Mage Tank

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[That’s right. Though, I don’t know
it gave me the option to mute you. Or why it turned it on by default. It says it’s because I’m your boss now, but I dunno.]
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[Well, that’s an uncomfortable thought. I’m listening now, so communique away
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[Alright. Take your time. Not looking for a nosebleed.]
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[I dunno. That’s what it does in all the tv shows. You know, a little girl with psychic powers overexerts herself and gets a nosebleed. Something like that.]
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I ignored the question and went back to the Bonded Familiar description.
The first benefit explained why my mana regen was higher. I was better able to absorb nearby dimensional mana, but the ability was also being hamstrung by the presence of divine mana. Still, even with the interference, my regen was quadrupled, so this ability looked like a solid win overall.
The second ability was phrased as a drawback, but I could see it being useful. Even if we were unable to communicate psychically for some reason, Grotto and I would each have an intuitive understanding of the other’s physical wellbeing. Hopefully this wouldn’t be too much of a problem for Grotto, since I doubted he was planning on tanking any more giant octopus monsters. I also wasn’t planning on being eighty-five-percent dead again anytime soon, though I hadn’t planned on being one-hundred-percent dead during my bike ride yesterday. Man makes plans and the gods laugh, so on and so forth.
The third ability was fucking terrifying. I had given this floating ball of malice enough control over my body that he could apparently kill me? What would stop him from using that to extort me into doing his bidding?
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[Jesus. Are you listening to my thoughts?]
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[So that’s a yes.]
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[I’ve had nightmares about this. Fuck, I’m going to have to monitor my thoughts. What if I start thinking about weird shit?]
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[Goddammit
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[Sure. Just… strap in I guess.]
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This whole arrangement was going to make taking care of my masculine needs a lot more challenging, which was a thought that I immediately regretted having. I know the System said that I could mute the guy, but I trusted that about as much as I trusted Alexa when she told me she wasn’t listening to my conversations. I knew she was still listening. The machines were
listening.
I climbed out of the bath and was about to get under the shower again, when a new notification popped up.
It was unusually polite of the system to give me the option, rather than dumping windows into my field of view. That had started to get annoying, and I wondered if the System was adapting to my preference. If it was, this thing acted like it had some sort of personality disorder. Did it want to help me, make fun of me, or get me killed? I couldn’t tell. I was tempted to dismiss the notification and look at it later, but when I saw the word ‘upgrades’, I couldn't help myself.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
That was nice to have. I made a mental note to explore the customization and display options once I’d gotten some sleep.
A ubiquitous feature of RPG’s. I was surprised this hadn’t come up sooner, though I had been able to explore some item descriptions while in character creation. I suppose that was a complimentary functionality, or this was just a way for the system to take something from you and then give it back later and act like it was doing you a favor. Either way, I’d be sure to awkwardly stare at everything I owned until I knew what it did.
I was beginning to wonder how obscure the system’s pop culture references were going to get. Maybe it would stick to things I understood, since it might have been pulling these straight from my own brain.
I re-read the text, but I wasn’t ready to commit to the “Perfectly Balanced” skill. It seemed dangerous, and I already did a pretty good job finding ways to manipulate the rules in my favor.
The description for Dimensional Magic was even spookier than the one for Perfectly Balanced, and I was starting to worry about how liberally I’d been using the spell Oblivion Orb. Was casting it actually an existential threat to reality, or did the System just like seeing me squirm? So far there hadn’t been any weird side-effects that I could remember, though that may be due to the spell’s level being too low. I’d have to ask around or do some research to see what other people thought about it.
The implications of the first option, Dimensional Shielding, made me very uncomfortable. First, there were different versions of me across multiple realities? I mean, the idea had crossed my mind, but it was mostly a fun thought experiment. Having a way to confirm that it was true would have incredible implications on philosophy and science, at least back on Earth. Maybe here that was common knowledge and people just lived with that. Maybe they regularly had conversations with other versions of themselves and I was the weirdo for not having weekend brews with the other yous.
Still, even if diverting damage and dividing it between a million copies of myself reduced it to an itch on the thigh, it was still impacting their lives without permission. I wasn’t into that. Plus, what if every copy of me in an alternate reality making similar choices chose this same skill? Would we constantly be beset by mild discomforts or inexplicable tingles? Would the damage diverted manifest on the copy in the form of a single human cell being destroyed within the body, or was it more significant than that? I didn’t want to take it, mainly because I wouldn’t want another me to take it either.
Pocket Closet looked like the exact type of monkey-business I was into. I’d get my own extra-dimensional room to keep all my crap in, and I could still access at least half of it through my normal inventory screen. I’d lose any buffs to my carry space from Strength, which I was just learning was a thing, but the description said the space could be upgraded, it was just ambiguous as to how.
In any event, I’d get an initial bonus to my inventory, though it was equally ambiguous about how much of a bonus. Even if it locked me in to my current inventory space and wasn’t upgradable, the fact that I could literally disappear off the face of the planet into a room outside of reality was a very valuable skill to have. My mind also ran wild with what “upgradable” meant. It didn’t have to mean more space. Maybe I could get it to acquire some sort of temporal distortion, so I could train with some sort of time dilation. Or get a few extra hours of sleep. Or procrastinate with greater flair.
Mana Void looked… useful. It was probably a solid, practical choice. If I ended up fighting a mage or a creature that used mana in any way, I’d be hitting them in two resource pools with every attack: health
mana. If monsters in the Delve had had this, I would have been useless a lot of the time. It was also one of those skills that was probably better than it looked. There were almost certainly other applications for the effect beyond straight combat. I thought that the use of the word ‘entities' as opposed to ‘creatures’ or ‘enemies’ hinted at that. Maybe I could deactivate magical traps or devices with it. Who knows?
I stared at this choice for a while, then asked Grotto for his thoughts.
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you
you
may
[Do they recycle here?] I thought to Grotto. [Where did you get that analogy from? And why is it an affront to you as well?]
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[Thanks for your concern, I guess.]
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[I’ll add those to The List.]
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[I mean, I could if they were magic emperors.]
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[Something that scales well.]
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[So you like Pocket Closet? Its description also leaves a lot unknown.]
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can
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That got me curious, and a little scared.
[What
of use?]
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