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MAZE - Chapter 971 - Upgraded spells
🕑 Added 2024-11-22 10:45:28 +0000 UTCFor the next couple of days, Blade kept teaching Hera’s Court how to connect spells and skills. The process was simple in theory—all it required was copying the mana signature from the skill into the spell. But that was nowhere near as simple as it sounded. The problem wasn’t just copying the signature, but finding it in the first place. Skills behaved differently than spells. The way they interacted with magic wasn’t through any kind of rune or spell circle; it was something much more fundamental, almost primal. Understanding how a skill activated was akin to understanding a law of nature.
It was possible, of course. Throughout history, many people had discovered various laws of nature. But it had never been easy. This meant that for every skill, they would need to make a similar discovery before they could seamlessly connect a skill and a spell together.
When it came time to leave, as all the participants in the operation had arrived, the trio had barely made progress in their studies. Lurize and Viper were still stuck in the discovery stage, trying to understand the patterns created by their skills. Nimbus was a little ahead. He still couldn’t fully understand his [Mana Shield], but he could now make it so a couple of spells he cast afterward would gravitate toward his barrier.
While the titled blades were essentially trying to draw water from a stone, Hera was a dam that had burst open.
The Empress wasn’t trying to do the same thing. The moment she heard Blade’s explanation, it became clear to her that mixing spells and skills like that was extremely difficult. Even without knowing all the details of how it worked, she already believed it wasn’t something she could grasp in just a few days. Instead, the Ophidianite focused on reviewing her spells, trying to identify areas she could improve.
The first one she tackled was, of course, Poison Needle. It was the spell she used the most, aside from her buffs, and one of her oldest. Using a notebook she got from Ka'mal, Hera wrote down all the pieces of the spell. The first step was identifying the parts of the spell she already knew how to improve. This transformed Poison Needle into Poison Arrow, a larger version of the spell that required slightly more mana but was several times more powerful.
Despite what one might assume, the reason for the increase in power wasn’t just the size. Hera condensed the poison, making the single arrow contain five times the volume of its original shape.
That alone was a major upgrade, but the Empress wasn’t satisfied. Moving to the second step, she started tweaking areas of the spell she wasn’t entirely sure how to improve. Her focus was on two specific aspects of the attack: its trajectory and the effects of the poison. A large part of the spell’s power came from Poison Control, another spell she used to manipulate the effects of the poison once it entered a target.
Since she could also use Poison Control to increase the amount of poison inside a target’s body, she had overlooked an important factor—how much poison was wasted when she converted it after hitting the target. By preparing the spell with the specific type of poison she wanted beforehand, the final effect would be far more powerful.
Once that issue was solved, Poison Arrow became Poison Talon. This new spell allowed her to imbue it with any type of poison she wanted, as long as she knew how to create it, and even increase the potency of the venom. She still had the option of using Poison Control later to modify how the poison behaved.
Feeling like she was on a roll, Hera also worked to tweak the spell’s possible trajectory. Her aim was good, but there were times when a monster moved too fast for her to land the poison. Fighting in a group also presented problems. Without a clear shot, she risked harming one of her allies. To address this, she tried to create a guiding system for the spell—something that would allow it to curve to hit the target or veer away from someone she didn’t want to harm.
Surprisingly, this ended up being easier than expected. All she had to do was add the rune for “snake” to the spell. There was an intrinsic synergy between poison and snakes, which made perfect sense. Snakes were the most venomous animals in the world. Some might argue that cone snails deserved the title since, unlike snakes, they didn’t have non-venomous variations. Still, if anyone were to think about poisonous animal, which was the most common way of saying it even if it was wrong, people would think about snakes.
With just a few more minor adjustments, Hera developed the final form of her upgraded spell. She called it Poison Fang. Casting it would fire a pair of fangs made entirely of poison, which would clamp down on the target. The spell could also angle and curve mid-flight. There were some limitations on how much it could adjust its path, but it would easily track any target as long as it didn't have to shift more than 30 degrees. At once.
Additionally, if Hera poured enough mana into the spell, its form would evolve. Instead of just the fangs, the bones of a snake’s jaw would materialize. At even higher mana levels, a full snake skull would appear, the entire construct made of concentrated poison. In this case, the spell would deliver all of its venom into the target upon impact, along with an empowered initial strike.
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Poison Fang
Rank: Advance
Creates a pair of fangs capable of delivering poison mana to a target. Creatures struck by that projectile can become poisoned. The amount of mana spent on the spell increases the amount of poison and the damage dealt by the initial impact. Poison Fang is capable of correcting its course in order to hit the desired target as long as the target is whiting 10 meters of caster.
Range: 40 meters
Base mana cost: 3 500 mana
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Despite all the changes, the base cost of the spell only increased by 100 times. To Hera, it was wild to think that someone like her, who had millions of mana available, was still using a spell that only cost 35.
After finishing that first upgrade, the Empress went into a frenzy, doing the same thing with various other spells she had yet to look at.
Her Fire Spray became Flamethrower. Since the base for her fire spells was her poison, the flames stuck to the target. But she decided this wouldn’t be a spell she’d use against a person—it felt too much like a war crime.
Next, she turned to Spore Field. It was originally just something that made people sneeze, but by changing the type of spore present in the area, the spell became Fungal Spread. The new version could not only cause allergic reactions, but also had a minor paralytic effect. Hera did attempt to make the spell capable of controlling someone’s body—even if just for forcing involuntary reflexes—but it quickly became clear that was still beyond her capabilities.
Pulse, the spell she used to better understand her surroundings, received a minor overhaul that changed it from a single active effect to a rhythmic, constant spread. It was now called Sonar and worked exactly like one. The only problem was that it still didn’t provide much information about whatever it found. Hera only got a loose idea of the shapes of objects hit by the mana pulses, and any spells being cast in the area caused interference. Unfortunately, the results felt underwhelming, especially since her Relic had a similar effect that was far more powerful, though it didn’t detect living creatures.
Some of her old spells—spells she didn’t even remember until she opened the file where she had noted them down at the start of her journey as an explorer—received straightforward upgrades. This was mostly because she hadn’t used them enough to develop a clear sense of what she could do differently. Mend, a very basic healing spell, became Heal, which had the same effect but was significantly more powerful. Bark Skin, one of her first defensive buffs designed to make her skin sturdier, was adapted to her current form, turning into Adamant Scales. The basic concept remained the same, increasing her durability, but now it affected her scales, which were already resilient by nature.
Fire Arrow had a bigger change. Hera felt that Poison Fang already covered her need for a quiet single-target attack, so she changed Fire Arrow into something that packed more of a punch. Thus, Flaming Cannon was born. A spell that hurled a large fireball, which exploded on impact.
Another spell she updated was one she had promised never to use: Mana Burn. By itself, it was simply torture, requiring constant physical contact, which wasn’t practical in a fight. Using the core idea as a base, Hera reduced the intensity of the effect and made it so she only needed to stay near the target for it to continue. The resulting spell, Burning Agony, caused anyone affected to feel as though they were poking an open wound whenever they used mana. It was annoying and painful, but not impossible to overcome. Not like the Mana Burn, where you had just to accept the pain and pray it would end soon.
With Poison Spray, Hera tried something different. Using the same idea she had with Poison Fang—adding the rune for "snake" along with the concept of hunting—she created Snakes of Venom. When casting this spell, snake constructs would appear and chase her targets. If they got close enough, they would bite, turning into a poison that directly affected the victim.
But unfortunately, Hera had been spoiled by the snakes from her bracelet. Unlike those, the constructs from Snakes of Venom followed her commands to the letter, even to their detriment. She couldn’t alter their behavior either. Once they were created and the orders were given, that was that.
The only spell she created completely from scratch was one to replace her flashbang. With Daskka’s help, she developed a mist that could irritate a person’s eyes to the point of temporary blindness. While it didn’t cause true blindness, it unfocused their vision completely. As if they really needed glasses but didn't have them on. It made it so seeing during a fight became almost impossible. Having this spell take the form of a mist also eliminated the problem of attracting attention with a bright light. To make it even better, Daskka was able to incorporate it into her own forms.
The last spell Hera upgraded during those two days was Elemental Poison Storm, the newest spell of the bunch. Instead of letting the rain fall randomly from the sky, Hera attached parts of the Poison Control spell to allow her to move the droplets around herself. The end result was almost like a snow globe—a swirling area around the Empress where countless droplets of poison, imbued with elemental effects, spun rapidly in all directions.
This change forced her to remove the completely random elemental effects originally created by the spell, as the lack of direction caused too many problems for practical use. Now, the droplets were imbued only with a few basic elements: fire, water, wind, earth, and electricity.
The change was so significant that the spell earned a new name, Quetzalcoatl’s Wrath. It also became the first spell Hera had ever created to reach the expert rank.
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Quetzalcoatl’s Wrath
Expert Rank
Drops of poison float around you, rapidly circling and striking anyone who enters the area. Each droplet is imbued with one of the following elements: fire, water, wind, earth, or electricity. Targets hit by the droplets take increased damage and become more susceptible to the elemental effects they were hit by.
Ophidianite Variant
This spell was created with Ophidianite poison, increasing the poison’s strength by 60% and reducing mana usage by 30%.
Anyone who possesses the Ophidianite Poison skill takes 25% less damage from this spell for each rank of the Ophidianite Poison skill.
Someone with a rank 4 Ophidianite Poison skill is immune to the effects of this spell.
Someone with a rank 5 Ophidianite Poison skill receives a 10% buff to their attributes while under the storm. This buff increases by 10% for each rank above 5.
Base radius: 20 meters
Base mana cost: 125,000 mana/s
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Even the variation became more powerful. Making it even easier for Ophidianites to stay under it without getting hurt. And that was the last spell Hera was able to improve before they had to gather for the final meeting. In just a few hours, the operation would begin.
Comments
Perizou
I agree with both, which means she would need two versions of the spell. One without the memory erasure, and another with it, using the second only to escape.
Pletter
Apply "obscurity effect" to all targets within. That would make teamwork inside the mist impossible.
CherMi
Hera should include that memory erasure spell she has into the blindless mist. Temporary blindless + general disorientation about where they are and what's happening.
