Magical Engineering

Surprisingly, I couldn’t seem to cause any sort of backlash. I suspected I might just need more opponents and more shields being damaged at the same time, and I added that to the list of things to try in full squad training the next day. I thanked the cores for their help and let them resume whatever fun they were having while asking Corey to come with me to the garage.

“Is something wrong?” Corey asked once we had the garage door closed behind us.

“Wrong is a strong word. But what are your thoughts on the cores so far?” I asked.

“Alpha and Gamma are adjusting well. Beta, I am not sure about. Sometimes what they say seems like attempts at jokes. But I have never been able to fully grasp humor, and I do not know that Traveler was able to either. It is currently a conundrum I wish to discuss with the more knowledgeable of our kind,” Corey answered.

“Understandable, as I can’t really read them either. Do you think everything is fine for now, though?” I asked, wanting to calm at least some of my concerns.

“I do. I still maintain full control over the mana connections between them and you. They cannot bypass that,” Corey replied.

“Glad to hear it. I’m going to dig deeper into the rest of my mana orbs. You’re welcome to go enjoy yourself as well,” I said, wanting Corey to continue exploring their own independence.

“Thank you, Dave. I am enjoying this new form far more than I expected to. It is quite interesting to have a fully autonomous body that is just your own. I will forever be grateful to you for allowing me this chance,” Corey replied.

“Just pass it on. Let’s do our best to figure out the new cores and try to get them as happy and healthy as you,” I said.

“Understood,” Corey replied as they left the garage, leaving me alone again with my orb plans.

Starting with the Life orb I moved Medical Telemetry to the max value, and then I unlocked Soul Regeneration and did the same there. I figured if I was going to start throwing around soul mana, it was likely for the best that I had the ability to heal any damage I did to myself. I also needed it for the long-term investigation into the soul knots the Jesters had created on the others. Beyond that, there was a curiosity about soul oaths as well, but as we still weren’t bound by the Arena one that didn’t seem as important.

I really wished I had more of the orbs leveled beyond the second tier, as things seemed to get much more powerful in the fifth tier of mana skills. Hopefully, as our mana flow grew and my very close proximity to the sources continued, I might be able to increase the growth rate on the orbs. There was also the possibility of Mana Weave Path, but that would likely take a lot more leveling than Corey could easily handle at the moment.

In the Body-Enhancing orbs the only real choice I had was Overwhelming Strength, and I still didn’t have any interest in it. At any point, I could see myself actually needing to use that I had almost certainly already lost the fight, and activating it could only make things worse. I just wasn’t the type of combatant to find that useful, at least not yet. There was, of course, still lesser mutation, but I wasn’t ready to play with that quite yet. Thɪs chapter is updatᴇd by novelFɪre.net

On both Elemental orbs, I quickly moved Silent Casting up to twenty-five ranks. I didn’t need the enemy to know exactly what I was casting just because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I knew that I would still hear the words in my mind from Elicec and that certain builds would still be able to pick that up for countering, but it was for the best to reduce that chance as much as I could.

Components did still sound interesting and was almost certainly something I’d take the time to explore more of once this was over. I had a feeling the ability was just more useful for me in my future magical experiments. While I was sure I could utilize them in a fight, there wasn’t really time to add that level of complexity to things I needed to figure out at the moment. I was pretty settled into the idea of my current battle plan for the tenth floor. There was also the fact that with the way Aether seemed to work for me, I’d likely need to start carrying around pure samples of elements to make the best use of it. Which was something I wasn’t remotely against in the future, it was just that now wasn’t the right time to start building my collection.

That left imbuing, which was my orb still at the lowest rank. The only real increase I could do on it was to finally fully invest in Elemental Affinity. This did leave me with a question, though. Was Corey able to activate mana skills from Alpha’s mallet to the other tools? Or were we only limited to using Imbuing on Alpha themselves?

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I opened my chat window, hoping Corey had a good answer to that question.