“So, acquiring new abilities and spells… Any idea how to do it? I just want to clarify that what I read about getting them in the book from Chalgathi’s starter quest was accurate,” Riven asked with a sideways glance at the spider beside him. Then he started writing on a piece of provided scratch paper with a quill pen—adding to the start-up notes of usable totems, one he could take with him when the tutorial ended. The system ssage had claid they couldn’t take the books, but given that this station had allowed him two pens and a couple papers, he could assu that he could take down notes and draw out the runes, a ans of utilizing soul shards, and totem shapes along with ingredients as long as he could fit it on the provided material.
So far the list of Unholy variant totems the book knew about was rather small, only having co across two very basic totems he could personally use as most of the book talked about theoretical situations or Fae pillar totems. Even so, these were two totems he could create here and now before they entered the tutorial dungeon. They included a Minor Totem of Murk that slowed down enemies that entered a certain radius with an Unholy mist, and a Minor Totem of Leeching that sucked life out of creatures at a steady rate in small amounts.
Athela was busy playing with her threads and took a while to respond to his question on the topic of spells, but she glanced up at him in between fiddling with the red silk ball she’d made and grunted an answer.
“There are a couple ways to learn new spells. The first way is at random tis by gaining combat levels; the system will reward you through visions that you must decipher. Whether or not you decipher the visions properly is up to you, and often it is heavily oriented toward whatever class you have. If you don’t have a class, they’re usually oriented toward what your goals may be or how you’ve perford over your life. There is a saying that your combat style will influence the way you are presented classes, but the opposite can also be said to an extent, because the system will award ability visions you may or may not it depends on who the user is and how they manipulate it on a given casting… But if you really wanted to know how much damage you’re doing with a spell, there are items you can acquire that will asure the damage for testing purposes.”
“Got it. How do I test this totem out here and now, though? We don’t have any enemies around yet.”
The spider demon chuckled, then crawled off the table and walked over to an area of the room devoid of anything fragile. Turning, she waggled her arms at Riven and danced on her back legs. “Think for just a mont that you want it to hit and see what happens! I don’t know if this will work, but—”
Riven didn’t let her finish as the totem’s glowing orange runes lit up brighter on either side. In less than a second, a strand of red light pulsed and shot out toward the Blood Weaver with respectable speed.
The spider easily dodged it, though, being far too fast to hit, but she was surprised when the strand of red light took a U-turn and followed her around the room. For a few seconds, the totem and the demon played a ga of cat and mouse where the strand of red light continued to zigzag through the air as Athela dodged left and right, before she eventually went out of bounds and left the totem’s eighteen-yard radius zone. She bobbed up and down and looked at the spot on the ground where the thread of red light had smashed into the stone floor. Then she looked back up at Riven, both eyes sparkling, and literally jumped into the air with a screech of excitent. “THAT’S SO COOL!”
“I KNOW RIGHT!?”
Riven had also jumped up, and the two of them laughed as they did a ridiculous dance together and galloped in a circle.
“WE’RE GOING TO BE AMAZING!” Riven yelled over the clanging of the hamrs.
“I KNOW! I KNOW!”
“MASTER ARTISANS!”
“WIDOWMAKERS AND BABY STOMPERS!”
Riven imdiately stopped dancing and looked down at the excitedly shaking spider. “Baby stompers?”
“I was just kidding.”
“All right, just making sure. Stomping babies isn’t what I ever intend to do. Like, ever.”
“What if you…like…theoretically had to go to sleep…and a whiny baby was keeping you up at night? You really wouldn’t stomp it?”
“Athela. I better not catch you ever attempting to stomp a baby because, so help God, I will strangle your little arachnid neck.”
“To be fair, when I have stomped babies in the past, it was more of a poke because my feet are so small. They didn’t die or anything like that.”
“…what the actual fuck are you talking about? Haven’t you been stuck in the nether realms?”
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