Chapter 53: Metal Map
Later that day yet again, putting us back in alignment with the passage of linear time...
Spike ticked off their morning accomplishments on his fingers one at a time.
"OK. Spars done, warning to the Princesses done, gem and buff testing done, dream discussed, breakfast cleared, Pinkie invited, I think that's everything handled?"
"Well you do still need to clean all the dishes and flatware from last night and this morning-"
"...after we check out the rewards I got from my 'story arc' quest last night!"
He watched as the warring sides of Twilight's brain (in this instance, 'Cleanliness and OCD' in the blue corner versus 'Curiosity and Selflessness' in the red corner) slug it out until one challenger reigned victorious. It only took about three seconds, but it was always three very fun seconds.
"...Well played. Alright, lay it on me. Or lay it on the table rather, Mr. Stickler About Phrasing."
The last twenty-odd hours had been a lot of a rush, the last few especially: Despite the elation when he had finished his first Story Arc? In the end Spike had just shoved all the popup windows and quest rewards into the equivalent of his 'Read It Later' shelf. Now he brought them all back to the forefront, messages and objects alike. There was a folded map, a few gems, a beautiful plain wooden box (smooth and curved like a clamshell), plus a piece of paper... That last bit seemed wrong. He could have sworn there was a skillbook involved. Well, maybe the various UI messages would explain that difference...
"Alright, do you want me to copy out the interface stuff or just recite it?"
"Recitation is fine! You did say there's a log, after all. We can get copies for my records later."
There was indeed a Log menu in his status screen, although its thoroughness might have been a side benefit of Eidetic Memory. Why jump to that conclusion? The Log contained (in a very well-organized and searchable tab system) every single item description, Observe, menu screen, and popup he had ever gotten as The Gamer. Perfect recall made even, uh, perfecter.
"So I got quite a few levels, putting me up to thirteen. A bunch of my Dragon's skills went up by at least four or five levels each: Maybe they tie into my main XP somehow? My raw stats went up from some of the sub-quest rewards, so they're seventeen across the board. Skills... Oh."
"'Oh'? Abrupt unexplained 'Oh' is usually not a good way to end a sentence, Spike: We've talked about unnecessary ominousity!"
"Well I was just... Look, it's better if I show you this part."
He grabbed a notebook and began sketching out the boxes he could see, and the messages in them. All of which confirmed... Well, the good news is his skill growth was probably going to stay just as fast as yesterday. The bad news was that his skill acquisition might take a turn...
The 40 WIS requirement of [Omphaloskepsis] has been waived due to special circumstances.
The 50 DEX requirement of [Dragon's Claws] has been waived due to special circumstances.
The 44 STR, DEX, VIT, INT, WIS, LUK requirements for [Balanced Soul] have been waived...
On and on the messages went, covering nearly half of the skills he had acquired: Every single one of the Dragon's skills, his meditation, his Balanced Soul, all of them were technically out of reach in terms of the required stats... That had been the real 'boost up the ladder' from the Story Arc of his first day. Not boosted experience or skill growth, but abnormal skill gain. He'd gotten access to a lot of things that should have been well beyond him in order to make up for the long portion of his life where he'd been... less than up-to-snuff.
The only message out of that lot, different from the others, stuck out like a sore thumb:
The 50 WIS requirement of [Dragon's Breath] has been waived due to prior personal affinity.
So his breath had been something natural for him... Maybe related to his species or subspecies as a dragon? They still didn't know nearly enough about draconic biology or magic to be sure, but he (along with Twilight and Celestia) had decided long ago that it wasn't a pressing concern.
"...Alright Spike, that 'oh' was justified. This is great news though! You got some very intriguing and potent skills early, and we know that your growth and progression from here won't be nearly as limited as we'd feared."
"I guess... But what if it's way harder to get skills? These are all fantastic, but I'll be the first to admit I like having more options when possible."
Twilight shrugged (which was always an interesting motion on a pony) at that.
"Then I guess you'll have more reason to double-down on statistical training, so you can be up to scratch for any new skills you come across. It might even speed up some of those Mastery items!"
"...I can live with that. In which case, moving on to the tangible rewards..."
Spike scrolled until he found the message that correlated with him being granted the skillbook from his big story arc yesterday... and the log item immediately following that was an error message.
Due to your skill source affinity, the acquisition of skillbooks has been delayed indefinitely.
"...I knew my power has been behaving like a real game in a lot of ways, but I didn't expect that to include release dates getting pushed back!"
Didn't he already have a skillbook though? He'd found one when using Quality Assurance on his inventory full of random stuff from the morning preparations... That was right, Able Actor's Advice. And it was where he left it in his Inventory, between a flashlight and a blanket.
"Lemme try something. Keep an eye out Twilight, this might go weird-ish."
Spike attempted to retrieve the book... And out came a single sheet of paper. The book itself was still clearly in his Inventory, but now he was holding something that looked like nothing more than a promotional poster. It advertised the book in gaudy colors and made some generic promises about the potential power of it, and had a release date of 'To Be Determined / Not Applicable'. On second glance, there was another matching flyer for the book he should have gotten from the First Day quest rewards in a different Inventory slot.
"Should I have seen something other than you retrieving some paper?"
"...Apparently not, although it's news to me. I guess I don't have an 'affinity' for skillbooks?"
"Well that doesn't seem right! We're all about books here in the Sparkle hou... I mean, at the Golden Oaks Library."
"Channeling your mother again?"
"Hush. But seriously... How do skillbooks usually work in video games? Is there something that would stop you from using them because you're a dragon?"
"Probably not... You just use them, they go away, you get the ski-"
Twilight's eyes narrowed.
"They what?"
"...go away? They're pretty much always consumable."
There was a brief flicker of orange sparks near the bottom of Twilight's mane as she shouted.
"Why!? They're books!"
"For balance purposes, I assume? They don't want you just teaching the entire party some rad skill because you found one copy of it. So the book gets destr-"
"Don't even say it!"
His (yet-invented relationship word) was huffing and puffing and trying not to have a minor panic attack over even the hypothetical destruction of a book... And yeah, given that? Spike could sort of see why his power had made the executive decision not to do skillbooks after all: It was better for his continued health if nothing else.
"M-moving on... I've got a map!"
That seemed to calm the unicorn down a little, and she looked over at it.
"Well, that's a map of the mountains underneath Canterlot... With two Xs on it?"
It only took a second for the facts to come together, and when they did he couldn't stop smiling.
"...Sweet Celestia I got a real treasure map!"
"Yarrharr and such, I suppose: Does it say what's at the marks?"
"Oh Twilight, you're so silly: Half the point of a treasure map is the surprise at the end!"
She was clearly unimpressed, but that was probably because she lacked true pirate spirit.
"Uh huh. And the rest?"
"Of the point of a treasure map, or of the loot? Because-"
"Spike."
"Fine, fine! But just you wait: Pinkie will be excited about my map."
"Spike, Pinkie would be excited by a crudely drawn map of her own house. She is excited, as a base state. She defaults to excitement."
He'd never thought of it that way, but at the same time...
"...That'd actually be kind of a fun gift for her at some point. I need to write that down. Oh wait, no I don't! Haha, eidetic memory jokes."
He stored the map into his inventory and wasn't terribly surprised to notice that his Map menu showed the marked spots now that he had seen and memorized them himself. Of course he'd never even been to that part of the Canter Mountains, but still: Nice to have a reminder.
That left the box and the loose gems... although 'gem' was really sort of a stretch. One was a strange rainbow-oily crystal formation, shaped into a boxy staircase of tiny flat layers, unlike anything he'd seen (or tasted) before. The other was a cute little charm made of carved metal, cold and grey... Maybe iron, or even steel? It was shaped like a unicorn horn, so detailed that even the little pores of the velvet were individually marked out.
"Two loose gems, which would be kind of a strange reward for anyone but a dragon. Still a bit strange that they aren't in a bigger quantity..."
Spike shrugged, very carefully balancing the gems in his palm.
"They're not for eating... Well I mean they are, but not like that. Remember how I said that the weird indestructible stone from Rarity's collection said it would 'improve Dragon's Breath', but had a failure chance?"
"Yes. These are the same?"
"Sort of the same."
Escherian Bismuth
Provides a new skill.
Failure Chance: 0.01%
Unihorn
Provides a new skill and improves Dragon's Breath... but you are not powerful enough.
Failure Chance: 93%
"One of them seems to be bismuth, and it's... usable. Failure chance under point-oh-one percent."
Twilight looked at him dubiously.
"That was .01 and not 'point, oh, one', right? You know how I am about p-value manipulation."
"Despite how much it makes everypony laugh, yes. And also yes: Zero dot zero one. Chance in ten thousand."
She shrugged, which was always fun when ponies did it.
"Acceptable in my eyes, if you were looking for advice. That's basically just a rounding error at this point, so I assume there's another reason you haven't eaten it already?"
"...Aren't heavy metals toxic?"
"One, dragon. Two, bismuth is the least toxic of the heavy metals, although I still wouldn't go around feeding it to a pony. You already eat semi-toxic rocks for fun, pleasure, and sustenance."
Twilight had a really good point: As such, she hadn't even finished her sentence by the time he popped the little staircase into his mouth and started biting in. The flavor was weirdly sour, then mint-cool, then the strange numbing heat of the weirder peppers... It came in waves and bursts until he felt totally set aside from himself, his tongue just kind of soaking it all in. When he finally came back from the Flavor Dimension there was a crisp and colorful skill popup hanging in the air.
[Disaffiliation] (Passive) Lv MAX EXP: N/A
Breaking the ties that bind us to certain preconceptions can be difficult. The things we learn are food will always be considered food, the things we learn are dangerous will always be considered dangerous. Severing those pre-established notions can expand the mind into new avenues.
All of the user's abilities that recognize one kind of (Earth) are expanded to recognize all others.
This means that powers which only impacted metals now work on gems, vice versa, and so on.
You have discovered your [Metal Affinity]!
"...Oh. Well that... um. One second."
Pulling the impervious sample out of his inventory showed that its chance of failure had dropped even further than last night's levelling binge had pushed it, bringing it into the mid-30s. And the Unihorn that still lay in his palm... was all the way down to 9%. Clearly Rarity's sample was stranger than modern metal alloys, while refined steel was still a step away from his familiar gems.
Explaining that to Twilight made her grin brighten and grow cheek-to-cheek instantly.
"Spike! That's fantastic: No recorded data has shown dragons directly consuming processed true metals, despite their hoarding tendencies... Which as we both know, are more connected to their growth than anything. This is a big deal!"
"Yeah, I won't deny that... Not to mention the whole 'Better chance of using these other weird pieces' thing. Personally I'm more excited about that part."
"Oh come on Spike, that's because you've clearly become a skill junkie."
"First off, you don't get to borrow insults from Shining Armor like that without knowing the context... and second off, why wouldn't I be? It's one thing to have more options in a game, but this is giving me more options in real life. And last I checked, a certain somepony in this conversation has no room to talk."
She tried to raise an eyebrow at him, but that always looked very silly on ponies... He appreciated it anyways. Having spent his whole life growing up with them, he knew ponies were inherently silly.
"Pardon me?"
"You literally catalogued and numbered the first hundred spells you learned, just because you could. And don't think I don't know you still keep a journal tracking all the new ones: You just stopped calling them by numbers."
Her embarrassed flush was so strong it washed from her cheeks all the way up into her crest, but that didn't stop Twilight from pushing the last item back towards Spike. He'd saved the box for last since an unknown container was only mysterious until you opened it... Savoring that last moment of mystery briefly, he finally relented and popped the lid with his claw.
Samples and pieces of nearly twenty different gemstones lay inside, small high-quality pieces of each surrounding one larger specimen... And every spot in the box was covered with a placard of slightly-transparent paper. The gems below were visible through the top layer, and the cover clearly wasn't just to keep them in place: Each card was inked with details.
In a normal gem collection you'd expect to see provenance, hardness, history, associations for magic and ritual... But here the lists were simpler, cleaner, shorter... And very specifically aimed at him. Flavor profiles, textures, melting points, potential benefits his Cooking abilities could yield from the gems... All of it listed in a tight, neat hoofwriting style he didn't recognize.
Rather than explain it to Twilight he just wordlessly spun the box, enjoying the way the smooth dark wood slid naturally on their table. If he could criticize any aspects of the rewards he had received, quality and craftsmanship were not among them.
"...Oh. I'm noticing that none of the successes from today are in here... In fact, none of the ones we attempted are represented. I wonder if this is like the Shroewinger experiment, where the contents of the box were not causally determined until you opened it?"
"Twilight, this whole Gamer thing has been enough of a headache without bringing arcane quanta theory into this... yet. I mean, we'll get there. Because it's you and me, so it's sort of inevitable."
She tapped the box with a hoof, carefully making sure not to disrupt any of the marking cards.
"Speaking of inevitability, should we..."
"No. Not yet, anyways. I've, well, I've got an idea already. I think I want to train my skills up a lot first, and get a feel for how important my practice is to getting hits when I make new recipes. So for now these are just going to get tucked into the Inventory..."
Twilight's slightly-longing glance at all the data cards in the box gave him pause.
"...after I do all that cleaning and prep we mentioned. Just in case you wanted to record all the details in the meantime."
She stood up with a huge smile, already levitating over ink and quill to do exactly that. She ruffled his spines with her hoof as they went their separate ways.
"Seriously: Number One Assistant."
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I feel you dude
Once again, great interactions between Spike and Twilight. I am, however, looking forward to the exposition coming to an end and the story progressing. Also, LoL about the Skill Books.
Thank you for the entertainment!
Interesting concept:
=[Earthshaper] now includes metal.
=cooking with metal for magical food recipes.
=consumption of metal as a dietary substitute for gemstones
=etc.
All those skill requirements are now delayed now that Twilight’s here. Also, Spike can’t use up skill books anymore, at least not in Twilight’s presence. Oh, and he needs a better title than “Number One Assistant”. Spike is basically an overqualified secretary/fax machine for crying out loud!
Escherian Bismuth?
sure Spike wouldnt de-Kleine to consume that morsel.
Reads the Wikipedia article. Oh boy, its all there and more, especially the fun with the fireworks right down the bottom end. Spike?.. You know that Bismuth you just ate? Its used for Dragons Eggs.
Could be worse, talking to Pinkie and the CMC could lead Spike to consider abusing Inner Alchemy to see if he can actually Make Pearls.
Its hilarious how the engine got a quick rewrite to deal with not being the target of the ire of Twilight Supernova. I wonder if statues can sweat.
Could Spike attain skill books by recreating the book creation method, transfering the information to that and then eating the printer instead of the printed, if skill books can be created by magically infused metals and gems typeset instead of magic infusion of carved or calligraphic runes?
Two treasure map locations. But what is a treasure to a Gamer Dragon, given the L-Space unlock chain is currently sealed off to him? Minerals and Resources? Hydrothermal hot springs? Even access to a chamber series that can access magmatic sources? Foals lost plush which reward is pirate Uncles sea chest?
10303980
What wiki would that be? Googling it produces nonsence.
10304038
Bismuth
M C Escher
Even funner things to realise, is that in russia, they discovered two small samples of naturally occuring Liquid Crystals, which are about as chaotic as its possible to get, and in research at least, so Im not sure if natural equivalents have been round yet, there have been perfectly quasiregular three dimentional arrays made whose solution is random in 3D, but fits perfectly when calculated in 4D, four spaciall dimentional arrangements.
It’s a dragon eat gems world...
That’s how the quote goes, right?
That's, uh... "lay it on the table" isn't necessarily better.
Oops. Knew I forgot something. About Dragons and the handling of Toxic Heavy Metals.
Dragons love Gems, consume them, adore them, love the taste etc.
Rubies, Sapphires, Emeralds are basically Alumina or Alumina Silicate, with heavy metals not as mere fractional dopants but make up percentages of the crystal structure such as Beryllium for Emerald. Berylium on Earth at least is a horribly toxic heavy metal. Had to double check with Ruby and Sapphire, turns out its Iron and Titanium doping that gives Saphire its Blue colour, Chromium that gives Sapphire its Pink and Red colurs, deep reds are called Rubies, and having Beryllium doping as well gives Peach, Orange etc. So if anything, the various possiblitiy of Sapphire doping, combinations and colourings would be the closest to juicyFroots?
If Spike has no trouble with Toxic Metals, then he could make a fortune dealing with Blacksmith leftover amongst others, and definitely no problem with metal weapons, as, well, iron food? As for the claim that wood etc in return wouldnt be good for him? Diamond is just ultra pure wood, without the sulphur, nitrogen, and metallic contaminants of wood? Last I checked, Dragons would enjoy various Sulphur compounds the same sort of way as we can enjoy cheeze on pizza etc? The trickiest would be phosphates, which are the greater part of fireworks explosive and are usualy derived from natural sources such as guano fields? Nitrogen from lightning in air leading to nitrogenous compounds, helping to fertlise most plants, amongst other sources?
Spike with Lightning breath is going to be generating horrendous amounts of toxic corrosive gas byproducts, and so makes sense that if he isnt affected by them in return, he should be far less affected from other sources, to start with, and hopefully resistances can increase to where he actually gains from the energy infused eventually?
The shere amount of work and effort going into this story to keep it coherent is absolutely awesome. The biggest problem is, even if anyone intrested got a major lotto win, would it be ebough to pay for a proper main platform release engine.
Twilight pointedly not being a pirate... reminds me of iisaw. I still have no clue why he blocked me, but unlike DeviantArt it doesn't prevent me from reading and following his stories so I guess it doesn't matter that much.
Possible humor if Spike tried eating odd things to unlock more affinities.
=A tuft of cloud [Air/Wind].
=liquid rainbow [Light?].
=Cloudsdale-made snowflakes [Ice].
=twittermites [Electricity].
=Timberwolf [Wood].
=Molted Pegasus feathers [Air/Wind].
No wonder he's so OP at such a low level.
Gotta pay for the DLC.
Sounds like a new quest line.
Neat. That's got to open up some additional possibilities as Spike develops.
Oh crapbaskets. Pre-established notions such as, perhaps, the fact that ponies are not food? Is the game trying to push Spike into becoming a Devouerer of Gods style monster?
On further thought, how about the ties in his mind between friend and foe? Foe and friend? Good and Evil?
10304232
That was my "trigger" for starting to dislike Starlight Glimmer. In her first villain appearance, she was just the only other "powerful" unicorn we saw. And in raw magic, Twilight beat her.
Now, if it was shown that she was so frustrated that she constantly trained, etc, specifically to become more powerful than Twilight, and if they actually addressed the reasons why they might have decided to keep Twilight nerfed, it would have been at least bearable.
Personally, I think that the showwriters REALLY weren't sure what to do after Hasbro decided she needed to be a princess. Don't get me wrong, I still absolutely think Alicorn Twilight was a good idea. And even that episode was good, if rushed. But they really didn't know what to do with her after that. For, like, an entire season. They did better in Season 4, but better isn't necessarily good. That Tirek finale was awesome, but ultimately, it only teased at things that would never actually be fulfilled.
(I should mention that I no longer dislike Starlight Glimmer as a character. I just dislike the effects that mistakes with her development caused the show as a whole.)
10304232
I would have called her the opposite of handicapped. On the contrary, that entire scene suggested to me the importance of being able to choose where and when you have your fight.
Consider; Starlight got to choose the location and the time (in more ways than one) of their fight. She wasn't strong enough to hold out indefinitely against Twilight - not in the slightest - but, in that place and at that time, it didn't matter. Because Starlight could hold on long enough to fire off some very flashy magic (and if there's one thing that magic is good at, it's being flashy), thus distracting Rainbow Dash from doing her original Sonic Rainboom.
In most other places, and in most other times, Starlight would have been comprehensively defeated. She only succeeded as well as she did because she had been spending a long time gathering information on Twilight; and she put that information to use in a way that actively negated all of Twilight's advantage of having greater magical power.
10305498
Severing pre-established notions does not deter you from re-evaluation or from rediscovery.
Spike understood that he could eat more than gemstones. If spike was unempathic and evil, yes, he might see that as the ability to eat ponies.
Side note - all of Fluttershy's animals save the herbivores *can also* eat ponies.
The ability to do something is not the motive to do something. Just because he can (and really, he could before) does not mean he's going to.
Furthermore, what's being severed here is the limitation, not the original definition. Gem is a subset of earth, therefore Earth manipulation.
you could argue that friend is a subset of relationship, but Spike can still differentiate between gems and earth - and in fact did so when he noted that one may be toxic.
10303980
Considering where on the clam the pearl is formed, I don't know if he'd want to.
10308585
Take Dissafiiliation, then combine what happened to his stats when training with the CMC.
There is a whole range of actions Spike could be taking that would trigger recursive stat increase, if the story went along certain lines. Currently though theres only suggestions and inuendo so as such I will not give more detailed explanations.
Currently though, Spike has a whole bunch of recursives, and thats even before he starts grinding Observe on All those library books, with cross referencing etc, until he can gain their contents from Observing the exterior, thereby reaquiring Skill Aquisition by duplication and so effectively Nondestructive Read.
Very fine reading experience or in my case auto-reading. Better to skill up what he already has. No use of many strengths if they underperforming.
Here's a thought: those notes could, to some extent, help out with hosting other dragons for dinner.
10307828
Don't forget, Twilight also had to deal with the bad futures, keep Spike safe, and try to not accidentally prevent kid Dash from doing the rainboom (which she did twice, one for having a flashy fight with Starlight, and one for actually hitting Dash with a spell). Twilight does have experience fighting, but save for that one fight, it's always with help from her friends (she had the other Princesses magic when facing Tirek, so she technically had help).
Unlimited potencial
O... It was empty from the beginning...