I was wrong. It wasn’t the weather we had to deal with, it was the freaking booby traps the dwarves of Ironhold set up all along the pass.
No sooner did we cross the edge of the pass than I heard a trio of twangs and three arbalest bolts streaked through the space beneath the carpet at chest height on an average man. Moments later, a collective click of reloading arbalests sounded and that time I was able to put up a [Wall of Force] in the shape of a sphere all around us. It wasn’t a second too soon as I nearly immediately felt a triad of impacts on the lower half of the sphere that then hung there, eating away at my magic and HP.
“Someone get those bolts out, they’re stuck in the shield and are still draining HP!” I left flying the [Cloud Carpet] to Gabby as I closed my eyes. “I’m going to see if I can figure out what’s going on.”
Splitting my focus between [Wall of Force] and [Spatial Awareness] was surprisingly easy, with one only needing my HP and the other only needing my mind. With my eyes closed, I focused on how the third trio of bolts felt sticking out of the barrier and, by the time Raiju pushed each of them out, I was close to discerning their points of origin.
“One arbalest per wall of the pass with another on that spire of rock along the other side’s exit.” I grunted as I felt a sudden peppering of impacts along the front edge of the barrier, a mere foot from my head’s location. My eyes popped open and I watched as another batch of ice crystals streaked from the snowy pass’ shadowy reaches.
Behind me, Ylsa and Volta were hard at work on some sort of combination ability, with a swirling sphere of crackling grey and green energy between them, while Mindy crawled her way over to me and laid a hand full of water on my shoulder.
“[Healing Waters] should help with the HP drain of the shield, right?” To her credit, she didn’t panic but she did sound very nervous. “I’m sorry I haven’t finished the carpet’s barrier charm, I was working on anoth–”
“It’s fine.” I grunted as an icy boulder the size of your average hog slammed into the shield above me and to my right. “I can keep the shield up for quite a while, though only because of your healing. That last hit took nearly fifteen percent of my health and your healing should be able to rectify that, yeah?”
“O-o-of course!” She spluttered as I watched her doing math in her head. “It should be restoring three point seven five percent a second at ninety-four percent mastery.” The mental math seemed to have done her good, because afterward she looked far more confident. “What else can I do?”
Behind us, I heard my conservative friends, Ylsa and Volta, both whoop with excitement as the sphere of energy they’d been working on suddenly floated back off the area above the carpet and out through the [Wall of Force]. The second it blasted ahead of the carpet down below, all the attacks on the barrier stopped as they instead trained on the watermelon sized sphere. Each time it was struck a tiny bolt of lightning would blast off toward wherever said strike came from, though it obviously wasn’t perfect in that at least it stopped me from getting pounded on long enough for Mindy to heal me up.
Turning around, I fist bumped the pair, though it took Ylsa a long moment to accept the dab. “Nice work, but what the hell is that thing?” Since I didn’t see a notification from [Skill Dominance] I had to assume it wasn’t a normal Skill.
I was half right.
Ylsa stood looking over me, Gabby, and Mindy at the sphere ahead of the [Cloud Carpet]. “It’s a combination of my [Autumn Breeze] and Volta’s [Ball Lightning] with a heavy dose of [Storm Control] from her to keep it all in line. If it works like it should, it’s going to produce enough heat to represent a larger group of people than us and send out tiny bolts of lightning toward wherever it is being attacked to mark the spots for us should we need to hunt those targets down.”
She sounded particularly proud and beamed when Volta stood next to her, though the Storm Elf had her brows held tightly together. “If we can move any faster, that’d be great because I don’t know how much longer my Mana will last to hold that thing together.”
Both Volta and Ylsa’s eyes widened as a System prompt sprang up between them. A quick glance at it later and the pair looked at me with wide eyes. “What’s a Synergy Skill?” They both asked at the same time.
From his usual position, Glyph finally joined the conversation when I didn’t immediately reply. “Skill Synergies are only available to Parties who have been together at least two months. They are usually learned from a list of known combinations, but with the Party Interface being removed from your System, it makes sense that you would have to come up with them on your own.” He flicked his wings before leaning in. “So, what are you going to call it?” His eyes literally glowed with excitement. “I have never heard of that Synergy Skill before, so you two should be able to name it. It would not surprise me if you got some sort of Boon for rediscovering them as well.”
The pair looked at each other for a moment before nodding and looking at me. “You name it.” They spoke in unison once more.
“Why me?” I frowned. “What are you two aiming at here?”
They remained tight lipped, but I could tell from the look on Volta’s face that she was hurting. Her Mana pool was nearly as large as mine after my summons and contracts were taken into account, so the Synergy Skill was obviously a hog when it came to Mana if she was wearing out after only a minute or so.
Wracking my brain, I came up with an answer a moment later and shot the pair a huge grin. “You’re sure I can name it?” The pair looked at each other once more before nodding back at me. “OK then.” The System prompt before them mirrored to appear in front of me and I quickly filled in the name I’d come up with and submitted it.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
While Volta laughed at the name, Ylsa wasn’t so amused and I was suddenly very appreciative of Volta holding it down for the group.
“[Attention Hog]!” The Goliath looked like she wanted to hit me. “Are you kidding me right now?! You were given the opportunity to name the first Synergy Skill on Genovia in the last fifteen millenia and you went with [Attention Hog]?!” She went to continue ranting when a wave of exhaustion hit her while Volta suddenly perked up a bit.
The Storm Elf flicked open her Status and whistled to herself. “Shared Mana usage, nice.” She looked over at her exasperated and tired looking friend. “I mean, not exactly awesome in this case, but when Milord and I come up with something together it’ll be nice not to have either of us bearing the whole load of whichever of our freaking expensive Skills we end up using.”
Ylsa looked from Volta to me a few times before clenching her fists and sitting down solidly in the center of the carpet. “I don’t feel so good, or I’d still be mad. Stupid Mana Burnout, it’s been years since I was drained this badly.” She pulled out a small blue vial and downed a Common Mana Potion she must have found in Chalcedony. “My Mana should hold out until we leave the pass, but I’m not going to be much use like this.”
It was obvious to me that the defenses we were encountering were all put in place by the dwarves who lived nearby, so I didn’t exactly feel the burning need to destroy them. Instead, I activated [Elemental Mastery] and pulled some of the borderline arctic winds from all around us to instead push the [Cloud Carpet] forward.
The effect was immediate as a huge surge of acceleration pushed us to nearly catch up with the sphere of [Attention Hog]. I pulled back a bit, ignoring the blinking light in the corner of my vision telling me I had a number of notifications, and our pace slowed down to match the distraction before us. Keeping a tight rein on the wind, I helped the group avoid a few wide area attacks even [Attention Hog] wasn’t able to deflect.
Bursts of iron shrapnel pinged off of the barrier around the carpet, but the worst were the clouds of poisonous gases that would get ignited by the tiny bolts of lightning from our protective orb. The first one of those would have destroyed the carpet–I have no doubt, given how big the resulting detonation was–if I hadn’t noticed it in time to harden the wind around the [Wall of Force] I was still maintaining. It still got warm inside, but it wasn’t hot enough to do any real damage to us as the cloud ignited to fill that thirty foot stretch of pass with a massive fireball.
When we finally crossed the threshold of the pass on the northern side, the attacks stopped as suddenly as they started. Volta finally took a seat next to Ylsa with a grunt before closing her eyes.
“I’m going to take a little nap here, let me know if anything attacks us.” Moments later she was snoring and Ylsa soon joined her at my urging.
‘Artie, check your notifications before you forget again.’ Jaegan’s voice sounded like it came from off to my left where his staff hung over my shoulder since it was as long as I was tall.
‘Thanks, I probably would have until we got to Ironhold, something still feels off about this pass. We’re a three day walk to Ironhold, even if it’s just a couple of hours by flying carpet, why did they trap that pass so heavily? It doesn’t make sense. Ironhold hasn’t been involved in any conflicts since the time they pissed off Grandpa and he wrecked nearly half of their industrial sector, at least as far as my tutors knew.’
‘That’s all well and good, but don’t get distracted.’ He grumbled. ‘Notifications.’
Instead of answering, I did as he asked and found about what I expected, four notifications asking for my attention.
[Autumn Breeze, Ball Lightning, Storm Control, and Attention Hog Acquired with Skill Dominance]
[Active Skills - Mastery
Skill Dominance - 52%]
[Skill Dominance Information: Slotting a Synergy Skill costs as many slots as the combination requires minus one. They may be used on your own, or in conjunction with any number of the originators of the Synergy Skill to reduce Mana/Stamina costs.]
That’s kind of awesome. It means if I were to make a Synergy Skill that only needed two abilities, I’d be able to access it for just one slot. That’s kind of amazing. I’m going to have to play with a few of my Skills and see if I can’t get another of these to pop. Maybe if Glyph and I…nope, there’s one more notification to get through before I can let myself go down that rabbit hole.
[As the Party Leader of the Party to create the first Synergy Skill on Genovia since the dissolution of the Party Interface, you have an option of two rewards:
- Imperial Reserve: A 10% permanent reduction in Mana/Stamina costs of all Skills for yourself.
- Shared Dominion: A 3% permanent reduction in Mana/Stamina costs of all Skills for your active Party, including yourself.]
“Well, fuck.” I groaned and leaned back on my hands while kicking my legs out over the mountain valley below. “That’s not fair.”
Raiju sat on my right along that edge and leaned in while resting the end of her tail against my backside. “What’s not fair?”
“Let me share this with everyone, since it involves all of us.” I tossed a copy of the System window out to all of the members of the party. “Take a look at that bullshit, it’s like the System is testing me. You know?” I leaned back against Raiju, glad for her warmth with the chill of the winter storm finally leaking inside the barrier I still had up.
“It’s easy.” Her tail whacked me a few times as she met my gaze, “You have to take [Imperial Reserve], it’s a huge benefit for someone like you who has such expensive Skills.”
“I concur with the young miss.” Jaegan’s voice filled the space like a warm hug. “While everyone in your party uses Mana, you use far more of it than any three of them.” Volta coughed and he revised his statement. “Minus miss Volta, of course. But my point stands, a ten percent reduction in Mana costs for you will open up new avenues of combat for you in the future, which is nothing to say what it will do for your non-combat Skill and Spell use.”
Surprising everyone, it was Mindy who was the first to recommend the second option. “Not to sound greedy, but a three percent reduction in Mana costs for your entire Party, which I believe would include any of your summons, seems like too good of an option not to take.” She pulled up a window and wrote some calculations. “As long as you have a party of at least six beings, even with the increase in efficiency you would get from massively reducing your own costs, the Mana saved will far outstrip whatever you would have saved by taking the first option.” She blushed. “That’s just the mathematical portion of the decision, but I thought someone should say something about it.”
Glyph nodded approvingly at his mathematical pupil. “Your calculations are correct, but they are missing one very important thing.”
“What’s that?” She looked very concerned to have missed something in her numbers.
“Artie is not just any common summoner, he is a pact summoner.” Glyph fluttered his tiny hands in front of his round body. “Any reduction to his Mana costs are passed on to his pact summons, including permanent pacts like Volta has with him.”