The Six Hundred Thirty-Second Ability
In the night of Gramorn, Dorothy was sitting in an armchair in her hotel room, swaying back and forth while sorting out her newly acquired abilities after her promotion, especially the new ability of the Path of Enchantment.
The Chalk Tier of the Path of Enchantment is known as the Dream Traveler. After an extraordinary being of the Path of Enchantment advances to this tier, their original Dream Interpreter abilities will be strengthened, and they will also gain additional capabilities related to the Dream Realm.
Firstly, the ability to transfer mental damage into dreams, where the damage can be shared by the Dream Traveler’s morphs within the Dream Realm. The stronger the morphs in the Dream Realm, the more damage they can take on. Previously, Dorothy relied on this ability and the Moon Crown fragments to withstand two pain transmissions from Gethsmoor; without this ability, she would have lost consciousness immediately due to the intensity of Gethsmoor’s divine enchantment.
Another ability is Dream Realm travel. A Dream Traveler can perform a small soul alliance ritual with an ally who fully agrees, marking the ally after the ritual. The Dream Traveler’s morph can then open a portal in the Dream Realm leading to any allied target’s Dream Cocoon coordinates, allowing the morph to teleport there.
Additionally, the Dream Traveler can create dream entity duplicates that manifest at the current coordinates of themselves or any allied unit. These dream entity duplicates lack physical form and can pass through material objects like ghosts, but they cannot possess targets. Instead, they can cause mental damage through contact. During the Dream Traveler stage, these duplicates retain only hypnotic abilities for reconnaissance and auxiliary combat. With sufficient spirituality, a Dream Traveler can create multiple dream entity duplicates, but their strength decreases with the number created; the fewer the duplicates, the higher their individual strength.
After reaching the Red Tier, the Dream Traveler’s dream entity duplicates start gaining other abilities. For Dorothy, some of these secondary abilities can also be released by the duplicates. Moreover, these dream entity duplicates can freely change their appearance, though they remain visible to ordinary people, they can easily blend into darkness and shadows.
Furthermore, the Dream Traveler enhances the extraordinary affinity of the Dream Interpreter. When the Dream Traveler speaks in public, their words possess persuasive and appealing qualities that cover a wide area, making it easy for many people to believe them, especially when telling stories.
As a Deceiver Writer, the extraordinary beings of the Path of Enchantment can manifest legends and rumors circulating in society, making them serve the writer. The strength of these legend bodies is influenced by the breadth of the rumor, the conditions at the scene, and the payment of spirituality. The manifested legend bodies will have different abilities based on the content of the rumor.
It should be noted that the spiritual consumption for manifesting legend bodies isn’t limited to “Enlightenment” and “Shadow”; it depends on the characteristics and abilities of the specific legend body being manifested. “Enlightenment” and “Shadow” are just basic consumptions.
For example, when manifesting the Full Moon Water Nymph, Dorothy used three types of spirituality: “Enlightenment,” “Shadow,” and “Cup.” “Enlightenment” and “Shadow” were basic spiritual consumptions, while “Cup” was used to give the Full Moon Water Nymph a corporeal form for action.
However, since the Full Moon Water Nymph didn’t have any powerful abilities or a strong body in the rumors, the consumption of “Cup” was minimal, around one or two points. The ability of the Full Moon Water Nymph to create illusions mainly consumed “Enlightenment” and “Shadow.”
If Dorothy were to create a legend body with immense strength, the consumption of “Cup” would increase significantly. If this legend body were a ghost with unique abilities, it would consume additional “Silence” spirituality. In summary, the legend bodies created by Deceiver Writers need to pay corresponding spiritual costs for abilities outside the scope of “Enlightenment” and “Shadow.”
The spiritual consumption for creating legend bodies is high and widespread, but fortunately, summoning legend bodies is not just a single ability. It can be ritualized, similar to how the “Silence” extraordinary ability allows for spirit summoning rituals. If an extraordinary ability can be ritualized, it means that it can use storage items to pay for spirituality, reducing the burden and allowing various methods to strengthen the ritual, such as using higher-grade ritual fields and powerful ritual implements.
Among the four different levels of ritual fields, using different grades of implements to perform ritualized abilities can reduce the spiritual consumption while increasing the ability’s strength and range to varying degrees. However, setting up the ritual requires much preliminary work, and during the ritual process, the user generally cannot move or use other abilities.
The larger the scale of the ritual, the longer the preparation time, and the higher the requirements for the ritual field and implements. At the same time, the strengthening effect of the ritual is also stronger, but large-scale rituals are harder to hide and can easily be detected by other extraordinary means.
‘The abilities of the Path of Enchantment… another characteristic that excels in planning and strategy. The Dream Interpreter’s ability, if enough intelligence is gathered in advance and proper planning is done, can safely complete personality profiling, leading to powerful suppression against the predetermined target. Whether luring or direct combat, it has significant advantages over same-tier and lower-tier extraordinary beings. Other branches of the same tier are difficult to defend against.
‘However, the downside is clear: it’s too cumbersome. To achieve the best results, long-term preparation is necessary. Even profiling same-tier extraordinary beings takes a lot of time, and profiling those higher than oneself is even less feasible. In dealing with sudden situations… especially in encounters, it’s hard to cope. With planning, it becomes very powerful, but without it, it’s quite average, lacking flexibility…
‘As for the Dream Traveler… not only does it strengthen the original Dream Interpreter’s abilities, but to some extent, it compensates for the weakness of the Dream Interpreter in direct confrontation. This stage of the Path of Enchantment extraordinary beings gains the ability to make long-distance plans through the Dream Realm. After reaching the Red Tier, this kind of dream entity duplication is similar to the bl**d erosion duplicates seen in Berard and the bone duplicates seen in Lu Ke. They all have the ability to expand influence through allies.
‘As for the abilities of the Deceiver Writer… if used properly, they can have a significant impact. The potential of the skills can be considered the highest among all the Red Tier abilities I’ve seen, demonstrating high creativity and possibility.
‘However, the drawbacks are the same as those of the Dream Interpreter: it heavily relies on initial planning and intelligence gathering. Additionally, the spiritual consumption is a significant flaw, consuming spirituality across the board depending on the manifestation of the legend. This differs greatly from other abilities that only consume branch-specific spirituality. Fortunately, this ability can be ritualized, which means it can use storage items and divine blessing objects to reduce consumption and enhance power. My accumulated divine blessing objects won’t go to waste…
Lying in the armchair, Dorothy thought about this, then shifted her attention to the final Fury Path.
After obtaining the Sky Command Envoy ability, Dorothy’s original lightning control ability saw significant improvement. However, due to the straightforward nature of the Elementalist, these improvements were directly reflected in output, without any complex maneuvers.
The enhancement in output was evident in increased striking power and expanded skill range. Now, Dorothy could radiate more powerful electric arcs that could jump between closely positioned targets, forming lightning chains for mass destruction. Besides electric arcs, there were new tricks. The radius for creating lightning strikes increased from seven kilometers to twenty kilometers. Within this twenty-kilometer range, Dorothy could strike precise lightning bolts at targets she successfully located.
The enhanced version of the lightning strike, Heavenly Punishment Thunder, had the ability to release destructive lightning after a long charge-up, with killing power comparable to Heavenly Fire Meteor wielded by a Heavenly Fire Apostle. However, like before, lightning strikes still required favorable weather conditions. But now, the Sky Command Envoy had the ability to change the weather.
Weather Ritual, this is a built-in ritual in the promotion information of the Sky Command Envoy, which is not an ability of the Sky Command Envoy itself but a knowledge automatically acquired upon promotion. Each extraordinary being can immediately learn the general information about their new abilities after a successful promotion, which explains why extraordinary beings know how to use their new abilities without needing to experiment. The promotion information of the Sky Command Envoy includes a complete ritual directly.
The purpose of the Weather Ritual is simple: to change the weather in a region. For example, sunny weather is “Lamp,” rainy weather is “Cup,” windy weather is “Shadow,” and so on. Since the ritual can use storage items, it requires a ritual field and implements. The better the field and implements, the better the ritual’s effect, and the higher the efficiency of the spiritual consumption. With a little spiritual consumption, the effect can be significant. Since lightning strikes require thick clouds and stormy weather, Dorothy needs to consume “Cup” and “Shadow” spiritualities to create wind and rain.
Finally, the new ability of the Sky Command Envoy, of course, includes the elementalization of elements, which all Red Tier Elementals possess. Due to the shortage of spirituality, Dorothy hasn’t tested her lightning elementalization yet. However, from the promotion information, this is a capability that transforms Dorothy into a conscious plasma body. What exactly it is and how it differs from other elementals’ elementalization are unknown and need to be explored by Dorothy in the future.
‘Indeed, elementalists’ abilities are simple and straightforward, without complex components. Just do it. This characteristic of the elementalists remains unchanged even in the most secretive ‘Enlightenment’ family. Rather, it seems that the Lightning Mage is the most dynamic among all elementalists, contrasting sharply with the overall rhythm of ‘Enlightenment.’ Whether it’s spiritual threads or the Path of Enchantment, they play covertly. The remaining foresight probably follows a similar style, except for the Fury Path. Indeed, the characteristics are written in the branch name?
‘The interesting part is this Weather Ritual. Including a universal ritual in the advancement information is something I’ve never seen before. With this ritual, one can actively change the weather to create conditions for lightning strikes, offering more flexibility than the Chalk Tier’s lightning. Since this is a universal ritual, it likely means that all elementalists will learn this ritual upon advancing to the Red Tier. However, other elementalists don’t rely on weather as much as Lightning Mages do, so it may not be very useful for them. But if I use this ritual, other extraordinary beings might easily detect what it is, so it needs to be used cautiously.
‘Also, the information I obtained about the Sky Command Envoy’s abilities is automatically acquired after a successful promotion. This doesn’t include the new influence of Misaka Mikoto’s superpower mathematical model on the Sky Command Envoy’s abilities. The new influences and the application of the elemental body need to be experimented with later.’
Dorothy pondered this in her heart, then slowly stopped swaying in the armchair and began to consider the last part of her newly acquired abilities.
This promotion to the Red Tier, Dorothy did not only gain the new abilities of the Path of Enchantment. She unexpectedly discovered that the Pure Enlightenment branch itself, the Truth Mentor rank, also came with a minor ability called Spirituality Mastery.
The Truth Mentor gained a new understanding of the essence of spirituality and a deeper insight into the nature of secrecy and spirituality compared to other same-tier extraordinary beings. Therefore, they can optimize the structure of their extraordinary abilities, improving efficiency and reducing systematic waste during the release process, thus driving greater extraordinary effects with less spirituality.
In short, when using all extraordinary abilities, Dorothy’s consumption of spirituality will decrease significantly, with lower-tier abilities experiencing the most reduction.
This reduction in consumption is quite substantial. Although Dorothy’s Red Tier ability consumption decreased only slightly, her Chalk Tier ability consumption dropped by about half, and further down the tiers, the reduction became even more noticeable, from two-thirds to almost negligible.
Additionally, this reduction in spiritual consumption is calculated based on output. Only abilities confined within the corresponding tier enjoy this reduced consumption. If a low-tier ability is forcefully infused with spirituality to exceed its original tier limit, the consumption will suddenly increase.
For example, when using Chalk Tier electric arc ability, Dorothy can strengthen the arc’s power by infusing more spirituality, but once this power exceeds the Chalk Tier’s limits, breaking a certain threshold, the consumption of spirituality will skyrocket because the technique’s output has reached the Red Tier level, becoming a Red Tier technique.
‘Spirituality Mastery… I didn’t expect that even the Pure Enlightenment branch can have its own abilities. This ability is great; it reduces blue mana consumption across all skills, with smaller skills benefiting the most. Although it doesn’t significantly affect major skills that consume a lot of blue mana, it can reduce the consumption of my frequently used minor skills. These skills may be small, but I use them often. For pure-color professions without auxiliary spirituality, every bit of extra spirituality counts. Using these minor skills frequently consumes a lot of spirituality.
