Returning to the Arcanist Class also meant that he had to return to combat Challenges. As much as further combat practice against Nia might have been valuable, John wanted to accelerate his growth. Finishing all of the Classes he wanted to and a Raid, while still inside this current grind barrier, was basically impossible. He wanted to take a gander at that Raid though, if nothing else. If it proved too hard to even slay a single boss in a sensible time, an Adventure would also do it.

John had to invest another six days to get all of the Arcanist Perks done. As a positive aside, he got a whole lot of other Class Challenges done in parallel. That he no longer needed to have the Classes be active in order to get their Challenges done aided him a bit in saving at least some time. Higher level Challenges were basically impossible to get done without focusing on them, but at least a few basic Perks could be acquired this way.

Such as the two extra Arcweaver Perks he wanted.

John had whistled quietly to himself when seeing these choices. They were all quite potent. Mana Chain Strike was perhaps the most interesting of the lot, given that it had two use scenarios. Shackling enemies together could be quite interesting. Particularly, John liked the idea of Possessing something and casting Mana Chain on his main enemy, just as he used the Mana Chain Strike. That would get both of them hindered in their mobility with a very quick and cheap combo.

Quick on paper, at least. In reality, when fighting enemies of his level, relying on a melee hit wasn’t a smart tactic. If they were physically superior to him, it was a bad idea to invest in a Skill that relied on him getting into a fistfight. If they were physically inferior to him, he didn’t really need the Skill. If they were about on par, throwing one of his familiars at the problem seemed like the proper way to solve the issue.

Magus Step had four advantages and two drawbacks. Leading with the bad, it had less maximum stacks than Shifting Momentum and didn’t have the ‘you gain a stack by spending 1’000 mana’ component. John liked the ability to spend mana in an emergency and get a quick teleport stack. However, the ‘having no cost’ bit was definitely an advantage as well. Further was that the stacks didn’t fall off and with the cooldown being relatively low, the Gamer would rarely be caught with his proverbial pants down. The range being doubled further helped elevate its usefulness and, lastly, changing from John having to ‘see’ the endpoint of the teleportation to having to ‘perceive’ it was very interesting. If he paired that up with some Unfound Perks, it could be incredibly powerful.

Cheap Shot wasn’t up John’s alley at all, but he acknowledged its usefulness. Essentially, he would get a free, 250 mana spell every time he landed a Technique. However, to get use out of that, he would need to get a high amount of Techniques and employ them in his regular battle strategy. He didn’t plan to do that whatsoever.

Therefore, Magus Step had been the chosen Perk.

Cheap Shot was still out and the same arguments to exclude it applied to Arcane Resonance. That only left Punishment Chain as a possible choice. It wasn’t exactly the best Perk ever, but it would have its uses.

‘The better Mana Chain becomes, the more attractive the Possession Modification gets,’ John had thought at the time. Using that passive of choice, John could cast Possession with any part of his body and even through his Equipment. Casting a shackling spell from the floor was just that much better than doing so from his own palm. It was a good Modification in general, John just kept on the Lover Boy one because it gave him 25GP a day and that was a value in its own. Sadly, the same Perk that allowed him to get several levels worth out of time dilation through Experience of Love didn’t apply to those GP rewards.

‘Oh baby…’ John had thought when seeing those choices. ‘Upgrades are good in this grinding session… very, very good.’ They were so good he had trouble deciding again.

Melding Rays was interesting. Range and damage increasing equal to the amount of parts used was just the baseline that made it usable. The real kicker was the last bit. Direction being dependent on the way the two Arcana Rays intersected allowed a whole bunch of aiming shenanigans. Many of them would be incredibly complicated and would doubtlessly require many hours of getting used to the trigonometry, but John was certain that he had the Intellect to make proper use of it in all the right and complicated ways. Aside from all of that, it gave him Magicka vibes, which his internal nerd just screamed for.

Immoveable may have been the most underwhelming of the bunch. Few enemies ever tried to throw him. Regardless, it was an incredibly fun idea to put the Strength of even the most powerful people on Earth (and beyond) up against his mana reservoir. Being the immovable object just sounded like an awesome time.

However, it was Chain Arcana that seemed to be the best. At the moment, Unstable Arcana was easily the least used of John’s arcane spells. Its uses were twofold: blocking corridors or dealing damage in tight areas. Adding a Mana Chain into that, even at 50% durability, was hilariously powerful. Unstable Arcana pulsed up to twice per second. Bonus damage of the chain aside, this meant the Unstable Arcana would just be throwing out crowd control at an absurd pace. The random target component was slightly counterproductive during area damage situations, but the chain was still extra damage. When there was only a single target, they would be bombarded with chains, forcing them to stay in the area and be hit with more and more pulses, stacking more chains.

Presumably, all chains would fall off when the Unstable Arcana despawned, but that was a worthwhile effect regardless. The price increase was actually a discount for the regular Mana Chain. Put all together, there was basically no drawback to picking it and it elevated one of John’s less useful spells to an incredibly powerful crowd control tool.

The Chain Arcana choice made and some grinding later, John went onto Perk seven of the Arcanist Class.

Once more, John had to forego the Melding Rays in favour of the Unstable Arcana related choice. Every thirty seconds was pretty high for a cooldown, but it was a free damage pulse and a free Mana Chain. Shackling people to John wasn’t all that useful, but shackling people to the Mandala Sphere was pretty damn good. The only drawback John could identify was that it could reveal who the double was, but given the toggleable state of the ability, that drawback could be avoided.

Immoveable was still categorized as meh, making the choice incredibly easy between the remaining two. This was because, frankly put, Steady Pulses was hot garbage – at least right now. As John had already noted and, between Perk acquisitions, confirmed: the Mana Chains spawned by Unstable Arcana despawned when the sphere throwing them out was used up and fizzled out. Doubling the speed at which the Unstable Arcana depleted itself would drastically increase its damage per second but it would also decrease its utility. Further Perks or John’s mana ramping up to a level where he could throw out absurdly powerful Unstable Arcanas regularly might alleviate this drawback. What it also did was reduce the Companion Arcana cooldown from 30 to 15 seconds. That was admittedly powerful, but not powerful enough for John to resist the call of Melding Rays.

Using angle calculations and a Magicka-esque death-ray was just too wonderful to pass up on.

Hit with repeating choices, the Gamer picked the most attractive upgrade: Joining Rays. It would be incredibly difficult to control the direction of the outgoing attack with five angles involved, not to mention the mana he would need to burn to keep such an attack active. It arguably had the same drawback as Steady Pulses, in that John couldn’t possibly afford to get a lot of use out of it with his current mana. He felt more confident about Arcana Ray’s power going forwards, however. That and the cool factor just compelled him to pick it.

‘…Interesting…’ John thought and stroked his chin, finally done with all of the Arcanist Challenges and looking at his last set of choices. ‘Disco Sphere of Death is out,’ he decided pretty much immediately. Random directions made it unpalatable, given the thinness of each ray. Even with the maximum of 25 Arcana Rays fracturing out of the Unstable Arcana, John didn’t see any guaranteed use from the Perk aside from burning very peculiar patterns into the walls of whatever place he fought at.

Pulse Ultra sounded hilarious and would be an absolute nuke in any swarm situation. Although none of them would last beyond the initial impact, each spawned Unstable Arcana would also launch one Mana Chain. If there was ever an enemy that stood in a sea of cockroaches, this would blow them up in an arcane inferno that would be awe-inspiring to behold. Even with just a couple of enemies, the additional damage created by Pulse Ultra was incredible. It certainly had an immediate use and didn’t require John to think any more about his current game plan.

Fusing Rays was borderline unusable.

Activating an Arcana Ray cost 1’000 mana up front and then 100 mana per second. Therefore, having 10 of them active cost 10’000 mana and then another 1000 per second. John currently had an MP bar that could hold about 11’000 mana and he regenerated about 34 MP per second. Arcane Ascension, Purgatory’s enchantment, was no help in this situation. The way it worked, it would pay either three or five times, depending on the state of Rising Annihilation, John’s maximum mana for one spell. The problem was that each Arcana Ray was its own spell. He couldn’t separate that out to make the enchantment finance the Fusing Rays.

It would take immense investments into Intellect and Wisdom to make it possible to use in even niche situations, where he somehow hadn’t spent most of his mana on other things.

‘But that might be a good thing,’ John thought. ‘I’ve been without a clear goal when it comes to Stats for a while now. Having something that motivates my decisions and keeps me focused in a certain direction could be valuable.’ He paused and inspected that line of logic. ‘That’s probably motivated reasoning,’ he told himself and tried to take a more distant view on the matter.

Did he strictly need either Fusing Rays or Pulse Ultra?

The answer to that was no. Both in single target and area damage, he was currently well served. There was a slight tilt towards powerful area of effect tools, however. Arcana Strike, Unstable Arcana and, counting them as tools for the sake of analysis, Salamander, Gnome, Unleashed Undine and Unleashed Stirwin were all fantastic at dealing damage in large areas. When it came to single targets, Arc Lance, Arcana Ray, Siena and Beatrice were the greatest assets he would reliably have available in combat. Sylph was hovering somewhere between those categories.

He wasn’t underserved in either category, but there was a slight tilt towards one he may want to balance out.

Was there a reason to dedicate his Stats to make Fusing Rays work? Was there a reason not to?

John assumed that it would take getting both Intellect and Wisdom to 1000 to make Fusing Rays a viable choice in situations it could be taken advantage of. Increasing his mana supply also increased his defences, so he wasn’t pressed to increase Endurance in that time. The best use of his health bar, often enough, was to use it to prevent his mana from taking a hit.

Not investing in Strength and Agility would make him fall further behind physically skilled opponents, but that hardly mattered if he could blow them to smithereens. It was alright to be worse than others in some things, unavoidable really, as long as his specialization overpowered those differences.

Investing into Charisma and Libido was a luxury thing anyway. John was already more than charismatic enough to keep his Federation together through words and wit. More helped more, but getting to 500 Charisma wouldn’t be a focus anytime in the near future regardless of what else he did.

Getting more mana was always good, no matter whether he used Fusing Rays or not.

‘Yeah, I think it’s still a viable choice,’ John concluded. ‘It might not necessarily be the better one between the two, but it’s not so bad that it’s doubtlessly inferior. At least not in the long term.’

He made the choice and looked at the three windows that followed.

The Modification turned out to be the same as the Puppeteer one, with the difference being that it allowed the casting of arcane spells, rather than Possession. Despite a greater list of castable spells, John found that to be the worse Modification. No spell came to mind that would be made better by casting it with another part of his body. Only the surprise factor was really worth anything. If he had chosen another path in Arcweaver, it could have been really useful.

The Modification may have been bad, but the Overclock was godlike. Using it would allow him to punch way above his weight, with its laundry list of bonuses and explosive finish ensuring his supremacy. The problem with it was that he had to end the fight in the ten minutes the Overclock gave him and he had to be sure that nothing else was coming afterwards. It left him with no mana to speak of, which meant that all of his offenses and defenses were gone. What he still had were his familiars, because they ran off percentage mana, and Magus Step would still be available. That’d allow him to be somewhat secure, defensively, but he would still be incredibly vulnerable. Potentially, he wouldn’t even have the mana to keep his contacts Possessed.

It was a fantastic cooldown for desperate situations, but a cooldown for desperate situations regardless.

The choice of new Classes was promising, if only because the passive bonuses were powerful as well. Between channelling speed, kinetic force and arcane damage, John favoured the channelling speed. John knew for sure that he had two spells that would benefit from it, being Arcana Strike and Arc Lance, both of which had a wind-up time. ‘Wonder if it increases the amount of times Arcana Ray deals damage as well,’ the Gamer thought. ‘It is a channelled spell… would that also increase the cost? No, the cost is written as mana per second, not per damage instance. Then again… well, I should just ask.’ “Gaia almighty on your couch,” John started, his hands meeting in prayer, “please bestow upon me the wisdom that I may know if Silver Arcanist increases the cost of any of my spells.”

Clouds gathered in the untainted blue sky of Magoi’s Illusion Barrier. White, grey and black, they appeared out of nowhere, spread out into a carpet and then condensed into three letters. ‘Nah,’ they read.

“Thanks, bootiful goddess.”

‘You’re welcome,’ the clouds spelled out before dissipating.

John hummed and turned back to the window. Passive bonus aside, the question was what he wanted to do with his arcane spells going forwards. Red and purple were different paths towards damage, which was valuable, yes, but not really what John looked for in his spells. More than anything else, John valued reliability. Having spells ready quicker and having Perks that helped with the fluid application sounded right up his alley.