have been listed in the Skill description, in John’s opinion.
Either way, that concluded the necessary experiments.
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