Books are a uniquely portable magic
Pre-Fall horror writer.
Fuck it, thank god she made it all work, Moore thought.
He had seen the expedition leader’s descriptors back in New Sandusky and had peeked at the man Peter had used for his demonstration, as well as a furtive contact with the raid’s cook. But everyone else was a blank, outside of the visible level label, which didn’t tell him anything useful since none of them had a pre-existing specialization.
But he refused to start a conversion until Johanna had got the bright idea to get the person to put her hand on the book so that Tom covered it. A bit too theatrical, but it did what it was supposed to, which was to let him see the stats and available XP.
One of the candidates even had a non-specialized Armored skill. At his level and without any multiplier, he certainly had never even been aware he had it, and Moore had woven it into his specialization since his stats fit well enough. That was probably the only skill Johanna had missed in her copious note-taking, as it never appeared on paper. She’d also mistaken the Keeper specialization for a skill, given how he’d granted it as an upgrade to Guardian given the double Level increase required, and he would have to figure out how to communicate the error, later.
The disparate collection of books had been more than enough. He had never thought he’d be grateful for the existence of Harlequin paperbacks.
I wonder how many books there are still at the Congress.
Then, selfishly, so much XP waiting, as he took stock of the personal 933 XP his conversion of that collection had netted him.
The road to 24k XP to see if my next ability is ×3 is long. And it’s going to be 25,500 by then, as they will all have leveled to 7, I bet.
Johanna contemplated her notebook. It wasn’t full, not yet, but the sheer variety of things she’d seen after converting all the books was intimidating. Madelynn Nash had become a Tyrant Fixer, with a Talent set that certainly included some of Laura’s, notably Falter which suspiciously sounded like her dreadful gaze effect. There was also a Deep Fixer, another Earth Shaper sorceress, a Guardian like back in Rocastle, his wife a Quick Battler reminiscent of Tom’s specialization, and another Ranger almost like Mark, although he had one differing Talent. Everyone had accepted the terms she’d outlined, but they had found enough books to create a set of Talents for everyone and some.
Not every book had worked. Some houses had damaged books, and like the hymnals back in the church, once the damage was too big, the books could not convert. At one point, Johanna had to sort through three damaged books before she picked one that immediately radiated the cold she knew well, and the lines of parchment creation poured out to dance above.
The last expedition member, a young man in Madelynn’s team, got a surprisingly simple Shaper. Johanna immediately got curious, as said Shaper got a Burning Ground skill at the same time.
“Why?” asked the man, looking pretty disappointed.
“There is probably some form of limitations that prevents you from going further. I know a Shaper, back in the North. She’s doing metal sorcery, but she was unable to get Metal Shaper like Miles,” Johanna started to explain.
“So… I can’t be a Fire Shaper? That’s what you are?”
“Or maybe you’d be another Earth Shaper? Burning sounds like fire, and Ground sounds like earth. Miles got metal spells related to fire and ice.”
The scavenger from Madelynn’s team sighed loudly, and Johanna picked the next book to see what was in the cards. Her suspicions got confirmed as the three next skills granted were named Flaming Blade, Spark Ash, and Shape Flame. Then she got a surprise with the following parchment.
Level, Fire Shaper. Just those, no Talent name or quality.
“What now? Do I…”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The scavenger looked at the parchment in his hand, which remained inert.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I don’t either… but I’m guessing. You can’t be a Fire Shaper right now. But you might be. Once you can gain a, well, a Level.”
“How do I do that?”
“It takes time,” she said, then she remembered.
“I did that, last year, back in the North. I had only four skills at the time, just like you got. But one day, I suddenly lost all my accumulated mana, and then every fire skill became much more powerful,” she guessed. “I was a Shaper until then and became a Fire Shaper after that. I didn’t start as one.”
She pointed at the parchment in the Shaper’s hand.
“Keep that. Check from time to time, maybe once a week or two. And once it lights up, use it.”
She stood up and called for attention.
“And that’s one thing done. Congratulations on your Talents, everyone.”
Now that the conversion was done, Johanna looked at the books. There were a lot of wrecked books, their pages vanished from the conversion process. A pile of ruined books that had failed to convert. And finally, a dozen of still intact books. She hesitated briefly, then called the rest of the team.
“What do we do with the rest?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked.
“We had enough for the expedition, I think. This is probably enough for, I don’t know… four or five more Talented? I guess.”
“So, you need to lug all those books,” Cameron Scott called out as he came back.
“Well, yes and no. We can convert them into sets of Talents in advance. Easier. The problem is that, if we do that, there is no telling who will be able to pick them. We did that once, for one bodyguard. But there were two of them, and only one could use it. The other person couldn’t. That’s why we kept them unconverted.”
She looked at the pile again.
“Want to see? That’s how we intend to get as much as possible from the East Coast. The parchments do not take as much room and weigh a lot less than the original book.”
Madelynn came closer as well, interested.
She picked one of the intact, unconverted books, and without any waiting, the cold sensation and light show of the conversion came.
Level, Authority, Maker… Fusion. The parchment was handed to the scavenger leaders, but it did not light for anyone. Johanna pulled out her notebook again, starting to take notes.
The list of parchments that appeared as they kept converting books was a seriously odd one. Strength and Restoration. Agility and Sharpen. Dexterity and Smooth Planes. After five different quality-Talent pairs, the parchment output switched to a four-fold again, with an Authority and Monger specialization along with a weirdly named Impose skill. It was followed by a Detect Lies along Perception, and followed by Empathy and… Empathic. The similarity made her pause briefly, wondering how the two were related. More often than not, there seemed to be a relation between the quality and the theme of the skill, but this one was odd.
A few of the parchments, usually when the book was almost consumed, were simple Levels or qualities.
I should probably have made an additional skill scroll for that Fire Shaper. If he gets lucky and fights some mobs with enough participation, he might get XP for both the spec and the stat by the time they return, Moore thought after the last book was converted.
Making “guess” builds was simultaneously less stressful and more wasteful than dedicated builds. He had simply thrown one skill per stat, along with a stat increase, so hopefully, people could pick at least three if not four, or five skills. It would take the perfect alignment of pre-boosted stats to get all six, he guessed.
The salvagers spent the last of the evening trying to figure out their brand-new Talents, and Miles had to make them split because testing so much sorcery and weird things in close quarters was becoming dangerous very fast. Madelynn had already needed to fix one of her team getting his arm almost sliced open by mistake as the Guardian and the Swordbringer tested their respective abilities. Thankfully, none of them had much endurance available, so they had to wait, although simple stuff became available relatively fast.
Johanna was starting to feel that First Aid was certainly the Talent for that. Both new Fixers had it, and the name was highly suggestive.
“You making me intimidating is such a tease,” Madelynn told her.
“I never experienced that feeling,” Johanna replied. “For some reason, all of the team is immune to Laura’s version of the dreadful gaze. No wonder Elena thought her that powerful if that’s what it does to people.”
“You’re basically like the Sorceress of the Mists of the Montana… only better,” she comforted the cook after Madelynn had yelled at him for briefly covering the entire area with impenetrable fog.
“I’ve heard about her in the news. Is she that powerful?”
“That Fog Cloud is how she basically stops battles when they start getting bad. It’s hard to keep fighting when nobody can see their enemy. And you’ll be probably longer lasting than her already, seeing as you have Frostbite as well, and each Talent seems to make you better overall. You should ask Petra about it, she did have it before she became an Earth Shaper.”
“Oh, and you’re immune to the cold of winter,” she added before the cook beelined to the former bartender.
Having off-loaded sorcery questions to Petra, she took a breather, joining Miles who was standing with Ulrich near the large “cedar” that the latter had used for his demonstration.
“That’s not quite as you expected,” Miles commented.
“It’s more… wild?”
“You’ve just made nine people into the most powerful Talented in the world, just like that. What did you expect?”
“And I find it funny for some. Cameron as some sword expert is surprising, but Madelynn as a Tyrant something? Those sounds almost hilarious,” Ulrich added.