Chapter 277: Spoiled for Choice

Discussing level progress via writing it down in a journal and passing it around the group was a tedious affair but considering all the levels that everyone had gained from the impossible fight, Jadis was more than willing to be patient. Sharing her growth as well as seeing everyone else’s was worth the wait. Jadis was particularly excited since she was nearing the vaunted CLR sixty threshold and would soon be unlocking her tertiary class. She had no idea what options were going to be made available to her, but whatever they were she was certain they would be powerful. Maybe a little lewd, too, but definitely powerful.

Not that Jadis was lacking in terms of power. As her level twenty-five skill choices demonstrated, she was well on her way to becoming a one-woman army. Or maybe she was a three-woman army? Three-in-one army? Whatever.

The two skills her ritualist class had presented to her at level twenty-five were both excellent. However, there was a clear and obvious winner between the two, even if the other had great value to it.

“I mean, the second option would absolutely be a good choice under most circumstances,” Kerr commented as she passed the book to Thea. “Just think about how often you get lit on fire or blasted by ice magic. It’s happened, what, half a dozen times in the past two weeks?”

“That’s true,” Dys grumbled as she put her elbow on her knee and rested her chin on her hand. “I am so sick of getting either cooked or frozen. Let me tell you, it feels way, way worse than it sounds.”

“I w—would still take the first option though,” Thea advised after having taken a few moments to think over the skills. “The first p—provides growth to, ah, attributes that would help you in those situations anyways, p—plus more.”

Thea was, of course, correct. Through Frost and Flame would give her a significant boost to her defense against thermal damage, but only thermal damage. It looked like it would be a convenient ritual, too, since it only needed to be recharged once every forty days, the equivalent of an Orosian month, but Lesser Fractional Spread was a passive skill. No ritual needed, and she would still improve her resistance to all kinds of physical damage as well as her other stats besides.

Most of the responses to the choice weren’t verbal. Everyone took turns writing more detailed commentary in the book, explaining various pros and cons as well as asking questions about synergy with already existing skills and rituals. The whole process was starting to give Jadis flashbacks to when she’d browsed various forums online on Earth, reading the discussions people would have about characters in anime or books. It was more than a little odd to think of herself as the center of one of those discussions.

The real crux of the discussion ultimately wasn’t whether or not Jadis was going to take Lesser Fractional Spread. Because she was, no question. No, the question became, should Jadis continue to use her Debauched Duplication ritual on Fractional Spread or switch it to something else?

Ever since she had gained the improved version of her Mirror Body skill, Jadis had used Debauched Duplication to double her Fractional Spread passive, increasing the number of attributes points she gained from it twice over. Now, with this “Lesser” version upgrade, the skill would be able to give her the same number of points naturally, no ritual required. That meant she could potentially use the duplication on one of her other passive skills without any loss to her overall attributes. On the other hand, if she maintained her passive duplication ritual on Fractional Spread, she’d be doubling her attributes again.

By Aila’s math, hastily scribbled into the margins of the journal page, Jadis’ attributes would jump from a fifty-three-point boost to a one-hundred-and-six-point boost. Jadis’ Fortitude, the attribute that offered her resistance to all physical damage including fire and ice, would reach one hundred and twenty-six. Jadis didn’t know the hard numbers on how well that would protect her, but considering how well Thea’s one hundred and fifty-three points of Fortitude protected her, she had no doubt that she would be a walking juggernaut. Well, more of a juggernaut than she already was. And that was just her Fortitude. All of her physical stats would be gaining the same benefit.

Those were some hard to ignore numbers.

Nothing else Jadis currently had in terms of passive skills could really compare to the kind of attribute boost on offer, except for three other possibilities. The first, as per Eir’s suggestion, was Improved Mirrored Body. Pushing past the giggles and smirks that were aimed at the priestess due to the obvious lewd implications, she pointed out that having two more of Jadis’ bodies, powerful as they were, would be potentially invaluable. Jadis’ strength was only growing greater and if five of her bodies were fielded in battle, the results would be devastating to any enemy they fought. Jadis could just imagine the number of Mirror Strikes she could trigger when attacking with so many selves.

The downsides though, were that she’d be even more vulnerable to wide-area attacks. Jadis’ bodies shared the same health pool and damage like the twisted wretch matriarch’s poison fumes did damage per each body affected. If Jadis had five bodies inside a toxic cloud, she’d be taking five times the damage. Further, Jadis didn’t have any weapons or armor for any extra selves at the moment which would reduce their effectiveness on the battlefield. That was, of course, a temporary problem, but still a pertinent one for the time being. Finally, if Jadis did duplicate her mirrored body skill, she’d be once and for all giving up on the pretense of being more than one person. There wasn’t a soul on Oros gullible enough to believe that the three Nephilim who had shown up in Far Felsen actually had two more sisters that they had rescued from the mountains, and those sisters were also identical siblings.

More bodies had a certain appeal, but Jadis was hesitant. There were still another two options to consider though. Both came from Mirror Knight level thirty-one and Jadis still had to choose one of those to take as well. Both were great, though for very different reasons.

Mirror Knight’s Impenetrable Ward indeed. Jadis had a strong inclination towards that particular skill, as did Aila, Eir, and Thea. At face value, the skill would increase Jadis’ Fortitude and Resilience by seventy-five points each. While that wouldn’t do anything for her physical stats other than her physical resistance, what the skill would do is shore up one of her most obvious weaknesses. Seventy-five points into her Resilience would make a massive difference in her ability to withstand magical effects. There was also the potential synergy to think of.

If Jadis used her ritual to double Impenetrable Ward, she would be increasing her magical and physical defenses by one hundred and fifty points each. Jadis wasn’t even sure if she would need to wear armor with over two hundred and twenty points in Fortitude. And per Aila’s calculations, one hundred and eighty total points in Resilience would probably immunize her to most magical attacks from anyone with a magic attribute less than half of her Resilience. Maybe not all attacks, not if they had some kind of specialty, but that much magic resistance would nullify the magical attacks of most common demons. Doubling her defenses with the skill held major appeal.

There was also the fact that Impenetrable Ward would still be good even if she didn’t double it, or if she chose to double her Mirrored Bodies. If she continued to duplicate her Fractional Spread, taking the skill would still benefit her magical defense greatly and help increase her Fortitude to the two-hundred-point range as well. If she didn’t duplicate Fractional Spread and instead duplicated her bodies, she would be gaining not seventy-five in each of her defensive attributes, but one hundred and twenty-five points. Plus she’d still be getting all the benefits of having more mirrored bodies while increasing her defenses at the same time, which helped mute the drawbacks of increasing her number of bodies.

Then there was Past Reflections. It wasn’t quite as glamorous as Mirror Knight’s Impenetrable Ward, but it was far from a weak option. There were a lot of solid skills and spells that Jadis had passed up over the course of thirty-two levels not because they were weak, they were just weaker than other options available. This was a skill that had the potential to let her access spells like Looking Glass, an ability that would allow her to see through reflective objects within a certain range, or Heavy Armor Mastery, which would make the armor she already wore even more effective. Many of those skills weren’t strong enough on their own to justify using a skill slot on, but at a price of three for one? Yeah, that was a lot of value.

What’s more, she could use her ritual to double that skill, and gain a total of six skills for one skill slot. Six! Even if they weren’t individually all that strong, having six more skills would drastically improve Jadis’ base potential as well as her versatility. There was also the possibility, as Bridget pointed out, that if she didn’t like the second round of skills that came from doubling Past Reflections, she could cancel the effect and perform the ritual again. Since the skills selected were random, she could get different results, ones that she liked better. She could keep doing that until she got her ideal mix.

Of course, there was also the chance that after the first ritual, any further applications would just remember the original result and there would be no difference. Aila didn’t have enough data to say one way or another, having never read about a skill that functioned quite the same as Debauched Duplication. There was also the concern that if she used Debauched Duplication on Past Reflections now and she decided to switch it to something else later down the line, she wouldn’t have three base skills anymore. If in the meantime she had gained improved versions of those skills, they had no idea what would happen to them once the base skill was gone. None of her companions had ever heard of a skill being removed before. They even broke the general silence to ask Sorcha if she’d ever come across that kind of situation. Sorcha had no clue, but her input mirrored Aila and Sabina’s worry. They thought it likely that the improved version of the skill would no longer function, which had the potential to be a major problem.

Then again, maybe once she reached a point where she had the improved version of a skill, the base version wouldn’t be needed anymore and she could safely stop duplicating Past Reflections with no negative consequences. It would be a way to essentially scam the system, a loophole that would let her bypass wasting a skill slot on a lower-level skill just to get the more powerful version. Aila doubted that such a loophole would exist, but Kerr and Bridget both thought it was possible since the gods tended to reward out-of-the-box thinking. In her own opinion, Jadis thought such an exploit had potential simply because she herself was a living loophole. She was the sole member of a previously extinct race because D had reincarnated her soul. The gods hadn’t put any provisions in their Covenant preventing such a resurrection until after D had done so with her. Wasn’t it possible they could have left another opening to exploit in their system?

Past Reflections was a gamble. A big one. But Jadis wasn’t opposed to taking risks, especially when even the worst-case scenario was still quite powerful. If Past Reflections duplication didn’t work out, she could still switch and double her stats with Fractional Spread or go with more bodies.

“Hey, uh, I know I’m not part of this,” Sorcha spoke up, interrupting Jay’s thoughts as she was rapidly writing down more thoughts on the choice to be made. “But I’m gonna say this anyway. It feels like you lot are getting super wound up on this whole skill choice thing. Maybe you should flip a coin or something? Or maybe set the debate down for the night and come back to it after you’ve had some time to let the tea steep for a while.”

“Jadis is not flipping a coin on this,” Aila immediately said, her expression stern as stone. “Don’t even suggest that. Jadis!”

Syd flinched, having been caught in the act of reaching for one of her belt pouches.

“What? I’m just curious about what chance has to say about it. Doesn’t mean I’ll go by it.”

“No,” was Aila’s uncompromising response.

“Fine, fine,” Syd held up her hands. “Look, leaving everything to chance isn’t a good idea, I agree. But I think Sorcha has a point. Let’s put my skill discussion aside for the moment. I can make a final decision later, after I’ve had a chance to contemplate all of your suggestions. Does someone else want to go next, just so we can talk about choices that maybe aren’t as complicated?”

“I can do that,” Bridget perked up. “I think my options are pretty straightforward, doubt there will be much debate. I’ve already kind of decided what I want, but I’d like to get your opinions first in case I’ve missed something.”

With that, Bridget took the journal and began writing in it, detailing out her newest class skills as well as the overall update to her status sheet. While she wrote, the others took some time to stretch, take some food from the platters their Dryad hosts and provided, and relax.

As Jadis closed her eyes and let all three of her selves lean back and just let her mind wander for a minute, she overheard a whispered conversation between Sabina and Sorcha.

“So, that’s—she’s really just one person? Not three sisters?”

“Yes, that’s true,” Sabina confirmed, her tone quieter than normal though she didn’t seem to be understanding the spirit of why Sorcha was whispering.

“That is… honestly one of the weirdest class skills I’ve ever heard of.”

“Oh, I agree,” Sabina chirped happily. “But then again there are a lot of weird class skills in this group, so it’s hard for me to say which one is the absolute strangest since I guess it’s kind of subjective. Splitting into three separate bodies is extraordinary, but drinking your own semen to regain magical reserves is also super strange too so that might be my pick for weirdest.”

“She does what now?”

Jadis sighed and opened her eyes, already getting ready to cut Sabina off before her half-explanation managed to make things even weirder than they already were.

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