Chương 136: AF Chapter 135 – Mentioning Mundane Matters

The Mick nodded slowly.

"Aye, the lore of the hunter. Stalker… the skills o' the hunter?"

"Against that foe. Contested skill checks, mostly. You know how to hunt them, track them, and avoid being sensed and tracked in turn. You know what makes them afraid, and how to exploit how they think. They can run, but they can't hide from you, while they find it hard to do the same in return to you."

"An' the Slayer is the combat bonuses," he guessed astutely.

"Yes. You know how they fight and move, either by instinct or by training, and you've fought and studied them so often you are very, very confident when fighting them. There are Feats which extend the bonus to Dodge Bonuses to Armor Class, Saving Throws, and even Spell Resistance, although you have to get hammered by a lot of spells to get the last two."

"Does this work against humans?" he asked carefully, glancing between us.

"Yes," Kris stated firmly.

"If you are NOT human, it applies against all of us. If you ARE human, it tends to divide out between national and tribal ethnicities that have common cultures. After all, humans of different cultures can be as different from one another as Hea and Aun are, even if they don't look like it."

"Aye. The sword traditions o' Gharu'n, Sho, and Aluvia be very different, as be the lands they dwell in," he agreed.

"A lugian… would focus on how all humans are alike, an' we focus on how we are different."

"Precisely!" Princess Kristie confirmed.

"Also, the kills thing is completely singular. You have to get the kill, and it has to be an uncontrolled hostile opponent. Slitting the throat of something paralyzed by magic doesn't qualify, nor do all members of a Fellowship or something get the count. It's about you and killing something, not groups killing something."

"Teamwork Feats are a different breed of dog," I added to that. The Mick blinked and rubbed his temples.

"This Matrix System has so much to it that the Isparian one does not," he sighed.

"How do ye keep it all straight?"

"Visual Files!" Kris and I said in tandem, and bopped fists without looking at one another. He just smirked on seeing it.

"And just what be a Visual File?" he asked.

"Magic that uses your brain and mind just like an open tome," it was my turn to say.

"There's several ways of getting one, but the easiest for us Caster-types is a Cantrip that is Cast and starts the effect, basically turning your memory into a walking, moving encyclopedia for you to read and recall as you need to.

"If you've heard of a perfect memory, it's something similar. How fast and well you can use it is dependent upon how smart you are, but the information you put into it and organize is all there. It will even take the image of a book page or screen inside your head for you to look at and interact with." I flicked up one of my Holos, reflecting what I was looking at and listening to.

"So, for instance, I will be able to perfectly bring up this conversation in the future. I will know what time it was, where it was, what the sky looked like, what the background was, if there was anything else in the area, and so forth and so on." He whistled, long and low.

"And this be a Cantrip. One o' the basic, minor spells…" he drawled out.

"It's using what is already there. It doesn't need to be powerful, just efficient."

"How be this working with the Wizardry ye talked about?" he asked, scratching his short-bearded chin.

"Ye talked of spellbooks and the like, but belike ye'd have this File in yer head, so why need a tome to lug around?"

"Because Matrix spell formulae have Chaos worked into them," I said calmly, and he blinked.

"Yes. The random results of spells within a fixed Lawful structure is evidence of Chaotic influence. The spells you write down in your spellbook take a special ink just because of the presence of Chaos. What most people don't realize is that formulae changes and evolves slowly over time, and the one in your memory… starts to deviate quickly from the book, and quickly enough won't work at all.

"The ink in your spellbook, or whatever energies you use in an alternative mode of them, helps bind the Chaotic element and direct it. The spell you memorize today is subtly different from the one yesterday, and equally so from the one tomorrow. Run across a spell written a century ago, and you've some work ahead of you to decode and decipher what it is and was doing way back then. Likewise if you look at someone else's rendition of a spell.

You might have learned the exact same spell from the exact same source, but as you grow in power and understanding, your spells will start looking different."

"That… be both very strange, an' makes perfect sense in a magical sort o' way," the Mick admitted after I finished.

"All spells be like that?"

"No. Stratic spells that remove the random element of Chaos don't change, but they are also much less powerful in many ways. For War Magic, it means they have a fixed damage figure, which is lower than the average damage of 'normal magic'. For example, if a spell has a normal damage range of one to six points, a Stratic spell would do two or perhaps three points, every time."

"Not the worst, but far from the best," the Mick nodded slowly.

"So the powers combine to great effect, but when ye take them apart, they be much less…" Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"Yes. If you try using Chaos without Law to balance it out, well…" I coughed delicately.

"It's called Wild Magic for a reason. What might happen is totally out of your control when it does."

"I'll take me normal magic, thank ye kindly, lass." Still, he rubbed his hands together with some enthusiasm.

"Ye opened up yet another whole world t' me, an' all I needs is time to take me harvest of it. It be like Winter Festival come twice this year!"

"Just so you know, the Achievement Feats are without limit, but the Masteries are tied to Class Levels," Kris said shortly.

"You've potentially hundreds of advances you can take in Favored Enemies, but realistically, you're only going to be taking a handful of them, so focus on what is important to you."

"Ranger and Warden Classes, and their ilk?" I piped up immediately.

"I am aware of Advanced Classes, Ryin," Kris replied drolly, rolling her eyes at me.

"The sheer number of Masteries is defeating, however, and Warden concentrates more on Favored Terrain than Enemies."

"True… and Blood Hunter is mono-focused on the one Enemy," I conceded.

"Blood Hunter is for those with a true axe to grind. You can't have any other equal Favored Enemy if you're a Blood Hunter," she reminded me.

"Ah, right… and our Lord Mick here has not chosen his Warden Domain, although he's high enough he could likely choose all of Dereth…"

"Given how many terrains it has? And that's just what we've seen?" Kris threw up her hands in exasperation.

"Northern forest! Snow-capped mounts! Lakes! Marshes! Temperate, subtropical, and tropical forests! Saltwater littorals!"

"Och, dinnae fergit the deserts, the blasted wastelands o' the Dires, the badlands, and the frozen tundra o' the Halaetans and that valley up in the north," the Mick contributed smugly.

"All stuck inta an area smaller than Aluvia!"

"This place is insane," Kris pronounced aloofly.

"A good way to get experience in varied terrains, however!" Which was probably the whole purpose of it...

"What kind of terrain be forgotten ancient temples?" the Mick asked, pointing across the water at the towering edifice of green stone, and the fallen ancient pyramidal thing laying tilted off to the side that had once been an airborne battle platform.

"Cities are considered urban terrain. Cultivated farmland areas are considered rural terrain. Ruins and Dungeons generally fall under the underground terrain moniker, although they can just be extensions of the surrounding terrain if there's enough vegetation, such as being overgrown by jungle."

"Nae a problem here. Whate'er the Empyreans made, they did tend t' make 'em last for a long, long time," the Mick commented.

"Always keeping themselves clean and the shit off o' them…"

"We noticed it with the roads… and the bridges. Still intact and nothing growing on them. Not the slightest damn weed at all," Kris muttered in envy.

"Which bridges ye see?" He thought about our path from the north.

"I can see the ones in Rithwic…"

"The one that stands out is the big double bridge crossing the river north of Cragstone."

"Ach, the Obsidian Span? Aye, that were quite a sight the first time I laid me eyes on it…" I gave him a squinty look.

"It's double arches, anchored at an island in the middle. Why are you calling it a 'span', like it was one bridge?"

"Er…" He looked at me helplessly.

"That were what everyone called it?" he rallied gamely.

"Holtburg. Small town-town. Eastham. That town to the east. Lytlethorpe, the little town," Kris recited from memory.

"The Blackmire Swamp, the swamp of black muddy water. Sawato, 'swamp-town'. Lin, 'forest'."

"It might be that the naming conventions o' the first people here weren't inta great originality. Given that I came a tad bit later, ye cannae blame me fer such wonderfully blunt names, aye?" he asked innocently, pointing ahead.

"Ithaenc. Ithaenc Cathedral. Heights o' originality we be, aye."

"You're not making a great case for us being all the much more original than the Empyreans, Lord Mick!" I informed him.

"We still be using the house styles o' old Aluvia on a whole new damn world, lass. There be some blending over time, but the experimentin' on new stuff seems to have been pounded out o' the lot o' us older folks. Mayhap the younger generation will get back to it.

"As fer the Empyreans, they dinnae wanna change, an' they'll kill us ta stop any changes, especially what with their ideas o' being rulers o' the world an' all, how dare we get any ideas above them!"

"It's a senile condition that happens to a lot of things that live too long for their britches," Kris contributed acerbically.

"There's a reason nature favors the young. Some times the old just have to have the sense to get out of the way or die." The Mick clasped his hand to his chest in horror.

"Ye wound me, ye trite scamps!" he gasped aloud.

"Are you claiming senility already, old man?" Kris shot right back.

"I be claiming I'm old an' stubborn as a mule… but ye can take me stubbornness out back an' lop off its head if'n it means learning some sweet swordness revenge upon those what looked down on me all these years!" he replied with utter shamelessness.

"So, would you say you're old or young compared to the average dead Empyrean walking around?" was my contribution. He looked at me, and his smile became something more thoughtful and dangerous.

"Ho, lass, I be thinking I be scarce out of me crib an' crawling around in the mud an' the muck in the eyes o' the undead, I be." I glanced over at Kris.

"Not that old, yet," I judged loftily. She nodded slowly.

"Well, let's hope we can change the attitudes of some of his peers who seem to have become even older. We're going to need their help, in the end."

"Bunch o' old dogs who thought they were young wolves, tryin' t' teach 'em new tricks," the Mick snorted.

"Well, mayhap. How will ye be doin' that, lass, t' those what lost their hearts an' mettle?"" Hope and Valor."