Without a monster spawn nearby, Rae’s night watch was depressingly uneventful.
But uneventful was good for Karl, as it gave him time to study his skills and theorize ways to combine them that might make a whole new ability.
Trollish Regeneration and Limited Invulnerability had combined to make [Void Body]. The skill basically combined the best of both, with a bit more power, while keeping them as a passive skill.
That wasn’t really what Karl was hoping for. It was an absolutely incredible skill, but he should be able to combine them into an ability that was better than just having both skills active, which he was doing anyhow.
None of the other skills seemed all that compatible, though.
Karl considered his options, and while it seemed like he might be able to combine some of his attacks skills, his imagination was failing him on how to combine them to make them better than skill plus skill combined.
There was no way that a skill so difficult to obtain could be limited to this degree. It wasn’t available on the offensive or defensive skill trees, so there had to be more to it.
Perhaps the point was to try to make incompatible skills work together to do something new and innovative.
[Maybe you just need to think about how to make something from each of us work together? You can visualize skills, so just imagine all of us working together on one spell.] Remi offered.
She was actually the one with the most talent and success creating new skills. She had made two different types of Totems so far, and she had learned a wider variety of skills than anyone else.
[Just make the snake’s magic less evil and go from there.] Hawk suggested.
Karl laughed at the bird’s loyalty to his element, and focused on the one shared skill from Remi’s advancement that he hadn’t tried yet.
[Cyclone] created a vortex of water, similar to the defensive cyclone that that Naga Shaman boss had used.
Hawk would want that to be less evil.
So, Karl focused on converting the element to be fire. A flaming tornado was more acceptable to Hawk, even if it wasn’t better than the base Cyclone.
[SOUP!] Cara shouted, startling them all.
[What in the world are you talking about?] Karl asked.
It wasn’t even close to lunchtime, and the drake leg that Hawk was roasting her wasn’t ready yet.
[You know, soup! Just keep putting stuff in the pot until it’s good. You have a flaming Cyclone, but if you added the Earth Barrier from Rae and a dash of Nullify…]
The Void Badger trailed off to let Karl finish the thought.
Karl thought about it, and that might be good, but not quite right. However, if he added Shatter to cause physical hits to inflict additional vibration damage, then made the Earth Shield swirl in the Flaming Cyclone, with a touch of [Nullify] to help it break defences, they might be on to something.
It was a great concept, in theory. Except for the fact that Karl couldn’t use Nullify.
In practice, trying to add Earth Shield to the cyclone was a pain, and he was unable to use Rae’s [Boulder Toss] to just add small stones.
However, if he added [Shred], the swirling vortex became positively hateful.
But it still needed a bit more, and [Bone Crusher] did a fine job of replacing Nullify in this situation, as it bypassed armour.
It wouldn’t break their defences, but having a portion of the damage bypass them was a great start.
Karl spent most of the afternoon trying to make that work together.
He could form it in his mind, but it was unstable, and missing something.
Chain Lightning, that was what it was missing. The Lightning would arc around it, carrying Shred and Bone Crusher with it, while the repetitive nature of the spell would help stabilize the mess of magic elements.
In his mind, it was a great spell. It only gained a fraction of each component, but Rae and Cara were unhappy with being left out of the new ultimate skill.
Disintegration wasn’t going to merge with this spell, though. There was already too much going on.
[We might have to make this one the Hawk and Remi combo. I’ve already added far too much to this soup, and I don’t think that it’s even going to stabilize. If I go any further I’m just going to be making a mess of things.] Karl sighed as they prepared to stop for the evening.
[At least try it once to see if you can make a less evil Cyclone.] Hawk pleaded.
“You’ve been lost in your head all day. Did you make some sort of discovery?” Dana asked as she leaned against his shoulder.
She had been there all day, and Karl had been so preoccupied that he had hardly noticed.
“I’ve been trying to use the Skill Merger ability that I got from Orthos to turn some of the Shared Skills into a higher grade skill. It’s harder than it seems, and the skill doesn’t seem to want to give me hints on what might work.” Karl sighed.
“How far along are you?” Dana replied.
“Well, I think I’ve got an upgraded [Cyclone], but fire element instead of water. In theory, it should be much more powerful, but I don’t know if it’s going to work at all.”
Lotus popped her head over his other shoulder. “Are we going to get a show? I want to see you try to use a made up skill. That is too cool. Does that mean, if you learn enough different things, you can just make up a whole new set of attacks?”
“I suppose that might be true. If I had the next stage of the Skill Master ability, the beasts would naturally be able to evolve their skills to new ones that are related to the base, like how Shred is an evolved Rend.” Karl explained.
A single use version was how they had gotten [Eternal Lightning] and that one skill alone was enough to call Thor overpowered as a defensive support.
“Well, let’s see what you have? Just cast it over there. We don’t want to get caught up if it goes wrong.” Lotus insisted as Thor pulled the wagon to a stop next to a large boulder that would be their windbreak tonight.
Karl chuckled as he got to the ground. “Alright. This might need some extra space, so I’ll go some distance away.”
Karl walked fifty metres from the wagon, just to be safe. That should be beyond the range of any accidental misfires, especially when he was casting it away from the wagon as well.
Karl focused on the new Cyclone, then activated all of the spells that would need to be combined to make it work. It was a massive energy use, but the spell was beginning to take effect as he had envisioned it.
The cyclone was fire, it was energized with Shred and Chain Lightning, but when he tried to add [Bone Crusher] it vanished in a puff of unstable fire.
“Alright, that might have been too much to ask. Let me try that again.”
Karl began to reform the four-metre tall Cyclone with more focus on the base spell to keep the form and then activated Shred for the tearing damage, and then Chain Lightning. That was fairly stable, but nothing special had happened, so Karl began to tweak the balances.
If he could get it right before he was exhausted, it would be a great victory.
The spell began to settle, but the mana cost was still that of four spells at once. That wasn’t really an improvement, but at least the effect looked right.
Then suddenly, lightning arced off the vortex, hitting an Earth Mouse ten metres from the main Cyclone.
A smaller version of the spell formed at the impact site, wandering off on its own without Karl’s input or control.
Then another Chain Lightning arc hit a hidden creature and a second two-metre tall vortex formed, wandering through the grass.
Karl nearly collapsed as a pulse of energy was pulled from him and a dozen more small vortexes formed, one metre tall and spreading from the secondary vortexes.
[Brother Hawk, it is glorious.] Cara breathed, barely loud enough for Karl to hear in his thoughts.
Hawk blinked a tear from his eye. [It is beautiful.]
[New Shared Skill Learned: Hellstorm]
[Usable by Remi]
[Usable Hawk]
There was only one problem with that new skill. They had started a grass fire.
[Remi, would you mind putting that out for us? Congratulations to you and Hawk on your new spell.]
