Chapter 283

Chapter 283

Colonel Galanodel was the ‘head librarian’ of Team Firmament, a slender, bookish woman with blonde hair, pointed ears, and a golden claymore she seemingly had out all the time. It was not what Matt pictured when he thought of a smith, but if she was the leader of Firmament she must have been the best.

Matt met with the woman in a small room off the main shops in Firmament. The musty smell of enchanting permeated the entire building, and even in this meeting room, the remnants of scorch marks covered the floors and walls. Fortunately, the room was soundproofed, and not even the deafening clangs from the main workshop could penetrate the enchantments to interrupt their discussion.

“Ascender Quill,” she greeted. “Thank you for coming.”

“Thank you for working with me, Colonel. I’ve heard you’re practically a miracle-worker when it comes to arms and armor. What do you see working for me?” Matt had to resist rubbing his hands together like some evil mastermind as he asked.

“Well, first we need to discuss a bit about what kind of role you want to play. My understanding is that you’ve traditionally been something of a tank for your team, yes? Is that still what you would like to be now?”

“My Intent’s phrase is I Am Dauntless, and as a part of that it includes me defining how combat flows around me,” Matt agreed. “So yes, I would like to remain a tank-like blademage.”

“So somewhat of a traditional tank then, yes? With your armor skill, we can definitely turn you into a potent force on the battlefield, able to shrug off any attack thrown at you, with basically unstoppable return volleys. Does that sound good to you?”

“It does.”

“Excellent. You currently have four growth items, two rings, your sword, and your house?”

Matt nodded. It had all been in the paperwork he’d filled out as part of being an Ascender. Technically, he could have obscured just about any part of his build if he’d been so inclined, but he didn’t feel too much need to do so.

“The house is out of my purview, and we’ll almost certainly replace the sword. Your rings allow you to teleport and convert mana to any aspect or subaspect, that’s all correct?”

“Wait, why’ll we be replacing my sword?” Matt suddenly felt a little defensive. It was, well, his sword. It had been at his side for practically his entire life, it fit him almost perfectly, and he’d basically learned enchanting with its generous rune-allotment and ability to wipe away old enchantments with just a bit of mana. Sure, he hadn’t been able to use it much lately, but he’d been looking forward to doing so again once they brought in all the possible Tier 25 upgrade materials for him to sift through to see what his sword needed.

“Well, it’s honestly not all that great.” Galanodel apologetically explained, raising her hand to forestall Matt’s rebuttal. “Look, I understand that it got you through many Tiers, and I’m happy for you. I get the attachment to growth items. But, it functionally has two abilities, the increased number of enchantments it can support, and the ability to switch between enchantment configurations. Sure, it will pick up a third ability when it hits Tier 25, and if it’s an absolutely legendary power, great. Even if it doesn’t, you can keep it as a backup weapon to supplement your main sword.”

“What’s wrong with having additional enchantment capacity?” Matt tried not to sound like Allie or other Ascenders who dug in their heels at the hint of a suggestion they didn’t like, but he wasn’t a fan of what she was saying.

“Absolutely nothing. And that’s where the drawbacks come into play. The increased weight, that doesn’t really matter. We could work with that. But, like most rift weapons, it’s a single object made mostly out of Steel L-24 A, which is standard in hardness and enchantability with no other stand out features. Most damningly, we can’t enchant it, Ascender.”

Colonel Galanodel gestured out to the rift around them. “We have people with Talents and Domains that let them cram ten runes in the space that you or I would take to enchant one. Another one can enchant the blade of a laser sword, a duo who can make weapons out of a special form of Talent-modified obsidian, sharper than anything and tougher than diamond. For as good as you may be a fighter, Quill, we’re that good at crafting, and we can’t do anything for your sword. As a primary weapon, it’s just not up to par. It needs to be something that’ll withstand antimagic fields, a complete blocking of your Talents and Domain, even stand up to Void magic. The kinds of materials and enchantments we have here, in Firmament, are beyond just about anything you could dream of, let alone make in time for this war.”

Matt sighed and relented, “Alright, then. So are we going to discuss its replacement now?”

The Colonel smiled. “Actually, I was hoping to discuss your armor with you. Given your fittingly Ascender-level mana production alongside your fully physical cultivation, we have some fairly interesting ideas for you.”

With a click of her fingers, a life-sized illusion of a fairly typical set of Empire armor wavered into existence in the center of the room. Vambraces, greaves, and a breastplate acted as the primary protective pieces for the suit, with various connective plates filling in the gaps while retaining full range of flexibility.

“Our first option is to simply approach this as typical armor, but lean strongly on your physical prowess. We can enchant it to boost your base physical attributes, so using [Mage’s Retreat] or [Archmage’s Presence] will be multiplicative with all of your cultivation buffs. Don’t worry about the form of the armor, we’ll take care of that after we settle on what you want,” she added, preempting Matt’s impending question.

“Now,” she continued while a new set of armor appeared next to the first, this one a full-body suit of armor with no apparent gaps at all, “The other way we can do this is to make it power armor.”

Matt frowned. “Power armor? Like a mech suit? Isn’t that usually used by crafters who want to fight, or mages who don’t want to cultivate strength but do want to punch people? I’ve fought some people who used it, and I’ve never been impressed, they always seem worse than what a warrior could do with a good suit of armor.” He nodded towards the original, traditional armor.

“Well, yes. Power armor is primarily utilized as a tool for those who need physical cultivation but can’t afford it. But that’s not the only way it can be used. Tell me, Quill, are you familiar with Paladins?”

“The Corporations elite guard, what about it? The kinds of resources needed to make something like that would be…” Matt’s eyes widened, “On the scale of what we’re working with?”

“Well,” Colonel Galanodel coughed, “Our power armors aren’t on the same level as what the Paladins have, not to mention all the supplementary resources that go into it, their supporting domains, the fact they have Minkalla bind them as growth items with no tradeoffs, all that. But what we do have is certainly several steps above what you’d be used to. Stone uses one, for example, and his certainly outmatches what even a top of the line Corporation mech suit can manage.”

“Huh,” Matt mused. Eric had mentioned his armor a couple of times, but Matt hadn’t gotten the chance to spar with him yet, so he didn’t know that his former sponsor had been referring to power armor. “So what can it provide then, which normal armor can’t?”

“I’m glad you asked! So, most importantly, we can make power armor almost arbitrarily strong without taking up normal enchantment space on your spirit. While more traditional armor would be exclusively about boosting you, using a mech suit means we can pack it full of more miscellaneous enchantments, giving you lots of redundancy and added focus on what’s most important to you and how you fight. It’s also no more cumbersome or limiting than normal armor is, people worry about that sometimes. But, with proper power armor, not only will you get the best of normal armor, functionally boosting your cultivation, you’ll also have room for lots of utility enchantments, letting you do all sorts of other things.”

“Can you really make a mech suit stronger than I am, though? With my buff spells…”

“Not a problem! We can make your buff spells apply to the armor itself.” Colonel Galanodel waved his concern away like an annoying fly.

“You can do that?” Matt asked, baffled. Self-buff spells were basically impossible to apply to anything else. He’d heard of some people modifying [Transfer Strength] to apply to golems, which power armor basically was, but not something like [Mage’s Retreat]. “Wait, why doesn’t everyone do that?”

“Well, it isn’t easy, and I’m not surprised you don’t know how it works. The baseline outright requires a crafting-focused Intent, and that’s the easy part!”

“It works on attunement, then?” Matt hadn’t had much experience with attunement, all told, but he was getting the sense that it was suddenly going to be incredibly important.

Colonel Galanodel pointed to a few spots in the hologram as she spoke. “I won’t go too far into it, as you don’t have that level of specialized crafting knowledge, but broadly… yes. We can make you a set of under-armor that will extend your spirit into the armor itself, so that once you get and run your [Archmage’s Presence], it’ll enhance the entire suit twice over. And yes, we can absolutely make a mech suit stronger than you are. You have all your cultivation in your physical core, but we’ve dealt with people who have scaling strength Talents in the past without issue. How much stronger will depend on how much mana you supply it, so you will need to split your mana between your buffs and your armor, but my understanding is that won’t be an issue. At its baseline, without overcharging the motors or using any of your strength buffs, I would estimate somewhere between a five and ten times increase to your base strength. Now, that’s just the baseline. Your self-buffs, overcharging the motor enchantments, all that will just push that strength even higher.”

Matt pondered that and slowly asked, “Yeah, mana isn’t an issue. How does that compare to the traditional armor, buffing me that way?”

Colonel Galanodel pointed back to the first armor. “We can pack a lot of strength enhancements into the more traditional armor, especially if we dedicate it entirely to that, so you’d be stronger that way. You would indeed be physically weaker with power armor, and it would be somewhat more reliant on you supplying mana for its peak functions. But in exchange, you get lots of utility and room for other miscellaneous effects, which will make you far more combat capable than just being faster and more durable.”

Matt thought about that and ran some calculations before asking another question, “And what about dedicating part of the traditional armor to enhancing my self-buffs, instead of enhancing my base strength?”

“Already accounted for, at least in my estimations. There’s a tradeoff between multiplicative, additive, and meta-buffs, but at the optimal balance? We could probably increase your strength twenty… maybe thirtyfold, when running your buffs but not including them. If you went for purely strength in the traditional armor, and we can’t get anywhere close to that with the power armor… Ten to fifteenfold at best.”

Matt nodded as he thought through that option. “What about enhancing self-buffs when they’re applied to the power armor?”

“That is an option. Though, I did assume some minor enchantments to that effect would be included.”

“So, just so I’m clear, the decision is between more typical armor, which can enhance my cultivation twenty times over but not really do much else, or a mech suit which isn’t quite that strong, but leaves me room for lots of other enchantments helping me out in other ways and will make me stronger overall?” Matt wanted to make sure he wasn’t missing something. The choice seemed obvious.

“That would be correct, Ascender.” Colonel Galanodel nodded like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Then why doesn’t everyone use power armor?!”

Colonel Galanodel snorted as she relaxed. “Most people don’t have us, a team comprised of dozens of the best Tier 35 crafters the Empire has, all of whom are Talented. Or the budget to make power armor out of materials that let it truly excel over its more traditional counterparts. And even if they have the first two, few people have enough mana to run a mech suit this powerful in a fight for more than a few minutes. And even if they can do all of that, the price to do so is astronomical.”

Matt nodded in thought. “At least for now, let’s assume that I’ll go with the power armor. I like the idea of being both strong and able to do more than hit things harder with my sword. For the first time I can use my entire skill set in a fight, so I intend to be the best damn blade mage there is.”

“An excellent choice, Ascender.” Colonel Galanodel had an almost manic grin as Matt agreed. “Let's start planning exactly what you want in your armor.”

***

Liz closed The Book with a sigh. It didn’t have the answers she needed, not by any stretch of the imagination, and no matter how helpful it could be for her, it was only bringing confusion and pain. At least for now. Matt was supportive, of course. He always was, and whatever she chose, he would be there for her. But that didn’t make the decision any easier.

But, the weather was as nice as it always was in Fort Lightfoot, and she had new skills just waiting to be tested. Her advisors had been incredibly helpful, giving her insight into the ways in which her spirit twisted skills as she absorbed them, and the four of them- herself, Delphi Ghan, Xell Brians, and Haley “Lifeblood” Tailor- had given her a whole new suite of exciting magic to master.

It was a bit of a pity that [Blood Intelligence], [Blood Artificial Intelligence], [Scarlet Intelligence], whatever the publicist in Group Chatter would eventually settle on for the naming scheme, had ended up a relative dud. But at least she’d been able to merge it with her legacy pseudo-AI just fine, and now she could choose to reserve blood or mana for all her computing needs.

She scrolled through her pending messages, figuring out what all had happened while she’d been in contemplation. It looked like Matt was still off designing his new armor, but as of twelve hours ago, Aster had said she was going to the training ground with Sebastian and Ai’la to test out her new skills… they were probably still there, and it would be a good place to jump in.

Weirdly, Liz didn’t mind the looks and salutes she was getting as she crossed the length of the Fort. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she had a fairly strong suspicion. For the first time ever, it was attention she had earned. That her parents were Royals literally didn’t matter. She was an Ascender, and the attention she was getting, now and forevermore, would have that fact first and foremost in their minds.

She was no longer the daughter of Mara and Leon. Now, they were the mother and father of Elizabeth Torch… or whatever her final Ascender title would be. Royals came and went, a half-dozen every thirty thousand years. But Ascenders were rare… or at least they had been.

Regardless, it would be her name in all the history books. Basically nobody cared about Royals after they Ascended, but the Cosmos were still regularly referenced. Just because she lived in a time with a record numbers of Ascenders shouldn’t mean she’d be any less notable. If anything, it might make her all the more memorable.

Her musings brought her to the edge of the training ground, where with some amusement she saw several off-duty soldiers and family members perched on surrounding vantage points, watching Aster face down a two-story wolf made out of fire.

It lunged at her, but the yellow-white flames were pushed down to faint black and red embers as Aster launched herself into the sky, trailing orange and green. While in the air, a miniature blizzard swirled around the fox, condensing into a vividly blue and white snowglobe in Aster’s cupped hand. Then, she threw it with all her might, her body twisting around itself to provide the leverage needed, and the spell struck the struggling wolf with a faint boom. It froze the wolf in place and left it utterly helpless for Aster’s final attack, a spear of ice larger than even she was.

[Chill of the End], [Astral Path], [Airsnow], and [Ice Manipulation], Liz recognized.

[Chill of the End] was her primary new defense against fire, a Tier 32 aura spell that massively disrupted all flames in its area. Liz hadn’t even been able to actually conjure or sustain any fire when she’d tried fighting the effect, and it was evident that even Sebastian struggled to keep his fire summons active when Aster turned her wintry attention to them. The only one who had been able to bypass her new spell was Zack, but that was his whole shtick so he didn’t really count.

[Astral Path] was a comparatively straightforward and simple spell. The aurora spell enhanced her motion, both in speed and power, and left behind a trailing wake of color that didn’t have any native effect, but could easily be utilized as the origin for any number of follow-up spells, be it to make a physical barrier out of the aurora or utilize it to deliver nasty touch-only debuffs.

Meanwhile, [Airsnow] was a decidedly fun skill that launched a fist sized globe of stabilized winter mana that exploded into frozen air, slowing anything that entered its space as an area debuff. It was potent enough that even Team Zero would have to specifically figure out some way to get around the effect, not simply power through it.

Then, of course, Aster had immediately utilized her first Tier 38 upgrade orb on her innate [Ice Manipulation], bringing her up to a truly terrifying level of cryokinesis. Though she may not have encountered any of the rare, variant upgrades of manipulation skills, you’d hardly know the difference as she ripped ice and cold from the air itself, spawning snow and fog with barely a second thought, and at a prodigious rate. One which she didn’t even need Matt to sustain for outright hours. And, while her ice was already quite able to penetrate resistance and even immunity to ice, Aster’s Tier 38 upgrade had brought that to a level beyond, with her most notable feat so far having been to literally freeze fire. The orange lick of flame, still in exactly the same position it had been days ago, was still sitting in their living room, encased in a sculpture of ice roughly cleaved to its shape.

With her target vanquished, Aster landed deftly on the ground, arms raised like a gymnast landing a flip. Some of the bystanders applauded, and Liz entered the arena. She caught a glimpse of Ai’la off to the side, gently massaging her skull with soot-stained hands.

The gadgeteer spotted Liz and gave her a wave as she approached, then flinched and rubbed her forehead.

“[Skill Freeze]?” Liz asked, earning a pained nod.

“Wasn’t even a core. Should wear off in a couple more minutes, though.”

[Skill Freeze] was one of Aster’s most literal new skills. If she timed the cast right, she could completely disable the use of a given skill for up to half an hour, more than enough for an entire fight. It didn’t do much for reserve-type skills, as it simply locked them and their reserved mana, but didn’t dispel the active effect. But when used properly, it could be utterly devastating. The arguably worse effect that the skill carried was the utterly splitting headache that only grew worse the deeper in one’s spirit the disabled skill was slotted.

In all honesty, the headache wasn’t that bad, as any pain-numbing techniques or skills were perfectly effective on it, but it was still a quite literal pain during practice.

“Oh hey Liz!” Aster bounded over. “How much did you see?”

“You were finishing off the fire-wolf when I arrived,” she greeted her sister-in-law with a high-five. “Nicely done.”

“It was GLORIOUS indeed!” Sebastian jumped in. “The mastery of your new skills is simply staggering!” he exclaimed, just a bit too enthusiastically for Liz’s preference. He reminded her of her parents in a bad way, just too over-expressive about everything. She tried not to hold it against him, she knew all about intrusive Talents after all, but it didn’t make it any more fun to be around.

“So what emotion was that?” she asked. “I’m going to admit, I have no idea what a twenty-foot-tall fire wolf would represent.”

“It was NONE of them, lovely Lady Elizabeth! I prefer to leave my Inner Demons inside of myself unless I particularly wish to train them, or genuinely fight with them! They can be-” his entire demeanor shifted in the blink of an eye to a very haunted look, “-really, really hard to take care of.” His eyes darted back and forth as he continued, “I- I certainly wouldn’t wish to pit them against an Ascender, n-not for practice anyway. So, so that was simply a summoned monster.”

“Right, that makes sense.”

“Oh yeah! Liz, check out what came in today!” Aster cut in, rolling up her sleeve to show a skill shard slotted into a holster against her wrist.

Liz wracked her brain to figure out what was scheduled for Aster to come in next, and decided to shoot for the moon. “Is it [Winter Spirit]?”

Aster’s ears shot up, then laid flat. “Oh man, I wish! No, they’re still trying to source it, last I heard. They should have a copy somewhere, but it seems like it was misplaced somewhere along the way. But no, this is [Snowflake Armor]!”

“How do you lose a Tier 44 skill?” Seeing that Aster was as irritated as she would be if one of her promised skills was ‘lost’, Liz moved on before she worsened her friend's mood any more than she already had. “Oh [Snowflake Armor]? Very nice. You’ll have to let me know what you think of it, my advisors have been encouraging me to take it myself.”

The Tier 32 skill wasn’t a particularly common defensive skill, as it sourced all of its protection from existing ice, but it was able to be particularly diffuse within that limitation. There were records of entire blizzards being turned into functional armor, and while it was literally useless if there was no snow or ice around to utilize for material, Aster’s advisors had recommended she take it. They felt it might have quite solid potential for synergy with her Tier 25 Talent.

It was a similar reason to why they thought Liz might benefit from the skill. She had to admit, if it could turn all of her blood into potent defensive armor while remaining liquid, in a similar way to how the base [Snowflake Armor] could turn loose, powdery snow into a formidable defense, then it might actually be worthwhile.

Her sense of self had been… weird, since she’d reached Tier 25. Her human and phoenix forms just felt so fragile whenever she was using them, as if a stiff breeze would send her back into a puddle of blood. Even if her actual stability was well beyond that, she wasn’t sure if she even was still human, or phoenix, but instead some kind of weird blood-ooze thing. It was like she’d had an extra form, on top of her malleable and bloodline ones, suddenly thrust upon her, and she wasn’t sure what that meant for her identity.

Maybe that was why The Book represented such a difficult choice for her.

But even on top of that, her clones had very literally taken on a life of their own. While she could only get too far from another part of ‘her’ blood, while keeping it definitively ‘hers,’ that limit was still… pretty massive. So long as she stayed on a single planet, she’d have to actively try to get that uncomfortable, tearing sensation that came with pulling a part of her body away from her spirit.

Also, she didn’t know which Liz was truly the original. She still kept track of what she considered her original body, mostly distinguished by the items that [Lesser Blood Clone] or, more recently, [Mana/Blood Clone] didn’t duplicate. But if she lost those things, even she wouldn't be able to tell who was who.

Supposedly, there was a proper [Clone] waiting for her out there somewhere, but she hadn’t officially requested it on account of the normal skill simply being far, far too expensive for her to cast. [Blood Clone] was plenty sufficient, giving each of her bodies their own individual sets of thought, and no longer requiring her to split her attention between each clone.

The mana cost was also surprisingly reasonable, all things considered. Liz hadn’t pushed herself to her limits yet, but between [Lesser Blood Clone] and [Blood Clone], she wouldn’t be surprised if she could have a hundred or more bodies active at once.

…which felt profoundly uncomfortable just to think about, and was the reason she hadn’t pushed herself that far quite yet.

“Well, my head is feeling a bit better now. Liz, do you want to try anything out?” Ai’la asked, pulling Liz out of her self-reflection.

“Yeah, actually. Most of my newest things are a bit more geared towards living things, but if you could provide some covering fire, I can try to work around that?”

The crafter nodded, hopped off the bench, and led Liz to the far side of the training field.

“I’ll start easy on you!” Ai’la teased, reaching into her backpack and withdrawing two metal rods taller than she was. With a twirl, she slammed each into the ground, and Liz watched as the pair mechanically unfurled into two similar, but not identical mana-cannon turrets. One crackled with lightning, and the other had a pair of massive white crystals sticking out of it, whirring with power.

A second later, Liz was pelted with a stream of lightning and glowing shards of crystal, forcing her to bring up a shield with her [Blood Manipulation] for protection. Upgrading the skill a second time had drastically improved her control, but had made the decision for her that it wouldn’t be one of her initial three Tier 38 upgrades. Maybe if she got the real [Blood Manipulation] one day she’d push it to Tier 38, but her old [Water Manipulation] wasn’t worth it.

It made an excellent generalist skill, filling in the gaps and serving as a great way to practice mana control, but she didn’t need another generalist skill. Her Talent, for all its faults and aggravating points, ensured that she could have a blood skill for nearly any role she might want. As a channel skill, it might have some utility in the ways she could split its active effect between multiple clones, functionally casting it multiple times… but that was about it.

Even if her skills shared cooldown between clones, she’d get something like [Barrage] once they figured out what would work best for her. For now, she was utilizing [Fever Pitch], a fire-aspect skill she’d left in her outer spirit that reduced cooldown in exchange for a nominal mana cost, with the reduction determined by how hot her body was. Between her bloodline, an outer spirit [Fire Resistance], and Talent, heat wasn’t much of a concern. Sure, actual fire mages would get more use out of it, but it was still an improvement.

In any case, she was far more interested in using her orbs on [Blood Tidal Wave], [Blood Clone], [Lesser Blood Clone], [Hungering Blood], [Sanguine Regeneration]... the list went on.

She rolled to the right, throwing a [Blood Sickle] at the lightning turret. [Water Scythe] had converted quite well, with her blood iron ensuring the crescent blades the skill created were as tough as they were sharp. Then [Iron Proficiency], taken with Delphi’s encouragement, had converted most excellently to what she was dubbing [Blood Iron Proficiency]. Instead of drawing power from the iron in her weapons, it drew power from and in turn strengthened the iron in her blood, making her blood-weapons nearly as physically strong as rift weapons of her Tier.

In a spar, her new skills weren’t all uniformly useful, and she’d need to fight some of Sebastian’s summons to try out [Hematohidrosis] and [Blood Thalassemia]. Inanimate turrets simply didn’t have blood for her to rip out of their bodies or prevent it from carrying oxygen. She would be lying if the latter wasn’t directly inspired by trying to mimic Uncle Aiden, but that didn’t make it any less effective.

The sickle sliced through the turret with ease, the [Fever] she was using to enhance the spell causing some of the more flammable interior components to instantly combust and even explode, drawing a wince from Liz.

“Sorry!” she called out.

Origami waved a hand. “I already expected these to be nothing but scrap at the end of this so don’t hold back on my account.”

With that encouragement, Liz instantly erupted into a mountain of blood.

Something interesting that she’d found about her new blood form was that it wasn’t particularly bound to the normal laws of biology, like the square-cube law. It was a massive, formless blob of blood she could semi-telekinetically control, but most interestingly… she always returned to the same human form afterwards. No matter how big her elemental form was.

Before anyone of her Tier could properly comprehend what had happened, the lightning-cannon was a broken and splintered husk of its former self. [Analgesic] was a classic blood mage spell, and while it was usually used to sneak curses and the like past most exotic senses, Liz also could use it to make it difficult to gauge the scale of her attacks. It was particularly nasty when paired with her lingering boon from Courtly Warfare, making her able to cut people into bits without them noticing not only she’d hurt them… but also that she’d attacked them at all.

It was also a great tool for feints and bluffs.

Something like the newly-upgraded [Blood Tidal Wave] was too large to fully obscure, but it still left a wake of confusion just as surely as the broken, drained bodies it produced. The Tier 14 upgrade made her able to sustain multiple tidal waves simultaneously, which paired excellently with her clones, and the Tier 26 upgrade also drained life, strength, even flesh, and converted it all into more blood for the spell. Even if it still took her Tier 3 Talent a bit of time to truly convert it to ‘her’ blood afterwards, it still gave her quite the headstart and had the potential to completely replace her [Blood Sprites], depending on how she moved forward and if she decided to upgrade it a third time.

She had a lot of options ahead of her, and all she could do was keep moving forward one step at a time. The Book floated back to the front of her mind, but Liz waved it aside in favor of focusing on the here and now.

“Showoff!” Ai’la accused.

Liz laughed. “Round two?”

“Hey Sebastian, can I get a hand?”

“You think this will go better for you by bringing in more people?” Liz responded, intentionally playing up a bit of a cockier attitude.

Aster caught on to what she was doing, and bounded over to the other side. “Why yes, foul mistress of blood! With the power of our friendship, you will never prevail!”

Liz cackled dramatically, and their spar began once again in earnest.

***

Matt spent a solid week designing his armor in the room with Colonel Galanodel. From the full-body underarmor, to the baseline HUD his helmet would display its findings on, to the actual color scheme itself.

Frequently, Galanodel would call in various other expert crafters to get their opinions and assessment for some of Matt’s crazier desires, like size-changing into a giant mech— which would be possible, but prevented some other enchantments that he definitely wanted from being implemented— or making the durability from his Stygian Gossamer extend to his left gauntlet as well as just his skin— which was not only possible, but could be extended to cover his entire left forearm.

He couldn’t make the armor a growth item, but that was just because the crafters capable of that feat weren’t familiar with power armor. If he wanted a custom growth item, he’d have to settle for a suit of traditional armor, and one nowhere near as good as it could have been thanks to the limits those Talents imposed on the crafted armor. Apparently, there was some research into making growth items outside of those few Talents, but their only prototypes tended to inflict rift madness on whoever tried to bond with them. That particular revelation had been… disturbing, and he couldn’t help but wonder why the Emperor would allow something like that to exist.

He’d also had his mind incredibly expanded to the possibilities. Various options he hadn’t taken included making the armor predominantly ethereal, and only becoming solid when he had [Cracked Phantom Armor] active. In so doing he would become able to morph the armor’s material between woods, metals, crystals, pure force, solid fire, unmelting ice, and form weapons and simple tools directly out of the armor itself. He could have also gotten it made as a pseudoskill, like his old AI, only manifesting when he cast it. He could have worn lamellar-style armor covered in talismans that he could channel through the suit, or make certain sections of the armor be able to detach as an autonomous golem and still cast through them, like they were still a part of his body, and that was just the basics.

Unfortunately, mixing and matching capabilities were… complicated. Some Talents and Domains worked well together on the same project, and others fought or were outright mutually exclusive. Sometimes it was obvious why— making a suit of armor out of solid flame inherently excluded smiths who specialized in making steels as strong as possible— but other times it was completely opaque why including solid force anywhere in the suit’s construction forced him to either not extend his Stygian Gossamer’s durability to his gauntlet, or remove all backup flight systems and make the weapon systems way weaker.

They made some very complicated graphs, outlining which abilities were inclusive or exclusive, how that would impact the strength of all the other effects, the range of mana each enchantment could accept, and how much redundancy he wanted for each subsystem.

By the time they were done, Matt’s new armor was projected to be a thing of beauty.

While there was always a bit of room for variation with something this complex, especially with it only being in the blueprint stage, Matt would have been happy with half of what he was projected to get. It would still take some time to be fully created, years even, and he’d be returning regularly for fittings and testing, but he couldn’t wait for the end product.

Material-wise, the suit was predominantly an alloy of three natural treasure metals - Midnight Adamant, Core Magnetite, and Whitestar Silver- that left the entire suit a matte black in color, though each of the suit’s many panels was trimmed in enriched gold. The enchanting on the outermost layer would result in glossy, tightly-packed runes glimmering across the surface that would glow obviously when he started to ramp up the mana throughput.

The armor’s tassets hung freely to cover his upper thighs, but while the metal plates looked as solid as anything else, they would freely deform as he tried to move, letting him keep his full flexibility.

Each vambrace concealed some of the most potent wands he’d ever heard of. The one on the right was made out of sculpted Infinite Diamond and imbedded with enriched gold threads, but enchanted to magnify attacks of every element instead of just neutral mana, and the one on the left carved from World Tree Root and coated with Immortal Ivory, designed predominantly to enhance defensive and utility spells. In the chest of the armor was a hidden power core, a radiant black lined with orange, red, and yellow like a true black hole, and capable of powering the entire suit at baseline strength for nearly a minute in case Matt needed to focus his regeneration elsewhere.

The helmet was a blank, featureless mask of glossy black Deep Volcanic Obsidian that had been merged with the Natural Treasures Bluesky Azurite, Chronal Jittermite, and Openeye Opal. By default, it would display the white quill that was synonymous with Matt’s Mask, but as he changed his name or simply felt like it, it could be directed with even more alacrity and fidelity than the shifting appearance of his old mask.

Then for good measure, there were several ports designed for Matt to manifest mana crystal without interfering with his normal range of motion.

The keystone of the entire armor was its ability to act as an extension of Matt’s body, of course. But it went beyond that. When he would cast [Cracked Phantom Armor], or any other armor skill for that matter, instead of forming as a layer on top of the armor, it would merge with the outermost layer. The advantage in that set up was that spells designed to pierce or bypass either physical or magical defenses would find themselves far less effective versus the merged armors. Best of all, with this method the armors reinforced each other. Not exactly adding their strength together, but managing something pretty close to it.

His underarmor magically linked him to the armor, not only enabling him to cast his self-buffs on something other than just his own body, but would enhance them when using them on the rest of his gear without weakening their effects on himself.

His gauntlets could basically fuse to anything he was holding, making them functionally one object and thus impossible to disarm. Not only did that extend the effects of his self-buffs to those items, his left gauntlet extended the durability of his Stygian Gossamer out to whatever he was fused to, so long as it wasn’t too large.

While he could fire attacks or channel spells from anywhere on the armor, just like it were his own body, if he used the appropriate integrated focus points in his helmet, vambraces, chest, or boots, that came with a massive boost to their respective power. However, none of them were rated for more than a sustained five million mana per second, or fifteen in very short bursts. But, if he wanted, he could unfold a shoulder-mounted integrated cannon from his back and really unleash devastation.

Not only could it take a sustained thirty million mana per second, an amount of mana that had proven to be difficult to safely channel with Tier 25 materials, it had been integrated with his mana-aspect growth ring to make it capable of firing its barrage in any element he had access to. Its baseline functionality made it an incredibly powerful spell amplifier for most offensive spells in his arsenal, but the aspect-changing and strongest boost only came with [Mana Beam], as that was the spell it was designed around.

He could also deploy the shoulder-cannon in reverse to amplify a skill like [Overdrive], giving him a ludicrously powerful jetpack that paired with the suit’s boots, which were capable of summoning force platforms at any point, to give him a solid platform anywhere he needed one. It could even double as a shield capable of reflecting attacks back to their source, though that was a secondary function.

His helmet was enchanted with its own backup [AI] and [HUD] along with physical screens in case even they went down. They were also capable of fully autonomous action should he somehow pass out without the armor being destroyed. Better yet, the onboard [AI] was a remote clone of his own, so he could also pilot the suit of armor remotely, albeit only in low-power mode. It also wouldn’t benefit from his Stygian Gossamer or other physical buffs, but it would still be plenty strong, and would still have most of its sub-enchantments active. Low-power mode could also be used in case his regeneration was blocked somehow, but in those instances it would rely mostly on his own prodigious strength. Matt would love to see the look on someone’s face when they thought even an anti-magic field could stop him.

On top of that, the sensors he had were capable of picking out even the best attempts at stealth, designed to pierce through any illusion, identify the true identity of shapeshifters, see through obstructions, determine the origin of directionless and manifestation-less spells, and had seven independent forms of highly accurate threat assessment. It even possessed a few short moments of future sight. Though admittedly, the future-sight was largely redundant, as Matt had long since honed his spiritual sense to the point where predicting where incoming attacks were coming from was second nature, but redundancy was king for this kind of thing, and he had the room on the armor so he took it.

The ‘power’ part of the suit included three forms of native flight, runic impellers for muscle and backup animation magic enabling the suit to act as a golem. Not only could the entire armor still walk, run, punch and fly if everything except for the power core in the chest was destroyed, it could still do all of those things if only the power core was destroyed. Each piece was not only a part of a larger whole, but an individual marvel unto itself.

And of course, the entire armor was fantastically good at stopping just about any attack. Immunity and resistance to just about every element, resistance to willpower and domain attacks, capable of expanding or enhancing a spatial lockdown field, and while they couldn’t get proper invisibility running, he could become blurry and indistinct to spiritual and physical senses at will. They hoped that with his Intent absorbing mana sense, he could all but vanish from spiritual perception, but they could only test that once they had a working prototype.

It even functioned as a replacement for his mask as Quill, in that it blocked divinations and could help him disguise himself, if he felt so compelled. While the block wasn’t quite as powerful as his old mask had been, thanks to the restrictions that came with the real war, it was allowed to and able to block divinations up to Tier 46 from determining anything too sensitive, like his true Talent, while blocking most divinations up to Tier 27 from learning anything about him.

The entire thing could also fold into itself, until it was the size of a normal breastplate thanks to spatial shenanigans.

The worst part about it was that it could take up to a century to be complete, and he wanted it now!

Still had an appointment in a couple weeks to come back and design his sword, and he could hardly wait.

***

Here is Team Zero's current sheets. Feel free to look at it. I'll make a separate post outfit so it's easier to find to come out a few min after this chapter.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jjEywQiqvNXclSpLrsx-BlrT_xWqd1LYnfwVO0x69MY/edit?usp=sharing