Chapter 5-123: Someone has Cabin Fever (1/2)

“By the power of the djinn, I Wish that Kayla Mafafar’s Charisma rise permanently!”

Windgraf Kochtal waved calmly at my words, and the young Sorceress tried to hide how she was quivering with excitement.

“Think long and hard about what you want to do with your life now,” I warned her, before she could hit that Level to Four. “You know exactly what you need to do now, and the road to the higher Levels is wide open to you.

“You’re going to make it to Six if you aren’t dumb. You are going to make it to Eight if you are clever. And you can make it to Nine or higher... if you are smart... and patient.”

The young woman of Iraqi descent clutched the Leveling Guide in her hand. Those things were like gold in Heavenbound Hall now; someone leaving the room with one of those Bloodbound pamphlets in their hands basically had a huge future ahead of them, and everyone knew it.

The Windgraf watched her go and turned to me respectfully. I nodded once and sighed, “By the power of the djinn, I Wish that my Intellect would rise permanently, not to take effect until five Wishes like this have been made!”

There was a kind of convergence in my head, a rumbling of pure thought, and then, with an explosion that was purely mental in effect, bits of my mind exploded away, and began to split and reform.

+5 Inherent bonus to Intelligence. Intelligence 28! First mental division!

With the ease of familiarity, I started partitioning duties between mental-only and physical, moving my cerebral functions away from my real-world functions to help manage things. It basically allowed me to take extra mental-only actions, process information from multiple sources quicker and more thoroughly, all without impacting how I was interacting with the physical world.

It was kinda like having two computer screens, only one half was looking out from inside the screen, doing computer things, while the other was playing at the keyboard and making things happen.

I opened my eyes, aware I’d slumped back in relief. “Finally. Dual thoughtstreams! I missed multiple thoughtstreams so much!”

The noble djinn cocked an eye at me thoughtfully as he digested that, and decided to simply harrumph. “Is it really so useful?” he had to ask.

“Admittedly, it becomes a lot more useful once I can apply Still and Silent to every single spell I cast. Once I can do that, I can do full spellcasting at the same time I’m engaged in full-on melee.”

His eyes widened a bit. “Ah,” he said after a moment of thought. “That does seem incredibly useful at that point...”

“Yes, very.” Although there were risks for trying to Cast while in melee, which was one of the reasons I was shooting my Concentration modifier to the moon. “Are things progressing smoothly on your end?”

“Yes,” the big blue Windgraf nodded, unable to hide his eagerness. “I am advancing smoothly along the Artificer progression. Having to take the full Masteries at each Level is slowing me down, but I acknowledge that it is wise to do so. The amount of Karma I have to use is quite fixed, and if I rise in Level too fast, I will wind up paying extra Karma for them.” He gave me a concerned look. “Is this not a problem for you too, Lady Traveler?”

“Yes and no. Yes, it’s a problem in that all the extra Masteries I’m not waiting to take are going to cost multiple times more. No, it’s not a problem, because the sheer volume of Karma I’m going to be earning will pay for it all when it is time.”

He was impressed. “And you are certain of this?”

“I have second-hand direct recollection of just how much Karma collapsing a Dead March and their Shroudzone is, and that was divided by literally hundreds or thousands of people. Karma, noble Windgraf, is not going to be an issue at all.”

He nodded slowly, trusting my judgement. I had been spot on with so many other things, after all.

He seemed to have something he wanted to ask, and was deciding how to get around to doing it. I waited patiently, he realized I was doing so, and that impelled him to action. “In your plans, Lady Traveler... is there any way that I could get out of this area and accompany you?”

I did not move my eyes from him as I thought that over. Having the noble djinn here was a huge boon, especially now that Heavenbound Hall was taking massive advantage of his Wishcrafting. Even if we couldn’t do anything too overwhelming, because it would simply be eaten by the Shroud, just his empowering of the agents of the Hall was incredible, and his Artificing would only take it to the next level.

That said, he was a djinn, a Chaotic Good genie, and sitting in one place all this time, threatened by so many powers that wanted to tap him for Wishes, had to be grating on him hard.

“How patient are you?” I asked calmly, after long thought.

“I have endured here for over four decades,” he got out grimly, and I inclined my head in acknowledgement of the fact. Even as an Elemental being, with a different perspective of time than we had, that was not a small amount of time. “I can endure longer, if I must.”

I nodded again. “I have some points for you to think on, Lord Windgraf.”

“Go on, my Lady,” he replied formally.