Chapter 25
I tasked Horpus, Lala, and Lili with looking into Paulson the Pure and the merchant company Ulric claimed the paladins used as a front.
I wondered, if I was the first antipaladin in some time, as Ludwig the Lawful had told me, what need did paladins have for fronts?
Disguising their identities made sense when people like me were about, but in that era of peace, what did they gain from that secrecy?
Dumb question. They disguised their lifestyle from the judging eyes of the public. Priests did the same thing when they went into town in plainclothes to drink and whore. You weren’t held to the standards of the Goddess if no one knew what you were.
Now that a new antipaladin appeared, the covert behavior was practical, a good way for paladins to keep their movements hidden from me.
Trusting someone as weak-willed as Lord Ulric, however, was the stuff of amateurs.
They gained nothing by revealing that information to Ulric, and now their secret was spoiled.
Abby appeared next to me as I looked out over Sanctuary South from my bedroom.
“Mistress Solara would like to know when you are next available. She requests an audience.”
“Where is she now?” I asked.
“Her penthouse, Master.”
“Thank you, Abby.”
I had a direct teleporter from my Sanctuary bedroom into the rooms of all of my party members.
They wanted that ease of access to me, and I wanted the same from them.
We had no secrets from each other. If I were to teleport to her room and find her fucking 10 of my followers, she wouldn’t flinch at me pulling up a chair to watch or at me opting to join in myself.
No such hedonism was at work when I arrived at Solara’s. My silk sorceress sat at her desk surrounded by books, studying and taking notes, but a curious piece of glass mounted on the wall in front of her caught my eye.
“Is this…” I began.
Solara grinned. “The Stocks of Glory,” she said proudly. “Abby set this up. It’s nice to have some entertainment on in the background, you know?”
Presently, a crowd of people–men and women, human and demon–surrounded the free-use paladins in the square. All three were in the middle of getting spit-roasted while a dozen other citizens groped, fingered, spanked, and pinched their bodies.
“I want a dozen of these,” I muttered. What a fantastic invention this was.
“It’s a scrying ward,” Solara explained. “Purity and I like to have it on when we’re warming up, getting each other in the mood. You should get one for each of our rooms. That way you can watch us any time you want.”
“Your mind is so twistedly sexy.”
“Before we get too distracted and you’re finishing on my face, I want to have a serious conversation,” she requested.
“How can I help?”
“I have been messing with Spell Forgemaster, and I thought you might have heard of a mechanic like this one. I’m not quite clear on how this works.”
The ability Solara referenced was her unlock for level 19:
Spell Forgemaster
Active Ability
Spend good-aligned levels to design new spells.
Prerequisite: Sovereign’s Corpse Builder
(Optional Upgrade with Loyalty: Hold a blank book with at least 50 pages and spend 10 good-aligned levels to instantly transfer your intuitive knowledge into a spell manual.)
(Bonus Pledge: Hold a blank spell scroll and spend 10 good-aligned levels to create a spell scroll usable by other mages…
But she had selected that the morning of her wedding day and then got wrapped up in the chaos of opening Sanctuary South. This was likely the first long moment she had to give it proper thought.
Though she was undead and no longer needed to sleep, she thus far used that extra time to get off several more times a day. The more she enjoyed her new life, the better, so I didn’t mind her focusing more on pleasure than business for the immediate future.
“Walk me through it,” I said.
“For Spell Forger, I had to pick from spells I knew and combine them to make something new. For Spell Forgemaster, the prompt says, ‘Design every detail of the spell of your dreams to leave your mark on history. Spend 100 good-aligned levels to have the system assess your spell. System will assign costs and requirements for making your spell a reality, but the system may also reject incompatible suggestions. You may only have one Spell Forgemaster quest active at any given time.’”
Some of that language sounded familiar, reminding me of the Write the Next Chapter mechanic of the dungeon core, which allowed me to write a freeform entry in the dungeon’s story to update and upgrade the entirety of the dungeon’s design–if the chapter was accepted.
That language read as follows:
Evolve the whole of your dungeon by writing the next chapter in its story. System may reject incompatible suggestions or the entirety of the new chapter. Any costs for making that attempt are not returned.
Speaking of similar language, the description for Spell Forgemaster sounded like one of my previous unlock options as well:
Plague Master
Active Ability
Cooldown: 12 Days
Spend good-aligned levels to design a unique disease.
Prerequisites: Plague Bearer, Corpse Builder
Did that mean Plague Master had the same open-ended design mechanics as Spell Forgemaster? I didn’t even have the prerequisite Plague Bearer, but having more insight into what unlocks did before I selected them would make my future choices smarter.
“The dungeon core has a mechanic called ‘Write the Next Chapter,’” I explained to Solara. “It’s open-ended like what you’re describing, but I’ve only gotten to use it once. That doesn’t give me much data to share with you, though.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“Wait. Actually, there is something else. The Minsic dungeon update was a new chapter, and seeing that made me believe I could have been much more aggressive and far more bold with what I submitted for our dungeon. The next chance I got to write one, my plan was to go as big as I could to see what happened.”
“You wouldn’t mind burning 100 good-aligned levels on a potential spell rejection?” Solara asked.
“Not at all, especially now when we have everything to learn. No matter what happens, we get something useful out of trying.”
“I might have a spell design written up already…”
“Tell me.”
Solara got distracted by the free-use scrying mirror for a moment. One of the paladins was getting her pussy spanked by the open hand of a very fuckable middle-aged woman.
My sorceress remembered herself and offered me a piece of paper.
It read:
Spell Name: Seraphim Slayer
Description: Caster can devote the quantity of mana and lifeforce of her choosing to cast an exponentially powerful Bolt spell capable only of harming those from the plane of the seraphim. Learning this spell requires the caster to sacrifice a full element of magic forever.
Targeting: Line of Sight
Base Spell Bonus: Bolt
Casting Time: 1 Second
Cooldown: 7 Days
Spell Reagents: ???
Verbal Components: ???
Blowback Penalty: ???
“My thinking is to try and ‘play along’ with how the system usually weights variables, benefits, and concessions,” Solara began.
“I know that this spell is a big ask for the system to accommodate because it’s so powerful and so specialized.
That’s why I baked in the element sacrifice, gave it a long cooldown, limited it to only a certain category of creature, and gave the system permission to fill in what it felt was fair for what it took to cast the spell and what the consequences might be. ”
“Why seraphim?” I asked.
“I want us to have as many tools as possible for taking on our biggest threats. We know that seraphim repelled our enemy before, so we know they’re strong. If I can make a specialized spell as a trump card, and it works how I want, we can make another spell specific to our abyssal enemy.”
Not being able to say Abaddon’s name out loud was so tedious sometimes, but an Abaddon Slayer spell was an appealing idea, even more so if Podni could turn around and make the bomb version of Abaddon Slayer.
Suddenly, my low-stat party members would actually have a chance at hurting the King of the Abyss.
Thanks to Mammoni, I knew that the King of the Abyss was really a fallen seraphim. If Solara’s plan worked, and it sounded like it could, we could even build constructs specifically designed for Abaddon hunting.
“How you went about this seems smart to me,” I said. “I have the extra good-aligned levels. Want to submit it and see what happens?”
Solara nodded. I watched her out-of-focus eyes navigate her menus and confirm the entry.
Solara read what the system spat back:
Spell Name: Seraphim Slayer
Description: Caster can devote the quantity of mana and lifeforce of her choosing to cast an exponentially powerful Bolt spell capable only of harming those from the Plane of the Seraphim.
Targeting: Line of Sight
Base Spell Bonus: Bolt
Casting Time: 3 Seconds
Cooldown: 7 Days
Spell Reagents: Sovereign Seed (Consumed on Casting)
Verbal Components: N/A
Blowback Penalty: Acquire a random abyssal trait.
To unlock Seraphim Slayer, you must spend 5,000 good-aligned levels (one-time), forget a full element of magic permanently (water, earth, and air available for selection), acquire blood or bone recovered from a living Seraphim, and bring 10 virgins from any of the celestial planes to climax.
Do you accept this quest? Yes / No
Note: You may only have one Spell Forgemaster quest active at any given time. Abandoning a Spell Forgemaster quest after you have accepted it incurs a penalty.
“What is a Blowback Penalty?” I asked.
“That means the spell is powerful enough that it has a chance to trigger a side effect. The more mana the spell costs, the more likely the Blowback Penalty is to trigger.”
“So you’re almost guaranteed an abyssal trait every time you cast this spell.”
“Probably. That aside, the system mostly gave me what I asked for. The quest objectives are pretty unfair, though.”
I agreed. “Yeah, how are you supposed to get ‘blood or bone from a living Seraphim?’ That’s pretty difficult.”
“Would Arcturus be able to acquire something like that?”
That wasn’t a bad idea. Sales of Byron’s Bliss and Purity’s Blessing had gone well on the celestial planes. Of any being I knew, Arcturus was the most likely to have access to seraphim blood and bone.
“He might,” I answered.
“So the next question, given the costs of the quest, would be: Do we commit to the Seraphim Slayer and then do the other spell after, or should we skip to the other spell now, knowing we might not be able to pull off both?”
“About that… Guess who is actually a fallen seraphim?”
Solara’s eyes went wide. “Really?”
“Yes, so your spell would work, or should work, rather. But I do think we should move carefully if cancelling a spell quest incurs penalties. Do you have to answer right now?” I asked.
“Doesn’t look like it. I can’t propose a new spell until I accept or decline this quest, though.”
“How would you feel about leaving that question open for a bit so we can think on it? Or do you have another option you want to try right away?”
Solara shook her head. “I think it’s worth waiting for now. We know the system can accept very specific spell requests. That alone is worth putting much more thought into.”
“Tell me more about where you’re going with that.”
“What if the system let us make exceptionally powerful spells with the condition that they only worked in Sanctuary South? Or maybe they can only be cast once a year. Or cost 1,000 gold or time off your life with each cast. The potential is high, and I know how this works, Byron. You’ll come back tomorrow with a genius idea.
When you do, I’ll give you my ass as a thank you. ”