Chapter 29 - Upgrade Round 2 (Patreon)

NSLICE-00P analyzed the latest combat footage and the available upgrades once more.  She had a great many choices available that could improve her capabilities, and unlike last time, she didn’t have a specific target to focus on.  So she would have to decide for herself a criteria to judge the possibilities.

Analyzing the fight, she concluded that her organic half had stumbled upon a decent criteria.  It had focused on synergizing its abilities, combining the Mana Beam and Light Beam spells together and then boosting them both with Supercharge.  So she concluded she should not evaluate each option separately, but in light of her other capabilities.

Likewise, she determined that ranged and in particular magical firepower should be her primary focus.  More than once, her armor plating had proven ineffective against the opponents she had faced.  And the simplest solution to that was to avoid being hit in the first place by immediately terminating hostiles at range.  In particular, it seemed her magical capabilities had much greater growth potential, and had in fact been growing simply from her continued use of those abilities.  On the other hand, her armor plating seemed locked to the dungeon implant menu, and so could not be improved unless she specifically and intentionally spent resources to do so.  The same went for her bionic prosthetics and her conventional weaponry, so the magical abilities seemed the most scalable option at present.

Which is not to say she wouldn’t be taking a look at those other areas as well.  She would not let a known deficiency remain unanswered.  But she had to start somewhere, and maximizing her ability for immediate termination would itself reduce the need for physical defenses.

She decided to start with her Personal Status.  She had hardly spent any of the resources she had available there, save for the purchases of Arcane Magic and Supercharge.  Likewise, her physical attributes were tied solely to her dungeon implants and so not accessible by the Personal Status.  So while she could purchase relevant skills to better make use of said implants, ultimately the opportunity costs of spending the Personal perks on magical capabilities were lower.

First and foremost, she already had some upgrades available:

• [Schools of Magic]
  • (continued…)
  • [Light Magic (Level 10) *Spell Choice Available: The school of magic governing the manipulation of Light-attribute mana.  One of the basic elemental magics, quick and precise spells that are excellent against dark-aligned foes.]
  • [Nature Magic (Level 3) *Spell Choice Available: The school of magic governing Nature-attribute magic. Focuses on growth and plants.]
  • (continued…)

She first decided to take a look at the available light magic spells, given how effective they had proven in the last fight.

[Available Light Magic Spells]

• [Blinding Flash: A sudden burst of light. May momentarily stun foes.  May inflict Blind status.]
• [Light Burst: Deals Light-attribute damage in a small area.]
• [Light Shield: A shield of Light-attribute mana.]
• [Light Infusion: Infused a target with Light-attribute mana.]
• [Light Blade: User forms a blade of light to attack with.]
• [Invisibility: Renders the user or target invisible.]
• [Healing Light: A Light-attribute healing spell.]

She quickly ruled out several options.  Light Shield and Light Infusion were just alternate versions of Mana Barrier and Mana Infusion, but with an elemental attribute.  She predicted there was a good chance she could learn those spells or a reasonable facsimile on her own with further analysis of the magic circles she had available.  Likewise, Healing Light was redundant with Recovery Magic.  Light Burst had potential but between Multicasting and the new Aurora Barrage spell she did not particularly require the extra area of effect.

That left three options: Blinding Flash, Light Blade, and Invisibility.  She ruled out Blinding Flash as a capability she could probably produce manually.  So she had Light Blade, which would allow her to employ her magical capabilities in close quarters combat and would be useful for analyzing how magical circles govern shape, or Invisibility, which would significantly expand her potential for covert operations and would provide a more novel example of what Light Magic could do.

She calculated the pros and cons of each…

[You have learned the spell Invisibility!]

Ultimately, for the sake of maximizing her ability to terminate a target without receiving counter damage, Invisibility was the superior choice.  Avoiding detection was part of survivability, and would allow her to get the first shot on targets more reliably, both shoring up her defense and enabling her offense, as well as improving options for retreat should a situation become unfavorable.  And it was a capability she did not possess at the moment.  Light Blade, on the other hand, would only be useful in close quarters combat, which NSLICE-00P wanted to avoid if possible from now on.  Likewise, a similar capability could be achieved by infusing her wrist blades with mana, so Light Blade represented an iterative improvement rather than a new capability.

Next, she took a look at Nature Magic.

[Available Nature Magic Spells]

• [Thorn Shot: Launch a sharp thorn at a target.  Mana cost increases in areas without plant life, and dramatically in environments not conducive to plant growth.]
• [Animal Talk: Attempt to establish common ground with an animal.  May inflict Charm status.  Will fail if the target's intelligence is above a certain limit.]
• [Regeneration: Infuse the user with nature-attribute mana, boosting natural regrowth and HP Regen.]
• [Barksin: Harden the target’s skin like bark, boosting DEF]

It seemed for Nature Magic, the early spell choice was left to the user, since Nature Magic could take several different paths.  For NSLICE-00P, this choice was simple.

[You have learned the spell Barkskin!]

Thorn Shot and Regeneration were capabilities she already possessed and did not particularly improve on what she already had, and her protocols and combat data did not predict many use cases for Animal Talk.  Barkskin, on the other hand?  Barkskin was a straight boost to her attributes, which she had not seen until now, and would directly address a point of concern.

Assuming it worked on her implants, that is.  She wasn’t certain how tree bark could be an improvement on her armor plating, but the description stated ‘like tree bark’ rather than bark itself, so it was still worth the risk.

And well, even without considering the impact of mana on plant life, there were superpowered beings in her previous location and/or time that could absolutely overcome state of the art metal alloys with mere plants.  She could not assume there was not, in fact, tree bark superior to her armor plating somewhere out there.

Next up she had an upgrade available for the Mana Infusion spell:

[Available Upgrades for spell Mana Infusion (Minor)]

• [Dense Infusion: Increase the density of mana infused, boosting infusion effect]
• [Lasting Infusion: Reduce the speed at which infused mana disperses]
• [Defensive Infusion: Unlocks a new spell.  Focus infusion on improving durability of the target.]

Mana Infusion was a fairly basic spell, just filling a target with mana, so there wasn’t much available at present.  But NSLICE-00P immediately realized what choice to make.

First though, she had a test to run.

She stirred up her mana, moving it towards her hand.  She then cast the Mana Infusion spell, focusing it on her bionic prosthetic…

The mana absorbed into the prosthetic.  She squeezed her fist, logging an increase in crushing force.

The experiment succeeded.  She could, in fact, infuse mana into her prosthetics to boost their performance.

With that, the choice was clear for her.

[Mana Infusion has been upgraded!  New spell Defensive Infusion unlocked!]

With this, she could now use her mana to boost her durability directly, shoring up that particular weakness.  She did consider Dense Infusion instead, but she had the Supercharge skill if she needed to shove more mana into the spell, so the defensive option was the greater upgrade.

With that part settled, she turned her attention to the Personal Perk Menu.  In particular, she wanted to focus on the magical capabilities.  After all, her Arcane Prodigy feat stated it unlocked advanced magic perks, of which Supercharge had been one of.

[Available Perk Categories]

• [Boost Physical Attributes (overwritten attributes cannot be boosted)]
• [Boost Magical Attributes]
• [Skills]
  • [Active Skills]
    • [Physical Skills]
    • [Weapon Skills]
    • [Magic Skills]
      • (continued…)
      • [Learn Spellstrike (Level 1): 12 points]
      • [Learn Spellshot (Level 1): 12 points]
      • [Learn Quick Casting (Level 1): 12 points]
      • [Learn Spell Fusion (Level 1): 15 points]
      • [Learn Spell Reflection (Level 1): 15 points]
      • (continued…)
  • [Passive Skills]
    • [Physical Skills]
    • [Weapon Skills]
    • [Magic Skills]
      • (continued…)
      • [Learn Spell Penetration (Level 1): 10 points]
      • [Learn Blood Price (Level 1): 18 points]
      • [Learn Mana Shield (Level 1): 12 points]
      • [Learn Geomancy (Level 1): 12 points]
      • (continued…)
    • [Schools of Magic]
    • [Resistances]
    • [Utility Skills]
  • [Special Skills]

NSLICE-00P saw three abilities that would be immediately useful.

[Spell Fusion: Allows the user to combine compatible spells.]

[Spell Penetration: Enable spells to bypass a portion of RES.  May spend more mana to boost the effect.]

[Geomancy: Elemental spells reduce the target's resistance to that particular element.  May spend more mana to boost the effect.]

She had already seen the benefit of combining abilities with Mana Beam and Light Beam and that was the capability she was seeking to improve.  A more formal method of doing so might be instructive, in fact.

On the other hand, increasing the efficacy of her spells against their natural countermeasures was highly desirable.  If she was investing heavily into magical firepower, encountering a foe resistant to such attacks was a major point of concern.  These skills could alleviate that risk.

[You have learned the skills Spell Fusion, Spell Penetration, and Geomancy!]

[39 Personal Perk points remaining!]

She thought this a good place to stop for now.  She wanted to test and analyze the new capabilities and she had spent nearly half her available Personal perks.  So she would spend some time with the new skills before reevaluating later.

And so she turned to her final scheduled task.

Investigating the language question.

“Query: What language do friendlies Lilussees and Excellion Formantus Rattingtale the Third speak?”

Rattingtale jumped at being addressed once more.

“Um, I think-guess the wretched spider-thing went to sleep, yes yes.”

“Query: What language does friendly Excellion Formantus Rattingtale the Third speak?”

“Um, rat tongue….err…only the most elegant-noble of royal tongues, yes yes!”

“Confirmation: Does friendly Excellion Formantus Rattingtale the Third understand English?”

“English?  Um, is that the tongue the boss-queen speaks-says?”

“Affirmative.”

“Well, of course this Great-High King speaks all the languages in all the land, yes yes!  It is only a natural bestowal of power for ones such as I!  How else would a lord of a dungeon command their loyal minions?”

NSLICE-00P’s robotic eye flickered.  Friendly Excellion Formantus Rattingtale the Third always referred to foreign system assistance as ‘bestowals of power’, so his words implied it was an effect of the system.  And low and behold, upon closer review of the data, NSLICE-00P found small traces of mana around her tongue and audio sensors during all conversations since she arrived in this place.

Rattingtale’s words implied this was an effect of the dungeon part of her status.  Which circumstantial evidence agreed with, given that Ateia and Taog were surprised by her ability to converse with the wulver.

“Request: This unit asks friendly Excellion Formantus Rattingtale the Third to say an example phrase.”

As Rattingtale spoke, she channeled the Equalizer.  She held up her hands, firing two small beams towards her audio sensors, angled so that they would skim the surface without deactivating the sensors themselves.

She heard only the sounds of a small mammal, not a decipherable language.

It seemed her theory was correct.  The foreign system was providing an automatic translation function for her.

One mystery solved.

And a great many more raised.

Because if her ability to communicate to the locals was due to an automatic translation, that meant the locals may not, in fact, be speaking in English.  Or any known language of Earth, for that matter.  She would need to verify the next time she spoke with Ateia or Taog but given the lack of shared cultural references to geographic locations, the probability of a shared language was now exceedingly low.

And the probability she was still on Earth dropped with each new piece of intel she gained.

Author’s Note:

Weekend’s looking pretty busy, stuff might get delayed especially on Sat/Sun, FYI.  One of these days I should make sure my delay warnings actually happen before y’all start ignoring em haha.  This time might just be true though, I, like, NEED to get some stuff done on Saturday, or something.

…the problem with Lilussees is she, like, infects my speech pattern.  You didn’t even talk in this chapter, Lilussees!

Anyways!

How will NSLICE-00P’s powers continue to develop?  Will she realize the truth about her circumstances?  And what will she do once she does?  Tune in next time, to find out!