Spike of All Trades

by Ariamaki

Zero Hour: Part 15

Settling down didn’t take Spike long, and once he was drifting into that slightly distanced state it was easy to cast his mind back on things with an objective slant.

First lesson: His new 'skills' being held in abeyance, the four attacks he'd been practicing? They weren't like any of his other skills. Maybe he wouldn't be able to figure out their true nature until he got a Combat Discipline. What he did know so far was that they didn't level up, their effects were a mystery, they had no description in his system, and they fluctuated in both cost and effectiveness wildly.

As an example, that initial Draw during the most recent fight had somehow given him a continual boost to attack speed afterwards. Maybe continuing the momentum from the first shot had carried into the future ones? Regardless, it also slurped down 1/4 of his mana in that one shot. In the fight prior he had attempted to use Draw as the opening attack and still spent hundreds of MP, but only got a decent single-target strike with no buff.

So the Combat Discipline techniques were clearly more complex and had their own intricacies for Spike to learn. That was an upside as far as he was concerned, although not a pure upside given current difficulties. The potential intrigued him, and he couldn't deny that using each one and figuring out its nuances and variability was fun and exciting. Exciting above and beyond the whole 'risking his life' thing.

Oh yeah, risking his life! Second lesson: Sub-quests for the Benediction did not mark progress unless they had distinct numeric targets. Twilight's quests were all clear and marked out with his current state against the end goal, but Luna's "life-or-death combat" objective didn’t show any difference yet. Maybe it would inform him when it hit completion? But the quest as a whole did say that 'Only you can know the moment that you are ready.', so he should have expected as much. It was probably best to operate on the assumption that it wouldn't update, ever.

Third lesson: Individual insects were no threat at all with his current stat boosts and the plethora of skills. That was great! But they were almost never encountered as just individuals. Weakness when fought alone was overcome with sheer quantity, and that created a qualitative change. A low-impact Bermite bite got much scarier when it tied up his limbs so he couldn't block a worse one, and sprays of harmless fluids from the Mountain Crawlers became a lot worse when he realized it was one half of a two-part cement that dried near-instantly.

The rest of his gains were more incremental and in flux, leaving Spike to pore over the information and make correlations between them. Thanks to his eidetic memory he was able to keep track of the exact costs and effects of dozens of different buff combinations. Comparing them and mapping the changes as skills gained levels? He was able to build up a pretty solid gauge of their effects and relative efficiency.

Previously he'd have to flick between Dragon's Hoard forms or pump mana into the Heart more or less randomly, aiming for the ballpark without any idea how hard he was hitting. Now he could make precise adjustments, giving his limbs the exact change in size to land a hit without over-exposing himself. There was still a bit of uncertainty in how his skills changed and grew, but he was getting a lot better at using them within that wiggle room.

His least tangible gain was also the one he felt most confident in... Which was kinda ironic or at least self-referential, because it was exactly that: Confidence. After hours of fighting all on his own, Spike felt better about himself and his abilities. Testing himself under such risky circumstances had really improved his mental state. He knew there was still an endless amount of room to grow, but it was a start.

He had a foothold in surviving, adventure, and fighting that would become a base for all his future development. And taking those things together: The combat skills, the quests, the knowledge of the enemy (and his own skills), plus a new level of confidence? That meant it was time to stop putting things off: He had what he needed to go fight the beetle, or admit it was time to retreat and plan.

Spike decided to snare two birds with one trap, making his way through the tunnels he'd cleared before and doing a full circuit around the warrens before confronting the gigantic final foe. The final current foe anyways: The Diamond Dogs would still need his help in the future to tackle nests and infestations further afield. Today was about creating the security and peace needed to get that far.

His patrol route didn't turn up anything unusual, with the Dogs that had been tracking him nodding their heads in confirmation or waving pleasantly. He'd have to spend some more time helping out around the warrens before he left, come to think of it: Maybe see if he could leverage his social skills? Or even grind up some new ones!

The Ammos had gone back to Ponyville again, leaving a simple paper note pinned to the walls where he had met them earlier. Reported back to Luna. Meet us at the Arcade when you're able. The Princess hadn't sent him another note or message, so Spike assumed it was full-steam ahead on all angles.

When he arrived at the chamber where he had last seen the Glittershell beetle... It hadn't moved. Not just ‘hadn’t left the chamber’ but literally ‘hadn’t changed its position’ The only signs it was still alive at all were constant shuffles and bobs. The creature was slowly tilting its head, almost moving rhythmically... Assuming the rhythm it was grooving to was measured in minutes-per-beat instead of the other way around.

The creature stood taller than Spike (at least, taller than he was before the Hoard) and was as wide across as a wagon cart. The shell looked to be extremely thick, but at least it didn't have any visible wing-plates: He shuddered at the mere thought of this creature going airborne. Two wicked-looking chitinous horns curved and branched from the front of its face as a nasty potential weapon.

Small mercy for both of them, the chamber the beetle had selected for whatever it was doing? That was clean and simple. Thirty or forty feet across, only small bits of rubble in the area. The ceiling was neither high enough to create meaningful airflow nor low enough to force a change in posture. There was no lighting save one abandoned and badly-cracked sconce on the wall. No other beetles were visible in the area, so either this single one held a lot of territory or the rest were secluded.

After scouting the area Spike contemplated a plan of attack. He could go right in and hit hard without much problem. Hard, but not full-force: Blowing your most powerful attack early was too big of a risk, between the potential waste and the chance of reprisal. Alpha strikes, to his O+O trained mind, were either used to disable the enemy or to probe and judge for future attacks.

Eventually he settled the fingers of his right claw into a clean cone with all of the points gathered as one unit. It was an awkward posture to hold, but an effective one for what he had planned. Dragon's Heart to buff the physical skills, Dragon's Claws to extend the tips and sharpen them. Earthshaper (just in case the shell counted) for insurance, and then-

"Pierce!"

Spike kicked off the hard ground with both legs, launching himself forward in something between a lunge and a leap. His attack came screaming in faster than anything he'd done without Draw, and it hit clean dead-center... A clean hit that then bounced clean off from the Glittershell. The impact was huge, concussive force quaking back up his own arm and sending the beetle skittering a few feet away. Its shell had at least some reaction to the strike, an unhealthy shade of grey spreading out in splotchy patches from the chips he took out of the surface.

The beetle slowly swiveled its head around twice, seemingly checking for whatever slammed into it. Eventually it went back to its previous behavior as if nothing had happened, leaving Spike in the corner to pick his jaw off the floor (metaphorically speaking).

"...OK. Extremely hard defense. But it also didn't, uh, care. Take two I guess?"

His second attempt went worse, which wouldn't have been his guess mere seconds prior. Pouring more MP into the Heart, focusing on the posture and the stance for the Pierce... He bounced off again, took even less shell away, and the grey reaction spread further. The recoil Spike received on the way back wasn't as painful, but he had a feeling that was actually a bad thing.

A third strike using Slice instead caused the grey to grow darker, and didn't even pull up any pieces of shell. He couldn't find a good position to Grasp this thing without growing enormous, and at that point he was worried it might actually see him as a threat and fight back.

"Well, if all else fails use fire!"

Fire did a lot more to anger and freak out the insect, but about as much damage as the original Pierce: Sections of shell rippled and cooked off with an ugly rainbow sheen like an oil slick, and then the layers below grew an obnoxiously bright red. The mingling red and grey put him in mind of the title cards on a Denizen Nightmare cabinet. Another blast of fire, this one angled under its shell? That had even less effect somehow, and the garish red began to spread even further.

"...Aw crap."

This creature can respond to changes in its environment very rapidly. This response can vary between reactive counteraction, passive comprehension, and more.

Spike had figured that meant it would be able to understand attacks and avoid them, not just grow resistances out of thin air. Given that it still wasn't fighting back, he had plenty of chances to keep testing this theory. The results were what he expected, for better or worse. Repeatedly using the same kind of attack made its resistances grow both stronger and more thorough: Every physical attack made it more resistant to physical blows, every gout of fire made it care less about fire.

Worse was that using specific skills was also causing the Glittershell to accumulate resistances for those on top of the generic resistance to their type. The fifth Pierce didn't even leave a scratch, and the sixth just sort of stopped on impact, all its momentum sucked away into nothing. Repeated Slashes met the same fate, even using Fugō and Resūmō to throw fire had diminishing returns.

The good news was that unlike Mountain Crawlers? This thing wasn't a Regenerator, so the tiny bits of damage Spike caused did seem to stick around. But that wouldn't last forever, and at this rate chipping down through 'whatever the heck 33 Fortitude meant for HP' would actually take forever.

In a game he'd be worried about sitting back for too long without putting on pressure, since natural HP regen moved fast enough to matter in gameplay. In reality, unless this thing could just recover by magic the same way it gained resistances...

"Wait. Magic. MAGIC!"

He didn't always pick up what Twilight was putting down with her research and rambling. Years of overheard mumblings and half-baked theorems went in one set of eardrums then out the other for the most part, and all that took place before he had Eidetic Memory... But some things did stick with him. He learned a lot by osmosis in the Sparkle household, and one of those things was how the magic that came out of a spell was different from the essence of magic, raw and unchanged.

All of his attacks so far were using his MP as fuel and had an output in the form of skills. The entire process of Internal Alchemy (as he understood it so far) was about that change, the move from raw magic into something useful. And while the average unicorn couldn't use raw magic, he certainly could. If he couldn't change his MP into a useful form, why not just skip over changing it entirely?

Neighponese murals that represented dragons often showed them wreathed in clouds. Not just because they were flying creatures by nature (not that he was bitter), but because dragons made clouds. 'Auspicious dragon clouds', a kind of mist that followed them from place to place, a sign of their coming and their power. Twilight's (short-lived) art history binge concluded that they might have been referring to the powers of a specific ancient dragon subspecies, or even just the normal steam and smoke from fire breath.

But what if it was something else? Spike had acquired a skill before the party, when he consumed the Unihorn: Respire. At the time he had assumed it was related to the magical auras unicorns and changelings created when using their horns for magic, and hadn't given it any more thought. He pulled up the skill's description again and read it with new eyes, all while the Glittershell puttered around in the background: Even after dozens of attacks it wasn’t paying him any more attention.

[Respire] (Active) Lv 1 EXP: 0.0% MP: 50+
Equestrian life is meant to keep their magic inside of the body for the most part, only extending it outwards as part of a closed loop. This is the way that Earth Ponies commune with the land, the way that Pegasi touch the clouds, the way that Unicorns extend their auras to 'do' magic. Even dragons using their fire breath form a cycle with the world that allows them to recover remnants of expelled power. Few if any ever learn this alternative, the breathless breath, to truly expel magic.

Using this skill allows for the exhalation of raw magic into the atmosphere.
Respire is immune to, and unaffected by, any method of cost reduction.
The amount of mana spent is the amount of magic expelled, at a 1-1 ratio.
The limitations on speed and scale are lifted as Respire levels.

So now he just needed a way to deliver it to the target: No matter how many skills he had used before, the beetle wouldn't have any resistance to Spike's raw magic. The problem was that if it could gain one, then he had to finish this in one shot. A true and proper alpha strike. Thinking back, his first test using Respire and Stagnet together had destroyed one of his pillows... But this thing was no pillow. He needed a much more certain way to end the fight.

He was pretty sure he had just the thing.

Author's Note:

Chapter 96
Zero Hour: Part 15
- OR -
Bungled Beetle Battle

Comments

[Herald of Opera]

Despite what I said about Mr. Freeze earlier, there are a couple attacks in Batman's arsenal where he did have to resort to altering his armor rather than, say, starting to habitually freeze grates shut so that you couldn't jump out of them anymore.

[Black--Soul]

Perhaps store the raw magical essence in storage, go MIB style into the stomach and blow it up from the inside?

Great chapter!

[Mister Morden]

Come on Spike, you can do it! Tear it's freaking head off!

[Booster Spice]

Borg class adaptive. At this point, just taking its head off is in no way a gurentee of slowing it down, never mind stopping it.

I mean, doesnt stop some chickens.

Intresting how the Beetles defence can stop a Dragons magic boosted claws, given what their claws, normally, can go through. Or is the Dragons ability to Consume anything, like harrdest gems, Diamond, caused by magical Ability, or just a passive improvement to better than basic gem hardness?

Hopefully for beating this thing, even if Spike has to use a Bed to Recover, he Absorbs or Aquires the bugs ability as reward?

Adaption?

[HB_DS2013]

RIP. AND. TEAR!!

[Greenhorn]

The beetle slowly swiveled its head around twice, seemingly checking for whatever slammed into it. Eventually it went back to its previous behavior as if nothing had happened,

Wow, this beetle's defense was really tough. Despite being a child, Spike is still a dragon. His attack should be able to damage normal insect to a certain degree. Wonder if actual spear could do anything to it?

[HB_DS2013]

10815937
Spike imho should totally learn armor-piercing skills.

[Jaro45]

10815964
Normally, that would be the... ( well, that's a really terrible pun. so, to phrase it different ) reason Pierce exists.

[Flutterstrucked]

I wonder what flutters would have thought about these things.

[Tonto the Trotter]

10815439
I remember that particular boss fight clearly, I beat him earlier this year. Batman has the knowledge and skill to utilize the environment and his own abilities incredibly effectively. And Freeze is able to learn and adapt during the fight, this Glittershell Beetle seems to do the same naturally. Like the Borg adapting to certain forms of attack. Though it's not being actively hostile, so this could potentially make it much easier to kill.

[Blackdust]

DAMN YOU AND YOUR CLIFFHANGERS!!!

[Blaze Song]

Adaptive : This creature can respond to changes in its environment very rapidly. This response can vary between reactive counteraction, passive comprehension, and more.

Oh, so the GLITTERSHELL is one of those really annoying literal adaptor enemies, aka Borg like.. those are rather rare in games arn't they, or have I just been playing the wrong sort?

[Black--Soul]

I wonder if he can build mana bombs out of pre-filled vials. Or Mana potions.

If that bug was a player i say it was pretty clever tanking attack for progress. Otherwise just confused...