I’ll need to experiment somewhere safe, obviously, but it appears as though it won’t stay in one place either, moving over the terrain in a way I may or may not be able to control. Going to need to keep an eye on that.
The second is a rather unusual cocktail of Water, Gas, and Ice. This spell is also very resource-intensive, which I’m starting to suspect they all will be, and requires forming a wide spray of water that is then frozen, trapping an unstable gas inside. The end result is a metric boatload of finger-length, deadly missiles that will shatter with surprising force on impact, sending shards of magical ice all over the place.
Ouch. Probably not effective against more powerful monsters, but hey, with the sheer number of projectiles created with this spell, you never know. If I managed to compress the Water Mana before releasing it, the resulting ice may have more penetrating power than I expect.
I’ll call it, Concussive Needle! Or something.
The next option takes me by surprise. A flash-hardening technique that makes use of Stone, Mud, and Ice. Weird. Effectively allowing the caster to shape something out of Mud Mana, then harden it near instantly. Perhaps not as flashy as some of the other spells, but I can see a hell of a lot of applications out of combat and more than a few in it as well. I haven’t made much use of mud in the past, mainly because I felt it would be fruitless to slap something with wet dirt. Now that I think about it, there’s probably a lot more applications than I considered. Turning the ground beneath an enemy into mud? That’s a classic! And now I can take it a step beyond. I can bury an opponent under a jet of mud and harden it around them before they can blink.
Come to think of it, if I hit someone with mud, I can turn it into stone basically any time I want. Ooo, I think this one’s going to be tricky. Quick thinking in a fight hasn’t been my speciality, outside of my reflexes, of course. That doesn’t mean I can’t improve, though.
What else have we got in here…
There’s a rather deadly combo of Gas, Air, and Fire. This spell looks a lot like the flamethrower effect I can already pull off, except turned up well past eleven and closer to fifteen. With the combination of an air funnel and Gas Mana providing more oomph for the flame, it should burn hotter than I can make Fire Magic on its own.
I might call this spell Dragon’s Breath. It’s going to look rad as hell. It probably only tickles demons, considering how fire-resistant they are, but hey, I can see plenty of use for it.
And for the last one, well, this spell seems… different, compared to the others. Let’s see here. Lava? Lava is cool as heck, I want to use more lava. And we combine it with, Stone? It’s already part stone. What do we do with it, though? We create a highly pressurised pocket of lava underground. I mean, cool? Is that supposed to be some kind of lava landmine? Then why the heck does it require so much Earth and Stone Mana? Like, a lot.
Wait a second.
Is this… a volcano? I think it is!
Once the pressure below ground reaches a certain point, the spell creates a massive shift, driving the pressure upwards, which should result in a massive upswell as the lava bursts forth, sending flaming rocks and rivers of lava everywhere. With enough mana investment, I could make an actual, full-blown volcano.
But… we are talking about a ton of mana. More than I could handle in a day, probably.
If we tunnel underneath the termite nest… and somehow remain undetected, then I could gradually build up this spell directly underneath their mountain. I’d need help from other mages to conceal such a massive concentration of mana, but it could be doable.
If it all came off, we could destroy the termites without even having to fight them, the spell would flood their tunnels with lava and shatter the mountain from the inside.
Not a nice way to go, but all is fair in war against termites.
102. Biomass Spending
The delicious sensation of new and powerful spells is one thing, but now that it’s done, I have to turn to another experience, one that is perhaps less pleasant. Mutation time! Gotta improve that body and push my limits to beyond the… limit. Or something. I’ve managed to gather around six hundred Biomass. Not a bad effort, given the fact I’ve been at a higher tier than almost all my food. The penalty reduction from upgrading my stomach is definitely paying dividends right now. Imagine if I had to go against monsters as strong as I am constantly… No thanks.
It’s nice to have a challenge every now and again, but for real, beating up on weaker monsters is by far the more relaxing way of Levelling up. It just takes longer. Good thing I’m a very patient and restrained person…
Yea… I barely managed to keep a straight face when I said that, and my face is literally part of my skeleton.
Where to turn now? I’ve actually managed to mutate quite a few of the big-ticket items by this stage, and now it’s time to move on to the more niche things. My brains are still only at fifteen, and they definitely need to go to thirty as a priority. Considering how complex and mana-hungry my new magic is, any little bit of help with casting will make all the difference.
Let’s take a look at what we have going on. The three sub-brains are all specialising in Mind Magic, which makes perfect sense, as it allows them to better utilise the mind constructs. The multiplicative effect of being able to focus on so many things at once is certainly a powerful feature and precisely the reason I was able to pepper my enemies with so many spells in the defensive battle against the termites. It also helped me rank up my Elemental Magic at such a prodigious speed, since I’ve been practicing a minimum of three different Elemental Magics constantly.
The question is, do I go all the way to thirty with the Mind Magic speciality or do I slide something else in there to nestle alongside. Browsing through the options doesn’t really help. Despite the absurd plethora on offer, since my focus has finally started to narrow down, the vast majority of options simply don’t apply to me. Light or dark? Nope. Life? I guess now that I’ve encountered Life Mana, it would make sense for the option to pop up, but nope. There’s a ton of upgrades for better cognition that might come in handy. Better memory, faster thinking, more adaptive thought processes.
You really can just straight up make yourself a faster and better thinker through mutation. Almost feels like cheating.
But no. That is not my path! I have always left the thinking to the Colony and I shall continue to do so! I can be honest and say that even if I reset my brains all the way back to zero and focused on nothing but pumping up my cognitive abilities, I’d still be less capable of making good decisions than the Colony as a whole. More brains is better, and even if I have four, there are hundreds of thousands in the Colony by now, probably. I’ll put my trust in them. Besides, mutating my brains does provide a background improvement to all of their functions. Every +1 has a strengthening effect to the organ or body part being mutated. It doesn’t have as big an effect as the big-ticket mutations that land every five Levels, but it adds up over time.
To take one of my brains from +15 to +30 is going to take… three hundred and forty-five Biomass… You can’t be serious. Geez, this is getting expensive. Damn you, Gandalf! Does your greed know no limits?