Spike of All Trades

by Ariamaki

Zero Hour: Part END

How to bargain with himself. Cutting a deal with his own brain, or whatever it was that made his internal game engine tick...

Meditation came first, sinking down into his own body and mind. He found it easiest to settle into the rhythms using Syzygy, Lyra's methods each in turn giving him a grasp on magic's essential parts. Then he shifted into Omphaloskepsis, with which he took his sweet time investigating his frame. This time it wasn't just the metaphorical self-image, but a proper analysis, biopsy-by-magic. He used Observe and Dragon's Eye back to back and in concert, focusing down on his stomach.

There sat the Unihorn: A solid piece of gleaming steel, still shimmering with leftover magic. He'd kept up appearances around Twilight and continued using Respire and EMC to do the last of the sorting and shelving earlier: Now he could see the cost of that. The area around the horn was sick, twisted up and mangled in unusual ways. Spike had been forcing himself to use magic with no real horn or organ or horgan or whatever, and this was the result.

Now he was planning to change that. Or he at least had an inkling of an idea of a plan. It started by just saying...

"How do I fix this?"

Spike didn't expect a verbal answer, or even a system message. He was just asking himself to try and get his thoughts in order, not a literally rhetorical question but an act of self-reflection.

That made the fact that he got a reply extra surprising.

You are attempting to resolve a system conflict.
Would you like to peruse potential known options?

If his body had been doing anything but maintaining a breathing pattern, his jaw would probably be slack. As it stood even his self-image was kinda flabbergasted, 'staring' into the metaphorical null-space where the message box just impudently jutted into view. Was this actually going to work?

"...Sure?"

There are no known potential solutions.
Would you like to devise a solution?

He almost growled his response in frustrated anger, until he realized. No known solutions. Devise one... This was helping. It wasn't self-reflection at this point, he was nudging himself in the right direction. The system was only a part of his mind, but it was a deeper and more unconscious part, a more subconscious part. By using meditation as a tool to confront it, he could ask his waking mind the questions that his sleeping self already knew.

"Yeah. I want to... make a skill. But not just any skill."

He'd already gotten so many pieces and parts of his heritage from the system: Claws, Heart, Mind, Breath, Hoard, Scales, Bones, Kitchen, Den, Eye... All the Dragon's Skills. Not all of them were literal parts of a dragon's body, but so far the ones that were had all been part of his body. Now he was missing something that (apparently) some kinds of dragons had. That was the solution: Make the missing part, whether literal or not.

Checking character values...
50+ base value in all core attributes.
A personally-created skill for growth.
A personally-attuned skill for magic.
Access to reference skills and spells.
Personal character level 19 or higher.

All requirements are met for the creation of the [Dragon's Horn]

Missing element: System for the interweaving of existing skills.
Current system {Skill Merger} is insufficient for this purpose.

That had bothered him, but always in the background: Twilight's portion of the Benediction quest required him to hit a minimum number of skills. Yet every time he got a few in one swoop they were all Merged together into one big unit. Sure the result was probably greater than the individual skills would have been functionally, but it bugged him anyways. It felt bad (as both a gamer and as a person) to have all those individual prizes get snatched away at the last minute. Now it was clear that it wasn't just annoying: It wasn't good enough anymore.

"What does it take to add an entirely new system?"

Potential.

He thought back over his past changes to skills, and the answer was obvious in retrospect.
"How many of those 'Unlockers' I got do I have left? The ones I got from Pinkie Pie on the first day."

Indeterminate.

Right: He'd never had an actual value for them, no inventory space or counter. They were just there when he needed them, like when he had turned the Dragon's Heart into a scaling buff in order to launch Scootaloo up to Rainbow Dash's house. So if he didn't know how many he had...
"...Is it enough?"

This time the answer wasn't something he knew, or even something he could possibly know. But that didn't matter: He'd apparently gotten far enough along in his mental math for the engine to carry the rest of the weight. Just like after his defeat of the Glittershell, two mutually-exclusive options appeared in their own distinct boxes. In front of them was another message to-and-from himself, standing before the metaphorical doors like a prize show host.

You are attempting to upgrade your ability to bring skills together, {Skill Merger}.
You may choose between {Skill Combination} or {Skill Synthesis}.

Through combining skills together into one cohesive whole, their sacrifice makes one grand skill.
This consumes skills used in the process and removes them from your skill list, as {Merger} does.
Their Level and EXP is retained and contributes to the created skill's starting Level and growth.
The created skill retains every function of all combined skills and additionally gains new functions.
The created skill will automatically consume new future skills in order to improve and evolve.

Through fusing specific aspects of skills based on common grounds, you can create new skills.
This does not consume the skills used in the process, but denotes them as its 'parent skills'.
All skills created this way start at Level 1 with 0 EXP, and require more EXP than usual skills.
The created skill's properties are not certain and usefulness cannot be guaranteed in advance.
The created skill itself can be used as a parent skill for future synthesis, and so on with no limit.

There were two competing voices in Spike's head. Everything else was silent except for the two sides, one slithering like a serpent and the other comforting and soft.

The first voice was far more familiar, more personal, more real. That voice was one he'd been trying to find, seeking it his whole life. It was his heritage and the voice of family he had never seen, and it said Listen: Everything I love, I will devour. The other voice was infinitely more important, since it was the voice that he chose every day. He grew up beside it, lived with it, immersed himself in it from the day he was hatched. It said The magic of friendship grows.

Spike didn't hesitate.

"Skill Synthesis. Parent skills: Respire, External Mana Control."

You have consumed all of your remaining Unlockers.
Through a choice of heritage, you have made a decision that echoes across Equestria.
Somewhere, your choice has been made known.

A one-of-a-kind skill has been created by The Gamer! Through the blood you own and the family you choose, the [Dragon's Horn] has been created!

[Dragon's Horn] (Active and Passive) Lv 1 EXP: 0.00% MP: Varies
One day, long ago and far away, an elder dragon said this: "Let no dragon who comes after me bear a horn or use the magic of ponykind." This was an immutable Law set down by something that will always hold a grudge and never forgive a transgression. Was an immutable Law, past tense. In breaking this Law, you have proven that the code which binds is not absolute. Laws serve the People and People help each other.

May your magic, like your friendship, ever grow.

Your entire body now doubles as a mana-controlling organ at all times.
You may choose to grow or retract a number of horns at will, at the cost of HP.
External horns can be used as weapons and tools, and improve the channeling of magic.
Spells cast without an external horn cannot be detected until the moment of casting.

This skill will grow indefinitely based on your age and accumulation of spells and MP.

Parent skills: Respire, External Mana Control

The Unihorn began to dissolve then, first on the edges and then furiously bubbling across its entire surface. Spike felt the power of it, the essence, spreading through his body. Fire in the belly, fire in the blood... It roiled and steamed and sprang from place to place, making uncannily subtle changes to every aspect of flesh and bone. His scales too: An impossibly faint silver tone underlined the spines and ridges of his body, just visible in the way they caught the light.

That same glinting silver also overtook the MP bar in his status screen, turning the blue a shade lighter and ever-so-slightly metallic. Most importantly for his peace of mind, the black sludge on the corner of his HP meter burned away in a flicker of (comically pixelated) silver flame. That got Spike to smile, and as he stretched and stood up from his bed? He returned back to his normal form. Not a little chubby fledgling, no longer a baby dragon in a world of adults, but properly and truly The Gamer.