With Shiftiness upgraded and done, Henry moved on to Misdirection next and this time, he was looking forward to upgrading its sub-skills as well.

  Misdirection of the Trickster (C) - Level 1

  Inkjet

  Actives:

  F-Rank: Shoot a jet of ink to confuse your pursuers and hide yourself.

  E-Rank: Quantity of ink shot is increased. Ink can temporarily have properties of ingested foods.

  D-Rank: Two mimicked properties can be remembered permanently, until exchanged. [Dispelling Ink]

  C-Rank: You can produce a cloud of static, magical darkness in exchange for mana. Your naturally-produced ink gains a disorienting effect.

  Scouting Clone (C):

  Create an ink clone that obeys your commands. You can maintain a mental connection to dispel the clone, or to take control of it and perceive the environment through its senses. Range can be increased by using clones as relays.

  Blood Clone (C):

  By expending 20% of your health and mana, you can create a Scouting Clone with access to your abilities.

  Henry’s eyes widened as he reviewed the changes. Then he read it one more time to be sure before he leaned back.

  The Blood Clones are cheaper, and now I can increase my range with relays?

  Henry might now be able to stretch his senses through a significant stretch of territory.

  Inkjet got better too, and the upgrade is thematic as well.

  Henry was happy with all of these new upgrades, but as he read through everything and glanced at this ever-lengthening status page, Henry couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed.

  He had a lot of abilities, and he wasn’t getting the most out of them. Henry shook his large head. He’d think about all of that once he was done. For now, it was the Octomind’s turn.

  Arms of the Trickster (C) - Level 1:

  Assistance of the Octominds

  Passives:

  Improved Cognition: Your mental faculties are improved by the individual brains in your many arms.

  Actives:

  F-Rank: Amplify the effects of a Skill that can benefit from increased cognition.

  E-Rank: Multiple Octominds can be temporarily pooled to provide a more efficient and substantial assistance.

  D-Rank: The Octominds are capable of activating Skills.

  C-Rank: The Octominds’ cognitive abilities are further empowered, and are now capable of following complex instructions.

  Arcane Arm (E):

  Summon an arm made of mana.

  With all of his Aspect upgrades done, Henry collected his arms under him. Deeper in the cave, the duo had stopped chatting and were instead working on their own little projects. Maurice was working on his Clawminds with renewed vigor, while Stormsong worked on her mana control.

  Right… We still didn’t test if she can take in one of my ability constructs. I’ll do that in a bit.

  For now, it was time to deal with something that had been bugging him for a few weeks, and the worry had finally boiled over as he got a whole new batch of abilities to work with.

  I have too many abilities, Henry finally admitted. He hadn’t expected that to ever be a complaint, but he was becoming inefficient with everything available to him. After every encounter, he’d often review his strategies and more often than not, he would realize he could have used one Skill or another a bit more optimally to end the fight faster, and he’d end up kicking himself for it. It didn’t happen every time, but because it had happened more than once, it was an issue, and it was only going to get worse as time went on.

  So. What could I do about it? Is it time to look into fusions?

  Using his newly-empowered Octominds, he visualized a white board. For a moment he thought he’d summoned one with his illusion skill. But he didn’t. It was just his Octominds’ visualization ability.

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  Damn. I might have finally gotten my notebook, I guess.

  So. What could he do?

  A first option was that Henry could look into fusing more abilities together. Or maybe even fuse some Aspects. He’d tried to model a few combinations with his Octominds a while back, and he was confident they’d gotten a lot better.

  As he considered that option, he realized one of the combinations was staring right back at him.

  Trickster’s Pathfinding could work incredibly well with the Octominds. I know they can use my skills and all that, but what if they had access to the predictive or divination-based magic of those skills? In fact, both Arcana and Arms of the Trickster feel like they could synergize pretty well, aside from a couple of abilities like Mana Nexus or Telekinesis.

  Well. That was one possible option. Henry visualized a pen writing it up on his mental white board, and it did.

  I hope it doesn’t get fuzzy when I look away.

  Henry turned his attention to some other possibilities. It didn’t take him long to find another incredibly attractive combination.

  Blink and Ink clones. Or Blink and Blood clones. I do have the anchor creation part right now, but what if I could Blink to an anchor created by a blood clone? What if my clones became anchors? Teleporting to my copies would be overpowered… Especially as they level and their range grows.

  That sounded too good to be accessible. Was it even possible to fuse Aspects and Skills like that?

  Henry pulled up his workshops and parsed through the options.

  First, he looked through the Concept Workshop, which offered him the options to extract concepts, excise class constructs, excise ephemeral constructs, and bind construct to class. What he was looking for wasn’t there, so he moved on to the Aspect workshop.

  Upgrade Skills and Traits

  Incorporate Class Skills and Traits in Aspect

  Merge Skills and Traits

  Create new Aspects

  Fuse Aspects

  I can already buy Invisibility and put it with Shiftiness. Creating new Aspects isn’t interesting right now; fusing is what I’m looking for, Henry thought. Plus, the System had said that too many Aspects might cause him issues later. He’d rather consolidate at the moment.

  Henry tapped the option, and was given another choice to make, though it wasn’t the one he expected.

  Assisted Controlled Fusion

  Unassisted Spontaneous Fusion

  Unassisted Controlled Fusion (Unavailable)

  Focusing on them, Henry was glad to see new text pop up to explain things a bit.

  Assisted Controlled Fusion: An accelerated, two-phase system-assisted fusion of Aspects and the Skills within. Not all Skills are guaranteed fusion, but possible combinations can be outlined and tweaked in the preparation phase. The assistance costs Evolutionary points. The assistance cannot be used past B-rank Aspects. Warning: In the fusion phase, Aspects and the abilities within will be unavailable until the process is finished. Warning: The process cannot be reversed or canceled once it begins.

  Unassisted Spontaneous Fusion: Fuse two or more Aspects together. Skills may or may not be fused or damaged. Warning: Fused Aspects will be unavailable until the process is done. Warning: The process cannot be reversed or canceled once it begins.

  Unassisted Controlled Fusion: Unavailable until the user acquires experience with the fusion process, skill-engineering, and a higher proficiency with mana-manipulation.

  Henry read the definitions over and over again, and a few more pieces began clicking into place as he thought of his previous uses of Evolutionary points.

  They are just tokens to get the System to help. Everything I’ve done with them I could theoretically do by myself, if I knew how. But achievements and Evolutionary points are a way for the system to bridge that gap until someone’s ready to make the modifications.

  Skill fusion, Aspect fusion, Aspect creation—that one he wasn’t that sure of how it was done or how he could re-create, but he could think of a couple of theories.

  This was all good to know, and it would be something Henry could work toward, but he wasn’t na?ve enough to think he could replace the System’s assistance anytime soon. After all, he was still struggling with modifying a single, one-time use skill. Much less larger and more complex skills or Aspects.

  Though I can always pay for the assistance, then continue training and working until I can do the fusions by myself.

  Glancing back at his balance of Evolutionary points, Henry found them incredibly low, now that he knew what they were really for. Would he even have enough?

  I’m taking enough risk as it is, he thought, shaking his head. He might have been inefficient with one point or two, but if he hadn’t fused some abilities already and organized them well, he would have been in a much worse mess than the one he was dealing with now.

  Henry sighed. Well, for now, he should make some preparations. And just in case he got trapped in the process, he should decide which Aspects he wanted to fuse before he clicked anything. He hoped there’d be enough Evolutionary points left to move Invisibility to Shiftiness of the Trickster, but then again, maybe he should try to do that by himself?

  I’ll see about that in a moment. It’s not as much of a priority. For now, let’s recap; what are my Aspect fusion options?

  Octominds and Arcana. To make his illusion creation, pathfinding, and divination part of the Octominds. That could push them closer toward becoming his own intelligent assistant. Like a mini-system that could help with navigation, modelization, and probably a bunch more things.

  The second option was Misdirection and Swiftness. To potentially tie his teleporting ability to his clones. It was an incredibly attractive option, but one he felt might be too powerful, which either meant he might not be able to unlock it just yet, or it’d be so expensive to use it’d just be practically useless.

  A third would be Vitality and Fury. Or Vitality and Hunger. Vitality could reinforce anything it went in, though Henry wasn’t sure which would be the better fit. And anyway, it wasn’t his first pick.

  I can’t see anything that fits with Shiftiness. It’s… too much of its own thing right now, but I’m sure I’ll think of something if I spend enough time on it.

  Henry crossed the options away from his mental white board and left only two possible combinations.

  Arms of the Tricksters—and his Octominds by extension—combined with Arcana. Or Misdirection combined with Swiftness.

  Now… which one do I try to get help for?

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