Finally, there was the manifestation of a supernatural ability granted by his Arcane Bloodline. Including this time, he still had two opportunities left.
Unlike Signature Spells, however, Arcane Bloodline could only incorporate certain beneficial spells, and none of the spells he'd learned recently were particularly suitable.
Intellect Fortress would have been a good fit, but it was a Wizard spell rather than innate magic, so it couldn't be directly integrated into his Arcane Bloodline.
'Then I'll improve one of my existing supernatural abilities.'
He looked through his Character Sheet and found plenty of abilities that could be upgraded. Aside from Transcendent Form II, Ethereal Jaunt II, and Truesight, there were also Draconic Physique II, Psionic Power, and Wild Shape.
'Interesting.'
A Druid's transformation differed somewhat from a werewolf's, but both were still classified as supernatural abilities.
'My Dragonkind Transformation is already good enough.'
Thinking of those Mind Flayers, Anser's attention instinctively settled on Psionic Power.
The potential ceiling of Psionic Power was extremely high. It was a foundational form of power, and what kinds of psionic manifestations someone could develop depended entirely on the individual.
'Let's give it a try.'
He selected Psionic Power as his target.
[Wisdom: +2. Spells: Dark Star, Demiplane. Feat: Ability Score Improvement (Dexterity +2). Arcane Bloodline: Psionic Power. Metamagic Enhancement: Enhanced Twinned Spell. Confirm?]
"Confirm!"
Outside, everything remained calm and peaceful, but unseen forces were stirring beneath the surface.
The Spirit Net's efficiency increased, continuously channeling pure, stable Magic Power into Anser's body. The entire process proceeded with effortless ease.
The Spirit Net concealed everything without a trace, quietly erasing all signs of what was happening. That put Anser particularly at ease.
After an unknown amount of time, Anser finished absorbing the arcane knowledge and brought his attention back to his body.
He immediately noticed the enormous change in his psionic power. Both its quality and quantity had risen by an entire tier, and he had also gained several derivative abilities.
[Psionic Power II]: Current Psionic Power: 16 units. Psionic Energy Die: d8 (1–8).
You can expend Psionic Power to use extraordinary abilities: Protective Field, Psionic Strike, Telekinetic Movement, Mind Piercing, Extended Awareness, Acceleration, Telekinetic Arrow.
Compared to before, his Psionic Power had increased by 5 units, its quality had grown stronger, and he'd gained no fewer than four new psionic abilities.
[Mind Piercing]: You hone your mental power into a sword sharp enough to pierce the mind. Your attacks ignore the target's psychic resistance.
[Extended Awareness]: Mental power is an extension of your consciousness. You gain an additional benefit to perception, adding your Psionic Energy Die to Wisdom checks.
[Acceleration]: You use telekinetic force to slightly increase your own or a target's movement speed for 2d8 (2–16) seconds.
[Telekinetic Arrow]: You condense telekinetic force into an invisible, intangible arrow. Its attack deals force damage equal to your Psionic Energy Die (1–8).
These were all traits and techniques derived from the improvement of his mental power, and every one of them was extremely useful.
The downside was that they all consumed Psionic Power, putting even more pressure on his already limited reserves.
'Still a net gain no matter how you look at it.'
Anser was quite satisfied.
After leveling up, his Hit Points reached 263 and his Magic Power reached 349.
The increase didn't look particularly dramatic because his base values were already high, making the percentage gain relatively small, but the absolute increase was nothing to scoff at.
He still had more than seven thousand experience points left in his experience pool. He would save them for now. His immediate priority was reaching level 17 and gaining access to 9th-level spells!
Other people were completely drained after casting one or two 9th-level spells. He was different.
The spell he had his eye on was Wish. It was known as the mightiest spell a mortal creature could cast. Who wouldn't want it?
He planned to upgrade it into one of his Signature Spells and see whether that could exempt him from the spell's negative effects. If that didn't work, he could always save up experience points and upgrade the Signature Spell itself.
While he was considering this, Sakkors suddenly sent him a telepathic message.
"Master, my experiment worked!"
"What experiment?" Anser already had a vague idea.
"Those symbiotes! The Mind Flayer larvae in their brains have been specially treated, so they won't devour the host's brain tissue and undergo transformation..." Sakkors explained excitedly.
Mind Flayer tadpoles were Mind Flayer larvae, fully functional aberrant organisms. Once inside a living creature, they would rapidly establish themselves as parasites, then ravenously devour the creature's brain tissue along with its memories and knowledge, ultimately transforming the host into a Mind Flayer.
The Mind Flayer larvae inside the symbiotes, however, were partially crippled. They could be understood as "vegetative worms" with only a small portion of their instincts remaining.
As a great arcanist, Sakkors knew these creatures extremely well. Or rather, the great arcanists of Netheril had all seriously studied Mind Flayer civilization.
Karsus's Crown had even been capable of enslaving an Elder Brain. The Elder Brain had simply regained consciousness later and quietly slipped free of its control.
Sakkors directly implanted Spirit Net Marks into the Mind Flayer larvae inside the symbiotes, using the mythallar as the "Elder Brain" and the Spirit Net as the hive network to forcibly control both the Mind Flayer larvae and their symbiotes.
The concept itself wasn't difficult, since the mythallar had originally been designed with an Elder Brain as its reference.
In practice, however, Sakkors had still spent an enormous amount of time and effort on it, and more than a dozen symbiotes had died in the process.
Once the mythallar took control of a symbiote, it could preserve the host's consciousness while controlling them through suggestion and brainwashing. When necessary, it could also strip away their consciousness entirely and turn them into living tools.
Eventually, the Mind Flayer larva would be completely replaced by the Spirit Net Mark. At that point, even if an Elder Brain personally appeared, it wouldn't be able to wrest control of the symbiote away.
"How do you plan to use these people?" Anser's thoughts leaped ahead as all kinds of interesting ideas surfaced in his mind.
"Spirit Net maintenance staff..."
The symbiotes could seamlessly connect to the Spirit Net, managing content such as news, knowledge, and tasks, processing user applications, and forwarding their preliminary results to the mythallar.
That way, neither Sakkors nor the mythallar would have to work so hard. They would only need to perform a simple review before forwarding the information to the dice.
A single symbiote's mental capacity couldn't remotely compare to the mythallar or Sakkors, but what about hundreds or thousands of them?
Enough quantitative accumulation would eventually produce a qualitative change. Besides, the symbiotes themselves would continue to improve.
The symbiotes also had another minor use: serving as psionic batteries.
They could continuously produce Spirit Coins at a far higher rate than ordinary professionals, and they handed over every last one without spending any themselves.
"Can the Spirit Net Mark directly help members awaken psionic power?" Anser began thinking of even more possibilities.
Casting with Magic Power was still too difficult. If psionic power could be awakened at low cost, the Spirit Net would truly take off.
"Hmm... that's almost impossible. A symbiote's psionic power actually comes from an inseparable symbiotic transformation."
"But we could introduce a spell service. We could package psionic power and spells together, transmit them through the Spirit Net into the target member's Spirit Net Mark, and let the member actively trigger and release them, just like using a spell scroll..."
Anser's eyes lit up. Now this was the Spirit Net's true potential.
Telepathic communication attracted ordinary people. Tasks attracted adventurers. But spells tempted everyone.
Especially spellcasters trapped by the Weave's instability who were unable to master Magic Power spellcasting.
As long as they meditated diligently, they could still gain the means to protect themselves.
"That's a good approach. I'll give you a batch of spell models to study, but for now, only make support spells of 1st and 2nd level available," Anser instructed.
"Understood." Sakkors acknowledged him, then cautiously added, "I also need some death-row prisoners."
He wanted to make use of all the Mind Flayer tadpoles in the spawning pool and see whether he could develop any new applications. He didn't care about human lives, but he knew Anser did.
Anser pondered for several seconds before silently nodding.
"All right. I'll arrange it."
The prisoners were going to die anyway. Erasing their consciousness and letting them "live" in another form could at least be considered making use of something that would otherwise go to waste.
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