180

Ya know maybe Dozer can use the Queen-link to visit Ameliah's soul now that he has a free transport ability. Doesn't even cost him Tel like Tallheart needs to summon soul stuff.

Starless

Depends on whether Ethereal Aura makes the aura invisible or not. But yeah, something like Shear could be used to put someone through a magical blender from across town. Not that I could see Rain becoming an assassin. Keep in mind though that watch mages with passive mana sight should be able to see the aura spreading out. So an aura mage assassin would eventually be discovered and hunted down. Still, any adamant soldier sneaking into Ascension's camp could get wiped out by Rain while he's sitting in his tent having breakfast.

Cirvante

Completely random observation. Rain's class or a similar aura build would be great for assassinations, killing specific targets, or finding/killing those hiding out when you only know the general location such as some city. Even at silverplate, Rain's max range and DPS when his skills are all 15 (plus aura synergy rings), plus max stat equipment with most allocated in Focus, is absurd. An attack aura with every modifier except aura compression maxed out gives him a range of 768 meters in every direction, and a DPS of 260K. That's already above the damage limit even in areas ranked 10-19. He can lower the damage down to 9.9k which makes it way cheaper to keep it going for a long, long time in rankless areas. Or compress the aura a bit and lose some range if he's doing it in a higher ranked area for some reason. Now when you combine that with Detection, Ethereal Aura, Prismatic Intent, and Aura IFF? He can find the target if they're anywhere within almost a kilometer, and/or blast attack auras without anyone even able to tell he's casting (barring mage sight?), without causing any collateral damage at all. The target, who could be hundreds of meters away and not even know he exists, would just suddenly burst into flames (or whatever aura aspect) while everyone freaks out. Toss on some Tallheart armor with obscuring enchantments and no one is going to be able to tell it's Rain; let alone suspect a person wearing metal armor of being the mage responsible. And that's just silverplate. At goldplate, if things upgrade at all similarly as it does when you hit silver, his range will be over 2-3 kilometers in every direction. Good luck hiding from that in anything but a properly enchanted bunker or headquarters. Goldplate Rain (or an assassin with this build) could kill the target while they're buying some bread from kilometers away.

Ziggy

Leave it to the human computer to get memory leaks and need hard reboots.

Loipers

Wouldn't Rain have been softlocked out of using PI if he didn't take Mana Manipulation? I know Kettel is having the same mana leakage issue, but it doesn't just straight up prevent him from using his skills. Also why were Ameliah and Tallheart surprised by this development? Shouldn't this be a common occurrence for new awakened getting their baby's first skill-stacking skill?

Starless

Thanks for the chapter.

Joshua Little

Another set back, who would have guessed it…

John

Is it though? From what we know, Prismatic Intent is the only thing that'll ever profit Rain from this training.

So Rain is essentially still a novice when it comes to mastering his spells and eliminating mana inefficiency with them and it is directly showing in prismatic intent. Good news is that prismatic intent will be able to point him in the right direction for improvement (not falling unconscious for longer means progress). Well it’s for the the best that Rain ran into this issue early here (where he has a relative amount of free time in a fairly safe place) instead of the depths or something. After all, Rain is a very new awakened and he has made a ridiculous amount of progress due to being a Dynamo. Being a Dynamo also means he gets all the mana he needs to practice (even if you aren’t talented, practice more). Rain will hit the level cap pretty fast anyway and his restrictions on daily mana use will ease up as his skills level as well. Being able to practice to eliminate mana waste is a good activity for a capped silver looking to improve.

Conor McGroarty

https://bestspellever.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Characters

SenescentSoul

Damm the MC is really drowing and in a swamp with all the possibility and thing he need to do and test, this is really overwhelming to be in his situation and think about all that (he gonna need years to calm all that and finish most of his present todo list and test/look at most of the possibility he keep getting) Poor Rain :)

Zarik0

I think Kata is different for magic spell that the physical Kata I guess technically they can learn it manually but after years and years and years of learning and maybe not succed Magical Kata seem to give you a magic spell/framework and not just how to use knowledge like most of the physical Kata Here he get the "metamagic" construct/framework working between the 2 auras So learning manually is the same as creating a total new spell/skill manually, basically impossible with how complicated is the framework of spell/skill he have seen in the past

Zarik0

People are always either bitching that progress is too fast, followed by long periods of stalling, or too slow. I think SS found an elegant solution here, forcing Rain to work just as hard as the regular mages. This was even foreshadowed last chapter with his inefficient mana usage and spell leakage. He thought it didn't matter because he's an Engine of Change, but now he's come to the painful realization that he ended up in Kettel's shoes. Considering he's someone who always takes the easy route, this is well-deserved and has potential for some actual character growth.

Cirvante

So if "Prismatic Intent" is a Kata, Tarny can learn it manually? Though it's unclear, if Seasons can be channeled concurrently by one user. And Rain will never be in a position to test that himself. Or what it feels like to be under multiple (Rain Winter, Ameliah Spring, Tarny Fall) seasons at once *cough, Tarny chapter, cough*.

Its not foreshadowed at all!! And it doesn't fit at all with how auras have operated in story either. The whole thing with auras is they're supposed to be on/off AoE magic with no real actions required on the part of the user. That is the beauty of them. And the trade off for that simplicity is that you have to pay a incredibly high "mana tax" which effectively limits their use in most situations. Adding kung fu kata moves to it out of nowhere makes no sense in that context. Yeah it'll add some skill grinding to the story but he is already limiting himself there on purpose so he'll be grinding for a while anyways. That is assuming too that he won't start spending his xp on T4 skill reveals either. The juice doesn't seem worth the squeeze here.

tibbish

We thought 15 points in Auras was difficult, but it also had the hidden requirement of git gud.

Pyrefiend

After reflecting a bit on this chapter, I think having PI being a kata is a good thing for the story, but that it feels insufficiently foreshadowed. After all the last thing the story needs is Rain speeding up to peek lvl 30 power and being stuck there. It's much better if the climb is part of a longer journey, exploring the skills and their implications. But I also think it's highly problematic that no one had foreseen this, even among the highly motivated theory-crafters in the discord. Basically hints about it should have been dropping as he returned from the delve, or when they were discussing elemental refinement. It should have been an "ah, of cause it is" realization rather than the redesign of the skill progression it now is. Even the discussions on spell shape and casting skill should have been earlier.

Chymor

Is there some kind of glossary where you can search character names, and how rain met them? I'm starting to lose track 😅

stubs

Ethereal Aura requires Mana Manipulation, but does not require mana manipulation, while Prismatic Intent does not require Mana Manipulation, but does require mana manipulation?

Starless

After the last 3 chapter which I felt dragged on a bit this one had great pacing and I really liked it.

Monus

I don't think so for skills like wards and utility auras. But you know how damage auras have a damage range? I could see him trending slight towards the upper bounds if he is more efficient

Monus

I think you are mixing up Mana manipulation and channel mastery

Monus

The problem with his stat boost auras is that they're so strong they can kill or injure his own people. He has to essentially throttle them back quite a bit all the time so the effective boosts are really much lower than what they could be. Its only the Silver and Gold tiers that could really benefit from them. Even then synchronization issues are still a thing in story.

tibbish

This chapter was quite a bit of disappointment. The prismatic thing being a kata is inconsistent with what we have seen with the other multi-skill skills, and combined with the serious limitations, it becomes obvious that it only has this form because the author wants to both nerf the MC and want to drag out the grind even more. Things have now gotten so far in that direction, that I no longer want to financially support it, even if I have to wait a couple of months to continue reading.

Ninetails

So does this mean that he's going to get more mana efficient as he increases his kata?

Forrest Minter

All he needs to do to have ample study time is run the auras that allow for a longer turnover before he passes out, then periodically switch them off so that he can vent the soot for a few seconds, and then re-engage them. Basically he just needs a timer/alarm macro for specific aura combos to alert him before he passes out. He could also see if it's possible to create a "soot meter." Even if soot isn't a technically quantifiable resource, he can design an equation based on his time to pass out to measure soot generation, and that will create a usable framework for what he needs. Later as his kata goes up in level he can add that as a part of the equation.

Forrest Minter

Ah but its not one grindy skill. Its All his auras. Turns out that when he thought he didnt need practice like other mages. he just couldnt see how badly he was performing The skills

Jeppe Fiig

Damn I honestly can't imagine seeing all those stat boost auras and not immediately snatching them up. I know it doesn't necessarily fit his build or whatever, but seeing as how he's a leader now, it makes a lot of sense to take those kinds of auras. Imagine what his people could do with an aura that has a base value of 33 extra strength. Now imagine that applied to a wide area, and more than doubled by metamagic. (Probably excluding the unawakened so they don't rip themselves apart with the excessive stat boost) then imagine if he ran two stat auras simultaneously. Anyone nearby could be 12+ levels more powerful than their real level depending on his metamagic usage. Actually the main problem would be making sure he didn't boost it too much so that no one else broke their soul.

Forrest Minter

Oh lord. It's a kata? Well, that'll be interesting. I assumed we'd see a skill for stamina like Suppression is for mana, so that's cool. Also, side note for the reveal of mana manipulation last chapter. Adding in the ability to increase efficiency for a cooldown is nifty, but that's yet another layer of consideration and math on top of all the other stuff. Making even more work for yourself lol. But there's no mention of mana manipulation suddenly able to do under 1% and/or more precise measurement. So doesn't that mean that his wards are effectively throttled for efficiency? He'll be able to do over 100% for like100 meters, and he can shrink it down to smaller to cover more percentage of damage in case of piercing. But if he can't bring the cost of the skill under 1%, it'll always be at least 0.04 mana per damage and never be more efficient. Maybe mana manipulation would allow it once it hits 16-20? Who knows.

Ziggy

My immediate thought for a solution would be some way of venting the soot. He has a hole in his paling, it would not be a stretch to use it to his advantage as a sort of exhaust pipe. Unfortunately the kata portion means that there should be a way to use multiple auras without making exhaust, and that learning that way is how he progresses the skill. It kind of sucks though, if Rain had a mentor who had experience with aura skills he would be able to practice the kata without taking the point IIRC. It's also interesting to note that looking at the 'something else' is not the cause of his spurts of unconsciousness, meaning if he solves the build up issue he may be able to study the underlying spell structure that allows multiple auras to work in tandem. The way it interacts with auras may be the answer to whether he can use more than two auras or not. If it's a pattern that isolates the auras by simply not interacting or reacting with the aura spells then it can possibly just be cast over and over again as a sort of filter between each aura. However, if it instead is something that specifically forces two auras to work at the same time by changing them just enough to function, then there may be an upper limit. If each spell relies on common structures to exist then a spell that forces the two auras to work by filtering redundancies would eventually not be able to filter everything. Or at least, that's what I think could happen based on what we know from the story so far. Spells and aura structures are sort of the least talked about portion of the story. We know how spells work with certain meta magics and we know all the nitty gritty of how the spells interact with the world, but we've never seen Rain attempt to disassemble a spell into component parts. Love the chapter! Ignore the word vomit if you want, I'm just in a overthinking mood.

Sean

Science! https://xkcd.com/242/

Jump 'N Shoot Man

Thanks for the chapter!

Cjack PVP

A good chapter with some nice screens. We also get another grindy skill for Rain to work on. Outside of leveling he now has his soul, stat synergy, scripts, and prismatic intent to work on. Looks like that time diluation will be put to good use.

Thransk

I was not able to defeat your challenge and find any typos, fwiw - but it's also 0116 here and I'm barely awake, so others may do much better :) (good chapter! How long until Rain thinks of strobing/pulsing PI to see if the soot clears out?)

Mike G.