Of all the sacred rites Angar had received, only the Discernment of Solomon contained an active component, something beyond mere improvement to this or that organ. Or, if he'd read it correctly, it seemed to state as much.

  Since spotting deceit could mean the difference between life and death, it demanded testing.

  He'd strode straight from the blessing, entering a riot of stalls where Laymen shouted over one another, the whole market reeking of strange scents, cheap ale the most prominent.

  Merchants clamored, their tongues oiled for profit, and Angar drifted through them like a fish through a pack of sharks.

  A wiry vendor with a patched apron had thrust a power-cell toward him. "Finest grade, Holy Sir! Straight from the sacred forges of Mercury itself! Brand new with a full charge, no degradation, guaranteed to outlast the Crusade!”

  The usual bluster. Every claim a blatant lie, but no sign presented itself. The rite remained completely quiet.

  He lingered, pointing toward a chipped combat knife that lay among the stall’s other wares.

  “Never dulls, Sir,” the merchant swore, tapping the blade. “Monomolecular edge, forged for a Seraph’s mighty hand, blessed by a secret congregation of young, beautiful, and hallowed virgins. Cuts through power armor like parchment. For you, Sir, my large friend, though it pains me to part with it at such a meager price, just six credits. A true steal.”

  The lies had stood out clean and sharp, far sharper than the knife itself, though no signal had struck still.

  But only a fool would've believed the man anyway.

  A hawker's lies were so expected, they weren't even considered sins, just a core function of the profession.

  Like haggling, exaggeration was the market’s lifeblood.

  Perhaps the rite only answered to subtler, more malicious deceit? Or maybe it offered no obvious signal at all beyond the usual instincts, only sharpening judgement, the rite's description just poorly worded?

  Either way, Angar had better uses for his time than soliciting lies.

  That being an immediate way to grow in power.

  Besides the recently appearing Feat he'd taken at level 79, a new Class had shown on his list as well.

  Its title contained two words, indicating more potency than the norm, but it held only three Abilities, a sign of a basic Class. For instance, Divine Storm had five Abilities.

  Still, among those three was a passive Ability he found extremely compelling.

  And it also provided an alternate path to an Adroitness increase, now made attainable by the trove of tokens bestowed upon him.

  ANIMA CYBERNETICA

  In the grim forge of flesh and machine, the Anima Cybernetica emerges as a symbiotic harbinger of wrath, channeling augmented might to scourge the legions of evil in close combat.

  These warriors fight without mercy, turning the tide of battle with Energy Drain, sapping life from foes in a radial pulse and turning it into Energy, fueling their own reserves. Nano Swarm deploys devouring nanites in a destructive storm, eroding nearby adversaries. Mechanosis ignites powerful enhancements, boosting implants to new peaks.

  Classes centered on cybernetics always drew their potency from the measure of flesh surrendered to metal, the body mass loss, not Power Level.

  This imposed a hard ceiling upon their scaling and ascent, the Church's decree that no more than 60% of the mortal form could be profaned by machine, else it cross into the sin of Heresy, the soul's purity forever tainted.

  For Angar, bound by the exigencies of his psychic gifts, he could afford no more than 25% loss, or that power would wither away to uselessness.

  So, such Classes as this dangled a temptation to carve away more of his body, to install a greater number of augmentations, something he’d rather not need to resist.

  Usually.

  But this one offered an Ability he could gain from significantly, bestowing benefits unmoored from the need of excess implantation.

  MECHANOSIS

  Toggle a cybernetic fusion, enhancing all implant variables (e.g., damage, range, durability, neural signal speed, toxin resistance) by 10%, which remains active until deactivated or Energy is depleted. (Note: enhancements from this Ability to implant-boosted characteristics count as buffs and are not shown in the Annals' values, even if made permanent by Techno-Ascension 3.)

  Cooldown: None

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  Cost: Drains 2 Energy every 15 seconds

  Upgrades:

  Enduring 1: Gain (Body Mass Loss/8)% damage mitigation for implants and self.

  Enduring 2: Gain (Body Mass Loss/4)% damage mitigation for implants, self, and armor.

  Fervor: Improve any EMP resistance sources (e.g., built-in or from cyberware or armor mods) by (Body Mass Loss /4)%.

  Merciless: Increase damage of Energy-costing cybernetic attacks by (Body Mass Loss/3)%.

  Mighty 1: Improve all implant variables by 13%.

  Mighty 2: Improve all implant variables by 16%.

  Rage: Increase effective range of Energy-costing cybernetic attacks by (Body Mass Loss/2.5)%.

  Zeal: Improve any EMP shielding sources (e.g., built-in or from cyberware or armor mods) by (Body Mass Loss/4)%.

  Sacred Upgrades:

  (A) Techno-Ascension 1: While active, grants a minor repair effect to damaged cybernetics and reduce drain to 1 Energy every 15 seconds.

  (A) Techno-Ascension 2: While active, grants a minor regeneration effect (stacking with most other sources) and reduce drain to 1 Energy every minute.

  (C) Techno-Ascension 3: Increase Adroitness by 1 and Mechanosis becomes a permanent, always-active buff with no Energy cost.

  If he’d claim it, he’d seize it in full measure now, unlocking all the desired features in a single stroke.

  For standard Upgrades, his interest lay in the two Mighty ones, naturally, for their raw amplification of his implants' potency, and the two Enduring, to further gird his body against the ceaseless toll of war.

  At the 60% threshold of flesh-loss, Enduring would yield a solid 15% damage mitigation, but with his current 24% body mass loss, he’d reap only 6%. Still a tangible benefit, a layer of harm reduction well-worth the investment.

  The enhancements to EMP resistance or shielding certainly sounded alluring, but even if a single Upgrade consolidated the benefits together, he’d still dismiss it. He already possessed the best source of both, and they’d already proven their worth against the Swarm's unforeseen attack.

  If he considered his current protection to be 100%, elevating that to 106% seemed like a hollow gain, not all that beneficial, and he had no Ability Upgrades to spare anyway.

  Besides, Mechanosis itself would improve one of his sources, the ScutEMP implant, by 16%, possibly the systemic mod too.

  But he refused to dismiss anything without due consideration.

  The Abyssal Sons, Old Guard, and United Front often employed EMPs, not those spawned of the infernal abyss.

  In fact, the forces of Hell using one was so unheard of, while Crusading on Abyssalhome, many Seraphs had excised their protective mods, replaced in favor of more prudent and useful alternatives.

  Naturally, the Swarm's unexpected electromagnetic onslaught had struck like Divine retribution, reaping a grim harvest among those.

  As a head-implant and systemic mod, his protection couldn’t be so easily swapped out, not without surgery. But even if they could be, he wouldn’t anyway, favoring switching items only for better ones, not constant tinkering.

  Fervor and Zeal could be safely skipped.

  The Merciless and Rage Upgrades were completely useless for him too. He had no cybernetic assaults, no palm-beams or ocular lasers to fuel with such modifiers.

  But the Sacred Upgrades? Another permanent source of regeneration? An Adroitness point? An always active buff?

  Absolute perfection.

  He was unsure how beneficial the minor repair would be, especially considering his necklace and his new armor mod, but he wouldn’t scoff at it, especially if it saved time and credits on repairs.

  And if it were potent enough, who knows? It could possibly free the two mod slots taken by the Vita Nanitica Armorum mod.

  But, as with all choices, it carried the unforgiving toll of an opportunity cost, demanding he review what he’d miss out on.

  Taking Anima Cybernetica would bar him from all other Class and Ability choices, including and especially Divine Storm’s fifth and final power.

  The reckoning could wait until he had gazed upon every path in full. The final decision, and all it commanded, wouldn’t be made lightly, nor out of ignorance and impatience.

  LIGHTNING STORM

  Summon a storm of lightning over a target 6-meter area within a 9-meter range, dealing 1 x PL lightning damage every second for 3 seconds to all targets within.

  Cooldown: 1 minute 30 seconds (starts after storm ends)

  Cost: 6 Energy, 1 Charge

  Upgrades:

  Enduring 1: Storm duration increases to 4 seconds.

  Enduring 2: Storm duration increases to 5 seconds.

  Fervor 1: Stun chance ignores 16% of resistances.

  Fervor 2: Stun chance ignores 33% of resistances.

  Merciless: Non-forking damage roots targets hit for 0.3 seconds.

  Mighty 1: Increases damage to 1.5 x PL per hit.

  Mighty 2: Increases damage to 2 x PL per hit.

  Rage: Halves cooldown.

  Sacred Upgrades:

  (A) Flash Storm 1: Damage triggers every 0.75 seconds (4/5/6 hits over 3/3.75/4.5 seconds). Each hit forks to 1 new target within 1.5 meters for a third damage, then forks to 1 new target within 1.5 meters for a sixth damage (adjusted with Mighty).

  (A) Flash Storm 2: Damage triggers every 0.5 seconds (6/8/10 hits over 3/4/5 seconds). Each hit forks to 2 new targets within 3 meters for half damage, then each forks to 2 new target within 3 meters for quarter damage (adjusted with Mighty).

  (C) Flash Storm 3: Targets hit are slowed by 50% for 3.33 seconds. Additionally, stun chance ignores 33% of resistances (additive with Fervor 1 and Fervor 2). With Fervor 2, total stun-resistance penetration exceeds the normal 50% soft cap.

  Lightning Storm presented itself well, but when Angar subjected it to cold, unflinching scrutiny, the flaws revealed themselves like stress fractures in steel.

  He held many area-of-effect powers in his arsenal, including his powerful Capstone and psionic assaults.

  This Ability offered a root and a slow, but each strike of lightning itself carried a chance to stun, and the power improved those odds by bypassing a portion of innate resistance.

  The most dangerous foes, however, almost invariably shrugged off System-imposed negative effects.

  Without specifically building around it, focusing on resistance penetration and negation, such effects became irrelevant in the toughest fights.

  And any adversaries that possessed even rudimentary intelligence, the storm’s complete absence of an initial instantaneous tick crippled its functionality.

  They'd need only to step outside the gathering storm and the entire Ability would fall upon barren rock.

  Stun chances, brief roots, elaborate forking chains, all of it became so much wasted time and Energy when the targeted area contained nothing but air filled with the clops and cries of escaping foes.

  Yes, against densely packed, mindless hordes it might reap a bloody harvest, but he already commanded many methods to reduce swarms to unholy chunks of flesh.

  Lightning Bolt itself, for all its disappointingly narrow cone, remained a markedly superior instrument of destruction, and its apex could be widened during ascension through the second Realm with Ability Enhancers.

  There was no fixing Lightning Storm’s flaw.

  He closed the Ability's pane with a thought, sealing away what might have been, and felt no grief, only certainty.