57: Power
Six hundred and eighty-two thousand, two hundred and seventy-eight.
That was the number staring back at Eris, held so innocently underneath her Desire’s Reap skill. She hadn’t been wanting to look at any point, partially because she was scared at what kind of number she’d see. Over seven hours straight of crafting pointless, thirty-second items and draining the magic before throwing each away into a growing pile of trash outside the workshop. And that number was the result of their labour.
Thankfully, a tired and sweaty Pravala seemed to have little arguments towards leaving so she could return to her room and rest. That left Eris alone in the room that looked like it was swept through by a tornado of cloth threads, leather scraps and wood shavings. Her skin would have been sticky with sweat, but she was covered head to toe in sawdust and workshop grime. At least she had a habit of ensuring the little ramshackle shower she rigged up outside the workshop always had a full tank of water, meaning that Eris could pull the curtain closed, open the valve, and sit down on the marble slab. It didn’t matter that she still had her clothes on or the water was uncomfortably cold- Eris just sat in quiet contemplation under the water while dust and dirt idly rinsed down her shoulders.
Six hundred and eighty thousand points, and six skills to spend it on. Unfortunately, because of the way that the skills seemed to be levelling so far, with the ten-times-the-previous-cost rule, it didn’t look like that many points would actually accomplish much. Of course, Eris was then flabbergasted by herself that she even had the audacity to be upset with over half a million points of resource that she effectively cheated to get.
Eris let out a sigh, and set to work. This was gonna take a while.
Novice Artificer, Resilience, and Crafting Points each took two hundred and fifty points to be brought to level three. Each also seemed to follow their same pattern in terms of the bonus increase as they did when reaching level two.
Novice Artificer got another twenty-five percent bonus, bringing the total bonus to seventy-five percent. Resilience gained another ten percent to make the Durability-per-Crafting-Point bonus thirty percent. Likewise, Crafting Points predictably went from twenty total points to thirty. However, Eris also dropped two hundred and fifty points of Desire into Ally of Artifice. Since it and Perfection were skills she gained at second level, they seemed to be treated as one level higher in terms of cost. She had already used her stockpile to bring Perfection up to second level a number of days ago, meaning every single one of her upgradable skills now had an even cost of twenty-five hundred points to level up. Even though the way it progressed was fairly on point with what she had predicted, seeing the skill still baffled Eris.
Ally of Artifice {Active} {Level 2}
Designate up to {2} willing people as your Allies. Until you designate different targets, the chosen Allies gain {200%} faster level progression and you receive the same amount of level progression they do.
An increase to both the number of allies, and the bonus it provides. In other words, a skill that quite literally multiplied its own effectiveness and grew exponentially stronger with each increase in level. Eris forced herself to move on and keep letting the energy of her Desire flow out into her skills evenly.
Twenty-five hundred points each. Novice Artificer, Crafting Points, Resilience, and Desire’s Reap all brought to fourth level. Again, with the first three having predictable increases. Seventy-five percent to one hundred. Thirty points to forty. Thirty percent per point to forty. However, the last one was a little different.
Desire’s Reap {Passive} {Level 4 - Maxed}
Engage in sexual acts with others to collect Desire. Additional Desire is collected based on the arousal of the active participant(s) and depravity of the acts performed. Current Desire: 671291
Interesting. Eris had refused to let Pravala boost the skill to see what the higher levels would have been like, because she hadn’t wanted even the slightest inkling of a thought about having sex with that woman. However, Desire’s Reap now dropped all of the ‘can be gained by’ examples and left nothing but the bare minimum. Eris could only assume that it meant any sexual act whatsoever now gave Desire. In other words, Eris figured she’d now get Desire from legitimate fucking, either with a real dick or a dildo. A nice upgrade, and understandable that the skill couldn’t go any further than that. After all, when it encompasses everything, what else could levelling it up even do?.
Perfection and Ally of Artifice both pushed to third level, twenty-five hundred points each. Perfection’s twenty percent bonus to Potency per CP went to thirty percent, and Ally of Artifice predictably went to three allies at a three hundred percent progression bonus. Dumping twenty-five thousand points into both was almost painful- like emptying out her coin purse to buy one extremely expensive thing, but Eris did it anyway. Their fourth level was just as predictable as third. Forty percent Potency per point, and four allies at a four hundred percent bonus. However, turning back to dump that same twenty-five thousand points into her other three skills to bring them up to five was different.
Tingling washed over her skin, rolling down her limbs and making her fingers go numb for a moment. Goosebumps rose and the hair on the back of her scalp stood straight for several moments, and Eris suddenly couldn’t breathe. Only after the sensations faded a few seconds later was Eris able to gasp. Out of morbid curiosity, Eris looked back at the skills.
Adept Artificer {Passive} {Evolution 1} {Level 1}
You have a natural talent for crafting. Any product you craft gains a {150%} bonus to its Quality, applied after all other bonuses. This bonus is doubled when crafting items using only equipment made by you.
Enhanced Crafting Points {Passive} {Evolution 1} {Level 1}
You have {50} Crafting Points, which you may spend on certain abilities while in the process of crafting. When beginning a new craft, current number of Crafting Points resets to {50}. For every 5 Crafting Points spent on a single ability during a craft, you gain {1} additional Crafting Point that can be spent on any other ability.
Unbroken {Active} {Evolution 1} {Level 1}
For each Crafting Point spent on Unbroken, the Durability of the craft is increased by {50%}. Consumable crafts, such as potions or food, have their Duration increased instead. When used on crafted armour, Unbroken also increases the Potency of the craft by {25%} for each Crafting Point spent.
Eris narrowed her eyes despite looking into her mind, letting the water of the shower soak through her shirt and run down her back. The skills… evolved?
What?
New effects, and judging by the brackets, new multipliers and effects. Even Novice Artificer, which Pravala had routinely boosted to level ninety-plus, was something completely new now. Not only did the actual percentage go up by fifty this level instead of the normal twenty-five, but it doubled the bonus when using tools she made? That most certainly hadn’t been there when Pravala was boosting the percentage bonus into the thousands. What was the relationship there? Were Eris’s skills going to ‘evolve’ into new and more powerful forms as they increased in level? Then why didn’t they temporarily evolve when Pravala boosted them?
Could it have something to do with the new names? Maybe Eris levelling them up naturally allowed the skills to progress in the way they should, but Pravala’s boost took the skills as they were and artificially boosted their level well beyond what they should. Like… Eris levelling her skills was shaping clay from the very beginning to make the vase, whereas Pravala boosting them was simply having a finished-but-not-fantastic vase simply handed to her. Fine for quick and powerful end results, but not quite as effective as if Eris brought it up to that point naturally.
Well, that was all Eris could imagine for the reasoning. It made sense in her mind. The only question was, how the fuck would she ever hope of getting this many points naturally if the cost was exponentially increasing at this rate? She’d be running dry in no-
Eris was nearly flashbanged when she started pouring in the Desire- fully expecting the skill to take a six digit figure. However, it happened near-instantly. Adept Artificer progressed to second level after Desire was dumped in at the rate of a waterfall, so fast that the next level blindsided her as well before she could blink and force herself to stop putting the energy forward. A quick count of her Desire showed that she had spent barely more than a thousand points, yet that got two more levels.
By all logic of the multiplying costs, she shouldn’t have had nearly enough points to do that, yet here it happened with almost nothing. As an experiment, before even looking at what her twice-levelled new skill even did, Eris turned her internal gaze towards Resili- err… Unbroken. It felt a little bit like trying to pull single drops from a dam, but Eris siphoned absolutely miniscule amounts of Desire to direct them towards the skill. It filled quickly.
Not quite as quickly as that very first level, with a cost of only twenty-five points, but close enough. After no more than a hundred points were drizzled into Unbroken, she felt the cup fill over and empty as the skill levelled. Another thousand was slowly poured in until it levelled again.
Eris blew a raspberry, leaning her face back until the water was spraying down over her closed eyes. Okay, so it looked like evolving a skill pseudo-reset the cost. It appeared to follow the same multiplier of ten times the previous value, but the base cost was now four times higher.
In other words, it looked like Eris’s stockpile of Desire was going to go a lot further than she thought.
Eris had to back out of her mind completely and focus on the water pouring down over her face for a moment. Getting a handful of upgrades to her skills before the costs became absolutely obscene was one thing. Suddenly having access to what may have been two dozen potential upgrades all at once felt a little bit like joining a lesson right before the class ended and having a wall of information dropped into her lap. After all, this many points may very well have been multiple years’ worth of progression dumped on her in a single afternoon. Aside from her level, this Altar may very well have shoved Eris to the equivalent power she should have had AFTER her four years at Marrix was finished.
Eris opted to reach up and start using her fingers to comb through and help wash out her hair while she tentatively focused back inwards and started allocating more Desire. As expected, it took ten thousand points to bring Adept Artificer to fourth level.
Adept Artificer {Passive} {Evolution 1} {Level 4}
You have a natural talent for crafting. Any product you craft gains a {375%} bonus to its Quality, applied after all other bonuses. This bonus is doubled when crafting items using only equipment made by you.
Judging by the quick math, it seemed that the percentage increase for each level of this version of the skill was seventy-five percent. Three times the growth rate of Novice Artificer’s twenty-five percent per level. Instead of spending a hundred thousand points, which (unlike the rest of her spending so far) would cause a significant dent in her stockpile, Eris turned to the other skills and started letting Desire pour free.
Enhanced Crafting Points {Passive} {Evolution 1} {Level 4}
You have {125} Crafting Points, which you may spend on certain abilities while in the process of crafting. When beginning a new craft, current number of Crafting Points resets to {125}. For every 5 Crafting Points spent on a single ability during a craft, you gain {4} additional Crafting Points that can be spent on any other ability.
Instead of getting ten CP per level, Enhanced Crafting Points now seemed to be giving twenty-five, and the amount of extra CP to be spent on a different skill went up to four. If Eris’s math was right, then she could dump all one hundred and twenty-five points into a single skill, either Unbroken or Perfection, then get an additional free one hundred to spend on the other. In other words, while she technically had a maximum of a hundred and twenty-five, it was actually almost twice that. If the level progression was hinting correctly, then the next level would literally double her effective points, while also giving her even more. If the skill then evolved on every multiple of five and got another effect on top of that…
Eris shook the dizzying comprehension of her power away and looked at the other skill.
Unbroken {Active} {Evolution 1} {Level 4}
For each Crafting Point spent on Unbroken, the Durability of the craft is increased by {200%}. Consumable crafts, such as potions or food, have their Duration increased instead. When used on crafted armour, Unbroken also increases the Potency of the craft by {100%} for each Crafting Point spent.
Instead of ten percent per level, it jumped up to fifty percent per level. A direct, absolute quintupling in power, on top of getting half that effectiveness as a Potency increase if the skill was used on armour. With the insane amounts of CP she now had to be able to spend, Eris figured that she may officially be able to make the most powerful armour anyone in the Syndicate has ever seen. Period. It didn’t matter that she was only second level. These were multipliers well beyond anything Eris could have even dreamed about, and it looked like Eris could only go further. However, now Eris was faced with a distinct choice, especially when she glanced at her remaining Desire.
507981.
Three evolved skills all at level four, presumably taking a hundred thousand points each to level up. Whether they would evolve again when they hit level five, like they did previously, was completely unknown. However, there were her also the skills she earned at second level and both at level four. Logically, bringing them to level five should evolve them just like her other skills did, but the cost would be two hundred and fifty thousand EACH. Bringing both of them up to the same evolution as the others would drain pretty much everything in her tank in one fell swoop. However, they were also very powerful skills on their own.
Perfection increasing Potency was ridiculously good, since Potency was pretty much the deciding factor for how powerful a magic item was in almost every regard except Durability and the multiplier of the enchantments. Quite literally, the only thing better to increase than Potency when making an item was the Quality, which was a modifier for literally everything- including Potency.
Furthermore, increasing Ally of Artifice was all but guaranteed to make it target up to five people and give a five hundred percent boost to progression gain. That was supremely powerful enough, but having the possibility of an evolution for even more features on top of that? That was really hard to pass up.
Either she could level up her first three, already-evolved skills and have a chance at evolving them further to lead into more upgrades beyond, or she could go for the almost-guarantee at big power boosts of the only two skills she’d yet to evolve.
Eris swore, then felt her wellspring of Desire plummet as half a million points was poured out into the two unevolved skills. Once again, limbs went numb. Every hair on her body stood on end and her lungs tightened like a bull was sitting on her chest. After a number of seconds where vision went fuzzy, the world pulled back into focus and Eris gasped to replenish the breath she lost.
Excellence {Active} {Evolution 1} {Level 1}
For each Crafting Point spent on Excellence, the Potency of the craft is increased by {50%}. This bonus is increased by {100%} when 50% or less of your total Crafting Points are spent on this ability.
Eris blinked, taking a moment to try and make sense of what Perfection evolved into. If she spent less than half of her total CP on this Excellence skill, then each individual point was twice as powerful? Or was it three times as powerful? Did ‘increasing the bonus by one hundred percent’ mean that it was multiplying it by one hundred percent and therefore doubling the effective power of each point, or was it simply taking the fifty percent Potency per point and adding that one hundred percent on top to make each point effectively worth a hundred and fifty percent? Eris furrowed her brow. She’d need to do some testing.
Either way, it made her already-ridiculous CP economy even more broken. She could use up half her points to increase the Potency, which was the strongest thing to increase, then use the rest to increase the Durability for free while keeping the power equivalent to if she’d put every single point towards the Potency, (if not even higher, depending on how the bonuses added together). Then she could add on the free hundred CP after the fact because of that extra evolution bonus Enhanced Crafting Points gave, and she’d be rolling in bonuses larger than all the best crafters in the entire Syndicate.
At least Ally of Artifice’s evolution seemed to be very simple and straightforward.
Wonders of Artifice {Active} {Evolution 1} {Level 1}
Designate up to 5 willing people as your Wonders. Until you designate different targets, the chosen Wonders gain {500%} faster level progression, you receive the same amount of level progression they do, and you receive skill progression resources from their sinful acts.
Oddly enough, the number of people Eris could give the bonus to no longer had the brackets around it to indicate an increase on subsequent levels. Did that mean Eris could only designate a maximum of five people as her Alles- scratch that… Wonders, no matter how much she levelled it further? Slightly disappointing, but given the nature of what the skill even did, that was only fair. Quintupling five different people’s speed at levelling up would have been nothing more than a daydream for anyone, especially since that also translated back to her to presumably make Eris level up faster as well. After all, it was simple math. If five different people were levelling up five times faster, and all of that progression also went to Eris, then that meant she was effectively getting the cumulative progression of twenty-five people… on top of the crafting she’d be doing in the meantime.
Then, of course, the cherry on top. ”-and you receive skill progression resources from their sinful acts.”
Based on the wording, Eris could only assume that it meant anyone she marked as a ‘Wonder’ would effectively get her Desire’s Reap skill, and Eris would get every drop of Desire they produce. Well, that alone answered her question of how she was supposed to logically get the insane quantities of Desire she needed in order to level up her skills even further.
Because she wouldn’t be the only one gathering them anymore.
Somehow, Eris managed to remind herself that she wasn’t quite done yet. After all, a quick look confirmed that she still had just under eight thousand points left to spend, and if her other evolved skills were an indication, the multiplied cost had been reset on evolution. A thousand points in Excellence confirmed that much, since it quickly tipped over to second level. Wonders of Artifice followed suit. Funny- Eris never even used Ally of Artifice at all, yet now she had completely skipped over the skill and evolved it into the next form. Like sprinting before even trying to walk for the first time.
Excellence {Active} {Evolution 1} {Level 2}
For each Crafting Point spent on Excellence, the Potency of the craft is increased by {100%}. This bonus is increased by {200%} when 50% or less of your total Crafting Points are spent on this ability.
Wonders of Artifice {Active} {Evolution 1} {Level 2}
Designate up to 5 willing people as your Wonders. Until you designate different targets, the chosen Wonders gain {750%} faster level progression, you receive the same amount of level progression they do, and you receive skill progression resources from their sinful acts.
Eris sighed, relaxing now that she officially didn’t have enough Desire to progress any skill any further. It was disorienting. Earlier today, she was a ‘pretty good crafter with special abilities’, and after seven hours of work she was, without a shadow of a doubt, now the single most powerful crafter in the history of the Syndicate in terms of raw bonuses. Of course, others may still have access to skills that she didn’t, and thus had more versatility, but Eris now easily provided multipliers and bonuses that couldn’t even be dreamed of previously.
However, her mind kept falling back to Wonders of Artifice. She didn’t want to use the skill on Pravala. She never would. But now that her designated targets could gain Desire for her and it wasn’t strictly based on progression anymore, there was now a very legitimate reason to use it on both Bailey and Elmas.
Or… not quite. After all, the Altar that made this all possible was still in the middle of the workshop, and if Eris really wanted Desire she could crank out items by herself faster than her and her Wonders could gain the sexual energy. So, still pretty much pointless.
On the thought, however, how would she even designate a Wonder in the first place? Did the person have to be willing, or could she force it on someone? (Not that Eris honestly thought anyone would turn down a seven hundred-fifty percent progression boost). Furthermore, did it require physical contact? Eris imagined it would, but what if it didn’t? Could she designate Bailey and Elmas right now, despite not even really knowing where they went off to-
Wait…
Could she…?
No- surely not.
But what if…?
Eris furrowed her brow and swore on the inside. After all, there wasn’t really any problem in trying. If it worked, great. If it didn’t, no harm no foul.
The redhead closed her eyes, ignoring the water spraying down the back of her neck and having completely soaked her shirt through. Instead, she focused on the images within. The memories. Faces. Voices. Names. Everyone in her workshop back in Marrix when she was serving breakfast that morning before they went on their journey into the Obelisk. A tall, beautiful girl that was the love of Eris’s life and more. The blonde curls of the stoic and quiet Knight that Eris cared for more than anyone- second only to the Berserker. The shimmering rainbow atop caramel skin and a bluntness to the point of being offensive and/or creepy. The lanky, pale Evoker that seemed passive but kind, and the almost-lookalike of herself with the social disposition of a chihuahua.
Eris willed Wonders of Artifice to activate, focusing entirely on Jaxie, Alex, Nima, Claire, and Meghan.