Chapter 48.4

Jax sighed before flopping across Arx’s lap—to the other’s chagrin.  “I dunno.  Seems to me it’s just another poison like what the Master’s got already—and not even as good!  ‘Sides, if Life Energy be doing that, couldn’t we just use what’s in our fannies?”

“Not dense enough—cherry boy!”

Jax’s head jerked up.  However, her outrage faded quickly, replaced by a grin of amusement tugging at her features.  “That one weren’t bad.  Pity ye can’t pull such out when it’s called fer.”

“Yes.  Pity,” Mia agreed.  Followed by an dismissive sniff.  “And anyway, if you want the poison to do something more interesting, you’ll need to specify.  At Lynnria’s current strength, there is only so much I can do with a single skill point.”

“I still have a second one we can use,” Lynnria reminded us.  “We only ever got around to spending the one when I gained my Class.”

That tidbit of information sparked a lengthy debate regarding the various avenues we might take this hypothetical poison, during which I maintained a thoughtful silence.

My own ability caused horrific pain through its corrosive properties and exploded violently if exposed to flame, so causing damage was not a… huge concern.

Jax thought it best for it to cause the Lust Ailment.  That way, her new—and thus far unused—Class suffix would have something to work off of.  As a Tenebrous Warrior of Beguilement, she was supposed to receive stacking Strength and Agility bonuses based on the arousal levels of those around her. However, being Boundary-locked, she had yet to purchase skills to take full advantage of that ability.

Meanwhile, Arx thought it would be more useful for it to cause some sort of Confusion or Dazed effect.  Anything we might do to throw the enemy off their game would be extremely helpful in combat.  Putting them to sleep, making them stare off into space, or even better, making them attack one another would be way better than just giving one of our party members a buff.

Lynnria’s own idea was… a little more violent.  She thought it would be really cool for the poison to make its victim explode… and then for the chunks to explode when they hit something.  And then for anybody caught in that explosion to also explode.  Ultimately resulting in a visceral popcorn spray of annihilation.

Paraphrasing, of course.

“Absolutely not!” Mia shouted.

“Oh, come on!” Lynnria groaned as she aimed a kick at an innocent pitcher of water… that was sitting on the table she had been pontificating from.  However, her foot was quickly reminded that the furniture and everything on it was glued down, leaving her hopping in circles with foot in hand.

“First of all, never mind the restriction on multi-targeting within the Foundation Layers,” Mia began, “proliferation isn’t even available until the 3rd Stratum.  And you want explosive proliferation?  You would need to be in the 4th before we could ever consider it.  Keeping a poison from affecting your own party is one thing, but explosives are an entirely separate matter!”

“Donum’s explodes,” Lynnria countered petulantly.

“Donum’s is modeled upon a compound his party fairly encountered,” Mia counter-countered.  “There is no need to define parameters in such cases, and the allied immunity it confers does not extend to explosive side-effects.”

No need to define parameters?  That was news to me.  Though, Mia had already mentioned something to that effect when she was explaining the Create Lesser Dolilim spell, this was the first time I had really considered the implications.  If it was possible to create spells by reference…

No, there has to be some sort of limitation.  I knew of one already.  Mia had even said it.  I had to have encountered the thing before.  But ‘encountered’ in what sense?  Like… was it possible to create a space shuttle?  I had seen one of those before on a school field trip.

Somehow, I doubted it.  And that was just exactly the kind of ‘deeper’ question Mia would avoid.  I was going to have to figure it out through experimentation, I knew.

But now was not the time.  I had something else in mind for Lynnria.

“Those are all excellent ideas,” I began.  Even Lynnria’s… if a bit ambitious.  “But I think the main issue is in how to apply the poison in the first place.  From what I’m hearing, this isn’t a simple matter of a magical buff like mine is.  This has to be meticulously applied to a blade.  That would be fine if we already knew we were getting into a fight, but she’d have a lot of trouble with surprise attacks.”

I hesitated in saying the rest.  I had been entertaining the vague hope of developing Lynnria into more of an offensive spell caster, but I was well aware how much that flew in the face of her expressed desires.  Mages and Warriors have very different philosophies when it came to combat.  Although, at the end of the day, there is not much difference between dying from a blade between your ribs or a hole burned through your chest.

So maybe if I phrase it correctly…?

“She really needs a better way to introduce the poison into her victim than just blood contact.  Like… maybe she could release it as a gas.  That way, she could just wave it into their faces.”

However, Mia shot that down immediately.  “A gas would count as a multi-target ability.”

I nodded, having expected the rejection.  “Okay… if you could somehow make the poison work on skin contact, all she’d have to do is touch them.  Better yet, you could even form it into some kind of projectile that she could launch from a distance.  Unless… hmm.  Maybe that’s too much.  There would be a lot of skill involved in actually hitting anyone with it.”

Lynnria puffed out her chest immediately and began brandishing her dowel rod from her perch on the table.  “I think I have already demonstrated my proficiency in that regard.”

I smiled.  “True.”

Mia clicked over to her private channel.  “Ah… a simple poison bolt spell.  But one which requires skill-based targeting, appealing to her pride.  She would even need to keep track of ammunition.  Well played, my lord.”

“Still don’t do much,” Jax pointed out, oblivious.  “But we could build on it yet.”

Arx nodded along.  “And range is an extremely useful component for an ability to have.  ‘Hurt them before they can hurt you,’ as our old seneschal used to say.”

“Our Clan has a seneschal?” Lynnria asked doubtfully.

“No… no, that was…”  Arx looked away.  “Never mind.  He’s long dead now.”

I gave Arx a curious glance.  Filing that away for later…

Lynnria sighed.  “Shame.  Good ones are hard to come by.”  She twisted her lips into a considering expression before starting up a circuit atop her end table.  “I suppose building up a skill to shoot poison would be pretty interesting.  Even if it only stuns, at first.”

“Excellent.  I’ll get to work on those immediately,” Mia exclaimed.  “In the meantime, I should mention one last item.  Your Core reconfiguration has forced me to rework your initial skill.  Instead of relying on your Will to define its parameters, all you need do now is touch an object with the claw of your left hand’s pinky to apply a Rune of Luck.  Then, if it is possible for that object to have some favorable outcome relative to yourself, the Rune will push for that chain of events.  Naturally, our lord’s ability will compound this effect greatly.”

“And this is an improvement,” Arx said, incredulous.  “How did it work before?  Twine and prayer?”

Lynnria bobbed her head to one side.  “A lot like prayer, actually.  I could never be sure when I had done the thing right or what effect it was even having.  This should be much better in a fight.  Although, it’d be difficult now to pull off that treasure-finding trick we did before.”

“It would require some creativity, yes.  Improving a skill’s specificity of function necessarily limits its variety of use.  By definition.”

Lynnria took a considering look at her now apparently-enchanted pinky.  “What else—”  She paused to rephrase.  “I would like to know the specifics of the ability, please.  Like how long the Rune lasts.  Stuff like that.”

“Currently, the Rune will only operate for a few seconds without our lord’s ability to enhance it.  Your skill level will improve this, of course.  And you will not need to worry about whether or not it is having an effect.  The Rune will always work.  However, it would take a great deal of skill to produce an outcome of any significance.”