A short search didn’t reveal any more hidden compartments or passages. Dav gave up first and retreated to the bed with the pot, just in case he needed it.

He didn’t. The first sign he’d finished was when his new Status screen appeared in Sophia’s vision.

Dav [https://i.imgur.com/G4Unk3o.png]

Dav

Summons:

Unaffiliated Abilities:

Chaos-Warped Human

(Bastion of Health, 1, 1)

Innate Communication (Bonus, Free)

(Eye Image)

(Thorn Emitter, 1, 1)

(Mana Core Specialization: Eldritch, 1, 1)

Body: 9

(Eyes that See, 1, 1)

(Empty, 1, 1)

Core: 3

Species Spells:

Species Abilities:

Shield: 20

(Eldritch Empowerment, 1, 1)

(Bonded Armor, 1, 1)

(Eldritch Overcharge, 1, 1)

(Mana Specialization Attunement, 1, 1)

Wisps: 31

(Eye Image)

(Spell Reservoir, 1, 1)

Attunements:

Spheres

Contraceptive Amulet, 3

Eldritch Summoner Abilities:

Eldritch Summoner (Hallow)

(Eldritch Reinforcement, 1, 1)

Level: 2

Eldritch Armor, 7 (Growth)

(Eldritch Weapon Alteration, 1, 1)

Level: 1

Perfect Fit: Dav

Rapid Assembly

Synchronization Required

Sophia examined the Status for a moment, then realized something she probably should have known earlier. She’d forgotten until she saw it in Unaffiliated Abilities with an empty slot after it. If he was barely able to get what he wanted, he certainly didn’t have the spare points for an empty slot. “Wait. You already had Mana Core Specialization. Why did you ask about it?”

That was what she’d thought he was doing when he changed earlier, too. What had he done instead?

Dav looked down and to the side, like he didn’t want to look at Sophia. “I was really asking if I made a good choice earlier, but once I saw this … it wasn’t there until after I took the one in Unaffiliated.”

Another short message appeared in Sophia’s vision.

Mana Specialization Attunement

Permanently reduces the negative effects of using a specialized Mana Core with a non-attuned body and increases the power of all Abilities using your Specialized Mana.

“The description’s clear enough that if taking a Specialized Mana Core is worthwhile, it had to be worth taking. I just …” Dav shrugged without looking up. Sophia suspected he might have flushed in embarrassment if his new scales didn’t hide it, but they did. “I forgot I didn’t mention the difference. It’s still a Mana Specialization.”

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“It’s all right,” Sophia said as she set a hand on Dav’s arm. “It does explain why you changed so obviously, though. I’m a little surprised you took it, with your earlier worries.”

Dav looked up. He sounded a bit sheepish as he answered the implied question. “It didn’t even occur to me that it would be visible. The mana core specialization wasn’t and this just said it reduces negative effects. I probably should have realized it could happen.”

Sophia started to agree, then realized there was really no point in beating Dav up about it. He’d missed it and already felt bad enough about it; the fact that they’d have to deal with the consequences of his altered appearance later were enough. “So, ah, it doesn’t look like you were able to get that much else. What are the spells?”

“I wanted to get a second point in Core, but that was going to take seventy-five Wisps instead of fifty,” Dav grumbled. “If I did that, I couldn’t get any Spells. As it is, I could only get two; those two were really twenty each even though the slots were cheaper.”

“Maybe it means they’re good?” Sophia took another look, but she wasn’t sure what the difference between Empowerment and Overcharge was.

“Eldritch Empowerment lets me grant a minor eldritch boon to myself or others,” Dav said. “I figure it’ll be useful somehow once I figure out how to use it. Eldritch Overcharge is simpler; I can channel extra mana into my Summons to make them more effective or last longer.”

Sophia nodded. She wasn’t sure she’d have taken Empowerment, but Overcharge sounded good. There was only one other thing on the sheet that concerned her. “Do you think the synchronization required for your armor means you need to wear it for a while again?”

“Yeah, probably,” Dav agreed. He groaned softly, then reached over to his armor and triggered its Rapid Assembly ability. “Why don’t you get started on your Level while I wait for it to synchronize?”

Sophia pulled up her own Status and frowned at it. She definitely had the points to increase her Body and Core and Level, but if she did that before she bought other things, they would be more expensive. That seemed odd, but it kept being repeated so she had to believe it was true.

When she compared her Status to the recommendations Rensyn gave, the only thing she was missing was Unaffiliated abilities. She hadn’t been impressed with the options, but it was worth another look. She was also a bit short of Spells and Martial Abilities from Cliff, but the only cost there was slots and there wasn’t anything in Cliff’s list that she really wanted to add at the moment. She hadn’t even used Rush yet!

There absolutely were Abilities she’d already seen in the Species and Spellblade categories that she wanted, but she’d just have to wait on those. She had three Abilities in each and none in Unaffiliated.

Sophia opened up the category and made her way past the same lists of uninteresting abilities as before. Okay, maybe Sword Training would be useful, but surely she could practice without it? Offensive Shield Use was similar; maybe it meant the Guide would help her, but Sophia just couldn’t believe that it would make that much of a difference. Similar abilities could be granted by the Voice back home, but they usually went to people who didn’t have a trainer; either way, you had to put the time in. The Skill simply meant that you could learn without someone else to teach you and actually get some things right.

It wasn’t until she made it farther than she had the previous time that she saw a category that actually interested her. She couldn’t even be sure it had been there; things seemed to appear and disappear periodically and it might not have been there before she picked her spells and MageSight.

The category labeled Arcane Manipulation and it sounded absolutely perfect for Sophia.

It was. Ability after ability was interesting. It seemed that she could increase the power of her Force spells, decrease their visibility, and even change their shape, all at the cost of extra mana when she cast the spell. Sophia doubted the Abilities would be cheap; she knew what it took to change a spellform and this had to be similar.

That meant the real question was what she needed. She’d also have to consider how many she could afford, but she needed to start with the ones that would make the most of a difference against the corpsevines. At the same time, she couldn’t consider only the corpsevines; that would be setting herself up for failure later. An ability that worked only on plants, if there was one here, might be very useful against corpsevines and useless later.

Sophia took her time. There were at least a dozen abilities she wanted in the section, but there was no way she could afford them all. There were hints in a few of the Abilities that they were intended to work with spells she didn’t have. She was definitely going to have to look again later.

In the end, she narrowed her choices to three: Disruptive Magic, Visual Targeting, and Spell Hardening. Disruptive Magic was her favorite, even though she didn’t know if it would be useful against the corpsevines at all. It would let her use her Arcane spells to disrupt spell structures. Sophia wasn’t certain if that meant spells she saw cast, enchantments, or both. She suspected it would have some effect on both, but that one would be far more difficult to disrupt than the other. Either way, it would be useful the moment she encountered spellcasters and she’d already seen that monsters could cast spells; the Rage Beavers were spellcasters. The only reason she didn’t immediately take it was that the one corpsevine she’d seen didn’t use any spells at all.

Visual Targeting, on the other hand, was especially useful if she wanted to hit things that were either moving quickly or a long way away. It allowed her to maintain control of a spell as it traveled and hit exactly where she was looking. It would slow down her spellcasting but she wouldn’t miss. It would help her hit enemies’ weaknesses. For the corpsevines, it might let her use Force Bolt to sever their vines, but that was probably all it would let her do.

Spell Hardening was almost the opposite of Disruptive Magic. It was a spell that she probably wouldn’t have looked twice at under most circumstances; simply boosting the power of a spell, which was an option that didn’t quite make her top three, sounded more interesting most of the time. The corspsevines, however, were the perfect enemies to use Spell Hardening on. With Spell Hardening, her Force Bolt would penetrate farther into the flesh shielding the vine’s central core and have a better chance of breaking the core. Unlike the Empower Spell ability that she’d seen before, it didn’t say it was more damaging, simply that it stayed together longer and therefore penetrated farther.

There were other Abilities that would be better than Spell Hardening in other circumstances, but she really couldn’t pass that one up now. She decided she’d get all three if she could afford it.

A moment later, she had them. She was pretty sure she could afford a fourth Ability in the same category, but she hesitated and glanced down at her Spellblade list. It never made her list before because it didn’t seem relevant, but wasn’t there an ability in there that had something to do with fighting monsters she’d seen before?

40 Wisps was a lot to spend on a slot so that she could look, but Sophia decided to go for it. She knew she’d want the slot for something later, so it wasn’t a waste. There were a lot of useful Spellblade abilities.

It took a while, but Sophia eventually found what she was looking for. It wasn’t a single Ability; instead, it was an entire category of abilities called “Collected Enemies.” It was pretty clear that this was a large part of what the Spellblade’s connection to Cliff’s Collection was supposed to be from the sheer number of abilities that were present.

She could cast a spell to locate a particular type of collected enemy, boost her spells or Martial Abilities against them or against “related creatures,” become invisible to them, grant herself their form as either an illusion or an actual, if temporary, shapeshift, or even borrow their abilities in some way. Sophia wasn’t certain how that was different from using collected Spells and Martial Abilities, but maybe it didn’t need a slot?

She wasn’t going to find out the answer to that any time soon. She simply didn’t care enough about it to try it, not at the high price these Abilities carried and even more so when she could see an Ability that was even better than she’d expected. In fact, there were several Abilities that were probably amazing. The problem was that she had to pick only one.