Chapter 481 – Thread Tips

Once you were past the first upgrade, the standard way Archons practiced combat Abilities was in the World Tree. There were parts of the Moonlit Branches set up for exhibitions, experimentation, and even regular sparring, but they were far more expensive to maintain than finding a place in the Roots to practice. The fact that heading to the Roots meant they could pick a spot not too far from where Leo, Arvinn, and Reko were exploring was a plus.

They didn’t really need the space for what they planned to take care of today, but that could change at any moment if either of them made good progress. It was easier to let Dav practice while Sophia worked on her Sphere in the Roots than make a trip every time one of them wanted to do something they couldn’t manage at the inn.

Sophia sat in a chair in the house attached to the orchard the three youngsters grew in their Challenge Chain to reach the first branch while Dav tried to figure out why his sword sometimes refused to turn solid. She was trying to figure out how to fix her Hoard but had barely started when Dav’s hand on her shoulder pulled her away from her Sphere.

A knock at the door told Sophia why Dav interrupted her; it must not have been the first knock. 

“Ah, good, you’re aware,” Dav said before he moved to answer the door. “Revanos? I wasn’t expecting you here.”

“May I come in?” The Wanderer asked politely. He followed Dav’s gesture and found a chair that faced the ones Sophia and Dav were using. “I like to travel; inside the World Tree is a welcoming place. I wouldn’t interfere if you were trying to climb, but you’re in the Roots.”

“You were looking for us?” It seemed like the natural assumption, but Sophia guessed there might be other reasons for Revanos to be in the World Tree. There really wasn’t any other reason for him to visit this specific location, though.

Revanos nodded. “What did you do to your Sphere? It looks like you failed an upgrade, but you’re nowhere near an upgrade and the damage isn’t really bad enough, either.”

Sophia blinked. Failing an upgrade was worse than what she was dealing with? She definitely never wanted that to happen, then. “I … well, Leo did something stupid. To get him out of it, I had to get too close to the pillar in the middle of the World Tree, I guess maybe that’s the World Tree itself …”

It was fairly fast to explain what happened, but it quickly led to explaining about Dav’s Blessing and the issues Dav was having with his Sphere. His Embodiments were easy enough to figure out, but everything else didn’t quite seem to work right.

Revanos chuckled. “You’re trying to shape the Ability, aren’t you?”

“Shape?” Dav frowned, then nodded. “Sophia called it holding the Intent in mind. It helps a lot, especially with the spell-stealing Embodiment. It seems to work especially well with Axiom; if I hold what I want in mind, I get exactly that.”

“And that’s probably exactly the problem. You’re trying to remember what your Ability used to do, aren’t you?” Revanos paused for just long enough for Dav to nod. “Try it without that focus. They should manifest fairly easily. Then take that and use it as your new starting point. Shaping’s advanced. It definitely works and I use it on pretty much everything I do, but it’s really not necessary at your upgrade. It does explain why you’re able to figure up as far as you are, though. Well, that and your absolutely absurd Body and Core.”

“You did that,” Dav objected. “We just followed the pattern you set.”

Revanos chuckled. “I didn’t say it was a bad thing. The fact that you’ve been able to afford it is the amazing part; most people stop when the Wisp cost gets too high and then have to catch up later. It integrates better if you take care of it early on. You can fix it, but then you have to do more or less what Sophia’s trying to do. Speaking of which, what do you think you’re doing, Sophia?”

Sophia struggled to express what she’d accomplished so far in the way of Sphere repairs. 

Revanos shook his head, then explained how he would have done it. “Your Aural Plumes need to be partially unraveled; you’ve tried to cover the damage but that’s not good enough for it. The Ability will break if you do that and try to add anything more. It also isn’t good for its next upgrade. You need to take it back to the solid, undamaged Thread; cut it if you have to. You ought to be able to figure out how to do that; it’s just like Shaping and Dav said you taught him that.”

Sophia nodded. Intent was how she interacted with the entire structure of her Sphere. Cutting Thread ought to be simple enough.

“Once you’ve cleaned it up, you need to rebuild the damaged sections. You ought to be able to do that by tracing over the intact parts; the key is a lot of small stiff segments with flexible connections while you set it up, then wrap the entire thing in Thread. Once that’s done, you’ll need to lock-stitch it with a reverse wrap. Make it as tight as you can; that will help the Thread meld together. If you do it right, that will significantly strengthen the structure of the Ability. When you’re done, compare it to the older structure; if the new bits are stronger, repeat the wrap-and-lock on the old bits.” Revanos held up his hand and projected a small illusion in the air that showed exactly what he meant. “The individual plumes are fine, but Aural Plume’s structure is weak for that many different selections. You need to reinforce it before you add any new Plumes or there’s a risk of it collapsing and destroying some of what’s there. You don’t want that to happen; it’s a pain to recover from and the Guide doesn’t do much in the way of Ability repair once you’re past the third upgrade.”

“It does more earlier?” Sophia had noticed that things changed with each upgrade but she didn’t expect how much help the Guide offered to really change; why would it?

Revanos shrugged. “It does everything for you early on. You can simply buy Abilities with Wisps at first, then you have to earn them in Challenges. Eventually you have to build your own, though you’re not at that point yet; the third upgrade Grand Talent is built from the fragments of your initial Sphere. The Item Manifestation tokens you used are the way around it at the third and fourth upgrades, and you already know they’re far more limited than Challenge rewards. At the fifth and sixth upgrades, it’s possible to absorb Abilities that others made and then stored, as long as it’s close enough to something that will work for your Sphere. Past that, you must adapt them to your Sphere as you absorb them and it becomes increasingly difficult. By the ninth upgrade, it’s far better to build your own Abilities, though you can still use instructions that will help. Those are the instructions I’m giving you to repair your Sphere, by the way; they’re also used when you have upgrade issues, whether that’s a failure or a success that wasn’t clean.”

Sophia couldn’t resist asking, “I assume you’re past the ninth upgrade?” 

“Fifteenth,” Revanos admitted. “I’m not the strongest person out there, but I’m close. There aren’t many of us, despite how many Towers there are. Climbing isn’t safe and it only gets worse once you get above the levels with a lot of Professionals, and Professionals have a hard time reaching the higher upgrades. It’s gotten easier over the last couple of millenia, but it’s still fairly rare. There aren’t many Towers that reach that high, either; this is one of six that I know of. In any case, we should get back to your Sphere; you have quite a bit of work to do.”

Revanos also had some suggestions for Prismatic Plume Strike and Armored in Arcane Scales that would make them easier to use. He wasn’t certain she’d be able to get the armor Ability to stop passively generating scales, but he was fairly certain she’d be able to concentrate them on areas that were less obvious than her face, even without concentrating on restraining the Ability. Dav didn’t seem to mind a few scales, so Sophia really didn’t care about that; she simply didn’t want to see her face covered in scales all the time. A few were probably fine.

The changes to Prismatic Plume Strike weren’t cosmetic, unlike Armor in Arcane Scales. They would help it connect to the upgraded and strengthened Aural Plumes more easily. It was interesting, but Sophia wasn’t about to implement any of it immediately.

The immediate change she wanted was to fix her Hoard of Plumes. It bothered her that she couldn’t get at her feathers when she needed them.

Revanos had both good news and bad news on that: the reason she was having trouble was because the Hoard was her Anchor Ability. That meant it was connected to everything else in some way; as she fixed each of the other Abilities, she pulled the Hoard out of shape. The good news was that because it was her Anchor Ability and she was only third upgrade, the Guide would fix it for her if she let it; the Anchor was the only Ability that would heal itself if she simply added enough Thread and waited.

Sophia didn’t like that answer. It took her a while to get the details out of Revanos, but he did eventually give her some ideas of things she could do to repair the Ability or at least patch it so that it would be functional until the Guide repaired it. Sophia told herself that she’d fix it and not wait, but simply getting it in good enough shape to gather more Thread would be a good thing. 

With everything else she had to do, she was worried she was going to run low, and repairing her Hoard didn’t look like it was going to be cheap. The first thing she had to do was snip all of the Thread that was binding it from properly opening; once that was done, she needed to twist Thread around each of the damaged lines to reinforce it. That would leave it a serious mess but it ought to make the Ability usable.

Revanos wouldn’t say what the step after that was. He seemed to think that she’d be busy with that repair for months, and said that what she needed to do after that depended on exactly how long she took and how good her initial repair was, so it was better to wait. The best she could get out of him was a promise that as soon as he saw she was done, he’d stop by again to lead her through the next step in the repair. 

The topic shifted once they had as much of Revanos’s knowledge of Sphere repair as he was willing to part with. By the time Leo, Arvinn, and Reko stopped in for the night, they were in the middle of telling him all about the Meteor Pillars event. Revanos seemed oddly interested; from what he said, most Towers had only a few Events that they rotated; the Events were the same from Tower to Tower and Meteor Pillars was definitely not one of them. It was similar to one, but not the same.

“...Notii called them Cleansing Golems and said they were based on his people’s history. I’m not sure he had the history right; they certainly weren’t doing any-” Sophia stopped as the door opened without warning.

Reko was the first through the door, followed by Arvinn and Leo. All three of them were carrying fruit, though Reko had to carry it telekinetically instead of with the hands he didn’t have. Leo’s arms were full of three different fruits, but his left hand held a sphere that grabbed Sophia’s attention: a dungeon core. It looked like a new one, too. 

“What is that?” Revanos asked before the trio of teenagers even closed the door. “I recognize most of what you’re carrying, but whatever that is does not belong in the Roots.”