Chapter 187: Let Him Cook

Goliath Armor

+10 Strength

+10 Resistance

Whenever the user heals, they temporarily gain a small amount of size that persists as long as the armor is equipped. Other Equipment worn by the User scales to match. Vastly increased size may damage the User if their Resistance is not high enough.

New equipment scales to match as it is attempted to be worn.

User and their equipment return to normal size when the armor is unequipped.

Hmm…. Will mused, inspecting the armor for the umpteenth time.

It had been one of the four rare Relics that Thea Oilton had bargained for. It had an interesting and unusual effect of making the wearer bigger based on how many wounds they had healed since donning it…and simply that.

It was…not Will’s cup of tea, to be honest. He didn’t like the idea. It lacked a certain…snappy flair that Will had realized he enjoyed, involving speed and a dazzling flourish of magic, but…

Becoming a big, slow, stupid mountain and crushing everything in his path was obviously not what Caddock was thinking he would do, and thus it was a viable strategy.

By itself, the Goliath Armor was…pretty good. But Will knew how to make it better.

Basic steps, basic steps first, Will reminded himself, turning his attention to the barrel that had been working on his new ring. He could tell that it was finally done.

On her shopping trip, Ria had found a couple extra copies of Will’s baking rings, and a hat that had similar effects. Will had poured all of them, along with some juiced-up Resistance gear, into the same barrel.

The last two weeks had been solely dedicated to making his new baking ring. It was cutting it pretty close, but Will was hoping the extra speed could let him finish the other equipment in record time.

Will popped the top off and fished around in the depleted Relic Dust for a moment before his fingers touched on metal.

Will pulled out the plain gold band and inspected it.

Ring Of Explosive Doughmaking

+8 Strength

+30 resistance

+6 Focus

+20% potency of Brewing and baking Abilities.

Creates ideal environmental conditions for brewing and baking Abilities, such as temperature, moisture, pressure, etc.

Baking and Brewing performed by the wearer is substantially hastened, without compromising quality.

Wearer creates, purifies, and mixes powdered ingredients much more quickly and thoroughly.

Scales with Resistance.

Explosive, huh? Let’s find out how Explosive.

The ring’s Resistance bonus wasn’t as high as the resistance ring, but it was more specialized, And Will was willing to bet that he could condense all the Sourdough-ing down to one day if he slotted this ring in his Phantom Hand.

Do you wish to sacrifice Ring of Explosive Doughmaking to Phantom Hand?

Will mentally checked that there was nothing inside the Dimensional Storage of the snake, before giving the mental affirmative, overwriting the Ring of Resistance.

A shudder travelled up Will’s spine as he felt his middle finger blacken and slough off. The phantom snake in turn, blackened and unraveled, replaced by what Will could only call an egg.

…oh right, it’ll take a week to regrow after overwriting one…damnit.

A week later, Will was bumping up against the time he’d decreed that they would be leaving. Thea wasn’t having any money problems anymore, since she’d purchased enough farmland and businesses to make their headquarters somewhat self-sufficient.

The people were eager to leave, though. The caravaneers had stayed in this place where they couldn’t lie over a month, where any misspoken word might lead to a lifetime of regret. It was gradually wearing on them.

On the other hand, Will had plenty of time to acquire and organize his Relics by type to make the ‘Caddock-crushing’ sets, as he called them.

At the end of the week, Will awoke to a rush of strength, and he knew without checking that the new ring was finished overwriting the previous one.

Will brought it up.

Ring Of Explosive Doughmaking

+44 Strength

+167 resistance

+33 Focus

+111% potency of Brewing and baking Abilities.

Creates perfect environmental conditions for brewing and baking Abilities, such as temperature, moisture, pressure, etc.

Baking and Brewing performed by the wearer is vastly hastened, without compromising quality.

Wearer creates, purifies, and mixes powdered ingredients vastly more quickly and thoroughly.

Scales with Resistance.

Wow. The original use of Sourdough is to retain consumeables. I wonder if…

Will took a healing potion and downed it, using Sourdough as he did so.

Sourdough

180 Charges Remaining

As usual, Will retained a little red nodule in his hand. It was bigger than usual, but nothing…

Will’s eyes widened as the nodule unfolded like a crumpled piece of paper, becoming a full-sized healing potion in a matter of seconds. Curious, Will tapped it with his fingers and shook it around a bit, even opening it and smelling the potion.

Same acrid mixture as before.

Okay, I like the ring. I like it a lot.

With the ring slotted, Will’s efficiency with Sourdough had become so high that the percentage of the original consumable item he retained had finally exceeded 100%, and the ambient Miasma was enough to reactivate it.

Sadly, it did not bud a second consumable starter to grow into a second potion. As cool as that would’ve been, The Tower didn’t like infinite glitches, so Will was stuck just retaining the same potion basically for free.

For now, anyway. Gotta be a way to increase the cost in exchange for budding another consumable. Some way to tweak how I use it. Ghoul always suggests things are less rigid than they appear. Is over-Charging an Ability possible?

Question for later.

The funny thing was, Will had so much money and space in his Dimensional Storage that he could pack pretty much as many consumables as he wanted for a long trip, rendering the ability to preserve them…an amusing parlor trick.

That money-saving aspect I was drooling over a year ago is too little, too late, Will thought with an amused snort.

But the more powerful Relic-baking aspect of Sourdough…That was still very much of interest to Will.

Will gathered together twelve Relics to create a soft set with the Goliath Armor.

Four thorns Relics, two Lifesteal, two inertia, and four ‘speed on taking damage’ Relics.

Will grabbed the first basic Thorns Relic and studied it. it was a steel collar with nasty spikes coming off of it at odd angles that surely wouldn’t be any fun to wear.

Collar of Thorns

+5 Strength

+5 Resistance

+5 Focus

12% Thorns

Well, in you go. Will thought, using his bolt-cutter to snap the collar above the barrel for his ‘thorns’ baking.

Something strange happened.

Instead of everything falling down through the funnel Will had set up, a plume dull, nonmagical Relic dust floated up and away while the glowing stuff drifted down into the barrel.

Create, purify and mix powdered ingredients, Will thought to himself. The effect from his ring was causing the impurities to simply float away, unable, or perhaps unwilling to contaminate his batch of sourdough.

This reminded him of the bowl outside the Tower that could do the same, condensing the good stuff to the center while the nonmagical dust was scraped away from the outside.

After a moment of deliberation, Will grabbed an extra Thorns relic.

I don’t think the Tower is going to let me retain more than 80% of each Relic’s potency, but I’ll bet this extra purity will make room for a fifth Relic without substantial loss.

Will destroyed three more Thorns relics and tossed them in before putting a ring in there to bake.

Why a ring? Mostly because they were portable and fit nicely into the tiny barrels. He wasn’t planning on keeping them around anyway.

Will followed that up by creating another three mixes using the other ingredients, and stacked the Goliath Armor on top of them, mentally labelling them ‘Speed titan’

Will then turned his attention to the bespoke illusion Relic he was obligated to make for Travis.

He went back to his pile of Relics and began plucking things out.

Let’s see, if higher purity allows me to use five Relics in each layer, then I’ll need…twenty of them plus the one to be baked. Ugh.

Let’s cover the basics, Will thought as he drew a handful of relics from pre-made piles. Illusion potency Relics, Focus Relics, Acuity relics…Then we need a soft-set effect.

Will scanned through the pile of Relics until he found an effect that interested him.

Eidolons created by the user gain Strength and Resistance. Scales with Focus.

Right. When he used the Wraith Vessel to grant his illusions physical bodies, they became illusion/eidolon hybrids, which gives them all the benefits and penalties of both.

For example, Travis’s illusions could now be dispelled by anti-illusion and anti-Eidolon Abilities, but they could also benefit from Relics that applied to either.

…Travis’s problem was his illusions were only as strong as the materials they copied. This could address that, Will thought, tossing the amulet in the pile.

Will didn’t really need it. Phantom Hand was plenty strong. Will kept looking, finally finding Relics with effects that made a nice little synergistic ecosystem.

Will had been going through Relics so long that he didn’t even look at the name or the sat bonuses, focusing solely on the effects.

Excess healing on the user will be consumed to re-create damaged or dispelled Illusions, starting from the least potent to the most.

Neat. That would allow an illusionist to repair their stuff by drinking a healing potion potion.

When an illusion is destroyed, the user is healed based on the Charge spent.

Cool. That would allow him to heal himself and his illusions by breaking one of them.

User may spend more Charge on an Eidolon Ability to increase its power.

There we go. Perfect. He could use that to make a powerful bodyguard or bolt of lightning that uses all of his Charge.

Travis will probably use it to make a big-titty goth girlfriend. Mark my words.

Will would probably use the combination he was looking at to dump all his Charge into making a tiny little illusion of a stick that could be easily snapped despite being a hundred times stronger, which he would put in a pocket or behind his ear. Every week or so he would make a new one.

Later, during a fight, Will could snap the stick and heal any wound or resurrect his entire illusion army. possibly both.

pretty good combo, Will thought.

Add a dash of lifesteal to allow his illusions to heal him and therefore themselves… Will thought, grabbing from the lifesteal pile and dumping a few of them in.

And there. You’ve got a decent soft-set.

Will then snapped all but five of the relics, leaving aside the most unassuming band to be the base ring, then putting the other four in the barrels full of swirling miasmatic dust.

Why the most unassuming band? Because Travis was sure to complain that it was too plain. Plain was good, though. It made it less likely to be stolen.

…And it irked Travis.

Will set the stack of bread-box sized barrels and the ring aside and turned to the other three unique Relics.

There were three left. A book, a sickle, and a bow.

The sickle reminded Will of his Cold Harvest, lost to the sands of time, so he reached for it.

It was plain and looked like beaten steel pitted by weather and neglect. The handle was plain wood that looked a little loose, like bugs or weeds could sprout out of the gap at any second.

As his fingers got closer to it, Will got a strange, squirming feeling in his chest.

This Relic is mean, isn’t it? Will thought, pausing for a moment. It gave him the same cursed feeling as Bakton’s saber.

He took a breath and picked up the sickle, inspecting it.

Sickle of Malicious Regrowth

+3 Acuity

+5 focus

Debuffs inflicted by the user that have expired or been dispelled, will leave behind ‘seeds’. These seeds will regrow into new debuffs as soon as the their host loses focus on them.

Number of seeds and their duration scales with Focus. Debuffs from seeds do not spawn further seeds.

…Holy shit. That is mean! That is like, the backbone of a Cursemonger’s Build right there.

Will dissected the description, looking for ways to exploit it.

‘As soon as their host loses focus on them.’

The way it was described implied that the enemy would be aware of the existence of these ‘seeds’, and as long as they paid close attention those seed wouldn’t be a problem, but if they stopped for an instant they would sprout.

It splits the enemy’s attention! Will realized.

It was like asking someone to fight while juggling with one hand, and the seeds were the balls.

It could be done of course, but they sure as Abyss wouldn’t be fighting at their best.

And if they dropped a ball…all their debuffs come out to play.

What can I combine that with?

Will immediately thought of Jason’s jaw-harp that attracted enemy attention.

If he got a relic that could draw enemy attention, that would be like jostling their arm while they were juggling.

All will needed after that were some Relics that specialized in applying debuffs.

It’s too bad I can’t add psychic venom to it, Will thought as he scrounged through the pile. Despite how good it was, there was no way he would destroy his set item for a soft set he was making for one fight.

Here’s one that adds bleed to any debuff applied.

Here’s one that makes debuffs contagious. Added.

Here’s one that adds paralysis. Added.

Here’s one that makes bleed stronger. Added.

Debuff potency… Added.

Try as he might, Will couldn’t find an item that applied a debuff in a way that he liked, which was critical to the soft-set he was trying to arrange.

Will frowned, resolving to put it aside until he found what he was looking for.

He turned his attention to the next unique relic, the book. It gave him the same squirming, uneasy feeling that he was beginning to associate with debuffing items.

Tome of the Stern Governess (off-hand)

+5 Acuity

+8 Focus

Active: 1 Charge

Wearer may shush a target and apply a debuff that makes it more difficult to speak. Duration and potency scale with Focus

Oh…This’ll work.

Will quickly got that batch started and set the sickle on top of the barrels, then turned to the bow. It was kind of gaudy with white wood and gold evoking lightning shapes across the arms.

Bows weren’t typically on the table due to the unreliable nature of Will’s off-hand, but as a slotted item? Absolutely.

I’ve been looking for a replacement for the Ring of Accuracy. Let’s see what you got.

Heaven’s Fury

+8 Strength

+8 Kinesthetics

+8 Acuity

4 degrees of correction.

+35% to Lightning damage inflicted by user.

Upon striking their target, projectiles fired by this bow are converted to lightning bolts, with potency based on the arrow’s potential damage on impact.

Is slotting that going to make anything I shoot or throw convert to lightning on impact? Will mused. In his experience, that was probably the case, since he benefited from the lifesteal on Cold Harvest back when he’d had it slotted.

Well, what do we have that synergizes? ‘Potential damage on impact’ is a key feature. I need to look for stuff that boosts damage. Plus the bow itself has a decent amount of correction.

Over a year ago now, the general store owner had told him that 30 degrees of correction it where rings of accuracy really began to get crazy. Like, shooting people around corners, and shooting around them to damage them from behind.

My current multiplier for items slotted in Phantom Hand is a bit over 5, and we’ll retain about 3 of those degrees, multiplied by 5…

After everything was said and done, the bow would probably have somewhere around 15 correction, which was great, but not quite ‘shoot around corners’ great.

Inspired, Will began rummaging through his accuracy rings, plucking out the ones that worked well with what he had in mind.

This one, this one…this one..should be enough.

Next, Will rifled through his rings, amulets, and ranged weapons.

Will paused on a sling.

Missiles gain speed over time.

Add it.

The next find that Will plucked out was an amulet that chained lightning damage to nearby enemies.

Bonus to the projectile’s mass over distance? Add it.

Once Will had filled up all 20 relics, he got that batch of barrels cooking.

Will turned back to the Goliath Armor and grabbed one of the barrels underneath it, shaking it around, using his senses to detect the movement of Miasma.

It was cold and dead inside.

The Relic was already done baking.

Holy…I’m gonna have this done by evening.

“Breakfast is on, you almost done?” Anna asked, peeking into Will’s tent.

“Oh yeah, just another few minutes, this is going gr-”

“William Oh, what have you done to your room!?” Anna demanded, causing will to flinch.

Will froze and glanced around his room, studying the quarter-inch of grey relic dust that covered every surface of his tent, including his bed and desk. As amazing as it had been for the purifying effect of his new ring to exclude the chaff from his experiments, those impurities had to go somewhere. In this case, his clothes, his bed, his desk, his shoes, his pillow, his chamberpot, etc.

It looked like his entire room have been covered in a fine layer of volcanic ash.

I guess I should’ve done this outside.