Mage Tank-Chapter 238: Mind Control Builds Your Character (sheet)

Xim and I spent three weeks in the Third Layer, hanging with her folks, participating in revels with the village, and having some heart-to-hearts over our shared experiences. The soul damage left by Hysteria faded throughout, and our moods continually improved with every hour that passed.

My own damage was greater since I’d had the influence cut and burned from my soul, whereas everyone else’s changes unraveled over the course of a day once the fragment had been destroyed. Since there was no force keeping their souls twisted, they naturally started returning to their correct shape. If I had to make a comparison, they had the equivalent of pulled muscles while I had the equivalent of several myectomies.

We met with Sam’lia, who confirmed that all remnants of the avatar’s influence had been rooted out from our souls. It was nice to have some godly confirmation since there was a lingering doubt that somehow something had been left behind, waiting for its opportunity to strike. I had no evidence that such a thing had happened, but my paranoia and skepticism were on full blast while my soul recovered.

The goddess was also happy to double-check that no other mind shenanigans were hiding out in there. She couldn’t do it for the rest of the party, since she didn’t have a spiritual connection with them, but it eased my mind either way.

I was able to work through the types of changes that Hysteria had made, most of which were just dumb. That made me feel a little better about the whole thing, but there were still one or two that stood out as troubling.

“‘Try to have sex with the Littan empress’,” I said. “That one was kind of obvious.”

“Why was that one so easy to figure out?” asked Xim. She was reclining on a chaise sofa that slowly undulated like a jellyfish. It was essentially a very fancy massage chair. It could work out knots like a master masseuse, even through Delver resilience.

I’d done my best to catalog the damage and write out a list describing what Hysteria had been aiming for. I moved down to the next item and read it off. “‘Subtly hint to everyone around you that you are trying to have sex with the Littan empress.’”

“Ah.”

“We aren’t very subtle as a group,” I said.

“No, we are not.”

I grinned and moved on. “‘Try to have sex with the king of Hiward while talking shit about the Littan empress.’”

“Missed opportunity,” said Xim. “We could have criticized her lovemaking.”

“I’m sure Filix would have enjoyed hearing about that.” I cleared my throat and sat up a bit. “Listen to this one. ‘Try to have sex with Brae’ach. When successful, compare his mating techniques to those of the king of Hiward and the Littan empress. Narrate these observations during coitus as though you are lecturing a classroom full of students.’”

“‘When successful’,” Xim snorted.

“You’ve gotta have confidence for this sort of thing.”

“How many of these have to do with getting it on?”

“Like half of them.” Xim looked thoughtfully into the distance, probably imagining what was hidden underneath Brae’ach’s mask and robes. She shuddered, then waved for me to continue.

“‘Find a reason to be in Foundation when the emblem in the southeastern skies reads null. Convince as many Delvers as you can to do the same.’”

Xim raised an eyebrow. “What emblem?”

I rubbed at my beard. “No idea, but there’s another one about ignoring the emblem in the southeastern skies, trying to make it a subconscious thing. I guess we should check when we get back to Arzia.”

Xim shrugged. I read the next item. “‘Ignore all instructions to ignore fairies.’” I lowered the page. “Really, what’s going on with fairies?”

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“Seems like there was an information war between Hysteria and a group of fairies out there.”

“Are fairies actually a thing?”

“I’ve never met one,” said Xim. “Although, maybe I have and forgot. Or would you have seen that in my soul?”

“I was pretty thorough. Also, Sam’lia gave us a clean bill of health.”

“True. If we run into a fairy we can ask them.”

“But they’re real?”

“Who knows what’s real anymore?” she said with a sigh.

“Hm,” I grunted. “I’ll add it to The List, along with the emblem thing.”

Other items encouraged us to take more risks, lowered our inhibitions, and put a strong emphasis on making friends with other Delvers. I suspected that last one was so we’d rope more people into coming to Foundation for the emblem event. There weren’t any triggers that would have had us assassinate anyone, so we’d never been at risk of going all “disposable state asset” or anything. There was some stuff trying to get us to cause social turmoil by digging up people’s past and spreading it around, which could have resulted in deadly conflict if we’d done it to the right groups. Hysteria’s manipulations could mostly be boiled down to drama, politics, and trying to collect a harem of world leaders.

I’d put off reviewing my notifications until I felt confident that my emotional state was under control. There was a chance I’d have to make a decision about something and didn’t want to do anything impulsive. I didn’t put it off for too long, though, since there was always a chance that some evolution or achievement might help with our recovery.

The first message was as portentous as I’d come to expect from the System, although it seemed to want to convince me that it was serious this time.

All right, some of this stuff may not be intuitive so we’re going to do our best to break a few things down for you and explain why you got some of these skill levels.

Before we do anything, though, we want you to take a second and think about who’s sending you these noties. SC1, that’s who. We gave Sub-el the day off and SC2 is distracted doing some weird shit in space. It’s just you and us right now. Why are we pointing this out? It’s so you understand how serious things are getting.

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Listen, we love it when Delvers do stupid shit. The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward, right? Go ahead and turn your body into an eldritch abomination, that’s a basket of laughs. Opening portals to secret realms where monsters lurk that can annihilate you so utterly that your best friends won’t even remember you existed? That’s a hoot. Whenever one of you slowpokes contacts dark gods to make a monkey’s paw deal that threatens all life on the planet, we practically piss ourselves with glee.

We’ve seen a lot of apocalypses. Shit, we’ve been an apocalypse. The end of the world isn’t a big deal, it’s mostly entertainment at this point. Planets and intelligent species die every day, they’re cheap. Keep that context in mind for this next part.

You’ve started messing around with some serious bologna.

Yes sir, you are putting yourself in a position to cause some real unpleasantness.

You’re practically becoming an entire prophecy of hullabaloo, and that’s not a label we dish out lightly.

Got all that? Good.

How was the tone? We wanted to blur the line between cryptic and foreboding without saying anything meaningful. After all, if we told you the potential consequences of your actions, you might stop, and we don’t want you to stop.

We want you to push.

Okay, enough jaw wagging. Time to quantify your gains!

Your Dimensional Magic skill has increased from Level 41 to Level 45!

Your realm, your rules. Sometimes being the king of an isolated pocket dimension has hidden perks. You aren’t satisfied with isolating your guests from the rest of the world physically, you’re learning how to isolate them metaphysically as well.

Completely unrelated, but what do you think would happen if you took the concept of something like ‘ice’ and trapped it in another dimension, eliminating all of its relationships to the wider universe?

Would liquids forget how to freeze? How much havoc would that cause? What a silly idea, right?

…

Your Physical Magic skill has increased from Level 29 to Level 32!

While the soul normally falls within the domains of Spiritual and Divine Magic, you exercised profound control over a soul that had manifested itself in the physical realm. That’s one hell of a trick!

Your Mystical Magic skill has increased from Level 26 to Level 30!

Have you ever wondered if the gods have their own mana matrix? You’re on the path to untwisting that knot of a question! You manipulated flows of divinity through your mana matrix as though it were a mundane Mystical force.

Your Leadership skill has increased from Level 25 to Level 29!

You led your team to victory through the most perilous trial they’d ever faced! This one’s self-explanatory. We’re adding the flavor text so Leadership doesn’t feel left out.

Your Exposure Therapy - Poison achievement has been upgraded to Exposure Therapy - Corruption!

Exposure Therapy - Corruption: Your body and soul have been subjected to persistent corrupting influences, from frequent poison baths to enduring multiple months of ongoing Spiritual damage.

You gain +25% resistance to Spectral damage in addition to your existing +25% resistance to Toxicity.

You gain a bonus to any attempts you make to resist long-term soul manipulation equal to your WIS. Additionally, you will be aware of any effect that attempts to manipulate your soul so long as your WIS is equal to or higher than the governing attribute of the effect. This may not stop another Deific ability from rooting around inside your spiritual essence, but good luck to anyone else who takes a shot!

Your Revelation of the Eye’s Sight and Revelation of the Eye’s Reveal have improved!

We can’t accurately describe what’s going on with your revelations, so feel free to figure out what changed on your own time. Don’t forget you can use the System to make custom entries and take notes! We can also read those notes, and it’d be pretty cool to steal your thoughts on this stuff, so don’t be afraid to be thorough.

Your recent acquisition of Deific portal and teleport abilities–along with all the other wild shit you’ve been doing–has enhanced your technician status. You now possess the highest level of access, repair, and shut-down authorizations available to a Delver in the second phase. (Mind-controlled entities will have their technician status temporarily revoked.)

It seemed that figuring out a way to defeat Deific mind control was a good way to gain some skill levels. I hadn’t been intentionally flexing any of my three schools, but my competence with those magicks had certainly been helpful.

It also demonstrated some of the overlap between the schools. Physical Magic was adjacent to Spiritual, while Mystical Magic was adjacent to Divine. Each school flowed into the next, and I was glad the experience hadn’t been wasted. Even so, it felt like I’d gained levels from the incidental effects of manipulating the fragment. If I’d had either Spiritual or Divine, I was betting the gains would have been monstrous. Xim was happy to confirm my suspicions.

“I got five levels to Divine Magic, taking it to 57,” she said, “five levels to Theology, taking it to 40, and eight levels to Spiritual, taking it to 24. That gives me two new evolutions to choose from. I also got a few levels in Leadership.”

While five levels to Divine was only one higher than the four I’d gotten to Dimensional Magic, a higher skill level took ever greater feats and experience to improve. I also had a +100% bonus to my Dimensional Magic leveling speed, while Xim had a +50% bonus to Divine. I guestimated that she’d gotten twice as much experience to Divine as I had to Dimensional. Xim didn’t have any bonuses to Spiritual; the skill’s relatively low level was responsible for its massive growth.

Getting a solid pump to my magic skills was always nice, but the upgrade to my Exposure Therapy achievement was a much juicier reward. The original description had mentioned that I might be able to improve the resistance by exposing myself to more poisonous environments. I’d been poisoned plenty since then, but the achievement apparently cared more about duration than intensity.

While the title had hinted that there were other categories of resistance to be gained, I hadn’t expected the achievement to turn into a combo. Not only did I get a new source of resistance, but also some improvements to my defense and detection against hostile soul manipulation. This seemed like a classic setup for an escalating bonus, and I wondered if adding a third source of resistance would add even more powerful effects.

The System’s commentary on my revelations was interesting, but I’d need to meditate on the abilities to really comprehend what I’d done while working with the fragment. I’d been in an advanced flow state created through weeks of practice and enhanced by Xim’s ritual and dreamscape, and I was doubtful I could replicate the effects on my own. However, the experience showed me hints of what the revelations could become. Having a target in sight meant that it was only a matter of time before I could work out a way to get there without help.

I was confident that I could now use my Sight to determine whether someone was under the effects of a mental ability, potentially expanding out to any kind of soul manipulation. The big question there was whether I’d be able to use it on myself as a sort of self-diagnostic tool. If my revelation could ping me whenever I became compromised, it would make dealing with certain skills and debuffs a lot easier. This would also stack with the new ability from Exposure Therapy, giving me a layered warning system when somebody was messing with my spiritual self–one layer to warn me that the attempt was being made, and another to tell me when it had been successful.

The improvement to Reveal was more nuanced, but I thought it dealt with how I’d received the fragment’s perception in a way that blended with my own. Reveal was primarily a one-way street, where my observations and feelings were transmitted to another. However, I’d used it to understand the fragment’s perception of me, then used that information to help assimilate its power into my soul. It was possible that I could now do something like connect with a party member to receive their perception of things, rather than the other way around. I’d had a little bit of experience with this when I went all fusion-ha with Grotto and Shog during the Pit fight, but that had as much to do with Grotto’s psychic abilities as it had with my revelations.

Musing on that reminded me that I had work to do on upgrading my Traveler’s Amulet again. I was pretty sure I needed to figure out how to use Grotto’s intrinsics as my own the way that he could use mine. Working on this new aspect of Reveal might help.

Finally, I was beginning to touch on the outer edges of a completely new revelation and could feel the tug of the next step in the Eye’s progression: Embrace.

Imparting my domain onto all that I could see sounded like it could be pretty useful.