To Rebuild a Mageocracy

Twenty-Two

^^ Hallow (Draconians) ^^

— Nonith, Tier Three Black Gate, Anitra —

The Dungeon was dark, lacking any interior lighting until I cast Light on my shield to light up the entire room and illuminate the group of Spiked Lizards in front of us. "They look friendly! Anyone care for some cuddles?"

An arrow sprouted out of one of their eyes, as Heric fired her bow past my head, frowning. "You're entirely too blasé about danger, Lady Anitra."

"I'm just lightening the mood!" My mace slammed down into the skull of the first lizard to reach us, but instead of killing it it just disoriented it before it slammed my shield anyway, forcing my feet to grind back along the ground with its stats and weight combined. "Mmmkay this might be a problem!!! This guy is reeeeally heavy!!!"

Aron's sword swung down in front of my shield in a simple arc, cutting the head off the lizard before he ducked back behind me. "Just halt their charges and we'll kill them!"

My only immediate answer was a grunt as I slammed my shield into the next enemy's skull, repeating the process until the room was empty of anything but corpses, which I butchered and sent away to the Warehouse to handle later. "Alright... Tier Three Monsters are stronger than I thought... those other ones weren't as strong as this, right?"

Aron shook his head. "No, they weren't; I imagine this one will be a step harder than the previous... caution will be Key. Do you have a Scouting Familiar? If not, I can go, though this armor you gave me doesn't really lend itself to improving my stealth."

"Does it detract from your stealth abilities in any way?" I asked dryly.

"Well, no, but... I dunno, Shapeshifting armor sounded so awesome when you explained it, and now it's just..."

"Underwhelming?" I supplied.

"Yes! I'm not being ungrateful, just... a little disappointed, I guess."

"Mm. Well, it wasn't intended to increase your stealth; it increases your ability to blend into a crowd and be forgotten after your gone; it actively makes people forget they saw you, without making you invisible, which you understand would actually make you more visible in an Urban Environment, which is what that armor was designed to assist you with, not a Dungeon. The sword is for the dungeon." I chuckled and patted his shoulder, summoning one of my familiars for scouting the next room; this was just a tiny slime creature, which paradoxically was just as if not stronger than Hallow, in the right circumstances.

This slime was made of pure Tier Seven Magic Crystals, enchanted as a Magic Item by combining it with a Grimoire Infinitus that I'd filled with scrolls for the spells Acid Splash, Arms of Hadar, Arcane Eye, Bane, Bestow Curse, Blight, Blur, Clairvoyance, Cloudkill, Contagion, Create/Destroy Water, Darkness, Darkvision, Detect Evil and Good, Detect Poison and Disease, Detect Thoughts, Drawmij's Instant Summons, Enlarge/Reduce, Expeditious Retreat, Evard's Black Tentacles, Eyebite, Feeblemind, Find Familiar, Find The Path, Find Traps, Fly, Fog Cloud, Freedom Of Movement, Gaseous Form, Grease, Greater Invisibility, Gust of Wind, Haste, Hunger of Hadar, Identify, Knock, Levitation, Locate Creature, Locate Objects, Magic Mouth, Major Image, Mindblank, Mirage Arcane, Misty Step, Modify Memory, Nondetection, Nystul's Magic Aura, Phantasmal Killer, Pass Without A Trace, Poison Spray, Power Word Kill, Regenerate, Resurrection, Reverse Gravity, Silence, Simulacrum, Spider Climb, Stinking Cloud, Thaumaturgy, Tongues, True Seeing, Weird, and Zone of Truth. The resulting Crystal Book was then turned into a Slime and given an A.I., turning into a Monster. This process merged most of the spells within into simpler forms, but it remained that I now had a Tier Seven Assassin in my shadow at all times that acted independently, and whom I could look through and summon just like a normal Familiar. If normal Familiars were Self-Replicating Grey-Ooze type monsters that could replicate themselves endlessly with Simulacrum if they had Magic Crystals to fuel the growth, of course. Which they aren't.