Chapter 27

Huh, I must have missed it, I guess; where did he search for "my shovel" with [detect]?

Elaborate

"Valuables", "smiths", "allies" or "traitors" would require value judgements by the skill. But maybe "my shovel", "Cervidians", "party members", "that guy I hate"? We know 'My Shovel' does not work, so 'that Guy I hate' also does not work, unless there is a difference between finding an 'that item' and 'that person'. "pages with the word 'potentate' " who'd not work beacuse that is an sheet of paper, or some ink. he might; might be able to look for spesific words with high enough pressision on the spell.

Håvard

(Rewriting my comment, since Patreon seems to have swallowed the previous one.) What are the limits of [detection], conceptually? We know "metal" works, but can Rain detect "matter", and get a 3D map of his surroundings in his head? (Does he see the outline of thing he detects, or does he just get a 3D coordinate?) How about "mana"? Or "essence", whatever that means? "Poison" or "Filth", to see what [purify] will remove? I could see it work *because* he's got [purify], so he has access to that data. "Valuables", "smiths", "allies" or "traitors" would require value judgements by the skill. But maybe "my shovel", "Cervidians", "party members", "that guy I hate"? "Things shaped like discs"? Getting into deep waters, but I could see it work if he's got enough resolution for that particular search. "Things hotter than ambient temperature?" Probably not by default, but again, since Rain has Skills that deal with temperature, the functionality might have been added. "People with above 20 in Strength"? Requires the skill to have access to third-party data from the System. Maybe if Rain gets the [identify] skill first. What about "books with titles starting with 'A' ", or "pages with the word 'potentate' on them" for finding what he wants in a library? It doesn't require value judgement or third-party data, but does require [detection] to have much greater perception and processing ability than Rain has...

Elaborate

(I'm probably going to copy/paste these setting questions into the RRL chapters once they're released, btw.) I don't expect you to answer them here - or really at all - but I think they're interesting questions to ask, and that from a world-building perspective you probably ought to know the answers, even if telling readers would be too spoiler-y... Plus, asking them might give you interesting ideas...

Elaborate

It would be interesting if he could boost the reduction effect of one of his skills to 'reverse' a skill. What specifically comes to mind, is making Velocity *slow* entities by a percentage. Although I guess if there's some metamagic that lets you inverse a spell's effect that would achieve the same thing and be far more abusable.

Keifru

So... What's Rain going to do when he finds a major metal deposit, 50 meters below ground? I'm thinking [shear] is going to be good at hacking up stone and soil into rubble, once it gets to the high levels. Freezing the ground solid with [refrigerate] (or baking it solid with [immolate]) is also doable. Maybe [aura IFF] will even let him designate a specific volume to shred, so he can form a tunnel with stairs. But until he can remove the unwanted rubble, he's not yet a one-man mining operation, and [purify] seems unwilling to pitch in. (Though I guess it'd remove CO2 build-up.) Hm, maybe a 10 in both [shear] and [purify] will unlock a [disintegrate] skill? Or maybe [mana manipulation] will let you modify mana-based skills to go beyond the strict reading of the skill description? Maybe there's a [poltergeist] aura in Tier 3 to make things fly around inside the perimeter? ...Hmmm, if he *does* manage to punch a major hole into the landscape, is it then going to turn into a Lair over time, in accordance with the "lower down is more dangerous" rule-of-thumb?

Elaborate

Thanks! Who has time to write when there are typos to fix?

SenescentSoul

Thanks! xD

SenescentSoul

I'm a simple man; if a story is good enough to make me re-read the latest few chapters three times, then it's good enough for me to consider supporting it on Patreon.

Elaborate

Yay! More bribery to keep writing!

Alston Sleet

Thanks! I'm glad you are enjoying it.

SenescentSoul

Hey there, I just want to say thank you and how much i really appreciate your good work!

Thanks for the support and encouragement!

SenescentSoul

Thanks! Love your story, it is one of my favorites on Royal Road.

Scott B Fenton