Chapter 1858: Badgers Cause Headaches
Chapter 1858: Badgers Cause Headaches
"See, this is why badgers give everyone headaches. Why would you want a spatial quake to steal people’s souls?"
"Because they’re sparkly."
Karl shrugged. She had a point. If you sucked an Immortal Spirit out into the Chaos Plane, where a [Spatial Quake] originated, it really was sparkly, in a collection of colours that didn’t exist in reality.
The black dragon clearly didn’t understand, but how do you explain a colour that someone can’t see?
"There are some spells that cause side effects that are worse than the intended effect. The ones that directly affect the Immortal Spirit tend to be among those. When an Immortal Spirit is shattered, the energy that is left over is not pure, and it generally can’t be used by others.
Trying to use it directly is usually toxic, and can corrupt the recipient."
Karl frowned. "Can’t be used by others? The amount of Immortal Spirit Energy that I’ve absorbed since I got here is ... considerable. I have a couple of skills for it, and a Haint that helps me out with the raw energy."
"Even a Haint normally can’t deal with Immortal Spirit Energy. There is too much personalized energy within it to filter out. How do you deal with it? Perhaps I might learn a new technique from the World Dragon’s disciple."
Karl laughed. "You’re not going to like the answer. My Power Matrix is based on the meridian points of a Legendary Chaos Dragon, arranged in five dimensions. I just throw pure Immortal Spirit into it and let it chew it up, spit out the waste and give me back the purified energy."
"That’s a thing?"
Karl nodded. "The personalized aspects of the Immortal Spirit can’t take the pressure of the fourth and fifth dimensions, so they get separated from the pure Immortal Spirit energy, which can easily adapt.
You could likely do the same thing with a purification type Power Matrix."
"Yes, the White Dragon Avatar does that. He will use nearly any sort of energy to grow his own power, by purifying it and absorbing it. However, I was not aware that there were others who had found a technique that works the same way.
Mostly, people would just trap the energy and convert it."
Karl thought about that. "I can see how that would be more effective. It takes a fair bit of mana to break down and cleanse Immortal Spirit the way that I do it. But I have a lot of mana."
"How large is your mana Pool? You’re still just a Void Immortal, even with an Epic Grade constitution."
Karl shrugged. "About a quarter million points? Give or take."
The dragon looked impressed, but Lotus was staring at him in shock.
"Oh, that’s some bullshit right there! How do you get a quarter million mana, and I’ve got ten thousand?"
"Can you even run yourself out of mana with ten thousand?" Karl asked.
"Of course. I can multicast long duration heals and run out in under an hour. And that’s without refreshing barriers."
The Black Dragon chuckled. "You know that you can get gear to cut down on mana use and increase mana regeneration, right?"
"I have gear for mana regeneration and extra healing already. Maybe I should upgrade and get something with more mana cost reduction?"
"Ask Rue to make you something that reduces spell costs by a flat amount instead of a percentage. That way, you can spam low grade heals for virtually free. There is a one point minimum on all spells, but one point per cast area heals will never run you out."
"Oh, that’s a brilliant idea. I don’t need a lot of mana if I can get like twenty points of mana cost reduction."
"Twenty points? How cheap are your spells?"
Lotus shrugged. "I am a Green Dragon Priestess, most of my heals are long duration ones, which are much cheaper than instant heals, or my Tree form, which is a channelling cost. Does mana reduction affect channelled spells?"
"It does, but not with the full effect. It’s spread over a variable duration, depending on the spell."
"Oh, that’s not good for my healing tree spells. Well, some of them are fine, as they’re an area effect that I trigger. But the tree itself has a healing zone that takes mana to keep active, and that is most of my mana spend."
Lotus looked a bit crestfallen, but Rue didn’t see the issue.
She could make her an item that buffed the [Tree of Life] spell, and reduced mana cost for healing spells by quite a bit. With that broken spell of Karl’s they might even be able to get Lotus’ basic healing spells down to one point each.
That would basically make attempts at reducing Lotus’ healing output a joke, where there was no "burn their mana pools first" strategy possible.
That was a standard siege strategy against Clans and Guilds.
It worked basically every time, but if you found a particularly hard target, you might need to use mana drain abilities on them.
She would have to ask Karl if he had one.
Rue was well aware that Karl’s basic strategy was "If hitting it doesn’t work, hit it harder" so there was no way to tell what sort of versatility his skills had, other than in elements, so that he had something that would hit anything.
Mana stealing wasn’t actually something that Karl used often.
The Haint had the ability, but the amount of mana that it took was far less serious of a concern than the life force and soul energy that it stole. Soul damage bypassed so many sorts of damage reduction that running them out of mana was irrelevant.
"Did you want my shiny new sword spell?" Karl asked the black dragon, changing the topic back to spells, in case he could get the Avatar to slip about a few more good combinations.
"I already know it, thanks. Divine Wrath is one of the spell categories that all the Avatars learn to use by the time that they are Demigods. You’re what is called an overachiever, starting before you’re even Ascended Immortal."
Karl shrugged. "Give me a couple more months, and I’ll make to Ascended Immortal. I’m doing well at adapting my Immortal Spirit. It’s just a slow process, and I haven’t found a shortcut yet."
The Avatar laughed. "You’re already using the shortcut."
"Well damn. I was hoping for a shorter shortcut."