Chapter 27: Departure
“Those are a totally unique power that only the Princesses can bring to bear."
At first Spike had been listening to avoid offending other Guards in the future. Now he was listening with rapt attention for an entirely different reason: This was big, and now he understood why Celestia hadn't explained the details to him when he’d essentially been a baby.
"It's called Benediction. An unrepeatable and irreproducible miracle that cannot be faked, imitated, copied, stolen, taken or broken. In a very real and literal way, it's an investiture of their authority onto their most trusted servants. We carry a fraction of Luna's power, and as such we are like her eyes and ears and hooves in the world. The Benediction is something no normal pony could do, not even a unicorn as powerful as Ms. Twilight. Cadance, maybe... I wondered why Captain Armor never took the call from Celestia, but maybe he's waiting for his lover to make her own version, to be her First."
"Yeah that sounds like something Shiny would do alright."
"Shin- Right, you're basically his nephew. Hah! I guess you could ask him directly, hear it from the horse's mouth. Of course, if the pattern holds true then he might not have an easy time of it..."
"Pattern?"
"Mmh. Celestia's Benediction sort of 'gravitates' towards unicorns. It's why you see so many in the Day Guard, above and beyond Canterlot demographics. And Luna's leans towards pegasi: Hence all the flying Night Guard. Cadance having an easier time laying her power onto earth ponies would complete the little triad, and historically speaking magic likes neat little sets like that."
"Ooooh. That... Wow. This is a big deal. And I can guess it's not a 'public knowledge' sort of thing?"
"Natch: I had assumed you knew, being from the palace and all... I guess when you were younger Celestia might not have wanted to explain the details."
Spike nodded, letting his thoughts drift. It made sense in a lot of ways. And it... Well. The idea of a power that only one single pony in all of the world could use, something just as unique as a Cutie Mark and yet was shared with others by its very nature... It gave him ideas. Not ideas he could act on just yet... But in the back of his mind, the ticket from this morning held an all-new significance.
Further musing was interrupted by Piercing Ammunition standing up and offering a hoof to Spike. He took it and stretched, looking over at the one section of the arcade they hadn't gone through yet.
"Long-term games is all that's left: A lot of the stuff with that 'profile' tech, role-playing games and adventures and building games. These are all pretty much permanent installations, instead of swap cabinets: Made sense to give the games ponies are likely to replay a more permanent home."
"Favorite section, here we come!"
"Heh. Lead the way, little expert."
A blur of cabinets and rapid-fire patter and chatter later, Spike and Piercing Ammunition came out the other side of the 'longplay' island and up into the food court. Pierce, for his part, was mulling over everything Spike had explained about the costs of playing some of the really long-term games, while Spike himself was engrossed in his latest piece of user interface.
> Hit the Arcade, Look at RPGs (research!)
Reward: Quality Assurance
[Quality Assurance] (Subskill) Lv Max EXP: 0.00% MP: N/A
For one who has the ability to claim all things, study all things, learn all things, know all things, and become all things, it is important to make sure that what you do claim, study, learn, know, and become are of the utmost quality. This skill enhances 'Observe' to make sure you don't waste time.
Your Observe is now capable of highlighting objects which pertain directly to The Gamer.
This includes but is not limited to:
Skillbooks, Skillgames, Fuel-for-Fire, Buff Consumables, and Recipes.
"...Who slash what writes these things?"
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Sure. That aside, think fast: The gals are a-comin'."
Spike straightened his posture and tapped the skill window closed with a quick jab of his attention. Sure enough, Rarity and Arcane were approaching from across the food court, having some kind of animated discussion that he couldn't quite hear. By the time they made it all the way over, their conversation had ended, so Spike put it all out of mind. It wasn't his business, right? But it seemed like Arcane Ammunition had some amount of business with him, from the way she was angling that piece of paper towards his face.
"Here you go!"
He looked down. It was a schedule written onto a copy of the next month’s calendar, a few blocks of several hours marked off on various days, at various hours early and late alike.
"...Um?"
"You mentioned having some interest in Rarity's ranged spells, yes? And I don't doubt that my husband got some ideas into your head as well, so... Those are times we'd be free, if you want to come learn from us. Rara's welcome too: If I'm going to be teaching things anyways I might as well get two birds with one. And we wouldn't mind getting some work out of you in return, of course..."
He cut her off with a surprise hug, smiling wide.
"That's so cool! I'll make sure I can find a time where I have openings and Twilight isn't having me do anything at the library and... Yeah! Thank you so much."
"Nothing to it, kid. You two need anything else before we go our separate ways for the day? It has been one beast of an afternoon for sure."
Rarity shook her head, while Spike stood up and surreptitiously slid the schedule into his Inventory when nopony was looking.
"I think we're good to go!"
The four of them walked to the front doors of the arcade, right back where he had started. It felt like it had been a long time since he arrived, but emotional moments always made him feel that way. In reality, it was still a good forty-five minutes before school was scheduled to let out, so he was right on pace.
"Nice meeting you two!"
"And you as well, kid."
"Keep in touch, huh Rara?"
"Of course. I merely had a fair few spring orders to get through and-"
"No excuses. We literally know where you live, all that jazz."
"Pfffine."
As Rarity trotted away, Spike turned back to take another look at the husband and wife duo. For the sake of testing his earlier Observe grinding, he made an effort to use it anew on both of them. He expected two boxes of information to pop up... What he got was a chorus of dinging bells and seven boxes. Above the two Observes were quest completions and one new message, first of its kind.
> Look at Ponies (titles? levels?)
Reward: Indra's Net
> "Game"
Reward: 2,500 Experience (+240 from bonuses)
Your level has increased by one!
Your level has increased by one!
His claw shook a little as he tapped the name of the unknown reward: With a name like that, it had equal odds of being an item or a skill. Turns out it was the second...
[Indra's Net] (Subskill) Lv Max EXP: 0.00% MP: N/A
In the same way that one pearl reflects all others. In the same way that one thread connects all things. Denying the singular vision of Gutei, those who see the world through the filter called Indra's Net are able to perceive the inherent and pervasive interrelationship of all things.
Your Observe is now usable on the relationships between things, as well as the things themselves.
All uses of Indra's Net are automatically compiled into a network of relationships (In a new menu).
Relationships that you know about are automatically added when Observing only one part of it.
Relationships for which you have a false impression will not be corrected until you are corrected.
Indeed, between the two expected Observe boxes was a third, filled with lines of holographic fire that reminded him of his earlier sorting job on the Hopeless Case. In the center of the diagram the Cutie Marks of Arcane and Piercing were connected by various lines (pink for marriage and love to each other, red for familial ties to Rarity, a solid blue for cautious respect of Spike himself, a plain black for ownership of the Arcade, etc) and boundaries.
Without saying anything he Observe'd Rarity again, and watched as a cascade of information added her relationships into the diagram. A swipe of his mentally-imagined claw over the interface moved it all aside, letting him see the vast space prepared for the information he would gather... Maybe with practice and more complex information, he could change this into a three-dimensional model like the ones Twilight used sometimes. Or maybe he just needed the right commands? This was going to take time. And it was also going to have to wait...
Because he had just leveled up.
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Did his Gamer power just evolve into a dating simulator? LoL, jokes aside, seeing the connections between others and things will certainly be helpful. He could become quite the detective with that skill. Pinkie better hide her deerstalker hat!
Quest:Arcade Completed.
You have Skillz.
Aw right, Spike picked up the Highlight Quest Objectives . Now he will be able to spot that One Particular Blade of Grass in AJs farm thats critical for some stupid amount of reward quest or similar?
Ah, thats where Ive seen the Relationship links before.. 3DS game, Miitopia, except there the links give some really nasty suprises for your opponants, extra attacks, attack assists, boosted stats etc. Dont know which RPG systems its based on though.
Music playing while reading this chapter.
Sylphstream:Soldiers Of the Night.
Hmm, level up. new points, new multipliers, bit of Meditation?
9991721
Actually with this new relation map, it kind of reminds me of Xenoblade Chronicles.
When you discover marked NPC's they will appear on your relationship map, and the map there shows how other people are connected, and how you could help them with their problems.
In one part you have to help a father fix his relationship with his daughter.
So this is SUPER fitting for a game set in the MLP FIM universe.
9991721
We'll know of its a dating sim if celestia tries to ara ara him.
9991803
He would only see that if he either found out via other methods or assumed that they see him that way.
After all, the skill will show false relations if he is mistaken and wont correct him until he learns the truth without the skill.
...Unless you're not referring to the skill at all and I mistook your meaning. In which case disregard this post.
Now that i think about it spike's build will have inherent weakness that will make him frail even when he reaches his end-game. Buff and de-Buff spells will wreck his stat array and cause even more rippling effects as the initial stat change will affect even more stat changes.
Balance is all good, if you end up as end-game juggernaut, but that all could theoretically be imbalanced with single casting of some end-game blessing leaving you with just bad stats in unpredictable ways.
How broad is the scope here? A lot of assumptions can be made about the number of different, perhaps abstract ways this power could be used that might not align with expectations. Will an artisan's pride for a beloved piece show up? Is it strictly for seeing emotional relationships? Or can it be used to trace the location of something after interacting with someone/something else that has prior confirmation of being connected to the item in question?
9992101
The negatives are reduced in severety towards lategame specifically for this purpose I imagine.
9992201
It visualises his pre-existing knowledge. Not a massive gamechanger, really.
This reminds me of that one Ace Attorney case where the culprit evades having Psyche-Locks by not realizing that you're still legally culpable for what a hitman does to the guy you paid for a hit on. To be fair to him, Ace Attorney's legal system is hilariously broken (with most of the focus on the hilarity because this is a game after all) so this isn't the given it probably should be.
Oooo, neat.
That's an interesting possibility.
Good opportunity to spend time with Rarity in non-sewing assistant related activities.
Also neat.
Level up time!
I have a question, when exactly is this story set? Context clues lead me to believe after season 2, but before the end of season 3. I'm interested to see how Spike's abilities affect future events. Great chapter.
9992101
That's not how this works. Balanced Soul specifically only cares about Spike's base attributes, before modification. A few rare skills can improve that base (like Balanced Soul itself), but buffs and debuffs don't interact with it. His emphasis on cross-stat training isn't going to leave him vulnerable to that style of chicanery.
9992201
It can't be used to find locations, but your theory about showing a creator's love for their craft is correct. Of course, to use Indra's Net in this way you'd need to know about the relationship's existence in order to target it, or at the very least you'd have to observe both parts individually without forming a preconceived notion... So it's very far from foolproof.
hoy boi
9992594
Okay, so it is specifically for identifying emotional connections, but not restricted to interpersonal relationships.
This brings to mind a rather interesting question. Do you think Celestia would consider the sun to be like family? If not, how about a close friend? I can't imagine there's nothing there. Huh...or perhaps would there be something more negative there, since the sun is so intrinsically tied to her duty as Princess, which lost her her eternal companion and closest confidante for so long? She might be back, but that kind of trauma leaves scars. I wonder what your take on it would be? Not important to the story I know, just a random inquiry brought about by circumstance.
Hi-ho silver!
This is getting even more interesting.
I can't wait for more.
So just finished catching up, and so far it looks very well written and interesting. The only problem? This reads like literally every single Gamer crossover I've ever read, and it's beginning to fall into the same traps I see a lot of MLP stories get caught up in. It's way too focused on completely unnecessary exposition and info dumps and fanon. This story is over forty thousand words and yet for all of that it feels like literally nothing of major significance has happened. With every new chapter filled with info dumps and fanon lore I just find myself wishing it would just get on with it already.
To put it another way, it's starting to get to the point where I feel less like I'm reading an actual story and more like I'm reading a blog post where the author is just continuously going, "Okay, in my headcanon, this is how xyz works, now let me just go into detail."
That said, it's still well written and I definitely intend on continuing.
9994482
While I'd understand a little of where you are coming from with the fanon thing, since he described the Night Guard in detail, it's actually very relevant to the story, and not just in a "background information" way.
It gave Spike an idea. I don't know exactly what that idea is, but yeah. It's not pointless exposition.
The "it's really long, and nothing's happened yet" is... well, it usually means that you are too used to fanfiction to remember what other books looked like. I've fallen into the same trap. The whole thing is magnified by the fact that it's released a single chapter at a time. Just try sometime to read Harry Potter a single chapter every two weeks and see how infuriating it gets. And I'm pretty sure the chapters are longer than these ones.
9994592
That's an entirely fair point and one I hadn't really thought of before, but yeah, thinking back it would have been infuriating having to read a single chapter once a month or so.
I guess one of my biggest concerns is I'm worried about the story going on. I've genuinely lost count of the number of Gamer stories I've come across, and I can count on one hand with fingers left over the number of stories that actually finished. Most from what I've seen just get completely lost in all the skills and levels and numbers and just grind to a halt. I guess I'm just worried that this will go down the same route.
9995498
For this one I can give you a personal guarantee: Not only is this entire first Arc already done and uploaded to FiMFic (I am just hitting the publish button after a final read-over of each chapter every week), but I've got ~46,000 words of the next arc written already (and counting). So don't worry about it abruptly stopping, as we've got a lot of runway ahead of us.
*hears the fourth wall cracking, sighs and gets the Nth Dimensional Duct Tape.*
10036733
I'll get the Fabric of SpaceTime Sewing Kit as well...
The relationship system reminds me a lot of Xenoblade 1.
The Princesses are probably listed as ??? at this point for h im, but those unique powers make sense
I wonder what Twilights benediction will be and its effects...
10386297
Works on all races and turns them into mortal alicorns or alikes depending on the base race (and I mean not pony in the first place). She's (or will be in this universe, I'm not sure of the timeline yet) alicorn of Magic after all. With capital M.
Guess by now Twilight Benediction will increase magic capacity or versatile affinitys.
There is another option on the table he could use the ticket to become a 'Perfect jack of all trades' in short he makes a skill that passively gives him unlimited potential in everything from (for example) wood working to blacksmithing to martial arts and dessert making
Cadance might get a very fertile Crystal Pony Benediction.