Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 202: Mingle

Paradox Zauberer (Perry Z.)

Class: Garage Tinker

Level 14

HP: 15

Body: 40

Stability: 61

Nerve: 44

Attunement: 61

Free Points: 36

XP to next level: 22613

Spells: Paradox’s Pernicious Prison (6/6) Light (5/5), Dragor’s Kinesis (3/3), Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation (1/1)

Perry heaved a long breath and ran his fingers through his hair. Ten more points than last level. Things were starting to speed up, drastically. A distribution that leveled out his stats a bit further and prevented imbalance fatigue on his body would be…twelve Body, ten Nerve, eight Stability, six Attunement.

Body 52

Stability 69

Nerve 54

Attunement 67

1.05^67= 26.28

That would give him fifty-three points to spend at level fifteen. He could get two cross-class perks and maybe pick up a handful of smaller ones.

The greedy side of Perry whispered that if he just dumped them all into Attunement, he could get eleven cross class perks and change at level fifteen.

Except that was stupid, suicidal and would turn him into either a mass-murderer or an eldritch abomination. Or both.

Well, you know, I would have 228 points available to me, and if I took eleven cross-class features, It would drop Attunement back down from an unhealthy 99 to 44, resetting my timer on going nuclear…and giving me a huge advantage over Tyrannus. Just absolutely blowing him out of the water.

Wait a minute. I don’t even have to have all the points in Attunement causing me to be crazy the entire time. I could just check my XP to next level every morning and afternoon, and when it gets really close, I dump them in attunement and spend a day doing whatever I need to get the last little bit of XP.

I could get that much XP for inconveniencing Tyrannus for a day with some pointless paperwork. As long as I diminish his potential actions for an afternoon, I’d get XP for it. Same as if I threw him in jail. I’d have to only do it once, or else he’d get wise real quick.

And if, hypothetically, even if some emergency happens that causes me to miss that mark and level without assigning the points, I’ll still have 76 points at level 15, allowing me to grab three cross-class perks and change.

AND leaving the points unassigned will prevent Tyrannus from noticing too drastic of a power spike…yeah, this could work.

If perry did take the even assignment, his Body bumping up from 40 to 52 would take his physical multiplier alone from X7 to X12.6, which was an insane amount of growth, and the other stats weren’t that far behind. There wouldn’t really be any way to hide it. It would be alarming.

Okay, so here’s the plan: Sit on the points until I’m close to levelling to obfuscate my power growth, then carefully dump them into Attunement and sprint to the end when it’s less than 100XP to go, hoping Solaris doesn’t kill me.

Careful as in: spend a day or two slowly dropping points in Attunement, watching for extra-dimensional limbs, thoughts that pierce reality itself, murderous tendencies, etc. NOT subjecting his brain to such wildly imbalanced Attunement that it was like diving into an icy lake.

Plus I can see if Nat can design me some Stability-boosting equipment. I got that enchanted circlet from Dave that gave an effective +5. I’d need something closer to an effective +20, but it would only have to last a day or two.

How closely is he watching Nat, because that could definitely tip my hand…but it’d be better to have a safety net than not.

In the meantime, if there’s a confrontation with Tyrannus before I’m close to leveling, then just dump them evenly as originally planned for a massive power-up.

Living to see his kids grow up was more important than min-maxing, sadly.

Yeah, this could work. I’m gonna have to take Nat somewhere private and explain that I need a huge favor…

Perry itched his bandaged hand and walked out of the hospital to get some fresh air.

“CONGRATULATIONS!” A blast of noise rolled over Perry in Manitian as the assembled crowd shouted, little firework spells bursting over the entrance of the hospital.

They’ve gotta be inconveniencing people who need medical assistance, Perry thought, scanning the music-festival atmosphere. There were even some musicians and dance-circles.

Odd that I did nothing to deserve this. Perry knew they weren’t celebrating him so much as the monarchy, which was the last vestige of their homeland. Gramma liked to seize on that marketing. In a sense they were celebrating themselves.

“Twins!” dad said, clapping Perry on the shoulder, grinning from ear-to-ear. “Not bad, son.”

“Still not sure exactly how that happened,” Perry muttered. He got an inkling that Nat and Heather knew but didn’t want to worry him in case there were complications. Two anklets for the baby should’ve been a hint.

“If there had been one more baby, we could’ve put you down for a hat trick. Still pretty impressive getting the wrong girl preggers, though.” Dad said, sipping his beer and scanning the crowd. It was different than the pool party Perry had hosted at his lair. Most of those had been his parent’s friends.

This was a mass of everything from relatives to sycophants. People he didn’t even tangentially know.

Speaking of relatives…Perry thought as gramma approached, seemingly effortlessly parting the crowd.

“Have you decided on names yet?” Gramma asked as she arrived, dad ducking down behind him and scurrying off, probably unwilling to lose another body to gramma’s mood. “Of course, the last name is already settled.”

“Yeah, Heather told me about your generous…bribe,” Perry said. “So, um…how exactly did Heather get pregnant too? We didn’t…”

“You remember that ‘protection’ spell I cast to help you on your mission to retrieve Professor Replica’s Magnum Opus?” Gramma asked.

“Nooo…” Perry said, his eyes narrowing. He did remember, the ‘no’ was expressed more like: ‘you better not’ve done what I think you did.’

“Well, your mother and I knew you had a good chance of not making it back alive, and before you get angry, we didn’t violate anybody’s free will or bodily autonomy, we just lined up the…timing of events, and maybe succeeded a little better than we expected with a one-in-a-trillion event. That’s all.”

She poked him in the chest.

“Besides, you’re the one that ‘did the deed’, so none of that outrage, young man.”

“Still a liiittle bit of outrage,” Perry said, jaw tight.

In a split second, his grandmother’s face went from ‘Wicked Witch’ to ‘Doting Grandmother’ “Oh, there they are!” Gramma said, clasping her hands together and disappearing before flickering into existence in front of Nat and Heather. The latter was in a wheelchair with one baby while the other rested in Nat’s arms.

“They’re gorgeous!” Gramma exclaimed before devolving into baby talk and cooing over the malformed raisins, sporting the biggest smile he’d ever seen.

Well, we can shelve that particular talk for later. Gramma was very much a ‘ends justify the means’ kinda person, so there was slim chance she could be made to feel ashamed of her actions…at all.

While gramma was bouncing Perry’s son in her arms, likely making plans for the dynasty, Perry leaned down beside Heather’s wheelchair.

“How are you feeling?” Perry asked quietly.

“Like a hot mess.” She groaned, her hair matted and sticky, face pale and sweaty. It was a lot to ask for a woman to attend a party, day of. Probably against the doctor’s orders, come to think of it.

“Don’t tell the doctor I did this, alright?” Perry said, placing a hand on her shoulder.

PPP.EXE

Perry drained a portion of his life-force and siphoned it into Heather, limiting the drain to his undamaged arm. It withered a bit as the color returned to Heather’s cheeks and she relaxed in the chair.

“There you go,” Perry said, moving to pull away. “I-“

Heather reached up and laid her hand overtop Perry’s on her shoulder.

“Thanks,” she said, glancing up at him, her gold hair tickling the knuckles beside her cheek.

Perry glanced around. No one was paying any attention to him and Heather. They were clustered around Natalie and Gramma as they held the twins, the stars of the show.

Pery bent down and kissed Heather’s sweaty, hair-matted forehead, his actions hidden by the temporary anonymity granted by the party.

Heather turned a deep red, bringing out her freckles.

“Feels like this is entirely out of order,” Perry said quietly, “but I think I love y-“

A soft, high pitched squeal, barely audible beneath the background chatter of the ongoing parking-lot-party, drifted to their ears.

They glanced away from each other and spotted Nat, her fists clutched in front of her face, watching them with undisguised glee.

“Yodeling,” Perry finished, glancing over to where his mom was cradling his newborn daughter, giggling madly, then checking up on Gramma, who was…apparently bargaining favors with a unicorn to allow it to smell his son.

Yep, nothing unexpected here.

Nat rolled her eyes with a groan of frustration and pulled them both in a tight hug.

“I think I love yodeling too,” Heather said, her face squished into Nat’s side, leaning awkwardly in her wheelchair, one wheel off the ground.

“Thanks for the heal, Perry, I feel much better,” Heather said as Nat released them and went to chat with her mom.

“I think I should go help Nat,” Perry muttered, watching Nat’s exchange with her mom. “It doesn’t look great over there.”

“Go rescue her,” Heather said, smothering a yawn. “I no longer feel like a hundred miles of bad road, but I’m still dead-tired.”

“We’ll talk more about our shared love of yodelling later,” Perry said as he moved away, hearing Heather snort in amusement behind him.

“…People think that trolls like eating babies, but that’s just not true, babies are barely a mouthful. The real tasty ones are overweight women in their late twenties…”

Karth inexplicably speaking to a gaggle of giggling young women faded in and out of Perry’s perception as he passed them by, arriving beside Nat, who looked like she was going to explode.

“Hi Donna, how’s it going?” Perry said, seizing the matronly woman by the shoulder and steering her toward an impromptu buffet set up in the hospital’s handicapped parking spaces. While Perry was steering her away, she prattled on about how Nat didn’t have the courage to have a ‘natural’ birth and how using a surrogate was a cop-out.

Perry knew her type well enough to know that pointing out the whole thing wasn’t planned wouldn’t make a difference, so he let her thinly veiled abuse pointed at her daughter roll off of him, stuffed her face with flatbread and ditched her by the table.

Nat’s dad was hanging out with Perry’s, and the two seemed to be hitting it off, chatting excitedly about the latest heroes and villains, each of them clutching a beer.

“Yeah, get this, his name is ‘Pulse’.” Dad said, his beer nearly sloshing out of the bottleneck from his exaggerated movements.

“So he just…vibrates?” Dave Smith asked. “That’s it?”

“Catalyst type, so he controlsvibration and uses that to do other stuff.” Dad said.

“So does he use the power to…you know…”

Perry moved away, the conversation fading away as he stood on his toes to try and see where he left Nat. Unfortunately, it was nearly as difficult to find a small person in a crowd as it was to be a small person in a crowd, and he’d lost her track.

Hmm…There’s Karth the Landmark, and he hasn’t moved, so if Nat stayed in the same spot, she’d be right…there. Good a place as any to start looking for her.

“Paradox! I hear congratulations are in order!” a vaguely familiar voice caused Perry to stiffen. He smoothed the reaction over and turned to face his adversary.

Charles Frepon, the patriarch of the Frepon family. His maternal grandfather’s brother’s son, father of his…incredibly annoying cousins.

Growing up, Perry had never really thought much about him. All the verbal abuse had come from his cousins. Charles was just the guy who hosted Christmas parties. Yes, manitians have Christmas parties. Huge ones, even. It was a political decision by Gramma to make them more sympathetic to the Americans they landed amongst.

With the wisdom of age and a System-enhanced brain, Perry had come to the realization that Perry was directly in front of Charles in the order of succession, which had made him the blue-eyed man’s enemy…basically since birth.

The cousins were mean, but they were just kids being kids. Charles was an adult. He had to have known his children mocked Perry at every opportunity, and he allowed it. Probably even encouraged it, especially after he was revealed to be Dull.

Now that Perry was suddenly a Mage and had his own kids, Charles Frepon had dropped from first in line to fourth. That probably didn’t sit well with him.

“Charles!” Perry said, affecting all the smiles and enthusiasm he could. No sense letting the man know Perry hated his guts. “I haven’t seen you since the Christmas party…three years ago?”

“Indeed,” Charles said, drawing Perry in for a hug. “You’ve become a fine young man, and by all accounts, a fine mage.”

“Eh,” Perry said waggling his hand as he detached himself from his uncle. “I’m only okay at magic. Still pretty limited. Working on it, though.”

“Such modesty,” Charles said, grinning and patting Perry on the arm.

Was Charles always this touchy? Perry wondered, surreptitiously checking himself for hexes.

FWOOM!

A gust of wind rushed over everyone present, knocking over a few smaller creatures, and some of the tipsy ones who’d started the party a bit early.

The sun overhead shined through a crimson wing for a brief second before Tyrannus flapped once more, arriving fashionably late.

“Greetings, my fellow Manitians!” Tyrannus’s voice boomed through the sudden stunned silence as everyone held their breath in front of the apex predator, waiting for the worst…

“Here’s the beer!”

The dragon waved a single paw and over fifty oak barrels appeared from a swiftly moving portal, depositing themselves in a neat chevron shape, their spigots facing toward the crowd.

The surrounding Manitians broke into a cheer and surged forward, filling their cups, cans and jars with the best spirits the Eternal empire had to offer.

Perry noticed Gramma heading toward the dragon, having passed his son back to Heather, a dark look on her face.

Probably because he’s an equal, and she can’t tolerate that. Perry rolled his eyes a moment before Charles clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“So I was wondering-“ Charles’ voice cut off, along with the sound of the party, and the light of the sun.

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