Infernal Knowledge

"So titles are sort of the less powerful part of your build, but they are useful. Except for the one you've got. I bet you got a selection of Coward abilities when you hit level 2, right?" Chum said. "Sure. I picked one that'd help me hide better," I said.

He checked his own notebook, where, apparently, he could see my abilities.

"Not a bad one, though you should be careful. It won't work if the monster has seen you enter the room, or if the monster was already in the room when you get there. I'd have taken Lickspittle, but you do you.

Anyways, titles. Normally on odd numbered levels you get a title ability. These tend to be less combat focused and immediately useful, but you get significant boosts. Nosy abilities might let you notice loot easier, understand Tower clues better, or even spawn in more loot in chests and such," Chum said.

"Yeah, I can see that being useful. So, what does Useless do?" I said. "Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. The best thing you can say about the title is that it stores the points for you just in case you get a new title. But by itself it won't give you anything. Like, at all," Chum said.

"So, getting rid of it first," I said. "You better. It's bad enough that you don't get the abilities, but a lot of titles are utility related. And that usually means they're good for getting resources or bonus experience. So the longer you don't have a useful one, the more everybody with a decent title advances ahead of you," Chum said. "Winner effect, right," I said. "Huh?" Chum said. "It's a thing in psychology and game theory. Winning early means you'll win more later," I said. "Yeah exactly, though it's not really about psychology here. Winning literally increases your power in the Tower. And losing will pretty often mean you're dead. How'd you get the title anyways, a goblin ambush or something?" Chum said.

I told him.

"A what?" he said, sounding outraged, "A fucking spike gremlin? An adult one? At level fucking one? Who the fuck is running this demiplane, I'll strangle their lawyer." "That's unusual then?" I said. "Unusual? Shit, man, I've been going about this the wrong way. I figured you were a useless loser from a soft planet and needed your hand held. We actually have to talk tactics, if the fuckface demiplane architect is throwing bone gremlins at you day one," Chum said. "Hey, look, the monster was fucking terrifying, but I am a pretty unremarkable guy from a fairly soft planet. At least my part of the world wasn't very bad," I said.

"Don't worry about all that, listen up, Alex, you will have to focus on spellcasting. You need to get an ability that lets you track your mana as soon as possible, because overchanneling fucking sucks. Like, you can die from it. You only need to get one good offensive spell, focus on utility and defense, maybe pick up an area of effect spell when you get a chance. If you face something like the gremlin again, run-"

Chum kept giving me more exposition, but if I'm honest I kind of checked out after that part. Look, I know it was important, and I swear it felt like I was paying attention, but I couldn't tell you anything about the details. He told me that we were in a sort of a pocket dimension called a 'demiplane of heroism', but refused to go into detail about it. There was some stuff about schools of magic, quests and party composition, but come on. If I had been home, I would have gone to sleep by now. I'd been awake for something like twenty two hours by now, and the last five included the whole top 10 of the most terrifying and exciting events in my life. "…with oozes it's weird- you don't really want to mess around with them, but with the right way of kiting them, you can really get past a level disparity," Chum said. "Listen, Chum, I am really grateful for all the info, but I think I need to have a nap if I'm going to keep going. Can you wake me up in an hour?" I said. "Shit, they got you at night, didn't they? Oh well, I'll go through these shelves, see what I can find. Free of charge," Chum said.

Of course there weren't any beds in the library, but there was a reading chair that was larger and more comfortable than any you would likely find in an actual school. My nap consisted of about thirty seconds of anxiety about not being able to sleep, followed instantly by Chum saying: "That's it, boss- an hour. I found some good shit while you were out."

On the one hand I clearly hadn't had enough sleep. I was groggy, my head swam a little and it took me a while to blink the sleep out of my eyes. On the other, I didn't remember a time I'd slept in a chair and not woken up sore all over. I felt fine- no numb arms, no sore neck, hell, not even a headache. I bet it was that recovery skill. Neat. So, even with the minuscule amount of rest that I'd had, it didn't take me five minutes to be up and about and feeling better for the nap.

"I found just the one thing," Chum said, "but it's a doozy. Unnamed too, so you'll have to appraise it and toss me a 20% of its value. You should get the coin if you kill and loot a few monsters, don't worry." With that he pulled a large, leather and metal bound tome. It was the size of a phonebook (that's about two gaming laptops stacked up on one another for those that don't have to worry about aches and pains when sleeping in a chair), had another pentagram on its front cover and had an intricate brass-work of flowers and snowflakes protecting its corners. "A genuine spell-book," Chum said, "Even has two spells in it already." "What does it do?" I said and Chum passed it to me. There were scratches from my journal and I opened the Equipment section

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Spellbook, Standard This is a standard spellbook used by wizards and other arcanists across the multiverse. This versatile tool can hold 50 ranks of spells. When you inscribe the title and sigil of a spell into a page of this spellbook, you no longer need to perform the visualization portion of the standard casting procedure, so long as you are looking at the sigil copied into the book. Note that you will still expend mental effort equivalent to visualizing the sigil, but a correctly transcribed spell cannot fail the visualization component and most arcanists are able to cast more quickly using a book.

As Chum had promised, there were already two spells inscribed into the book. When I read their names and saw their sigils, their descriptions were copied into my character sheet.

Shield, Tier 1, Rank 1 Below is the sigil for the Abjuration spell Shield. Shield can be cast as a quick response in combat or situations of imminent physical danger. It uses the standard casting procedure, with the exception that the invocation is only two syllables long. Focus on the attack you wish to block and say the invocation phrase Pha-Ack, an invisible magical barrier will briefly intercept the attack. The block can be overcome by massive damage. The block doesn't reflect attacks, nor cause them to lose momentum after it expires, so long as the attacker keeps applying pressure during the blocking moment.

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2: Block 0/100 attacks that would otherwise have dealt damage to you

That was amazing, by far the most useful spell I'd gained so far. But I was even more excited about

Conjure Icicle Rank 1, Level 1 Below is the sigil for the Conjuration spell Conjure Icicle. To cast, focus on a point and direction and perform the standard casting procedure with the incantation cri-alo-nix and a pseudo-portal to the Elemental Frost will briefly open, expelling an icicle at terminal velocity from the point and in the direction that you designate.

Requirements to upgrade the spell to Rank 2: Kill 0/20 creatures with the spell

"I got an attack spell, that would have been fucking useful," I said. "Yeah, not bad, not bad at all. There's a couple of sorts of combat attack spells, most of them either redirect forces or transmute air into something different, but there's a good deal that conjure elements from their magical origins. I guess it doesn't matter too much which kind you have right now, but it's a good one. Won't be as strong as some others right at the start, but we'll get you in shape in no time with a few monster hunts," Chum said. "Fuck me, how does that even make sense? Shouldn't I be able to get my wizard on without killing monsters? Can't I just read some books?" I said. "Bro, you're starting to sound like maybe that Coward class is good for you after all huh? Happy with running away for the rest of your life?" Chum said. "No, sure, don't want that. Still, how does that work?" I said. "We'll try the spells out a couple of times before we go out and uncle Chum will assign you some reading, don't you worry. But you are where you are. The way it works here is you get experience points and you get stronger- no matter if you're a brawler, a healer, or a wizard, you fight. I really can't get into it, but trust me," Chum said. I sighed. Truth was, now that I wasn't completely defenseless, I did want to go out and try to find some monsters to ice. But looking at that door still filled me with a sense of dread. "And do you know the requirements to become a wizard?" I said. "Aside from getting rid of that Coward shit, you'll need to fulfill two requirements- max out your Mind attributes, so, everything at 4, and cast 10 different spells," Chum said, "Then you kill the fucking spike gremlin, which won't be easy even then, and bing-bang-boom, yer a wizard". "That's, what, 8 attribute points I'm missing? I'll need to get to level 10 before I can change it?" I said. "Yeah. And that's on the low side for when I'd advise facing a bone gremlin. Ain't no one said it would be easy," Chum said. "Won't getting 10 levels of Coward ruin my build in the long run?" I said. "Probably not, we'll see. Usually you get rewarded for getting rid of a bad class. Also, magic items count too. There shouldn't be that many of those around in the first challenge, but you could get lucky and get something that boosts your Mind attributes," Chum said.

Thus reassured I got to practicing. The shield spell was fairly intuitive. Not having to visualize the sigil while looking at the spellbook I could intercept almost all of Chum's thrown debris before it hit me, but it quickly became apparent that I should get proficient at casting at least one of Shield and Conjure Icicle with visualization. If I was under attack and needed to rapidly cast shield over and over I couldn't leaf through the book to get to Icicle and vice versa. I needed to be able to mix and match the combat spells, which meant I had to learn one of their sigils. The sigil for the conjuration spell was actually pretty complex, so I memorized the two interlocking rhombuses that was the sigil of Shield, and practiced more with the icicle summoning spell.

That was a lot more mentally taxing than I had expected. Not only did I have to pay attention to the sigil, I also had to choose a point in space where the portal would appear and think of a direction. These weren't all exactly difficult things to do individually, but as Chum demonstrated, if I wanted to hit an agile opponent, I would eventually have to learn to do it much faster.

I checked my log for the first time since I'd met Chum, and found quite a few notes:

You have met your first neutral or friendly creature in the tower. Exp to level 1.1/25 You have cast a spell from a new school of magic. Exp to level 2.1/25 You have entered an infernal pact. Exp to level 4.1/25 You have gone unconscious for the first time. Exp to level 5.1 You have found your first magic item. Exp to level 6.1/25 You have cast a spell from a new school of magic. Exp to level 7.1/25 You have gained the following skills at 0: Spellcraft (Binding), Spellcraft (Conjuration), Planar Lore, Historic Lore, Arcane Lore

"Does experience usually come in increments of one?" I said. "That's what you get for doing common non-combat tasks, usually. If your title was anything other than Useless, you'd get more from something specific. Same if you double-dip. Like, if you did something both Human and Cowardly worth experience, you'd get double. If you had a useful title you could as much as triple it. But the real juice is from killing monsters. You can expect experience rewards starting at 10 and going up from anything that's a decent challenge for your level," Chum said. "Alright, I've hid here long enough. Let's go see what we can find out in the halls," I said.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.