GH - 225

I observed shards of ice grow all over my body as I pondered my conundrum.

The shards extended and spread every two seconds, soon making me look like a frost porcupine. I could comfortably move as I followed Mr. Inuus; the ice didn’t make me feel any heavier. Still a bit of a hassle having this added armor of ice, but it wasn’t too cumbersome. I didn’t need a wide range of movements, hacking or slash enemies. The most action I’d do was blocking with shields or playing instruments.

“I’m so cool…” I chuckled at my pun.

After around forty seconds, I was completely encased in ice. My cocoon exploded, shattering into hundreds of pieces that shot off in all directions. Those didn’t deal any damage to my surroundings because the cocoon hadn’t absorbed any damage.

“Very cool effect. It’d take more than that to convince me to permanently reduce my health for a skill.”

When I used to play RPGs in high school, the reservation mechanic wasn’t around. Auras and other spells with continuous effects were either costless passives or charged resources, like mana or health, per second. That was a decade and a half ago. Not surprisingly there have been many new mechanics since then. Reservations cropped up when RPGs started having lots of skill selections not tied to classes. Characters used to be balanced around the respective skill trees of their chosen jobs. Having a pile of skills available for everyone to choose from presented a new balancing problem. Players couldn’t be allowed to use all the strongest continuous skills—the reservation mechanic was a balancing limit as well as a drawback for the power.

Was the drawback of reducing my health by twenty percent worth the benefits of [Ice Cocoon]?

Defenses could be thought of as more health. Shields were straight-up added health; that was easy to see. All the rest, Armor, Magic Resilience, Resistances, and so on, allowed a player’s health to last longer. Comparable to a longer health bar.

Did [Ice Cocoon] increase my ‘effective health pool’ such that I’d still come out with a gain despite the reservation of twenty percent? If the answer was yes—I was sure it was very much so if [Ice Cocoon] was level ten—the other question was why don’t I just go for skills that didn’t reserve against my health, like my [Lesser Precision Aura]?

Lvl. 1 Lesser Precision Aura: Invoking the deities of Order, paying the patron god of precision with your energies, generate an aura that grants you and nearby allies (+85) and (+5%) Accuracy Rating. 

  Reservation: 10% of your Highest Secondary Resource

Reserve against Ancestral Shroud or Energy, sure. Just don’t touch my health. Reducing it was helping my enemy kill me! A weaker tanking skill that was reserved against Ancestral Shroud instead sounded preferable.

However, I wasn’t discounting how powerful [Ice Cocoon] was and its synergy with my Plaguetank build. For one, I could build on-hit Freeze without worrying about Freezing myself through [Unselfish Blighted Decay] because of the immunity. Also, the reduced effects of Ice debuffs would also help; I would be bothered less by self-inflicted Ice negative statuses I’d lovingly share with those foolish enough to attack me. I could go with some Ice theming. Theorycrafting juices flowed.

What if I used the Energy counterpart of the [Health Conversion] connected to my [Greater Pyro Shell] to change the cost of [Ice Cocoon]?

Lvl. 1 Health Conversion (Link): Replaces the cost of linked Active Skills with Health, with a multiplier of (220%)

I had no qualms with [Health Conversion] because the health cost of casting my shell was a one-time charge. I could quickly regenerate under the protection of [Greater Pyro Shell]. From another perspective, I was using my untouched health to become tankier rather than letting it sit, doing nothing. Likewise, my otherwise unused massive health regeneration would put in the work even if my shell was up. This concept was actually the foundation of my Plaguetank build. I’d inflict myself with various poisons and other debuffs, then spread it to my enemies using [Cloak of the Plaguespreader].

Lvl. 1 Cloak of the Plaguespreader: Chosen as a servant of a sealed carrion lord, you increase your resistance to diseases while spreading them to those who dare touch you. Negative status resistance (+4%) and a 10% chance to inflict any negative status you have on an attacker.
  Cost: 45 Energy
  Duration: 40 Seconds
  Cooldown: 10 Seconds

The [Ice Cocoon] exploded once again, jogging me out of my boxlike thinking and cowardly conservativeness in theorycrafting.

In a way, wasn’t my Plaguetank build sort of reserving health as well? Poison ticks got charged against my regeneration—lower regeneration was lost health in a sense. Self-inflicted debuffs made me slightly softer, translating to a lower effective health pool. I was ‘reserving’ some amount of health to spread debuffs, and I was fine with that because weaker enemies meant an easier time surviving for me.

“Health is a resource,” I said, wanting to slap myself for forgetting such an important thing.

(Good health is the most important resource,) said Mr. Inuus, oblivious to the shards of ice slapping his behind. (Music helps with good health, only a few know. A stress-free mind, relaxed by music, will keep the body healthy.)

I smiled. “Thanks for the advice. Healthy, yeah…”

I was approaching this the wrong way.

This wasn’t real life where more injuries weakened me. Some games impose limitations on injured characters, but those are usually in the survival genre. In the vast majority of RPGs, including MCO, the player was in tip-top shape up to the last point of health.

It was inaccurate to say that I needed defensive layers to protect my health bar. Rather, I needed to protect only my last one point of health. If that was gone, then I was dead. The rest of my health bar was another defensive layer and resource, all to protect that final health point. If health could pay for a skill that offered better protection than being simply health, then I should use that.

“And I don’t think I’ll find Freeze Immunity as easily available as this,” I said, examining my ice-coated arms.

The [Ice Cocoon] burst several more times during our journey. This was starting to become annoying. I’d have to learn to tune it out. In any case, I should find a way to use this explosion for tanking. Squeeze every value from the health reservation.

We’ve passed very wide tunnels, some could be considered caverns, and [Ice Cocoon] demonstrated how insanely wide its area of effect was. A Link Shard could increase its AoE further, but it might be better to go for debuff or crowd-control options. A whole dungeon of monsters weakened in one go meant more survivability for me.

On the damage department, I wouldn’t count on it much in PvE. Normal mobs wouldn’t deal high damage to me, so the ice explosion would just be… decent. Bosses would dish out a lot of hurt but were super tanky as well. Since I lacked secondary DPS stats, like Penetration and Pierce, my ramped-up damage absorbed from the boss’s beatings wouldn’t amount to much if thrown back at it.

It was different when it came to PvP.

DPSers were squishy, a natural consequence of foregoing defensive stats to pile offensive ones. [Ice Cocoon] could absorb so much damage from them, way beyond [Greater Pyro Shell]. Based on my stats, my shell had a set ‘health’, but my cocoon didn’t. If I kept on healing and surviving during the growing phase of the cocoon, I could absorb damage several times my actual health bar. Good luck to squishy DPSers surviving that.

Another thought occurred to me. I left Mr. Inuus’ party.

He stopped walking and turned around. (Why did you break our Contract of Binding, musical friend?)

“I need your help with something,” I said. “A simple test with skills to satisfy my curiosity.”

(Perhaps a misplaced curiosity, given our situation. Could it not wait later? And what help do you require of me?)

“It’s just a quick test. Do you have any dispel spells? Something that can remove shields and barriers?”

 (I do, for inasmuch as I can erect barriers to protect friends—)

“Hehe, erect. Sorry, that was immature of me.”

(—I can remove the barriers of foes to make them vulnerable.)

“If that’s the case, can you remove this barrier of mine?” I asked, casting [Greater Pyro Shell].

Mr. Inuus didn’t summon new instruments other than those already floating above his head. But even those, he didn’t appear to have used. A blue bubble expanded from his body, hitting me. [Greater Pyro Shell] was gone. Some sort of AoE dispel. But my [Ice Cocoon] was uninterrupted in its growth.

“That’s worth the reservation,” I said. “Can you add me back to your party, Mr. Inuus?”

I yanked my mind away from theorycrafting to figuring out our situation. According to the [Tattered Map], though we previously deviated away from the wardcrafter’s cave, we were now curving back to it. Hope surged that I might find wardcrafter Ocadules or even Compressed Integral Data Modules, called Cidules by the inhabitants of Hierakon, Dalkanus technology that contained whole skill trees.

From the secret cave of Elder Pabilsag’s family, assuming we’d find it, could we reach Mezhu Nue and beyond? There shouldn’t be any path or Pabilsag would’ve gone to Mezhu Nue instead of Kurghal Village after the Great Quake. Could Karnon have dug a path in the two centuries since then?

Hell, I didn’t even know how to return to Kurghal Village. Besides dying. That wasn’t an option if I wanted to bring others to Mezhu Nue. I needed an actual path.

Or dying might be the correct course of action…

Pathfinder Gibil gave me a clue of the answer—Sigil Totems. He had previously found a Hermit Crabore with a not-so-old Sigil Totem among the crap on its back. The Sigil Totem was for a warp point that wasn’t one of Kurghal Village, a clue other Mardukryons were out there. But the Sigil Totem was unpowered, so we couldn’t use it, wherever it was supposed to go. If I did reach the other Mardukryon tribes, I could ask for one of their Sigil Totems, unalive myself to return to Kurghal Village, and use the Sigil Totem to bring my party to the ‘other side’. Then I’d leave it to other players to figure out the correct path.

“What’s that?” I peered at the light from the far end of the tunnel. We had been traveling for some time, so I wondered if we should go back and dig to where Karnon was. The giant snake was probably gone by now.

It wasn’t the afterlife, obviously. It also didn’t seem to be an opening to the outside. It was a wall that glowed.

Nearing it, I realized it was a huge boulder that blocked the entrance of a cave. Glowing runes of various colors wrapped around the boulder, probably keeping it in place through magical means. Mr. Inuus might not be able to move it with his ghostly hand summons. But even before we could puzzle about the boulder, we should figure out the story of the body in front of it—another dead Mardukryon.

“Magically frozen solid,” I said, noticing the reflection of the many lights off the dead guy.

He lay collapsed on the ground, face down, arms stretched out, hands on the boulder. Very likely, he was trying to inside the cave to shelter from whatever killed him. He wore leather armor lined with metal bands over thickly padded clothes. On this metal bands were etched runes, some of them still smoldering. He was also larger than me. Did he have any connection to the dead merchant?

Before I could ask Mr. Inuus what he thought of this guy, he already answered. (This attire, I am familiar with!) he exclaimed, stomping his hooves in agitation. (This Mardukryon friend is a wardcrafter.)