Chương 13: AF Chapter 12 – The Bugs are Back

Spells were divided into base damage, bonus damage, and Kicker damage. Base damage was the core effect, bonus damage added onto and was added into the core effect, and Kicker damage occurred if the spell actually hit/hurt something. There were some weird interactions in this, however, especially with Shards. Shards were a multi-missile spell, meaning you could hit them with one or more separate attacks. If they were auto-hit, you lost the bonuses of weapon Feats attached to them, specifically additional damage.

If you used touch-attack, weapon Feats were considered bonus damage and applied once per spell, even if you hit with multiple Shards all at once. If you used weapon-style spell attacks, which would run into armor, weapon Feat bonuses were considered base damage, as you had to roll for every single attack! I had Ranged Weapon Specialization in Shards. If I attacked with multiple Shards as auto-hit, I got no Weapon bonus because there was no aiming involved, it was fire and forget. The bonus there was...

I couldn't miss. It didn't matter how fast the target was, if it warped or Blinking or Mirrored or was ducking, dodging, or concealed in mist or shadow, or even had anything but absolute cover. The Shards would hit, and it would take damage. If I used touch attack, well, I had +2 Ranged Attack Bonus, +7 from Intellect, +2 from Argent Savant, and+1 from Weapon Focus. +12 to-hit against something not wearing armor was pretty good.

However, Weapon Specialization's current +2 bonus to damage was lumped in with my +7 Warcaster's Razor for +9 damage, added after ALL base damage was calculated, once per spell per target. If I used it as a Weapon Attack, the damage was considered base damage and applied per Shard. So, hitting with three Darts would be 3 x 2 damage, for +6, instead of +2, and then THAT was added to my Warcaster's Razor for +13.

The third thing I had going for me on my Matrix damage was per die damage bonuses, which were also bonus damage, but in the case of Shards, followed each Shard. Power in the Blood, +1 damage per die to Bloodline or Spell Focused spells... and I had Spell Focus (Cold), with Snowcasting giving all my spells the Cold descriptor, even if they didn't do Cold damage.

Cold Specialist, +1 or 2 bonus to damage per die based on ambient temperature OR if I was a being of Elemental Cold, which the Ceremony of the Frozen Soul had made me. Argent Savant Mastery, +1/die to Force spells, which Shardcaster made all my Shard and Dart spells in terms of descriptors. +4/die was a very big bonus for Matrixed spells, but the ungodly staying power of even minor creatures here rendered it... less than optimal.

A minor Buff I had going was the combination of Vivic Spell/Vivic Darts and Augment Healing. Vivic spells had the Healing Descriptor, and so Feats and effects that boosted magical Healing boosted them. Alas, I was only using Darts, which as a Cantrip meant the +2/Valence bonus was a measly +1. Vivic energy only damaged creatures of negative or unnatural energies, typically Undead and Fiends, sometimes death-feeding Aberrants or Fey, or negative energy Elementals.

It did set dead things on vivic flames, reducing them rapidly to base ash and dust, 'Feeding the Land'. However, creatures who were immortal, eternal, otherplanar, or the like could have their souls savaged by the vivus if they resisted its effects. Lesser otherplanars, or Soulborn, could be consumed entirely and Fed to the Land, as could almost all Aberrants and Fey.

Undead were completely consumed, and even if their soul was hidden elsewhere, part of it was devoured, as happened to powerful Soulborn and Fey who tried to resist the vivus. Vivus was the 'unnatural' energy of the Mortal Plane, consuming the energies of other worlds and making them part of the Mortal Plane, and so was rightly feared by those lifeforms who relied on such energies to sustain themselves!

These alternative, unnatural ecologies powered by consumptive magic qualified for vivus' discriminatory tastes, and so they set to work. Dead baby thrungus Burned just like the... uncounted number of corpses they'd used to fuel and build up these mounds. Mounds of organic material ten feet high, multiples of them... As the vivus spread out, it eventually reached the locations of the remaining Summons, which didn't react to it in the slightest.

I would pull them over and away, shoot them, knock them down, and shoot them again. If the vivus was atop the point, when the next Summoned Thrungus came in, the pull at the astral templates was fun fuel for the vivic fires there. There was a jet of vivus that flashed through the area where the Summons was supposed to materialize, and instead the ectoplasm was more like gasoline thrown onto a fire.

I was patient and thorough, and even worked on some rep counts with Shards, since I could replace them every two minutes. Like before, I found no useful gear whatsoever. Only the noble metals, like gold and platinum, and some precious stones had survived the acidic leeching of the magic-seeking fungus that had spread everywhere, and was now withering up slowly and steadily as vivic fire took its due. The mounds Burned down, literally as the bones inside them held them up.

The vivic fires, touched with Holy Banefire, were driven into the cores of the things, and they shrank rapidly as the vivic fires turned them into hungry pyres devouring them to the core. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Banefire damage specifically attached to Damage over Time effects as magical Kicker damage, and vivic fire Burning stuff like this definitely qualified.

As a result, the dead fungus was devoured with astonishing speed, and the living stuff died with incredible speed in the area of where I was shooting. Bones crumbled, reeking compost was drained away and sloughed off, and the mounds began to fall, fall, and fall, the dead who'd been used to make them finally falling completely to dust. My Disk waited patiently at the side, accepting Air Gold coins and the scattered valuables left behind in this mess. Fucking things.

It probably came completely naturally and heartlessly to them, but that was just one more reason to get rid of them in my eyes. Then the low trilling call, skittering on the edge of my nerves, sounded from down the hallway, echoing around the stone, and the other set of fucktards here showed up.

When the Power of Ten had been a game, Argos, the largest Monarch of the game, had set up his home on Hivergreen for one reason: it was occupied by constantly respawning giant insects, and so was the absolute friendliest spot for low-Level people to gain Karma at. The bugs never stopped coming. Stomp them out in one place, they rose in another. Stop stomping them out, and they'd grown in both numbers and power with amazing speed.

Sometimes swarms chased out of Hivergreen came into other servers and had to be exterminated with absolute thoroughness or they took root there, too. But in Hivergreen, the bugs never went away. As a result, everyone in the whole game had taken those lessons to heart. The bugs never stopped coming. It was a genocidal war, you didn't let up on them, or they ate you, took over the landscape, and devastated everything.

The only thing which might contain them was other insects or bugs who preyed on them, which meant you had to be careful about killing all the giant spiders or your bug problem might just explode on you. Mobile mushrooms and plants were the same way. Just like bugs, all they did was feed and grow, and if you let them go, they'd also take over everything, transform the landscape, and make it Hell on Earth.

The main problem was that a lot fewer natural things fed on mobile plant life, so the only ones who could contain them were the players... Damn, if I came to a place where this was an ongoing problem… Day of the Triffids was not wrong, in the end. You just don't mess around with animated plants! Well, getting to Ten wasn't currently a problem, and I'd like to see what this Isparian system could do, especially in some area with a plethora of targets to practice on. I just needed a lot more sustained firepower.

I didn't hear multiple trills, which didn't mean there weren't multiple bugs. Was it going to come this way and investigate? A lot of bugs had tremorsense and could feel footsteps nearby through the ground. And while I didn't have a way to get off the ground right now with my footsteps, I did have a Disk.

I glided slowly along the hallway as it hooked around, seated on the edge of the Disk as it glided along over the vivus Burning and misting below. My wand was up and aimed, but no sound, no motion, no upright bugs in blue-black carapaces. Calmly I shifted around as the next room came into view... and nothing was waiting there at the corner. The only direction it could have come from was through the small room there coated in olthoi goo... olthoi goo that was also attracting the vivic mists.

I moved along the wall to my left, having the impression it had moved ahead, not back. Slowly, I crept over the withering stands of shrooms and reached the corner down the longer hallway, the one leading back to the passageway left that had been blocking whatever was thrumming. There it was, standing there and looking at the mists that were now pouring down out from inside the chamber.

I could hear the thrumming only faintly, given how quiet it was, the only other sound being a faint skritch-skritch as the olthoi rubbed its ready pedipalps across one another. Standing guard in case something came? Might the first olthoi have been doing the same thing, and that was why it had responded before the second wave of thrungus? The forge was still burning dimly, but not enough to let it see me peeking past the corner. I held my wand off out of sight, pulling in the power.

"Zojak Quareth!" It spun around in my direction at the flash of light, just in time to see eight spinning spheres in ROYGBIV with Black smash into it, shatter its tiny legs, pound its head to pulp, and shatter its thorax. It was knocked over with its automatic death-cry, glowing yellow-green blood scattering with hisses... and the vivic mist swirled on it and began to grow quickly on the fresh new meal. Instead of moving to investigate, I moved into the shadow of the kiln, anticipating a response. I got one, too.

There was a clicking and clacking, sounding just like something with very hard feet was coming down sets of stairs with short, fast steps, and then the next olthoi arrived. Two of them, except the second one was more blued and a foot taller than the Worker, with pedipalps more like spears than picks, and easily a foot longer and stronger. Olthoi Soldier. Wonderful. 190ish health, registering as a 60? They trilled together in that nerve-grinding fashion, and got no answer.

There was some hesitation as they moved into the mist, but it did nothing to them, although it seemed to make them uncomfortable. Well, all their glowing slime was down off the walls, and likely the scents they were looking for were all gone, meaning they were out of their element. I was just a part of the wall and in the shadow of the hotter forge, vivus only very visible because of its hue and not actually shedding much illumination.

They trotted ahead with a little hesitation, knowing the way, turning the corner and starting down towards the freshly deceased Worker down there. Well, no better time than the present, seven Shards.

"Zojak Quareth!" I said, my voice inaudible over the faint roar of the coal in the furnace giving up its last. Both of the Olthoi were smashed in the back and went flying forwards out of control. Five Shards on the Soldier, two on the Worker!