Lord Sorcerer: Singularity Online: Book 3 Read online

Aranos blinked, surprised. “Wait, you got an Advanced Class? When? What is it?”

  “If you learned the Inspection Skill, you would know the answers to both of those questions, would you not? The first I will answer: I reached level ten after our defeat of House Exxidor, and thanks to my actions at your side, I was able to take a Class that is relatively rare. As to what that Class is…learn Inspection, and you will see.”

  Aranos sighed as Rhys snorted in quiet laughter. “Fine, fine, I’ll learn it as we travel. Are you seriously not going to tell me until then?”

  “You obviously require motivation, and hopefully curiosity will serve as such. Oh, and while I know you could demand this information from your Oathbound, I am trusting you not to do so.”

  Aranos grunted; he had been considering it, to be honest, but he decided it wasn’t worth the argument. Instead, he hefted himself to his feet, grateful that he could even do so, since typically, the Compassionate Renewal Spell left him utterly exhausted. One benefit of his Advanced Sorcerer Ascendant Class, though, was that he would occasionally be able to reduce or ignore some of the side effects of casting his Ascended Spells. In this case, rather than receiving the Exhausted debuff, which would have made it impossible for him to perform any physical or mental activity for an hour, he only had the Fatigued 2 penalty. That slowed his LP regeneration and would have impacted his Stamina, if he had any. Fortunately, he didn’t, so the debuff wasn’t a big deal to him.

  Still, he was tired, badly wounded, and needed some time to rest and heal. “I need to meditate for a bit,” he told the others wearily. “I think Saphielle could use some rest, too. Can you give me an hour or so?”

  “An hour is of no moment, Oathbinder,” Geltheriel spoke up. “Silma and I will stand guard, as the Druid will certainly be occupied with this new rebirth.” Indeed, Rhys was kneeling on the ground next to the tree, intently examining a patch of odd, purplish flowers. “I will instruct the Avenger to spend some time recuperating, as well.”

  Aranos sighed and slumped down, his back to the tree. He closed his eyes and willed himself into his mindscape, sighing in relief as he stretched luxuriously in the silence of his mind. Fortunately, pain was vastly muted in the mindscape, so his injuries were nothing but a distant, nagging sensation that he could easily ignore.

  He glanced around the mindscape, wondering how he could spend his time. With the Fatigued debuff, he couldn’t craft Spells or work on his spirals; either of those would keep the debuff from fading and basically waste his time here. Really, he only had two options: working on Skills or looking over the information Lorsan had given him earlier about his House. Sighing, he realized he should probably do both and pulled up the notification he’d received earlier when he’d glanced at the list of buildings:

  Quest Offered: A House United 1

  Grow your noble House to the next Rank

  Objective: Improve your House Rank to Young.

  Difficulty: B

  Reward: 2,500 XP, Improved Reputation for your House

  Failure Condition: Lose your Noble Title before increasing your Rank

  Failure Penalty: Decreased reputation in elven lands

  This is a mandatory Quest and must be accepted

  Aranos blinked as he read it; he hadn’t known that he could lose his Title, although he guessed it stood to reason. If someone could be elevated to the nobility, then it made sense that they could be cast out, as well. He guessed that was one more reason to keep up his reputation with the elves, and maybe to seek out some allies.

  Dismissing the notification – he was planning to grow the House anyway, and the rewards offered for the Quest weren’t that significant to him anymore – he pulled up his House screen and a list of his current structures, glancing at Lorsan’s list for comparison:

  House Evenshade Structures

  Structures marked with an asterisk (*) are currently unworked and non-functional. Structures marked with an exclamation point (!) are unusable, due to Path, Rank, or other changes.

  Keeps:

  Manor House

  Grand Hall

  Common Structures:

  Archery Field

  Barracks x2*

  Family House x3

  Farm x5****

  Guest House x3**

  Servant Quarters x2*

  Stable x2*

  Training Field

  Warehouse x2*

  Uncommon Structures:

  Armory*

  Enchanter’s Workshop*

  Goldsmithy*

  Grand Hall

  Library*

  Mage Tower*

  Meditation Suite

  Treasury

  Rare Structures

  Crystal Garden!

  Dueling Arena!

  Runecrafting Workshop!

  Mana Concentrator!

  Aranos went through the list of buildings, pulling up a description of each one and making mental notes. Four of his five farms, he saw, were unworked, and Lorsan had recommended Aranos only keep two of them and trash the rest. Apparently, each farm brought in enough food to feed 75 people, so two would carry him for a while. He’d also recommended destroying one of the warehouses, two of the guest houses, both stables, and one of the barracks, which would leave him with twelve Common buildings. After reading through the descriptions, Aranos agreed and selected those building to be destroyed.

  Warning!

  You are about to destroy 9 Structures!

  Destroying these structures will return 50% of the invested resources and Construction Points. You will receive:

  76 Construction Points

  191 Units of Timber

  114 Units of Ore

  38 Units of Stone

  38 Units of Glass

  Once destroyed, these structures can only be restored by building new ones.

  Do you wish to proceed? (Yes/No)

  Aranos selected “Yes” and watched as his Construction Points and Resources shot up. However, his maintenance costs had only dropped to 9 Construction Points from 11; looking more closely, it looked like each Common building only cost about a fifth of a Construction Point per week to maintain, so losing nine hadn’t helped much.

  He turned to the Uncommon structures, next. To his surprise, Lorsan had recommended that he get rid of the Armory and Goldsmithy, but Aranos wasn’t sure about that. He had the Goldsmithing Skill, and he was sure that other Travelers would pick it up and want to use it. He decided to keep that one, at least for the time being. After reading the description of the Armory, though, he agreed with Lorsan’s judgment: it allowed him to field a 25% larger military force and gave combat bonuses to soldiers defending his territory, but with so few people, if Aranos found himself in a pitched battle with another House, he’d probably already lost. His magical prowess and personal reputation were what was keeping his House safe right now, not strength of arms.

  Of course, at some point, that might change, he realized. You’ll either need to build some sort of standing army, hire one, or ally yourself with someone who can do it for you. The first option would probably be the safest but would take a prohibitively long time. The second option would be the fastest – in fact, that was part of what Durlan was doing for him – but also the least reliable. Typically, soldiers who fought for gold could also be convinced not to fight for even more gold. Which means that I’ll need to start trying to forge some alliances at some point, he thought a bit grimly. Maybe I should grab a Diplomacy Skill book from Durlan before I leave, as well. Politics. Yay.

  He turned his thoughts back to the list in front of him and the last group of buildings to consider. The Rare buildings were the ones that he felt he really needed to investigate more closely, anyway. They were probably more powerful than the Common and Uncommon structures, but they also had a higher upkeep of about a Construction Point per week, and he was certain they’d give him more resources when destroyed.

  The Crystal Garden, it seemed, actually grew the mana crystals he had found. It also produced crys
tals very slowly, so if he destroyed it, he’d have to wait a long time to be able to harvest more if he rebuilt one. The Dueling Arena he didn’t care about; he wasn’t going to be a Duelist, and he wasn’t going to encourage that in others. PvP, or Player-versus-Player was a fun aspect of the game, sometimes, but it wasn’t his favorite part. The Mana Concentrator was supposed to be an aid for spell-casting and Stat training, since it produced an area of higher-than-normal mana a Wizard could work within, but Aranos had a Perk – Mana Well – that basically made him a high-concentration area of mana without help. He didn’t know if the building’s effects and his Perk would stack, but he suspected they probably wouldn’t.

  The Runecrafting Workshop gave him pause. It wasn’t functional right now and wouldn’t be at least until he’d ranked up his House, but it looked like it gave significant bonuses to Runecrafting done within its walls. That seemed like something perfect for him, but as he thought about it, he realized that it really wasn’t. His High Enchantment Skill used Runecrafting and Enchanting in combination; did he want to Runecraft an object in one building and then take it to another to Enchant it, just to get a bonus of – he glanced back at the Enchanter’s Workshop description – 15% when he already had bonuses of almost 100% to those? Not really, and while other people might get some utility from the two buildings, he could always rebuild them later if necessary.

  Deciding, he selected the Armory, Enchanter’s Workshop, Dueling Arena, Runecrafting Workshop, and Mana Concentrator to destroy:

  Warning!

  You are about to destroy 5 Structures!

  Destroying these structures will return 50% of the invested resources and Construction Points. You will receive:

  380 Construction Points

  792 Units of Timber

  411 Units of Ore

  350 Units of Stone

  175 Units of Glass

  88 Units of Crystal

  87 Units of Quicksilver

  Once destroyed, these structures can only be restored by building new ones.

  Do you wish to proceed? (Yes/No)

  He selected “Yes” and stared at his new total of 456 Construction Points. His maintenance had dropped to six points per week, meaning he was now gaining three points per week in profit, but he wasn’t worried about that; with the huge pool he now had, he figured he was set for a while. Running the numbers in his head, he estimated that each Uncommon building had cost about 60 Construction Points, while each Common one only cost around 20. He still had sufficient buildings to go to the next level, so it was probably smarter just to hoard those points for right now and use them for Rare buildings once he’d ranked the House up.

  Idly, he scanned through the list of buildings, noting that for the moment, he could only reproduce ones that he already had. He recalled that Lorsan said he needed blueprints if he wanted to build other buildings; he assumed there was a place he could buy Common and maybe even Uncommon ones, but he assumed Rare or rarer blueprints would be hard to find. That meant that, even if he wanted to, he couldn’t rebuild the Enchanter’s Workshop or Runecrafting Workshop right now, but he was okay with that. If House Exxidor had built them, then they must have had blueprints for them, which meant Aranos could get a copy somehow. Heck, he might even have those blueprints already, if they’d been left behind by the former House.

  Either way, he was done fussing with his House for a bit. He checked his clock and realized he’d been occupied for about half of his allotted hour; reading all of the building descriptions and dithering about which buildings to destroy and which to keep had kept him busy for longer than he’d thought. That meant he could work on two Skills before he needed to head back up; he decided to practice Arcane Lore and Carving. The first would be useful almost immediately, while the second was something he really needed to practice. He had a couple of pieces of Exotic rarity wood in his Storage Bag, and he wanted to be able to make something with them at some point. His Herbalism Skill told him what properties the rare leaves, flowers, and fruits he’d gathered possessed, but he needed to level up Carving to learn more about what was possible with the wood.

  He cracked open the new Skill book on Arcane Lore and found himself within a dusty library. A wizened, old dwarf woman spent days teaching him how to research arcane materials, the use of quill and ink to copy fading texts, and the basics of transcribing magical formulae. He spent hours reading about magical theory, much of which he already had a basic but admittedly incomplete understanding of, and learned how to recognize the auras radiated by different types of magical effects.

  His Carving training had him crafting simple wooden sculptures from softer woods, like pine and cedar, as well as learning about the attributes of various wood types. His instructor, a middle-aged male gnome named Laris, continually interspersed his instruction with various stories of how famous gnomes had used different wood types for fantastic creations. Laris was a fantastic carver and carpenter, but he seemed far too focused on his idea that gnomes were inherently superior to other races when it came to crafting. As Aranos finally exited the book’s memories, he heard a distant voice shout, “Gnomes rule!”

  He blinked as he glanced around his mindscape; his hour was up, but he’d technically asked for an hour “or so”. That meant that, if he wanted, he could take a little more time here; he doubted they were going to do much more hunting that night, anyways, so a few extra minutes wouldn’t matter. At least, he hoped it wouldn’t, since he’d come to feel that his mindscape, while larger and more useful than it had been, simply didn’t feel “homey” enough for him. He wanted to spend some time working on the space, which would also improve his Instinctive Meditation Skill – and that would boost pretty much every one of his casting attributes.

  Decided, he channeled off a small bit of the energy coming into his spirals and poured it into his mindscape, willing the space to grow slightly. At the same time, he re-imagined the walls fading, being replaced with stands of tall, majestic evergreen trees. The floor shifted from wood to clean, fresh-smelling loam, and the ceiling overhead vanished, replaced with a clear, blue sky complete with a brightly shining sun. Finally, he collapsed the glass pillar into a pool of rainbow-hued mana that glowed only dimly in the bright sunlight. The grove was filled with the songs of birds and the hum of insects that didn’t really exist – creating living creatures was impossible in the mindscape, but making ambient noise was certainly doable – and a soft, gentle breeze swirled the scent of pine throughout the room.

  Aranos glanced around, satisfied. Before, he’d mostly improved his Instinctive Meditation by expanding the size of his mindscape – doing so placed more of the part of his mind that controlled his magic under his conscious control, and at the same time it allowed him to bring more focus to bear on his mana hourglasses when he was casting Spells – but now, he wanted to try a qualitative rather than quantitative change to see what effect that would have. Once the changes were complete, though, he poured energy into growing the grove that his mindscape had become.

  As the trees receded and new grass and flowers rose in their wake, a shadowy figure emerged at the very edge of his mindscape. Aranos froze as the hazy image slowly sharpened, gaining solidity and coherence as the tree-line slid farther away from it. At last, the figure gained clarity, resolving itself into a wizened, ancient elf woman with white hair, wearing simple robes, and bearing an expression that seemed both irritable and wise at the same time.

  “Lythienne?” Aranos breathed, feeling a pulse of excitement race through him. The woman whose image stood before him had been his trainer and mentor when he first came to this world; she’d taught him how to use his power, how to craft Spells, and most of all, how to become a truly great Sorcerer. Imagination, passion, and courage, he chanted to himself silently. He’d tried hard to have all of those things; he knew that he didn’t always succeed, but he never ceased trying.

  Lythienne, the Last Sorcerer, was dead now, killed by his hand, freed of the Corruption and madness she’d given
herself to. Still, as her last act, she’d left him a series of lessons, buried somewhere within his mindscape. He had no idea when they would appear or how the woman had placed them to show up only when they were useful, but the last one had been instrumental in teaching him how to aspect his mana.

  “Well, child, you have grown if you are seeing this lesson,” the dry voice said warmly, her face turned toward him. “If you have reached this point, you have unlocked many of the primary and composite forms of mana and are now ready to learn about Enhanced ones. You have also likely been terribly frustrated trying to tease Enhanced mana out of your mana patterns, have you not?”

  Aranos opened his mouth to reply but quickly snapped it shut. Lythienne was gone; this was only a recorded image, a virtual lesson of sorts for him. It couldn’t respond to anything he said and would follow whatever script Lythienne had given it.

  “I thought as much,” the image chuckled, as if he had answered. “Do not fret, child. Every Sorcerer faces this same difficulty when they first try to unlock Enhanced mana. And with good reason: no matter how well or how long you search your mana pool, you will never discover Enhanced mana, for it does not exist there.

  “Primary mana, as you know, comes from without. It is drawn from the world into your mana patterns, where it is separated and can be used to power your Spells. Enhanced mana comes not from the world, but from within the Sorcerer, as each Enhanced aspect reflects an inherent part of the Sorcerer’s existence. It is tied to your body, your mind, and your Stats; you draw it from yourself, not from without.

  “There are but five Enhanced aspects: Mind, Nature, Soul, Spatial, and Spirit. Each is tied to a specific Stat and a specific part of existence. Unlocking these is not merely a matter of finding the mana within you; you must also have developed that part of your existence and be knowledgeable and capable in it. This means that you must have at least a score of 50 in the relevant Stat and must possess ranks of a specific Skill, usually an Adept ranking at minimum.”