Minute Mage: A Time-Traveling LitRPG

Chapter 177: Dark and Light

After a long day’s walk, I arrived at the guard outpost that held the Arcane Spell Crystal. I’d arrived slightly ahead of schedule due to my own underestimating of how fast Expedite could work on me when I didn’t have to worry about using it on anyone else, so it was around nine thirty right now.

As I approached, I heard the faint sounds of conversation between the three people.

“Raise you three,” Bon said, and I could hear the sound of a chip sliding across a table.

“Send that to the flames,” Jannin said. “I’m out.”

“Uh…” Poppins hummed for a moment. “I’ll match?”

“Great,” Bon said. “Raise you one more.”

“Hm…” Poppins paused to hum once more.

“Y’know,” Bon said while he thought, “I can’t believe we’ve almost been up here for three years now. Feels like we’ve become part of the mountain.”

Jannin grunted. "Well, at least the mountains make for a good view. Beats staring at the same city walls day in and day out."

“I will…match you,” Poppins said. “And I agree. The beauty of the mountains is awe-inspiring. It's a privilege to stand guard here, even if it does get lonely sometimes."

Bon grunted. "Lonely? Try infuriating! No one to talk to but you two numbskulls for miles. I'm starting to think the rocks have more interesting stories to tell. Raise by one.”

“Nah,” Jannin said. “You can’t say it’s all been bad.”

“Oh I’m sure you can’t say that,” Bon said. “With your flamin’ secret prostitutes. I’m the one who has to suffer out here.”

“Well,” Poppins offered, “what about last winter? There was the blizzard, and command sent us those Enchanted heat stones to keep our outpost warm. We boarded up the windows and spent all day inside, it was like a single day of summer in here, just for us! And the day after that, we spent all day building that snow fort. And I will…match you.”

Bon scoffed. “That was just you two goofing off. Certainly not a fun memory for me, having to deal with your insubordination. Raise by one.”

“Man, just cool it with that,” Jannin sighed. “You’re the one playing cards with us instead of doing nightly patrols.”

“Playing cards with you? Barely. You fold instantly every time! If anything, I’m playing with Poppins, and you’re watching.”

“I will match you,” Poppins said.

“You’re still pissed about that Annor Ton guy, huh?” Jannin responded to Bon.

“What? No.”

“He kinda messed up your face.”

“You’re exaggerating. He just got the drop on me.”

“And then he killed that Gloomspur that was giving you trouble.”

“I was conducting a coordinated retreat. Just…go burn in flames, man. He was an asshole, ‘course I don’t like him. But he went off to wherever he’s going, so whatever. Doesn’t matter anymore. Raise by one.”

“I will match you,” Poppins said.

Bon groaned. “How many times are you gonna match me? Know what? Whatever, I match as well, let’s reveal our hands.”

I heard the sound of cards flopping on the table.

“Triple synergy sword, plus double synergy wiz, plus a high Level of 13,” Bon said.

Another set of cards flopped down, and Poppins said, “Full party? I don’t think the high Level matters here.”

“Ugh,” Bon groaned, and chips slid across the table. “You had a full party the whole time? And you were just—what in Lyra’s shit kind of luck do you even have, man?”

“I’d like to think I just play well.”

I sat down and decided to wait for them to go to sleep. If they were up, I didn’t want to break in and try to steal the Spell Crystal like that. There was the chance they might be able to overpower me—which, honestly, I didn’t think was likely, considering their Levels—but also I didn’t want to burst in and start killing people to get what I wanted. Sure, I’d just reset it with Time Loop anyway, but just wandering around and killing innocent people…Well, it certainly wouldn’t be pleasant, no matter how I could rationalize it. I’d rather get this done without conflict.

So I sat down by a tree, and just listened for the noise to stop.

While I waited, I mulled over the choice I’d be presented—either Upgrade Ethereal Armor next, or Gravity Well. While I hadn’t chosen for sure, I was leaning pretty heavily toward one option—Ethereal Armor. So far, that Spell had been the most useful to me out of the two choices, and while I couldn’t use Light Plate right now since it didn’t hide my identity, Index had hinted to me before that its Upgrade options would still be useful to me regardless. According to it, the Gravity Well options also held some solid choices, but I wanted to go in order of what I felt would give me the best benefit first.

By the time it got close to midnight, I heard them all dozing off. One by one, they stopped speaking, and went silent. Then, after a little bit longer, I heard snores.

So I crept up and into the building, remembering the layout from last time I’d been here, found Jannin, reached into his pocket, and…

Threshold reached. Ethereal Armor XP has reached 355.

Ethereal Armor Rank has increased to 10.

Due to Ethereal Armor Rank reaching 10, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 187 to 234

Dark Plate Downtime: From 37.9 to 36

Light Plate Discount: From 43.4% to 46.2%

And then I was back, standing on the road about five minutes ago. I technically had the ability to go back a full six hours, but doing so would, of course, force me to live another six hours in a day where I had no access to Time Loop. And personally, I’d rather limit the amount of time I spent without that life-saving safety net to zero. So I sat around watching for threats at 11:50 at night, waiting for Time Loop to refresh.

One thing I did while I waited, though, was cast Ethereal Armor. Since it finally moved past the hard limit of Rank 10, it meant I could finally move it up to my Soft Cap of 11—one more Rank I got pretty much for free.

Threshold reached. Ethereal Armor XP has reached 461.

Ethereal Armor Rank has increased to 11.

Due to Ethereal Armor Rank reaching 11, it has undergone the following changes:

Mana Cost: From 234 to 240

Dark Plate Downtime: From 36 to 34.2

Light Plate Discount: From 46.2% to 48.9%

Without much effort, I amassed Spell XP until I received my notification. Dark Plate’s downtime going further toward nothing was nice—I’d have certainly liked it to be lower back during my fight with Xhag’duul, at least—and I was getting petty close to my Spells fully being half off with Light Plate at this point.

“One more Rank and you’re there,” Index confirmed.

“How about until they’re ninety-nine percent off?” I joked.

“Uh…Seventy-seven more?”

I snorted. Not exactly close to that. It’d probably take a thousand years straight of casting the single Spell to get there.

“Actually, it’d be closer to twenty thousand, assuming your Mana/Minute stayed—”

“Don’t discourage me even more,” I sighed. “Just let me dream.”

After the necessary time had passed, I had all three uses back again, and sighed. Safety once again. So I turned around and got walking down the road. I’d be out here pretty much all night, but with Expedite, it probably wouldn’t take too long. I’d need to collapse in our bed the moment I got back, though. A higher Stamina/Minute could do a lot of things, including help you function without sleep to a limited extent, but it certainly couldn’t replace it.

Once I got back to town just as the sun began to rise, I quickly meandered to the room we’d rented, Erani still in the bed asleep in the early morning, and laid down, myself, quickly finding myself unconscious.

Soon after, I woke up to Erani getting out of bed, accidentally having shaken me awake.

“Hey,” I groaned, blinking my eyes open.

“Oh, shoot. Did I wake you up?”

“Yeah, but it’s no problem.” I yawned and rubbed my eyes. “Need to make my Upgrade choice, anyway.”

“What Spell did you end up doing?”

“Ethereal Armor.”

“Yeah, I guess you are pretty much constantly using that one. You know what’s being offered to you yet?”

“No, I haven't looked at what’s being offered yet. Thought we could see together.”

“Well then, let’s see!”

So I closed my eyes once again, fighting to stay awake through my meditation, and focused inward. After the necessary ten minutes, I finally felt the click and opened the Upgrade.

Choose one Upgrade for Ethereal Armor:

Elemental Armor

School: +Aqueous, +Fire

—

Ethereal Armor can now summon two additional types of Plate—Fire Plate and Water Plate.

While wearing Fire Plate, whenever you damage a being with a projectile Spell, you may shoot an additional ball of fire in that being’s direction, coming from the center of the armor. The ball of fire deals up to 10% of the damage dealt by the projectile Spell, depending on where it hits, on a direct collision with a being.

While wearing Water Plate, you have an aqueous shield that surrounds your person at all times, absorbing an amount of damage equal to 10% of your total Health before being destroyed. After 10 seconds, the shield is re-summoned.

Celestial Armor

School: +Divine, +Illusion

—

Ethereal Armor can now summon two additional types of Plate—Lunar Plate and Solar Plate.

While wearing Lunar Plate, whenever a being casts an Illusion-School Spell on you, if your Conjuration Stat is equal to or greater than theirs, you may cancel the effects of that Spell.

While wearing Solar Plate, whenever a being looks directly at you, you may burst in light. If you do, and your Endurance Stat is equal to or greater than theirs, they are blinded for 10 seconds. This ability can only be used once every 10 minutes.

Broadened Armor

—

When you cast Ethereal Armor while a Plate type is already summoned, you may, rather than dismissing the Plate and summoning a new one, instead switch the currently-summoned Plate’s effect with another type of Plate.

Plates are automatically dismissed after 10 hours, rather than 1 hour.

I read the options out to Erani as I looked them over, myself.

Elemental Armor and Celestial Armor were somewhat straightforward in their uses, effectively broadening the different types of Plate I could summon. Elemental Armor seemed to focus on straightforward combat, dealing additional damage and providing additional Health when I was in need. Fire Plate required me to specifically use projectile Spells—so just Ray of Frost right now—but I liked the synergy it had with Cumulative Catastrophe, allowing me to gain additional stacks of its effects with every cast of that Spell. And, of course, I could always take more projectile-based Spells in the future to expand its effects.

Water Plate also offered a solid amount of utility, giving me extra Health when I needed it. 10% of my Health right now would be around 60, which, while not an insane amount, was certainly a nice buffer to have when it came back every ten seconds. The issue, of course, was with situations when I didn’t have a spare ten seconds to wait for that shield to regenerate.

As for Celestial Armor, its two options, Lunar and Solar Plate, felt more specialized in their effects. First off, they both wanted me to have better Stats than my opponents for their effects to go off—certainly a requirement I’d have an easier time meeting, with Recursive Growth, Recycled Loop, and my Bond with Ainash all boosting my Stats.

Lunar Plate was extremely specific in what it did, effectively making me immune to all Illusion magic as long as I had even a single point of Conjuration over the caster. While it wasn’t every day that I got hit with Illusion magic, I could see a world where I took the Upgrade, basically forgot about it, and then, if I ever lost a fight against a powerful Illusion user, I could just go back with Time Loop and redo the fight with Lunar Plate equipped this time, effectively destroying all hope my opponent had of winning.

However, Solar Plate seemed to be the main draw of this Upgrade. As long as I could find enemies with lower Endurances than me—which wasn’t extremely easy, given my status as a Magic-Type, but wasn’t impossible, either—I could blind them for ten seconds basically for free. The ‘requirement’ of needing them to look at me was basically nothing, after all. Of course, it was limited to once per ten minutes, but that, too, was surprisingly forgiving. It effectively translated to “once per fight.” And ten full seconds of blindness was certainly nothing to ignore. A single activation could be the difference between winning or losing a surprising number of encounters.

And finally, there was Broadened Armor. That one broke the pattern of the other two. Instead of giving me new types of Plate to play around with, it instead gave me an easier time using the ones I already had. Instantly swapping between them, plus multiplying the amount of time it was summoned for by ten, made it much, much easier to use Dark and Light Plate in a fight. Effectively, I could start out a fight with Light Plate, and then at any moment I was in danger of a massive strike, quickly swap to Dark Plate before I got hit, and then swap right back to Light Plate afterward. That’d allow me to bypass that annoying drawback of basically needing to forego Light Plate’s discount in a fight if I wanted to use Dark Plate’s protection. I’d always get to have the best of both worlds.

But, when I looked at all the options together…

“Gods,” I muttered, “I wish I could just take all three.”

“Well, yes,” Erani said. “I wish I could get all the Spells offered to me, too.”

“Yeah, obviously,” I said, “but I mean, look at them. They synergize perfectly together! If I had Broadened Armor plus these other two Upgrades, I’d be able to harness the power of all six types of Plate simultaneously, seamlessly switching between them as I needed them. I could go to Dark Plate and block a massive attack, move to Solar and blind them, then move to Fire or Light to hit them with some Spells while they’re blinded, Water to block another hit, switch off while I wait the ten seconds for it to come back…Man, it feels like they were just made to go together. Do Spell Upgrades ever show up a second time? Like, if I took Elemental, could I end up seeing Broadened for my next Upgrade?”

“Not typically, but sometimes. Maybe this could be one of those cases?”

“Nope,” Index cut in. “These aren’t gonna repeat. At least, not anytime soon enough for you to see them.”

I relayed what Index said to Erani, then said back to it, “So then what’s up with these choices? Why do they feel like they go so well together? Like, Broadened Armor feels absolutely perfect with these other Upgrades that add on more types of armor I can summon. Kind of counterintuitive that I won’t be able to use that synergy.”

“It might be better to think about this less in terms of the specific Upgrades Broadened Armor synergizes with, and more the general type of Upgrade it synergizes with. I mean, there’s nothing specific about these two other Upgrades that make them work with Broadened, other than the fact they summon more types of Plate, right?”

I frowned. “Well, no, not really. I guess it’s great with anything that summons more Plate types. Wait, so you’re saying that, if I take Broadened Armor, I’ll get more Upgrades in the future that do that sort of thing? Summon more types of Plate?”

“Exactly. Again, look at the general ideas of each of these Upgrades. Elemental Armor is numbers-based combat focused. It wants to give you numerical supremacy in a fight, and basically do nothing else. So its further Upgrades are going to continue in that vein. Celestial Armor is also about combat, but more the edge-cases and matchup games you play. Equipping the right armor for the right foe, that sort of thing. So that’s the direction those Upgrades will go. And Broadened Armor is about tactics, switching the armor back and forth to have the perfect effect at the perfect time. Don’t you think at least one further Upgrade is going to do what those other two do, and give you a broader range of effects to choose from? If not all three?”

“Okay,” I said, “that makes sense. So, in that case, Broadened Armor isn’t going to be a waste of potential since it can’t have the extra Plate types of the other Upgrades, rather it’s more like delayed gratification. I’d be taking it now, and then it’d get that extreme increase in power next Upgrade? Not that it doesn’t do anything for now.”

“Man, I’m still just thinking about how I wish I could have that Fire Plate,” Erani muttered. “Even more percentage multipliers on my Spells would be so good.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t put it on you,” I said with a sigh. “Honestly, the way I’m thinking about it, it’s currently between Celestial and Broadened Armor. The requirement of me needing more Endurance for the blinding ability is obviously restrictive, but it’s still super useful against most magic-using enemies, plus I’ll continue to increase my Endurance at a disproportionate rate as I Level. But then, Broadened Armor just feels awesome to have. Like, the issue with Celestial Armor is basically the issue that Broadened solves. I already have situations where I need Dark Plate, and I also need Light Plate. Can’t choose both. Adding on even more options just creates more issues down the line, since when I want Solar Plate, I’ll probably also want Light Plate, and adding on Dark Plate would probably be nice, too.”

“The extra length also needs to be mentioned,” Erani said. “It hasn’t created too many problems yet, but having a single-hour time limit before needing to recast it is going to cause issues eventually. Dark Plate is the only thing protecting your identity right now, and if it falls off in the middle of a crowded area, and then later on the Demons decide to start putting your face on posters everywhere? No way people will ignore that you look just like the extremely dangerous, extremely wanted Arlan Nota.”

“That is a fair point,” I said. “Actually, the quick swapping between the two types also creates an opportunity. Like, I can basically never use Light Plate right now, even when we’re alone, because of the off-chance someone walks up to us and sees me. But if I can instantly change back to Dark Plate, that effectively isn’t an issue—at least, not much. As long as we see them first, I can just instantly change back before they can get a good look at my face, and there’s no issue. I can finally go back to getting the discount. At least, in more important, more isolated fights I can.”

“That’s true, too. Do you think that’s what you’re going for, then?”

“Seems like it. The convenience, the specific benefits in our situation right now, and the long-term potential for the next Upgrade…it all adds up perfectly.”

So I took the Upgrade.

Ethereal Armor has gained the Upgrade Broadened Armor.