Chapter 255: Glacial Guidance

I ended up getting a crash course on the current knowledge surrounding Ray of Frost. This was the Spell Erani had originally planned on taking at Level 10, so she had quite a few thoughts on the Upgrade choice.

“Now, Quindrex’s second Sorcerer build, which was centered around crowd control, took Piercing Ray and used it alongside Explosive Firebolt to offer severe firepower against any sort of grouped-up enemy. However, another scholar named Perito Pontifix argued that it was optimal to use Prolonged Ray alongside Explosive Firebolt, since his strategy used Spell primarily for the Dexterity drain, which work alongside Explosive Firebolt to control an enemy’s movement, and so extending that timer effectively made the strategy five times cheaper. But—”

“Hold on,” I said, interrupting a lecture that’d gone on for several minutes now. “Most of what you’re talking about is specifically about how the Upgrade works with the Sorcerer Class. But I don’t have any of the other stuff Sorcerer gets, so that seems kinda irrelevant, right?”

“It’s still context,” she said with a shrug. “I’m sure you can apply what they’ve said to your own situation.”

“Then, do you mind giving me some more generalized info? Like, are any considered to be far-and-away worse than the others?”

“I wouldn’t say anything like that. Coating Ray is probably picked at the lowest rate, but that’s just because it can be difficult to make work, not because it’s total garbage or anything.”

“What do you mean, it’s hard to make work? Seems simple enough to me.”

“Well, it’s like that for anything with a non-numerical effect. Increasing the Spell’s range or its debuff duration has a clear and obvious effect on its power. But when it’s something as abstract as creating a layer of ice—something that doesn’t directly increase damage per second, range of engagement, or even how much numerical advantage you can surpass from higher-Level opponents, it doesn’t typically stand out as very useful. You’ve got to come at it with some sort of plan with which you’ll abuse the ability.”

“What are some of those plans, then?”

“Honestly, most of the builds I’ve seen that go with Coating are ones that don’t use Explosive Firebolt. Which, considering you still have to take the Firebolt Spell itself in order to take Ray of Frost, means you’d need to take Firebolt while going a suboptimal route with its Upgrade, which isn’t extremely usual, to say the least. Especially since the second-most Firebolt Upgrade is one that increases the Spell’s range, which means taking Ray of Frost’s range Upgrade is about as forced as it can be in a situation like that.”

“And Coating Ray doesn’t work with Explosive Firebolt because…? What, the explosions destroy the ice coating?”

“That’s the main reason. And if you’re going to use it to try and hold them still before hitting them with an explosion, it ends up being very Mana-intensive, so Prolonged is better. But also, there’s the issue of…Hm, okay, how do I explain this? So, when you’re looking at System combat theory like this, you typically think of fighting as a trade of actions and responses. Some attacks are better because they do more damage if they hit—that is, if your opponent can’t respond effectively—and some are better because they’re harder to respond to in the first place. Within this theory, Explosive Firebolt is the first type, while Ray of Frost is the second.”

I nodded slowly. “Okay, that makes sense.”

“So, the idea behind the original Firebolt plus Ray of Frost strategy is that they work in tandem very well. If you think your opponent can dodge a slow-moving Firebolt, you just shoot a Ray of Frost, which hits instantly. Which, once you get beyond beginner-level fights, that typically means you only let your Firebolts loose when you’re absolutely sure you can hit them. And if you manage to do that, you’ve pretty much already won. So then, Explosive Firebolt is what’s known as your ‘win condition.’ You poke and prod with Ray, force them to use their resources to deal with that, and then the moment you see an opening, you get them in a lock with a flurry of Firebolts. At least, that’s how it goes ideally. Fighting is usually a little messier.

I felt the bed below me shake slightly, like she was readjusting her sitting position. “But the theory stands; you want Ray of Frost to be your cheap move that technically forces them to act, but it doesn’t matter that much if it misses. Piercing Ray is great at making it even harder to dodge, and Extended Ray makes it more impactful for longer, meaning later missed shots won’t run with the threat of letting your debuff timer run out. Coating Ray, in this instance, doesn’t do any of that. What it does, effectively, is turn Ray of Frost into yet another win condition. Suddenly, you’re trying to hit them with as many of them as possible, all in specific areas to limit their movement in an optimal manner. You exploit their openings to shoot them with perfectly-placed Rays, and eventually they’ll be immobilized and you can easily finish them off. But then, why would you take some Upgrade that wants you to cast Ray of Frost during your opponents’ openings when you already want to be casting Firebolt during that time?”

I took a moment to absorb everything Erani had just said. “Okay, okay, I see. So then, in my case…What, would Noxious Grasp be my win condition?”

“Some strategies have multiple. Sorcerers just have to be extremely aware of this sort of stuff because we get so few Spells, and the Spells we do get have so many resources put into them with the free Ranks the Class gets. Yes, I’d say Noxious Grasp is certainly one of yours. If you ever get an opportunity to sustain prolonged contact with an opponent, you’ll almost certainly win the fight. But in your case, I’d almost say…” She paused for a moment, and I could hear an uncertain frown in her voice. “It kind of feels like you don’t have any dedicated win conditions. Most of what you do is just about disrupting your opponent, until they eventually die to some random effect. Honestly, I’d normally say that’s a horrible strategy if I hadn’t seen you make it work so many times.”

I furrowed the brows of my closed eyes. “I don’t think I agree with that.”

“Well of course you’d disagree with me saying it’s bad; you’re the one who uses it. Besides, I don’t actually think it’s bad, which is what confuses me.”

“No, no, I disagree with your initial statement. I do think I have a win condition. At least, the way you describe it, it feels like I have one.”

“What do you mean? Which Spell is it, then?”

“I don’t know. The way you talked about it, it’s like there’s this one thing you’re constantly fighting to do. Every moment is just you waiting for an opportunity to pull that thing off, and everything else is just a distraction—something to weaken them or protect yourself or whatever.”

“Yes. And some strategies have more of those than others, of course. There are more aggressive Wizard builds out there that utilize the massive breadth of options the Class gets to effectively have the perfect winning Spell for any situation. And the barrage of so many different threats can overwhelm lots of opponents who can’t deal with so much unpredictability from an opponent like that. Do you think that’s what you do, maybe? Not quite the toolbelt of a Wizard, but you’ve got a decent number of Spells at your disposal that deal damage.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it, either. It’s more like…” I opened my mouth, letting out an audible breath of air as I figured it out. “Within your framework of wording things, my win condition is time. Literally, it’s just letting time pass.”

“What?” She laughed. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“Think about it. At any opportunity, you’re supposed to be constantly working to find openings to enact your win plan, right? If I had an opening to do literally nothing and just stare at my opponent for some time, I would be ecstatic to take it in any fight. And enough moments like that would certainly cement my victory. I don’t have any individual Spell or Talent that acts as a win condition, but rather, the combination of each of their elements that get better with time each come together as a sort of amalgam that rests overtop my whole strategy, and that forms the fighting style.”

Erani breathed in, preparing to say something, but then caught herself. After a moment of silence, she spoke with an exhale. “I suppose you’re right. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a strategy that works quite like that—even the more debuff-focused builds I’ve seen being discussed typically have a central thing they’re trying to do, with the debuffs just buying time until that thing happens. But in your case, buying time is the thing you’re trying to do.”

“Right,” I said with a nod. I hadn’t really figured anything out in a practical sense—my  moment-to-moment fighting style would likely stay the same after this conversation—but it felt good to finally be able to concretely think about what I was doing with a formalized strategy in mind. And it provided a useful framework with which to consider this choice. “So then, what does all this theorizing mean for Ray of Frost?”

“What? Oh, right, I’d gotten so into the conversation I forgot we were doing that. Sorry. Um, I guess that’s more of a question you should ask yourself?”

I laughed. “The more I talk with you about this, the less I feel like you’re here to offer any help.”

“No, no, it’s just…well, this is your thing, right? Your choice, your fighting style. I certainly don’t know it better than you do. But if you know what your win condition is, then everything you’re picking should in some way add to your goal in accomplishing it in some way. That could be directly or indirectly, but it’s often a trap people fall into where they get too caught up in random side-objectives that sound nice on paper, but in practicality, you never find an opportunity to do.”

“So then…” I glanced over my options again. “I think Piercing Ray might not be as good of a candidate as I thought at first, then. If Ray of Frost is just a method through which I reach my true win condition most of the time—at least, when I’m fighting against stronger opponents that won't die to just a few casts—increasing its range or letting it hit an extra person every now and then isn’t very great. Making it easier to shoot someone isn’t that useful when all I normally use it for is to distract them and keep them on their toes, plus to get an extra debuff stacked on the rest.”

“Okay!” I heard a voice other than Erani’s, startling me for a moment before I realized it was just Index. “Just finished looking through your few most recent fights with several enemies to see how well Piercing Ray would have done in those situations, and I’m ready to give you my report!”

“Oh, uh, hey Index,” I said awkwardly. “We actually just finished talking, and I kinda decided I probably wasn’t going to take it anyway. I mean, unless you found something super relevant, or something.”

“Wait, what? Hold on, let me look through this conversation backlog…” Index’s voice trailed off for a few seconds before it spoke up again. “Ugh, are you serious? I did all this work for nothing? Whatever, I found data to suggest you shouldn’t take it anyway, so I guess you’ve just done my job of convincing you all by yourself.”

“It didn’t seem like it would’ve actually helped in the past?”

“Essentially. Lots and lots of near misses; turns out it’s really hard to randomly hit enemies off fifty paces away from you when you aren’t even remotely trying to aim for them. And with an instant-traveling beam as thin as Ray of Frost is, you’d have to be aiming dead-on at the perfect moment in order to hit an enemy behind the enemy you’re already shooting at. And, again, when they’re that far away, it becomes pretty hard. So it was just a few moments per fight where you’d have hit an extra enemy. Plus one moment where you would’ve hit an ally, which I guess you’d find worth mentioning.”

I frowned. “Hm. Well, good to know I have the numbers to back it up alongside theory.”

“Index doesn’t like the Upgrade either?” Erani asked.

“No, doesn’t look like it. Which puts me down to Coating Ray and Prolonged Ray. Between those two, I can kinda see an argument for both. They both at least contribute to the whole time passing thing, with Coating Ray’s ice preventing movement while Prolonged Ray makes it easier to keep the debuff active on them at all times, but I guess the question between them is just whether I want to go for making that temporary debuff as powerful as possible, or whether I want to make the one that exists easier to use.”

“Do you mind if I chime in with my own input, now that I can read through your much less jumbled thoughts and know what your priorities in this matter are?” Index said.

“Uh, yeah. You don’t normally ask to do stuff like that, do you?”

“It always pays to try out new things. Also, your next point of Intelligence will be your 36th, meaning I’ll get a new power-up in my abilities, so I’d like to try especially hard to do data-gathering regarding your responses to different stimuli before I get my new abilities. I’ll mark this one down as bemused, yet positive.”

“...Sure. Anyway, what did you have to say?”

“I think you may be neglecting the way Coating Ray interacts with a few of your other Spells. Specifically, I’d like you to look at Crippling Chill—and its recent addition of Weakening Chill as an Upgrade—and Gravity Well. Each of those Spells specifically weaken your opponent in how much force they can exert. Which, since Coating Ray will suddenly create an obstacle they’ll need to exert force to get through, it can force them to engage with you on grounds that you’ve made extremely unfavorable.”

“But isn’t the ice really thin? Doesn’t seem like making it a little harder for them to break would be that big of a deal. I mean, sure, it’s worth considering, but is it really a reason to take the Upgrade?”

“Think about it. If you lower someone’s Strength, their basic movement still won’t be very impaired as long as they have the ability to hold their body up. Movement uses Dexterity and Endurance, primarily—Strength only cares about those moments when they need to apply extra physical force. So then, even if it’s not so much that it will literally stop them in their tracks, adding a slight amount of force above the norm that they have to exert every time they want to move after you’ve hit them with this Spell will still create a massive barrier. They’re going from not having to engage their Strength at all, to needing to engage it slightly. But going from nothing to something is a relative change of infinity, and they will feel it, especially if you’re attacking their Strength with your Spells.”

I nodded. “I think I get it. Even if it’s not enough to really immobilize them, even that little bit will add up over time.”

“It’s not just that it adds up. Think about the strategic implementations of being able to create ice wherever you want, whenever you want. Freezing up a specific joint just before an attack could be the difference between a hit and a miss. Typically, this sort of thing doesn’t matter that much, since higher-Level opponents can break through a little ice no problem, but if you’re artificially lowering that boost they get from their Levels, they’ll suddenly find themselves having quite a bit of trouble with it.”

I nodded once again. “You’re kind of selling me on this. I hadn’t quite thought about it like that. Actually, could I do something like shoot the ground beneath someone’s feet to make them slip? It doesn’t say I can only hit living beings with the Spell.”

“Theoretically, yes, but only on certain surfaces. For example, if you tried to do it on dirt, it’d likely just freeze the blades of grass, which would crunch under a boot with no effect. But a hard, smooth surface? That could certainly work.”

“Okay.” I paused for a moment, thinking it all over once again. “Okay, yeah, I think I’ve decided.”

“Coating?” Erani asked.

“Yep. Seems like the best option, considering my debuffs.”

“That makes sense. So then, you just have Curse of Echoes waiting for the next Spell Crystal, and then they’re all Upgraded, right?”

Ray of Frost has gained the Upgrade Coating Ray.

Opening my eyes, I finally gazed around the room. Erani was sitting on the bed with her back leaned against the wall, looking at me with a cute head of messy hair. I nodded. “That, and then Noxious Grasp. Close to being halfway to Rank 20, and I already have the two Poison Spell Crystals waiting to be used. So I’m hoping that’ll come sooner rather than later, with this tournament around the corner.”

“Oh, speaking of…” She leaned forward, back leaving the wall and her hands going down to support her. “Are you gonna tell me what happened? You’ve apparently used your Talent, if you Upgraded a Spell. What’s the story?”

“Ah, right, I should explain that before things get started.” I took a breath and turned to fully face her. “So, basically, there was this total asshole crystal thief named Godo, and…”