Mage Tank

Chapter 159: Arbitrage

A flash of lightning pulsed within the clouds over Timagrin. It was timed to perfectly accent the end of Avarice’s claim that she could give us information on a world-ending threat. The view above was an illusion, so the entire display might have been orchestrated. Even if it was, I appreciate the effort on Avarice’s part. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone some flair.

“The man who will destroy the world,” I said. “Not the avatar who will?”

Avarice let her arm drop and clasped her hands in front of her hips in what I recognized as a presenter stance. This entire pitch had been rehearsed or, if it hadn’t, she was an expert in adapting the mannerisms.

Her black and gold dress had slowly morphed to a more conservative style. Less skin showing, thicker fabric, neat lines and straighter angles. Her bare feet were now clad in a pair of no-nonsense heels, though they somehow hadn’t increased her height. The transition was obvious enough that she didn’t seem to be trying to hide it, but I found it interesting that she was adjusting to the role she’d decided to play.

“They will eventually be one and the same,” said Avarice. “However, for the moment, the most significant threat to Arzia is a mortal man.”

“He is transforming?” asked Nuralie.

Avarice held up a finger.

“A question I am happy to answer if you accept my offer.”

“That’s some serious clickbait,” I said, drawing a raised eyebrow from the avatar.

“Information on Orexis will be included,” said Avarice. “He plays a role in the ongoing threat.”

The big guy turned his gaze back onto Avarice, a brief glimpse of simmering fury crossing his features before he composed himself.

“I will agree then,” he said.

“Ah, one moment,” I said to Avarice, then placed a hand on Varrin’s shoulder. I turned him away from Avarice and guided him toward the back wall. “Grotto,” I thought to my familiar, “can you link me and Varrin up?”

[Very well.]

I felt a tug at my mind as Grotto started serving as a psychic bridge between myself and Varrin.

“Listen, brother, I know you’re willing to take a lot of risks to get at Orexis. Hells, that’s half the reason we’re here. Still, we’ve got no reason to trust this… woman.”

I stumbled over the pronoun. My first instinct was to think “creature”, since I suspected the thousand-armed monstrosity in the avatar’s shadow was a better representation of Avarice’s true form than the woman she wore as a costume. I didn’t want to let that slip when speaking aloud, so I tried to stick to words I thought were inoffensive.

“If we are choosing not to trust her to any extent, then we should leave,” thought Varrin. “We have no power that allows us to be certain of her motives. Still, I believe we should stay. I am willing to take the risk.”

“Yeah, that’s something we need to talk about. You were ‘willing to take the risk’ back in the Chamber of Conviction. You made a unilateral decision without consulting anyone and your soul nearly shattered. That’s not how we do things. You know that.”

He shrugged off my hand.

“That ‘test’ was a trap.” He thought the word “test” like a swear. “Discussion would have only invited uncertainty, and slaying the Icon would have gained us nothing. It was a test of conviction, not prudence.”

“Nothing? What we would have gained was the certainty that none of us were going to die. If that’s how you felt then you could have presented that argument. We can’t have people going rogue, it erodes trust.”

“We needed those items,” Varrin thought to me. “Most are powerful enough to serve as centerpieces for the rest of our careers.”

“I don’t want to argue over the benefits, this isn’t the time or place. Even so–”

“Can you honestly say that you would have allowed me to do what I did?”

“I’m not your keeper, Varrin,” I thought, growing frustrated. “I’m not here to decide whether I allow you to do anything. I’m thinking about group cohesion. If you’d said something, if you were insistent, then we could have been prepared. We would have thought over ways to mitigate the soul trauma that came afterward.”

I studied Varrin’s soul as we communicated. It was still somewhat turbulent, and I wondered if that was affecting his judgment. He huffed a breath and looked at the ground.

“I… felt something,” he thought. “At that moment, I knew what needed to be done. I do not know if I would have been successful had I waited. I seized the opportunity.”

“And right now?” I asked. “Are you having a spiritual revelation that tells you to divulge all your secrets to an avatar?” I tried to keep my thoughts level, but I knew some irritation was creeping into my psychic ‘voice’.

“No,” he replied. “But it is my story to tell. If the rest of you decide not to divulge anything, then maybe it will still buy us something.”

“Fine,” I thought. “We can bring that to the group and hear people’s opinions. Not to veto your decision, but so everyone is informed and you’re working with the most information you can.”

Varrin flexed his hands, making fists and releasing, his gauntlets creaking. He looked me in the eye but finally nodded. I watched him for a moment, then turned and we began walking back to the group.

“Besides,” I continued, “she’s negotiating, trying to sell us something. We don’t know what ‘services’ she wants to exchange, and we should try to get the best deal we can. If you’re too eager, she’ll smell blood in the water and try to take advantage. It’s classic salesmanship.”

I stopped beside Xim, and she looked over the pair of us while obviously suppressing a question. Avarice watched us patiently, and I cleared my throat.

“You want our life stories and secrets in exchange for information on”–I waved my hand in the air–“a threat you claim is world-ending. We can’t know how useful your information is without hearing it.”

“I cannot know how useful your ‘life stories’ are without hearing them,” Avarice countered. “Regardless, there are ways to determine value in the absence of certainty. Simply decide what the information I have would be worth if it is what I say it is, then multiply that by the probability that I am actually offering that information.”

“Seems kind of vague,” I said. “We have no idea how trustworthy you are.”

“Then consider assuming a low value,” the avatar replied. “If there is a 1 percent chance that I am being honest, then multiply the value of saving the world by 0.01.”

“Multiply the value of information about a world-ending threat by 0.01,” said Nuralie.

“If that’s how you want to do the math,” Avarice said with a shrug. “Regardless, I think you realize that’s still worth quite a lot.”

“Maybe…” I said. “Before we decide anything, let’s discuss the services you want to exchange.”

“I’m fine with that,” she said. “My aspect allows me to trade almost anything that is tangible, even if it is something that cannot normally be exchanged with ease.”

“Can you give an example?”

“If you had a bucket of seawater, you could trade me the salt without having to extract it,” she said. “You could trade me the banana in a fruit smoothie, and it would appear whole, leaving the rest of the smoothie unaffected. Probably not as tasty afterward.”

“That would be a trade of goods, not services.”

“Unless the object of the trade was to retrieve the banana,” she said. “Or to extract the salt for yourself.”

“Okay,” I said, trying to understand the bounds of that ability and how it might help us.

“You can break down items into their components,” said Nuralie. “With enough trades, a useless item could yield chips, essences, and all its base materials.”

“True,” said Avarice.

I ran over our inventory of unused magic gear in my head. There were a decent number of powerful items we had no use for. Then there were items like the Wand of Boundless Night that might break down into something terrifying.

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“What if we don’t know what we’re trying to extract?” I asked. “If we don’t know enough about the item.”

“I can lend expertise,” said Avarice. “I have more experience with mana-woven items than any other entity on this planet.”

“That’s a bold claim,” said Varrin.

“My results will speak for themselves.”

“What about mana?” asked Nuralie.

“Pure mana?” she asked. “Not in the form of chips?” Nuralie nodded. “Sure.”

“Can you pull mana constructs out of people?”

“The mana matrix is tangible,” said Avarice. “Yes.”

“Then you can extract stats?” asked Nuralie. Avarice grinned.

“I could extract stats in trade,” she said. “Although that carries many implications. For example, reducing a stat below an evolution point would not remove the evolution, merely make it useless. You could not reinvest the stats to make a new choice. Additionally, your mana matrix is only so developed. I could not, say, drain stats from your entire party and dedicate them all to a single person afterward.”

“Can you trade for specific stats?” Pause. “Such as creation points.”

“Yes, that should be possible.”

Nuralie turned to me.

“Share the text for your Dumping achievement,” she said.

My heart rate went up as I understood what the loson was getting at. I shared the full System text.

Wowee! You spent all your character creation points on a single stat! A truly inspired and nuanced build. As a reward for your foolhardy bravery, you have earned the Dumping achievement!

Dumping: After spending 5 or more stat points at once on a single attribute, you are granted 1 additional point in that attribute. This effect is retroactive.

“Nothing we’ve tried has let us snag that one for ourselves,” said Xim.

“Because it requires spending creation points,” said Nuralie. “That is my theory, anyway.”

“You want Avarice to pull out all of your creation points,” I said, “then return them so you can spend them all on one stat?”

“Yes,” said Nuralie. “If the achievement text is accurate, it should allow the rest of us to get Dumping.” Pause. “It is also retroactive, so we will get the bonus for any level where we dedicated 5 or more points in the past.”

Varrin produced a journal from his inventory and flipped through it.

“That would grant me 2 Strength, 1 Agility, 1 Speed, and 1 Fortitude,” he said.

“Oh!” said Etja. “I’d get 3 Wisdom and 2 Charisma!”

“Could we do a full respec?” asked Xim. “Trade all of our stats to Avarice, then get the bonus for every level when we get them back?”

“Based on the text,” I said, “It should only trigger once per stat when spending points.”

“We could receive the stats back in 5-point increments,” said Nuralie. “Then we would maximize the benefits.”

“What about the training stats?” asked Varrin. “Could we dedicate them somewhere else, and then re-train the stats we’d drained up to 10 again?”

“Training stats?” asked Avarice. “I am not familiar with those.”

I stroked my beard and thought over how much to tell Avarice. If she could really do stat surgery to let us share Dumping and then respec us to take even greater advantage of the achievement, it was important for her to understand where the points came from.

“It’s a boon I got from Fortune,” I said. “We managed to give it to everyone in the party.”

“Hmm, curious,” said Avarice. “I normally cannot undo Fortune’s work, so I doubt I could trade for those stats.”

“You know Fortune?” I asked. Before Avarice could answer, Grotto chimed in.

[The process Fortune used was a modification of the Creation procedure. It coats the Delver’s mana veins with a crystallized form of mana that is released after the Delver engages in strenuous training related to the relevant stat. It is not dependent on avatar magicks, only a specialized process. It is very mana-intensive, however.]

“I see,” said Avarice. “I still do not believe it will be successful. Even if I moved the stats around, if you have exhausted the crystallized mana, then it will be unavailable for more training. And yes, I know Fortune. He’s an ass, but I’m bound by contract not to talk about him. All I can mention is that he says ‘hello’ and to ‘keep up the good work.’”

“Huh,” I grunted, wondering whether Fortune intended that message for us specifically, or for anyone Avarice encountered who’d met the rotund demigod. “Well, as for the crystallized mana, we could get Grotto to inject us with more.”

[The only reason that was successful the first time was because we were siphoning mana from an unstable void sphere. The cost is absurd. It would be an egregious waste when you could simply gain more levels unless one of you has a spare void sphere you wish to donate to the cause. Even if you did, there are better uses for such a powerful item, and the procedure’s risks should not be taken lightly.]

“But if our original build was inefficient,” said Nuralie, “then we could gain the benefit of training that we missed out on originally? We should still have the crystallized mana for what remains untrained.”

“Perhaps,” said Avarice. “This is new territory for me, which I must say is delightful.”

“Okay,” I said. “Before we get carried away, what do you want for these types of exchanges?”

“When you entered this Delve, I felt the touch of a being far greater than any I have felt before,” said Avarice. “It made me curious, and so I turned my eye upon your group for some time. I heard a discussion of your level 10 Luck evolution.”

I didn’t like the idea that Avarice could have been spying on us throughout the Delve, but at this point, it didn’t surprise me. However, the fact she was barking up my level 10 Luck tree made me nervous.

“What about it?” I asked hesitantly.

“First, I would like you to share the text so I can confirm the ability.”

I glanced between the party members, but the looks I got back were uncertain. I didn’t know how Avarice could take advantage of the evo simply by looking at the text, but merely reading the description had elicited some painful reactions from Xim and Varrin. There was at least some power to the words themselves.

After thinking it over, I decided to let her read the description. If we were considering making a deal, we had to extend some level of trust. Proving that we had the goods was about as basic a show of trust as it got. I put aside the fear that Avarice might enslave me and make me her divine phone line to the Dread Star, then shared the evolution.

Divine Favor of JuRoQi, The Dread Star of Heaven: Speak the Dread Star’s true name and be seen. Ask one question and be answered. Should you survive the Dread Star’s truth, forget its name for seven days.

Avarice’s eyes shone and the hands in her shadow twisted. She blinked, and her shadow flickered, the thousand limbs returning to calm in an instant.

She locked hungry eyes on me, and I suddenly felt like a slab of meat on a cutting board. I still had my inventory open and the Get Out of Cage Free card selected, ready to activate it at a moment’s notice. I doubted I would escape if Avarice decided to go back on her word and force me to stay, but it helped put me at ease nonetheless.

“Very good,” she said. “One question for each party member undergoing the stat exchange.”

If I considered the questions as a form of currency, I had around 52 questions per year to trade if I was exercising them optimally. Assuming I took the evolution, I would certainly want to use some of those questions for myself or the party. The text also not-so-subtly hinted that there were other costs to using the ability beyond the long cooldown, so 52 might have been a very generous estimate.

Avarice was asking for 4 weeks' worth of questions assuming I didn’t undertake the process of trading stats back and forth myself. My use of training stats was perfectly optimal, and I’d already received 13 instances of Dumping; 1 at each level, plus 1 at creation and the 2 I’d munchkined during the boss rush. Unless the achievement allowed the exploit of gaining the bonus point multiple times from the same 5 stat points, there wasn’t much reason for me to do it.

I also doubted it worked that way since someone like Avarice could create an infinite combo–gaining bonus points from Dumping, which then increased the stats she could trade back and forth, allowing me to gain even more stats from Dumping each time. The System, as far as I could tell, couldn’t make something from nothing, so there had to be hard limits on these sorts of processes. I assumed the extra point from Dumping was due to something like an efficiency gain when pushing most of the stats into a single attribute. It had to come from somewhere, right?

Maybe the extra 3 points I spent every level outside of the 5 that triggered Dumping hadn’t been ‘exhausted’ for the purposes of Dumping–aside from levels 7-10, which had 30 out of 32 points used for Dumping. In that case, I’d have 20 points that could be utilized, giving me 4 extra stat points if obtained and reassigned. Nice enough, but was that worth a question asked of an eldritch being of unknowable power? Probably not. That’s also assuming Avarice’s power could appropriately separate stats that had been used and those that hadn’t.

“There’s a 1-week cooldown on using the evolution, and potentially some risk to my health and sanity,” I said. “Do you intend that we stay here for a month or more while you ask your questions?”

“That depends on the answer to my first question,” she said. “I will likely choose to make some preparations before submitting additional questions after the first. If that happens, you would be free to leave, but I could call upon you at any time to pay the next part of the debt.”

“How do we know you won’t drain our stats then refuse to return them?”

“We would have a binding agreement,” she replied. “I can forge unbreakable contracts for various purposes.”

“That still requires us to trust that your agreements are unbreakable,” said Nuralie.

Avarice gave us a weary look, then took a few slow steps forward, growing taller with each stride until she loomed over us like a giant.

“If I wanted to cheat you, do you believe I could not take these things from you?” she asked, her voice cascading off the walls.

Echoes mingled together until her presence was a cacophony of irresistible pressure. She did not ask anything of me, but I knew at the core of my being that if she did, I would do whatever she wanted without question.

All at once the pressure vanished, and Avarice was once more in her 10-foot form.

“The agreements tether to the soul,” she said, tone light. “You will know the truth of them the moment the agreement is made. If you harbor any doubts as to my intent to uphold the agreement after it is formed, you will be free to leave without any exchange.”

“Why don’t you?” asked Varrin.

“Why don’t I what?” she asked.

“Take everything you want by force.”

Avarice smoothed down the front of her dress, now made up of countless tiny metal ringlets, like some sort of chainmail.

“If I stripped you of everything you had, would you want to deal with me again?” she asked. “If I killed you, would you be able to generate more wealth to trade me? I am not the avatar of Pillaging, I am Avarice. To sate my desires, there must be life to labor at the forge of creation. There must be civilization to feed gold into my coffers. Not that I’m particularly enamored with gold, but it’s a good turn of phrase.” She stepped out of her heels, which faded into motes of light. “I have no interest in slaughter, and I would prefer that the world stop destroying itself if I am to be trapped on this plane for all of eternity. I can defend myself and my property–many have died who threatened it–but I do not seek conflict.” She ran a hand over her hair and it grew out several inches, the green and gold threads woven through it turned to crimson and silver. “It’s bad for business.”

“Hmm,” I said, trying to shake off the intimidation tactics. I didn’t appreciate the heavy-handed treatment, but she made a good point. “Let’s assume we’re considering your offer. Getting everyone Dumping and a few extra stats is nice, but I don’t know if it’s worth giving up so many Dread Star questions.”

Avarice tapped her lips with a finger.

“Your group has been through many trials recently,” she said. “Your mana matrices are primed for an influx of power. It is a shame that special Delves grant no levels. I have been in this Delve gathering mana for quite some time, and I am familiar with how the obelisks function. I can probably simulate their effects.”

“You can grant us a level?” asked Varrin.

Avarice pressed her finger into her lips, then bit at the nail. Her tongue ran over the fingertip in a salacious manner as she studied us.

“Why stop at one?” she asked.