Training Montage: Activate

It’s been three weeks since the day that Elsa came over and enthusiastically studied the barrier that we call home. In that time, we’ve continued to train and practice under Olivia’s instruction. We’ve grown ever more powerful and gotten better at working together in dungeons and combat scenarios.

We’ve also bonded with Olivia more on a personal level. I think that she’s come to see us as friends, as well as allies with a common goal. She’s told us more about her personal life and her experiences, how she learnt not to trust most people in the abyss of Sydney due to all the gangs, and ultimately withdrew from mundane life, because no matter how good the people were, she was always hiding that side of herself.

I feel honoured that she’s decided to trust us. In return for her sharing her experiences, we tell her of our experiences with life, the differences in growing up for all of us. Skylar especially can relate to Olivia’s difficulty in trusting people, and the two of them seem to be bonding really well. I’ve seen them on more than one occasion, sitting out on the balcony together. Just the two of them, talking softly about life, their conversations interspersed with periods of comfortable silence. It’s really beautiful to see.

We’ve also hung out with Elsa a couple more times, and she seems to really enjoy our company, which is nice. The idea of her joining our guild is floating around in my head, but it’s not something that I want to ask her at this point, especially since she’s so passionate about the Fateweavers and her craft.

On the power level side, things have been progressing very nicely. I’ve hit level 90, which has given me access to 3 more class levels and 150 statpoints. Instead, I spent all 3 class levels in the cryomancy class, hoping to use it to increase my overall damage output. The results have certainly been interesting, and very worthwhile.

I decided with the help of my girlfriends that the Seductress class isn’t worth it for the moment, even though the raising of potential power is completely broken, because none of us have actually hit any of our ceilings yet. We aren’t sure if it’ll let us raise potential even higher, but if it does, it’s not something we need right now. More firepower on my part is more immediately necessary, and it’s definitely paid off so far.

The first new perk I got access to is the ability to conjure a weapon of ice. There are a couple of upsides to this, including that the weapon isn’t limited by a single form. I can conjure a variety of melee weapons on the fly, with different weapons being useful for different situations.

We tested the limits of this and I find that I can’t conjure guns of any kind, slingshots, bows or crossbows. I can’t conjure anything that can be used to fire a projectile, but interestingly enough, I can conjure throwing knives or shurikens and use them as throwing weapons.

They disintegrate as soon as they hit anything, they don’t deal all that much damage and I have to spend mana to conjure them again when they disappear, so using this spell for anything ranged is mostly a bad idea. I’m also only limited to conjuring one weapon at a time, which makes sense.

My ice weapons can break, although it takes a lot for that to happen. Whenever they break though, I can spend mana to immediately conjure the weapon once more, which is nice. The other amazing part is that with the skill, the weapon comes with two enchantments on it.

These enchantments elevate the spell to an extremely attractive replacement for my axe. One of them makes it so the weapon does frost damage equal and in addition to physical damage, the other adds a minor freezing and slowing effect for every strike, contributing to the effect of my freezing blast spell. Even though it’s not a very powerful effect, it’s still amazing, and free.

The second cryomancy class perk I got access to is that my cryomancy spells now scale with my level. This affects the damage I can do with my ice weapon, the freezing effect from my freezing blast spell and the damage from ice blast. This is an incredibly useful way to make sure I’m always passively getting stronger with levels, even outside of raw stats.

The last of the three cyromancy class perks I got is one I’m incredibly excited about: the ability to freeform create and control ice. The perk only encompasses quite small constructs, only things that can fit in my hand. It’s definitely a start towards what I wanted to achieve with my ice magic though, and since the perk was listed as the beginners version, I’m confident that there’ll be the opportunity for more upgrades down the line.

I managed to get my hands on two skill evolutions points, one of which goes to evolving my axe mastery skill into universal weapon mastery, to support my new ability to use whichever weapon I want in a given situation. The other skill evolution point goes into evolving ice bolt into a spell called ice blast, which is a more powerful version that deals more damage and has a slightly larger impact area.

That skill evolution also took away icicle as one of my skill options, since it’s been so heavily outscaled. Ice blast costs me 75mp for each use, but in return, the damage is roughly quadrupled from ice bolt. Given that ice bolt cost 30mp, the ratio of mana to damage output is much better with the new skill.

The slightly annoying thing is that since ice blast has the same freezing effect as freezing blast (and a confusingly similar name), freezing blast is almost a dead spell at this point. Not entirely, because it takes less mana for the same effect over an area, but it’s not good for much more than crowd control over weak enemies bunched together.

If I’m targeting a single enemy, an ice blast is usually better, since it damages at the same time and makes for a quicker fight. The next skill evolution point I get, I’m planning to use it on freezing blast to hopefully evolve it to something better. The option was there last time, but I figured I needed the increased damage more.

On the stats side of things, the massive increase in stats has led to me achieving the 250 milestone for Intellect, which is something I’m pretty happy with. It’s definitely alleviated my mana problems for the moment, having increased my max MP per point of Intellect to 13, and my total max MP to 3700.

The bonus from the Intellect-Wisdom synergy means I’m regenerating mana at 3.44MP per second, which is a pretty solid rate in all honesty. I wanted to work on getting Wisdom to 250 next, but Ivy wanted me to get my charisma to 50 first. It’s only a couple of levels worth of points, and who am I to say no to my dom?

Speaking of Ivy, her stats are looking extremely solid as well. She got to the 250 Wisdom milestone, putting her at 1.74MP per second. This is important, as she’s quite close to the threshold of being able to heal infinitely. I suspect Gaia will patch the system somehow if Ivy ever gets over that threshold, but having such a reliable healer is really nice for the moment.

Ivy agreed to get her charisma to 50 as well, a milestone that she only just reached. The milestone reward was something extremely exciting to all of us, and one that she can toggle off if she likes: Ivy now naturally exudes pheromones that make people more attracted to her. This new power comes with a natural scent that she now emits, which happens to be lavendar.

The 50 milestone also came with a few other slight changes as well, including giving her supernaturally soft skin, a voice so beautiful that it’s almost enchanting, and perfect posture. Most of these changes are very slight, and barely noticable to the naked eye. The result they produce however, is very much noticable.

Ivy has always been incredibly beautiful, on an almost otherworldly and ethereal level. But with the increases in charisma and her pheromones, there’s no almost anymore. She is supernaturally enticing; a celestial beauty. Somehow even more ridiculously attractive than before, something I didn’t know was possible, and despite her physical appearance only having changed to the slightest degree.

It’s something that’s really hard to describe, but is extremely effective. All of us noticed immediately, and Ivy seems pretty pleased with herself and the effect she has on us now. Over the course of the day, she’s revelled in it, taken to teasing us all. She walks differently now. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Swinging her hips as she walks around the castle, the gorgeous jiggle of flesh drawing the eye wherever she goes.

To Paige and I, the two most outwardly subby people out of the five of us, we’re near brain broken just looking at our girlfriend. All she has to do is look at us, and we both lose the ability to think or speak. It’s hard to meet her gaze now. The second she turns her loving, lustful and commanding eye on us, we can’t help but look down at the ground in submission.

Ivy delights in this, and has had plenty of fun doing it throughout the day, much to the amusement and slight annoyance of Olivia. She’s definitely warmed up to us, but she’s very insistent on our training and grinding for power. If she wasn’t here, motivating us through training, I have no doubt that we’d be in our bedroom right now, and that Ivy would be ruining both of us. I can tell that Paige and Ivy want that just as badly as me right now.

Unfortunately for our lustful desires, Olivia is currently training us in Martial Arts, the magical kind. Aside from running through dungeons, this is the second kind of training that she’s had us all do. It’s been very interesting in theory, learning all the different techniques and the ways they work is pretty cool.