Kahli's big, flaming boulder slammed into that skeletal berserker in a flash and blasted it to bits in an amazing barrage of scattering smithereens. It was, in a moment, anhilated.
[Skeletal Berserker is dead]
Yes, it sure was - and Kahli was feeling mighty proud of herself. With a smile and a raise of her eyebrow, she sauntered over to the ashy pile where the skeletal berserker had once been. She noticed, as the boney dust cleared ever so slowly, that there was a large, green orb floating in the air about where the berserker had been standing. And so, what exactly was it? Kahli wasn't rightly certain, but it looked terribly powerful, although she didn't think it seemed dangerous. Just... Powerful.
Kahli walked forward, cautiously, and reached her one hand out as if to touch to glowing orb of light.
[Clarification: In order to scalp a skill, you'll need to fully step into the aura in order to absorb it.]
So the glowing orb was an aura, was it? Was it the berserker's aura? Was it the berserker's remnants of an aura, and if so, what would happen if she [scalped] a [skill] from it? What did that mean? She could [scalp] a [skill], but what exactly would that achieve? Kahli was confused. Still, she was also terribly curious.
Before another moment could pass in wondering, and without considering freezing time to ask her system for clarification due to her own, silly excitement, Kahli stepped forth and entered the glow of the aura. Immediately, it wrapped around her like a gooey, translucent glove, and then faded away as it was seemingly absorbed into her skin. Kahli felt a light and airy feeling as if a small colony of locusts were fluttering around inside her chest for a moment, and then suddenly she felt normal again.
[Skill scalped successfully]
[Gained skill Barrage of Blows]
Oh. Wow. So, it was about what it sounded like - [scalping] a [skill] referred to, essentially, absorbing a [skill] that a vanquished foe had and using it as your own. Kahli really couldn't complain - [Tale Teller] was a cool [skill], but she'd been really regretting not getting another combat [skill] the last time she leveled up.
Well, that was cool. Clearly, it didn't happen every time Kahli killed something, but it was just as well that this skeletal berserker's death had afforded her a new [skill] - it had, she figured, used that [skill] on her as much as it possibly could, and along with that, the whole ordeal hadn't seemed to level Kahli up, so it was nice to get a [skill] as a bit of a consolation prize.
Then, Kahli felt a moment of wonderance. What exactly was the [skill]'s description? Sure, she had an idea of what it could do, functionally, and system descriptions - at least from her system - seemed to be a bit obtuse, but Kahli still figured it was better to read the system description than not.
[Barrage of Blows]
[This skill leverages your STM to deal out a rapid succession of melee attacks to the closest possible entity. Each successful hit compounds into a combo mechanism, so the more hits you land in rapid succession without ample cooldown or interference from the entity you've chosen to attack, the stronger your blows will become, allowing for the most agile fighters to rack up massive points of damage before the enemy can so much as move a muscle. Barrage of Blows, to aid in this feature, also has a stunning function that can be employed in order to keep foes at bay and from blocking attacks - however, employing this stun ability also impedes the ramp-up of damage to hit ratio discussed earlier. So, it is a bit of a pick your poison skill - either rack up wild amounts of damage before enemies can respond, or keep enemies from responding while dealing a lower amount of damage. This second option is better for one on one fights where there are no assisting enemies, whereas the other attack method is recommended for fights with larger groups.]
Wow. Kahli had... So many thoughts. First of all, that was the most information she'd ever gotten on a [skill] from her system! What had changed?
[Clarification: Your system is, as mentioned earlier, constantly changing and improving.]
Kahli shrugged. That was just as well, she figured.
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[Clarification: Also, you seem to have unwittingly enabled 'verbose' on your descriptive interface. This can be done unintentionally by wishing, over and over again, that your system will give you detail that otherwise it did not. You may now find, in this aforementioned 'verbose mode' as some call it, that your system may indeed go overboard on the describing things. This is, be assured, a feature and not a bug. Regardless, you can always disable verbose mode by thinking about disabling it.]
Well, that cleared up the first thing on Kahli's mind. She figured she'd keep her system on verbose for now, but she was glad to know that she could set it back if it ever got on her nerves.
The second thought Kahli had was, well, this just went to show how useless everyone surrounding her had been. Seriously, what was all of their problems? Of course, Kahli had already in her mind established her association of Sahdi being useless - and that was all very well and fine, though of course Kahli would judge Sahdi for it to no end. But what about everyone else? Was she supposed to just believe that Brahdley, footless as he was thanks to Curr, was so useless with his system that he couldn't do much of anything to help attack the berserker after lassoing it that one time with his [skill]? Seriously, had Brahdley just fallen asleep on the ground or something while Kahli had been absorbing hits and putting her life in danger, all to not even level up? And what about Philhip? Had he just, what, just hopped as far as he could, gotten knocked over by her boulder kick earlier, and then just laid there like some sort of a useless, impotent shrimp of a person? Disgusting. And of course there was the Gehaffrey guy, who'd charged the berserker only to get knocked away like he was some sort of intrepid gnat on its way to get burned alive by a lamp. Gehaffrey sure was a weird guy. What had happened with him, anyway? Was he even... Kahli hated to think of this, even just to herself, but she really was wondering whether he was even alive or if the attack from the berserker had been enough to make him... perish.
"Kahli! Oh, thank Theseosus you're alive!" said Gehaffrey as he scurried over to greet her.
"Oh, hi there," said Kahli. Her eyes were like slits - thin and suspicious. "Why are your living wood claws so damp? You don't want them to get warped, do you? You ought to dry them off on your shirt or something."
"Oh, right..." Gehaffrey did so. "Sorry, I uh... Just, well, you know, all my inner demons and stuff."
Kahli felt like someone was trying to pull the wool over her eyes. After all, she had the [Tale Teller] [skill], if anyone could sense when someone was unconvincingly lying by omission, it was Kahli. "Inner demons?"
"Look, Kahli, that is serious business!" Gehaffrey had a strained look on his face - and, at least this much was true, he did really have some sort of inner demon, although whether the voice from his restaurant's basement was an actual demon was still up for debate.
Kahli thought for a moment, and then she remembered exactly what had happened when the berserker had slapped Gehaffrey away like a pesky insect. He'd been sent careening through the air and slammed into the side of an old pornography building, hadn't he?
Kahli looked at his living wood hands again, now feeling jealous on two accounts - one that he was a hand haver, and one that he had both of his hands. Still, this jealousy was not enough to completely cloud her skills of observation.
"Are those bits of paper stuck to your claw-hands?" Kahli asked suspiciously.
"Uh, no!" Gehaffrey gave a crooked smile.
"Also, why is there a light on in the pornography store? I thought it was broken down and abandoned, with nothing good in there!"
"Oh, it's broken down and abandoned all right," said Gehaffrey with the same smile.
Kahli tried and failed to hide her disgust, then she shook her head. "I'm glad you made it out in one piece, Gehaff."
"Me too," groaned Brahdley as he scrounged to his feet, which were not there, so he instead collapsed in a heap back on the cobblestone ground. "You know, not all of us are so lucky to have all our appendages, what with all the Curr and everything."
"Oh, I was meaning to ask about that," Kahli interjected with a raise of her one hand. "How exactly do you know that all the Curr is contained in your restaurant?"
"Of course you would ask that, Kahli." Gehaffrey grimaced. "Too proud of your own handiwork, huh?"
Kahli sighed inwardly. She'd forgotten that everyone was still convinced that all of the Curr was her fault, even though really that had been a bit of a hunch on Omar's part exacerbated by the fact that pretending to have done so inspired so much fear in the heart of Lloyd the evil alien that he abandoned, at least temporarily, his plans to destroy Nomachiato. Still, she felt it was better to hold on to the lie for now. After all, the last thing Kahli wanted was to give up her lie and have it come right back to bite her in the neck.
She looked down to the ground and saw her poor, shut off robot friend Unit 5a23 lying unconscious next to Brahdley. She wondered when she'd ever get the opportunity to take him in for service. Kahli had no idea what had caused him to shut off in midair, but she was growing increasingly concerned that if she didn't deal with his situation sooner rather than later, he might degrade in some way and face some sort of a robo-brain death.
"Uh, oh, Kahli! It looks like we've got company!" said Sahdi.
Kahli wanted to tell Sahdi to shut up, but then she looked up, and saw that the useless restaurant employee was far from wrong. A cluster of three skeletal beasts had sprouted up from the booming beam of light only a block away, and they were dashing towards her at a threatening clip.
Kahli sighed and cracked the toes on her big, left foot. It was time to put her new [skill] to the test.