Upgrades

“Is that what I think it is? Where did you get that?” She asks. I smirk for the second time in 5 minutes. “It’s a spirit crystal. I got it as a quest reward for fucking you.” I admit. “Gemma do you know how much those are worth?” Mia asks incredulously. “Uh no, how much?” I reply unsurely.

“I’m not sure the quality of that one. Lower end ones sell for fifty million dollars. Higher end crystals can be worth up to five hundred million.” She lays out. My mouth drops open slightly. “What the fuck?” I manage to get out. Mia nods, wide eyed.

“Look, my family is pretty well off, so the value of that thing isn’t what astounds me. Remember, money works a little differently in the abyss.” She explains. “It’s the fact that you just got it handed to you, essentially for free, by Gaia or your ability or whatever.” She continues. I take a few seconds to process everything that she’s just said. I’ve received an item potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars, as a quest reward?!

After taking a moment to compose myself, I look back at Mia. “I’m not selling it in any case.” I say. “You know what they are and what they do?” She asks. “Yeah, I bought information about it from the auction.” I reply. “Okay the fact that you didn’t know how much they cost is hilarious, after hearing that.” Mia chuckles. “Hey, I was researching what they are, not how much they cost!” I defend myself. “So you want to make something with it then?” She asks and I nod in confirmation.

“Any idea what you’ll fuse it with?” Mia asks and I smirk at that. “Well, I do have one idea.” I say. “Go on…” She prompts, sounding simultaneously intrigued and suspicious. “At home, I have a rare statue of Poison Ivy. I was thinking of fusing the spirit crystal with the statue. Especially since the crystal has attributes related to love, nature and healing.” I say.

Mia slams her hands on the table and leans forward, making me jump slightly. “If you make a sentient Poison Ivy, you realise we’re both going to have to fuck the shit out of her, right?” She asks, a cheeky grin on her face. A grin of my own makes its way onto my face. “I’m counting on it.”

“Oh, right!” I exclaim, remembering the Skill Evolution Point that I still have. “What’s up?” Mia asks. “As part of my reward for having sex with you, I got something called a Skill Evolution Point. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but if the name is anything to go by, it makes one of my skills better.” I explain. Mia raises an eyebrow at me.

“Dude are you serious? You already have pretty bullshit skills, now you’re telling me that you just get to upgrade one of them with the click of a button?” She asks incredulously.

“Well I haven’t tested it yet, but yes, I do think that’s the idea.” I reply. “I should use it before we start training, it could help us quite a bit.” Mia nods in agreement. Opening my character sheet once more and tapping the skill evolutions part and bringing up the plus sign once more next to three skills, augment body, craft and mana arrow.

I relay the options to Mia and ask her which one she thinks I should pick. “Mana arrow, right? I mean, if you’re evolving the skill, it would be more immediately useful to get a better attack skill.” She says. “Yeah I thought so, wasn’t sure though.” I reply, tapping the plus button next to mana arrow. A new window appears, one I haven’t seen before.

All interesting choices. Mana bolt sounds like it would be useful for how I fight now, especially since it’s supposedly just mana arrow but better. Mana shell would be more useful in close quarters. It could be used from a longer range, the description doesn’t specify that it has to be close quarters, but depending on how slow moving the projectile from mana shell is, it’s possible that it could be easily dodged, leading to wasted mana.

Using it at close quarters would negate that, but I also don’t know if I might get damaged by it at all. I doubt it, that would be really bad game design, but a combination of not wanting to take the risk and recent revelations that I need to not get into close quarters fights until I’m stronger, are what convince me to dismiss mana shell.

Mana ray does sound interesting. If I ever wanted to just laser somebody constantly, obviously that would be the skill to pick. The nature of the skill means it would be very easy to adjust aiming on the fly, leading to more longer range uses. I don’t want to be a backline support though.

While this skill doesn’t necessarily push me towards that role, I still find it unattractive in comparison to mana bolt. 15MP per second is nothing to sneeze at either. It’s not the worst in the world, especially after the recent Wisdom upgrade and the hopefully soonish Intellect upgrade, but it’s still a sizable cost.

Each of these skills is offered in the same choice, so it’s a reasonable guess that they each have roughly the same balancing. I find myself favouring mana bolt over mana ray. At a second glance, there doesn’t seem to be anything that differentiates mana ray as obviously more powerful, although the fact that the description for mana ray doesn’t mention how much damage is a bit iffy.

It could be high damage per second or low damage per second. I’m not super keen on testing my luck though. My overall preference to getting a more powerful version of a skill I currently have and not needing to change anything about how I fight is what makes the decision for me. I push the button to choose mana bolt, and enjoy reading the observe window for my new skill.

Travels at 60 metres per second? Well it’s good to have an exact number for the speed of it, and that’s a decently fast speed too. About the speed of an arrow, if my old archery lessons are anything to go by. I read out the description of the skill to Mia, and she frowns. “Isn’t that basically what you had before?” She asks.

“Yeah, the description of mana bolt on the skill evolution page said it was essentially just a better version of mana arrow. It costs more and the description says it’s powerful, so I’m happy with it.” I reply, a smile on my face. Getting more powerful always makes a girl happy. “Ready to test it out then?” Mia asks.

“Let’s just check first if Skylar wants to train with us today.” I say. I send Skylar a quick text, asking her what she thinks of training more today. I receive a reply within a minute. “She says she’s free after lunch?” I say to Mia, looking to her for confirmation. “Yeah that works. Same idea as yesterday then?” She asks. “I guess so.” I reply, texting Skylar back to confirm that it’s all good.

“Do we want to fight the same level enemies though?” Mia asks. “Yeah I think so for the moment, unless they give a lot less experience. No need to up the difficulty yet. I’m level 15 as well, which means that I still fit into tier 3.” I reply. Mia nods. “Skeletons good with you again?” She nods again, so I open an ID at tier 3 for skeletons.

Mia and I spawn in, in the environment that has become so familiar over the past. It doesn’t take long for a skeleton to come shambling around the corner, and I prepare to use the new skill. Using my skills is a weird process, it’s something that is rapidly becoming automatic, yet I still have to activate a mental switch. I use the instinctive knowledge given to me by the skill evolution to fire the mana bolt at the skeleton.

It hits the skeleton in the left shoulder. A little off centre, but it’s still a hit. The energy blasts some pieces of bone off the skeleton, and it stumbles back from the impact. It’s left arm falls to the ground, as it’s shoulder has been obliterated. With one arm completely useless, it shambles towards me, definitively less of a threat.

“Fuck me, that’s pretty good!” I exclaim happily to Mia, who nods in agreement. “Definitely an upgrade.” She replies, readying herself for battle. I can’t use my new skill very often, 25MP is still a lot for my relatively small mana bar. Just for the heck of it, I run the numbers in my head and find that mana bolt uses just under one seventh of my mana bar. With my current mana regen, I can use the skill once every minute, without my mana bar decreasing.

I’ll still be relying on icicle for quick damage, but mana bolt is a nice addition to my skillset. It means that I’ll finally be able to do some proper damage, instead of just relying on beating enemies using ‘**** by a thousand cuts’ style techniques. I’ll still need more mana to be able to use my magic more, so intellect is definitely what I’ll be working on next, when it comes to my stats. Pushing those thoughts aside, I focus on the battle in front of me.