The Wanderer's Rebirth: Other Paths

The biggest bombshell had come after they’d finally eaten, though.

“So, Joram?” Theril said, sounding a bit hesitant.

“Yes?”

“When you cleared away the dead goblins,” he began, motioning to where they’d lain. “Do you always use [Cleanse]?”

“Yes?” he replied, not sure what he was getting at.

“Ah,” Theril replied while Celys shook her head, looking sad for some reason.

“Why?” he asked, getting a bad feeling about it all.

“Well because, normally, you would just need to touch the body of a dungeon monster and ‘Loot’ it,” Theril replied, not quite looking at him.

“Loot?” he asked, reaching for the dictionary. Although it was a very limited one, it had proven quite handy.

“Yes,” Celys said, taking over the explanation. “You see, there is a function to the Great Protector’s gift to us that allows us to retrieve treasure from slain dungeon monsters,” she finished, giving him that sad, but now slightly guilty, look.

“I’ve wasted treasure,” he asked, working very hard to keep his heartrate under control. He was a bit… draconic when it came to loot, treasure, money, and such, so this revelation… hurt.

“Yes,” Kalduin answered for the group as Myra was looking oddly guilty.

“Well, crap on a cracker,” he said, finishing in english and thus causing them to give him odd looks.

After that, the group had said their goodbyes and set off, leaving him to mull over the events of the day.

“Avi?”

‘Yes, Joram?’

“My hoard hurts,” he said sadly, looking at where his fallen enemies had lain.

‘You don’t have a hoard, Joram,’ Avi said, giving him a look that told him that she thought he was a bit crazy.

“Exactly,” he said, then sighed.

The next hour was spent fixing everything that had been broken… mostly. There wasn’t enough of the door left for [Repair] to work on it, so he just gathered up the pieces and piled them up with his previously broken door; the one missing its glass centre.

He also gathered up the various goblin weapons, pleased that he now had more metal to work with than before. So, he piled them up and then reviewed [Recycle]. Why? Because he wanted to try making something a bit different.

It took him another hour to review the unfamiliar power, but once he was done, things went smoothly.

From the scrap that remained of the door to the extra weapons, he [Recycle]d them all into a good seventeen ingots of metal. Sure, they weren’t the largest of ingots, but they’d do.

From there, he also [Recycle]d his two broken doors after removing their hinges and [Repair]ing them. With the pile of wood that he now had, and some other piles of random things like dried paint, he once again reviewed [Delve].

He really wanted to get that power mastered… or at least to the point where he was proficient with it. He was reasonably sure that any door he currently tried to make wouldn’t be as sturdy as the doors that had come with the place. And so that he could produce something reasonably solid, he believed that having a decent understanding of the door’s make-up would prove invaluable.

That said, he felt that he got much farther this time, likely due to his reviewing the fundamentals of Metacreation a day or two ago. Still, he finished with a headache, so he grabbed his last spare door and went back to the living room.

Ten minutes later, his door was replaced with the new one, resized and all. He still wanted to make sturdier doors, but it would have to do for now.

Given the spacing between the goblins’ attacks, he was reasonably sure that he’d have just over two days before the next group showed up. The next, larger group, that is.

Which meant that he had much more training to do, both physically and mentally.

Now, if he could get the door’s exterior the way he wanted it, then battering rams would be much less useful to anyone trying to use them on his door. Growing up with his woodcutting father had given him the idea.

You could get special wedges for splitting logs. Some were larger than others, while others had slightly different shapes. The one he was thinking about was the one that looked like a four-pointed star if you looked at it form its tip. Once you drove it in a bit, then whacked it with a sledgehammer, it would spit the log into four pieces.

What he was thinking was to stud his door with those things. Then it had occurred to him that castles (at least in movies) had had such things on them. Up to that point, he’d always just assumed that they’d been added for extra intimidation or something like that.

Now he felt silly.

Looking at the door, though, he was certain that he wouldn’t have enough metal to complete the project. Which would mean that he’d just need to reinforce the door again, hoping for even more metal to be gifted to him from the goblins.

I’ll add the bands later, he thought, then turned his thoughts to his new bundle of knowledge. Specifically, to the features of Soulknife.

He could feel that he could… customize the “class”, what he’d learned. And if that were indeed the case, then he had a lot to go over.

Like, did he want to use any of the archetypes of the class? If so, which one, or ones? Armoured Blade and Shielded Blade were both very tempting, as they had no overlap in their requirements. Being able to quickly form protective armour or a shield were going to be rather important for his survival. Through, with how his psionic power regenerated in this world, perhaps just having [Inertial Armour] running all day was an option.

Shielded Blade was in a similar niche as Armoured Blade, as he could just use [Force Screen] whenever he needed to. Though, he might have to start practicing with [Quicken Power] for emergency situations….

Joram sighed again, this time because of the time constraints placed on him. If he could just have a few years to go over and practice everything in his head, he was sure that he wouldn’t have to fear much in the future.

But, alas, the world wasn’t a kind place.

Shaking his head, he got back to the issue at hand: should he specialize?

Given his currently limited ranged options, he was tempted to either take Soulbolt or the blade skill [Telekinetic Bolt] which would effectively give him what he liked about Soulbolt: range.

That said, he wasn’t a masochist, so the thought of being right there in melee with his enemies wasn’t at all appealing to him, no matter how good it felt to fell his enemies with his own two hands. Survivability was where it was at for him, and the risk of having his skull caved-in, by a hob or something else, wasn’t something that he wanted on the table.

So, what to choose? Shielded Blade was a nice option, but it did reduce how powerful a weapon he could form with either [Form Mind Blade] or [Form Mind Bolt] when it was in use. Sure, he could mitigate that loss by taking a blade skill, but that would limit his other combat options.

Man, I always hated agonizing over these options, and now it’s worse because it’ll now affect my life as opposed to my gaming, he thought, decision paralysis now ramped up to its fullest.

‘May I make a suggestion,’ Avi said, interrupting his internal deadlock.

“Yes, please,” he replied, greatly relieved at the distraction.

‘Just as Altaea did in the past, why don’t you just learn one path, then use [Psychic Reformation] later to adjust things if they don’t fit as well as you would have liked?’

Joram facepalmed.

“Well, shit,” he said, remembering one of Altaea’s tricks over the years which led to her rise in power. Let alone her ability to use multiple “class abilities” at once. “That’s kinda broken,” he said, shuddering at the thought of game developers grabbing their pitch forks and torches before hunting him down.

‘If you’re able to do it, why not?’ Avi asked reasonably as she shrugged rather expressively.

“Do you know how she made class abilities into Crystal Minds?” he asked, now keen on the idea.

‘I do,’ she replied, then waited a few seconds before continuing, likely to annoy him. ‘Like I said, it started with [Psychic Reformation]. What is key here, is that she made an augmentation option for that power, that allowed her to “hold” that choice for a short while.

‘That was when she would create a Crystal Mind using the information she was holding. After that, she would just assimilate the Crystal Mind and continue on from there, repeating the process as many times as she needed to,’ she finished, sounding smug as could be.

Joram sat for a while, absorbing that and going over the possibilities in his head before coming back to reality. [Psychic Reformation] was a 4th Level Power, though, so it would take him a while to wrap his brain around it. But when he did, he could just imagine the possibilities ahead of him.

“But for now,” he said, then took a deep breath before letting it all out. “For now, I need to focus on what I can do. So, I’ll just have to choose what I can for now, and go with what I know,” he said, then went over to his repaired laptop and opened up a spreadsheet.

From there, he charted out what he wanted to do and what options would be best for that. Which led him to lean heavily towards Soulbolt, as that would keep him out of melee and allow him to support his astral constructs from a safe distance.

With that decision made, he went over the options for Soulbolt that would keep him alive the longest.

So, his shortlist became: Alter Mind Bolt, Charged Shot, Close-Range Expert, Emulate Technological Ranged Weapon, Freezing Bolt, Knife to the Soul, Launch Multibolt, Reaper’s Blade, Telekinetic Edge, and Thousand Blades.

The Alter Mind Bold would allow him to change between the three forms his “mind bolt” could take with much greater ease, potentially saving his life in a fight. From the long-range version- which, counterintuitively, dealt the least damage- to the short-range version, their range increments were 35m, 20m, and just 6m. He liked to think of the short-ranged version as the sawed-off shotgun option.

Charged Shot would basically turn his projectile into an exploding round. Fun times would be had.

Close-Ranged Expert would allow him to avoid presenting any openings if he somehow wound up face-to-face with an enemy while he tried to blast the thing’s face off with his “shotgun”.

He was a bit excited to play with Emulate Technological Ranged Weapon, as he’d likely be able to mess around with various modern weapons, and possibly more! That said, he got the distinct impression that the projectiles that he would be launching would be as silent as the standard “bolt” that he would have normally been using without taking this option. Sure, it would take a bit of his psionic power to form the mindbolt every time, but given his regeneration rate, he wouldn’t have to worry about that.

Freezing Bolt would allow for him to both change his damage type from physical to elemental cold, as well as adding the possibility of inflicting a “Slow” status ailment on his target for a few seconds. That might not seem like much, however, when he would be counting on his astral constructs to do most of the heavy lifting, it could mean the difference between victory or defeat. Likely death.

Knife to the Soul was a bit of a misnomer, as that particular ability could be used with his bolts, and would inflict mental penalties on the target if he used his [Psychic Strike] ability in conjunction with it. Well, he couldn’t actually activate it without using his [Psychic Strike], so there was that. But the possibility of debuffing a caster was a bit too hard to pass up, especially if he could just snipe the caster from a hundred metres away!

Launch Multibolt was nice, as it would allow him to get off two shots for the price of one whenever he attacked. Sure, it would be slightly less accurate, but if he needed it, it could save his life, especially when combined with the short-range option. Double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, he thought, shivering at the destructive potential.

Reaper’s Blade was another misnomer, as it could also apply to his projectiles. The reason why he wanted to get this particular ability was that if he managed to kill an opponent with his mindbolt, then his [Psychic Strike] would immediately recharge if he’d already expended it during the fight. Not having to take a second or two to recharge that ability during combat would prove invaluable to his damage output.

Telekinetic Edge was another one that he was very much looking forward to, as it basically turned his projectiles into armour-piercing rounds. They’d ignore something’s damage reduction as well as the hardness of and object, making this ability especially deadly and useful.

He couldn’t remember the number of times that he’d seen the protagonist shoot open a lock in a movie, or use a shotgun to blow the deadbolt out of a door. Real life didn’t quite work like that, nor were things so convenient. But with this ability, he’d be a bona-fide action hero!

Well, probably not, but one could dream.

The last ability, Thousand Blades was yet another misnomer, as no blades were actually involved. Instead, it allowed him to make a full attack and retain his accuracy for the entire attack… at the expense of expending his [Psychic Strike], of course. Sure, he wouldn’t get the added damage from [Psychic Strike], but that really wouldn’t matter if he had a much better chance of hitting his target with every shot.

Sure, maybe one hit with the extra damage that a [Psychic Strike] could add might be preferable at some point, but sometimes more hits in a short period of time were better than one big hit. It would very much be on a case-by-case basis, though.

So, with those abilities now “slotted”, he went on to choosing the enhancements for his mindbolt.

There were many options, but not many actually appealed to him very much at the moment. There were lots of situationally effective options, but having something that would be good for the long run would be best. Sure, he could always spend some time to reconfigure his “loadout”, and he likely would, but having the most effective all ’rounder build would be the best way to keep him alive the longest.

That said, he wasn’t going to be regularly looking for fights. Well, at least he couldn’t see himself doing that on the regular, anyway. The goblin situation was completely different, though, so he’d need to be ready for when he eventually needed to deal with them.

That said, he went with the classic Keen, as anything that increased his chances to deal extra damage was a must. Then Distance, as increasing the range at which you could kill your enemy was always good. The next was Seeking, something that he’d very much need if he was going to be shooting at things trying to take cover or using magic to obscure their position. Lastly, he took Collision, as that just added more oomph to each shot, increasing the damage.

So, with that taken care of, he decided to start messing around with the various forms his mindbolt could take.

The first one he tried was the long-range version. For one, it allowed him to have his hands full while using it, so if he wanted to hold a sword and board, or if he needed to carry something large, or a person, he could still shoot at stuff.

Which had probably subconsciously affected its form. When he formed the long-range mindbolt, it took the form of an articulated shoulder canon. Gun? Shrug.

The point was, he now had a Predator style shoulder gun. Which was beyond awesome, if he was being honest. Sure, it didn’t have the ridiculous damage potential that its original design had, but it was still better than he could have hoped for.

It didn’t auto-target though, which was somewhat expected seeing as how he had an instinctual understanding of how it worked. Instead, it fired at what he could see. And no, it wasn’t as broken as all that. He still needed to focus on his target, otherwise the shots wouldn’t go where he wanted them to. Even then, his aim still had a long ways to go before he’d be competing in any marksmanship tournaments or anything like that. But still, he’d been a pretty good shot growing up on the farm, so there was that.

The medium-ranged version wound up being a Desert Eagle-like gun that reminded him a bit of the M-6 from Mass Effect 3. Which also threw him for a loop, because having a pistol be that accurate at 40m was insane. Not only that, but every version of his mindbolt had up to ten range increments, meaning that he could still conceivably hit- and kill!- something up to 400m away with the pistol.

Insanity.

But he wasn’t going to complain about that, so sir-ee.

The final version, sadly, didn’t come out as a two-barreled shotgun. Instead, it looked more like the lovechild of an N7 Crusader and an FN-P90. He was in love as soon as he saw it.

Then he couldn’t wait until he could start getting all of the archetypes for Soulknife, as he’d definitely take Armoured Blade in the not-so distant future. Because he was a geek. And he really wanted to get his mind armaments so that he could mimic various armours from the many franchises that he so loved. Like an N7 Destroyer’s armour, or Mandalorian armour….

“This’ll be so much fun,” he said as his eyes lost their focus and Avi facepalmed.