Fate Points - Ch 99 (Patreon)

“How long till the golem is ready?” Tom repeated the question Michael had asked. The answer was not as rosy as he would have liked. “When the dome comes down, it’ll be able to reposition and fight uninhibited from a magical perspective. Physically, the story is less hopeful. It will function at full capacity for anywhere from ten seconds to a minute.” Tom admitted. “After that, there’ll be limited mobility but no true physical combat ability.” Tom saw the annoyance on Michael’s face. “It’s not that bad. Seventy percent of its combat proficiency is in its magic. Unless it’s a protracted engagement, it will be above ninety percent efficiency. That’s still peak tier two.”

Michael nodded. “And when fully charged what does that look like? I mean how much are we losing?”

“It’ll be able to fight all out for two minutes, but practically in battles only a small amount of time is spent expending all your effort. Often, you’re moving between spots—”

“I’ve got combat experience.” Michael interrupted. “Against something that matches it perfectly it will have two minutes once the melee starts, but in the normal course of events we’re looking at longer…?”

“Probably ten minutes of sustained fighting at the peak,” Tom estimated from his own history and his knowledge of the relative costs to the golem of a physical attack versus moving. Most fights leant heavily on the moving side of the equation.

“More than enough for nearly any engagement.” Michael mused.

“Of course, that’s how they’re designed. It wouldn’t be useful if they failed mid fight.”

Michael smiled at his defensive response. “Tom, I’m not criticising your competency. I’m making sure I understand what we’re getting. And the automation complexity?”

“Oh,” Tom waved his mana crystal. “Once I’ve regenerated, I’ll summon an elemental. There as smart as we are.”

Michael nodded. The de facto commander of the coming event battle walked over and studied the exposed artefacts of the golem. When it was fully functional, Tom expected those visible components to be hidden when not in use. Michael touched the eye and then the sabatons. “And what is its offensive magic capability? Even the ones I can see I’m not familiar with.”

“It has an Ice Spike and Tremor, which are both tier four. The ice spike has a practical cast frequency of eight seconds and can punch through anything and leave a chunk of ice in you that should freeze whatever it hits at about a cow sized mass per second against what we’re fighting.”

Michael coughed. “When does natural resistance kick in?”

Tom considered the question for a moment. “General vitality would need to be over rank twenty to resist and ice resistance above moderate.”

“Fine.”

“And then Tremor is, as the name suggests, but is a once-a-day cast.”

“Why did you give it a spell designed to destroy fortification?”

“Planning ahead,” Tom said easily. His mind racing, Tremorwas never the point of the sabatons, but they didn’t need to know that. He shrugged, nonchalantly. “It’s for when we need to fight the giant earth worm. This was the only way I could think to end it.”

There were sudden gasps of shock in response to what he had said.

Michael arced an eyebrow, smirking. “Giant earth worm?”

“How big?”

“Can we solidify the foundations against it?”

“Are you psychic?”

Tom let the alarm spread.

“Don’t tease them.” Everlyn interrupted with an amused tone.

“Can you predict the monsters?”

He deliberately paused and took a considering stance. “I can’t confirm anything. However, there is nothing stopping me from pondering out loud.” It was all true.

“Is it a skill?”

“Yes, there are oracle skills that can do that.” Sonya helpfully supplied.

“A giant earth worm I don’t like the sound of that.”

“No, he can’t tell.” Everlyn almost yelled in frustration. “Tom!”

He held up his hands in defeat. “I don’t know what’s going to happen… but it would be funny if a worm did come.”

“Tom!” Everlyn and Michael both warned him at the same time.

He shut up.

“So the worm?” A voice asked.

Tom chuckled. “I was joking about the worm. The Tremor spell was a byproduct of getting the earth shard spell.”

“Earth shard is what it sounds like?” Michael asked.

“Yep. Through with an Earth Elemental piloting, I’m hoping it can be flexible. Against lower-level enemies, it should be the main attack weapon.”

“And no other abilities beyond the blind spell?”

Tom shook his head.

“And what else do you have planned before the dome comes down?”

“I’m completing the golem by summoning the elemental and then I’ve got an artillery spell that takes all my mana, including my crystal to cast. I should have time to get that and recharge my personal mana before then.”

Michael grimaced at that. He was intimately aware of how long it took Tom to regenerate the mana in his crystal even with Harry’s help. “You’ve got a strategic mind. Is there anything else we should do?”

Tom considered the question. “Apart from the obvious?” He grimaced as he thought about it. “Everyone should do the mathematics to make sure they’re at full mana when the dome comes down with the freshest buffs as possible. I don’t have fate,” Tom waved at the golem. “Getting that right consumed my reserves, but everyone not doing summoning or auction raids should all contribute half our fate pre-battle.”

“How?” Michael interrupted.

“You need to get a settled image, a set of words to guide it so that the different fate contributions are not fighting each other. Something like, ‘The enemies we face are ones that the community can defeat without loss of life or injuries that take more than an hour to heal.’”

“That last is important.” Michael agreed. “Otherwise we might end up with cripples.”

“That’s my thought too,” Tom concurred. “The coming wave is weak enough that if we’re lucky, we should emerge unscathed. Applying fate will help to guarantee that.”

Michael nodded. “I haven’t read anything from other groups about using fate, so I’ll start including the details in the notes that we send out.”

“Agreed.” Tom said. “Maybe they are all are already doing it and believes it’s too obvious to include and we’re wasting time writing instructions on the best use of fate. It is however only time and a few credits. It’s worth the attempt even if it only helps a few groups of humans. Excluding a handful of us, the rest weren’t thinking about fate in the right way and there must be groups without people like us in it.”

“You Tom.” Michael said. “And I doubt people like you are that common. A lesson I’ve learnt from my years as a doctor is to not to assume the patient knows obvious things. It’s possible that we’re not seeing anything about fate because they are all stupid and no one has thought of it.” The healer shook his head. “That’s for later. For now, we need to survive. I’ll gather everyone together to spend the fate and work on the wording to get the best result possible.”

“Include something about rewards?” Everlyn suggested with a smirk. “I don’t want to be rewarded with a blacksmith hammer. It shouldn’t cost much to ensure they’re tailored to the individual and maybe community survival.”

“Yes.” Michael agreed. “That’s fate dealt with. I’ll workshop the exact word. We have a plan to man the walls, which will distribute us all appropriately, spread the strongest fighters and healers to ensure nowhere gets overwhelmed. That means we’ve still got an hour to dedicate to improvements.”

“The fortifications are already built.” George observed. “Physically, I’m not sure there is much we can do to improve them.”

“Pitfall traps? Magic runes?” Tom suggested. “Not really my expertise.”

“Liar.” Everlyn interrupted. “There is no way you didn’t spend days building elaborate traps in the tutorial.”

“Of course I did.”

“We all did.” George interjected, sounding bored. “The question is whether we can do anything here?”

“Even a trench might help.” Michael said. “We’ve got spare capacity, so we should make any minor changes we can. We won’t be able to get anything elaborate done like hundreds metres of traps given how close the dome is, but we can make some progress. Magic runes?”

Tom shrugged in apology. “I don’t know anything about them. I know rituals can do stuff and I’ve seen runes used in trials but…”

“I’ll ask around.”

“And,” Tom said excitedly. “You guys could help charge the golem.”

“We can help?” Michael asked in surprise.

“How do I do it?” Everlyn asked immediately.

“Put a hand on the golem and imagine mana flowing into it.”

Everlyn rested her palm on it and jumped back in surprise. “It’s like it’s thirsty.”

Tom, though his link to the golem assessed it. “You contributed less than forty mana,” he whispered to her.

Evelyn looked flatly at him. “I have more than that. But I’m not bottoming myself out when I don’t have to. That would be dumb. I’ll just dump my regeneration every couple of minutes.”

Michael was the next to step forward. His hand touched the golem for only a moment before he rapidly pulled it away. His forehead wrinkling a little. “It just sucks. It in.” He looked at the sky. “How much did you say it needed?”

“I didn’t but twenty thousand.”

Michael stared, lost in thought up into the sky. “We have over an hour. I’m sure there is a over fifty people willing to rotate through. Most people probably regenerate ten mana per minute. That’s five hundred every minute. Which means we can get it charged fully or at least close. Unless, someone can create explosive runes, then that excess mana is going there.” Michael winked at him and then hurried off presumably to better organise everyone

While a steady stream of people went past his golem, Tom sat down to recharge his own mana and his mana crystal. The memory of those trumpets that had gone off when he created the golem was still clear in his head.

Tom shut his eyes to reappear in his system room.

Part of him wanted to check straight away the other part wanted to wait till after he had summoned the elemental. His instincts told him that the elemental’s presence in the broken prison should push the golem up a tier and probably change the title that he was awarded, but he couldn’t stop himself.

He closed his eyes and appeared in the stone room.

The title was already on display.

Title: Golem Master (II). Golems created have their vitality increased by 10% and efficiency by 10%

· Awarded for: Creating a golem to peak tier 2.

· Common Title. Competition Rank: 5th, 1 Ranking points.

Tom was not impressed by the title. It deserved to be listed as common. It was something every golem creator would receive at some point. There were, after all dedicated classes to constructing golem besides standalone spells like the one the challenge trial had generated. To push a golem to the peak of tier two only required time and materials and while the bonus was only five percent for vitality and efficiency per rank that was enough for any golem making factories to push their animators to make a peak tier two golem the moment that they had sufficient mana to do so. Spread over the hundreds of golems that animator would create each year the payoff was more than there.

He had been hoping to get some sort of unique achievement, but he guessed what he had thrown together in the golem’s creation was not that extraordinary. Doing so at a combined class level of eight might be worth a little more, but he was not sure that conditional titles like that existed.

Well, it would do the job. He opened his eyes and marvelled at the steady stream of people who were walking past to donate mana.

With nothing else to do, he thought about the murder.

Maybe they should go down and examine the ritual or get Harry to have a look.

He made eye contact with Everlyn and she came over to his mana circle.

“Secret.”

Her eyes went blank, and he tried to step into his system room.

Everlyn Louise Campbell has invited you to her personal system room.

Do you wish to accept the invitation?

She was waiting for him, standing in front of the roaring fire.

“The ritual?” He asked immediately.

“I’ve already sent Harry down to check.”

“Should we be there?”

Everlyn laughed. “Ideally, yes, but we need to trust someone.”

He was abruptly booted out of the system room and Everlyn gave him a small kiss before going back to her sentry duty.

She was, of course correct. Harry was the best to determine what sort of ritual had been put in place and they could consult later. The murderer being active once again worried him more than a little, but there were steps he could take to improve safety. He didn’t need to exclusively rely on the answer to the oracle question. What he had asked his oracle question should have been watertight, but the further he got away the more concerned he became.

There was nothing he could do against a daylight attack. If there was another knock out attack like the one that eliminated Tiny, could he do anything about that? Nope, everyone seemed to have been knocked out almost instantly and there was no reason to think that he could avoid it if no one else could.

Nothing to be done against that, but nighttime was different. That was when they were more exposed because a large number of them were asleep. During that exposed period, there were additional precautions that he could put in place. And more, he told himself than just getting the golem to guard them. With his new title and Earth Manipulation ability, he should be able to create a cave for himself and Everlyn. After that, they could seal the cave. The real question was would that deny the murderer? It kept going back to the fact that the range of abilities displayed was improbable. If it had already shown so many, then who knows what it would display next. Tom imagined some type of class, bloodline, or trait that awarded you a random set of skills after each murder. It could explain the diversity of talents that had been utilised, but Tom had never heard of anything like it. It was also… his nose scrunched up… not practical. There would be no chance to master your abilities. You would be forever weaker than someone who specialised and learnt to use their skills perfectly.

None of it made sense, but a trait like that would explain what they had seen, and it wasn’t impossible. After all, it was sort of like Everlyn’s trait. If it was something like that, it would make forecasting what they were up against difficult. There was also the question of his allies. Should he expand his protection to them? Could they be the murderer? Michael was convinced that it had to be from that group without an alibi but… Surely a murderer capable of killing three of them would not cornered and figured out that easily?

Different ideas and scenarios continued to occur, and the final mana was deposited into the crystal in his hand.

It was time for the next step of the plan.