Zoe and Emma fell into a comfortable routine over the next few months, wandering through the city and seeing all the sights again with a new, excited face. Emma took off on her own after the first week, eager to try her hand at some of the dungeons around her level and maybe learn to play one of the sports competitions.
Zoe on the other hand, stayed behind at home as she worked on learning what all the new skills she got did, as well as working on deciding which of the skills she wanted to save for herself before she swapped her classes again. She started by going through each of the skills in her Bearer of Words class and testing them out, though there was only one that didn’t seem very straightforward.
Notebook, Bearer of Ink and Bearer of Words did exactly as they said on the tin. Summoned a notebook, quill and inkwell, or allowed her to store away her books. Notably, Bearer of Words let her store far more books than she would be able to store in a level one Storage skill, but it was quite strict on what it considered a book.
A torn out page from a notebook was not a book, nor was a letter or postcard, a bill or even a stack of papers stitched together with a thread. The system only recognized books with proper, glued bindings, and even then it seemed to reject some of the notebooks Zoe had in her multitude of other Storage options. Perhaps they were too damaged for the skill to recognize them as books, or perhaps something she used to write on them?
The notebooks her skill summoned were quite plain, black covers with a small white space she could write in a label. She had some control over how thick the notebooks were, but none whatsoever over the width and length of the book. Each notebook she summoned was about seven inches by eleven inches. Almost a normal size, but just big enough to be annoying to hold, for some reason.
Sender of Words Zoe had already used in the past, and found herself using quite often to send messages to her friends. Even just to Emma while she was out wandering the town to let her know what was going to be for dinner, or random bits Zoe learned about her skills.
The most interesting skill was Words of Power, though it was also the most disappointing at the same time. Zoe expected it to be a lot more than it was, letting her shape the world around her with carefully sculpted phrases. Instead, what it did was far simpler but fun in its own way too. It allowed her to project her words onto a surface from a distance. She could speak a word and have it splatter onto a wall on the other side of the room, or draw black wispy words reminiscent of the ones John used in the air. They didn’t do anything, but if she put enough mana into the skill they could stick around for several days at a time.
As enchantments, Bearer of Ink and Words of Power were the only interesting ones. Notebook made whatever she enchanted with it feel like paper to write on, and Bearer of Books allowed whatever she enchanted it with to store a singular book. But Bearer of Ink made whatever she enchanted work as a pen with infinite ink as long as it had mana. Quite nice, since the quill that the skill itself summoned wasn’t the most comfortable to hold or write with, so Zoe found herself using various sticks she summoned with her Wood skill and enchanted with Bearer of Ink to write with.
And Words of Power had quickly become one of her favourite enchantments to play with. She could enchant an object with a specific word in mind, and with a pulse of mana, the enchantment would make that word appear either on its surface or floating in the air somewhere adjacent to it. Zoe found herself running around the house some days absentmindedly labelling everything she could find.
After she finished toying with her new abilities, Zoe spent some time going through all the class skills she had access to in her third class onwards to see which ones she needed to replicate for herself. Some of the skills were available in some form or another in her new classes — Storage for instance, and many had replacements that were good enough to not warrant spending time poking through their mana patterns. But several were without any notable replacement, and many of those Zoe found herself not being too enamoured with regardless, but there were a few that interested her.
None of the classes she’d be taking had any Familiar skills, and while the familiars themselves weren’t the most useful things in the world, the enchantments they gave were irreplaceable. Getting at least one familiar skill would be an absolute necessity, and preferably one that worked with just normal mana signatures. Nature’s Assistance was great for flooding her healing across Foizo whenever she was in town, but she could live without that aspect of it.
Several of Zoe’s Elemental Shaman skills were candidates, if she could manage it. But other than a familiar skill, nothing stood out to Zoe as being absolutely necessary. Elemental Creation was a great skill to have for when she started up a garden somewhere, but it could just as well be replaced with some patience. Nature’s Clearing was an excellent skill to have as well, but she didn’t find herself using it too often. Though when she did, it was extremely useful.
Everlasting Enchantments was useless to her, at least as general skills. Zoe would always have at least one enchanting class — they were just too powerful to ignore as a mana hungry build. Spending time saving these specific variants of the skills instead of getting used to the new offerings her Enchantrith would give her made little sense.
Replacing her classes didn’t mean she’d never be able to take them again — worst case scenario, Zoe could just keep switching out her highest level class if she ever found she missed a specific skill. There was a fine line to draw between spending time on her skills versus sacrificing a little bit of what she was used to for a large jump in power so she could come back later on when she was more suited to the task.
Zoe settled on three skills that she absolutely needed to get before she replaced her classes. A familiar skill, her new Sender of Words skill, and her new Words of Power skill. The latter was more for fun than anything else, but Zoe really didn’t want to be taking Bearer of Words ever again if she could avoid it.
Beyond that, she had a list of skills she’d love to at least spend a few days to try replicating if she could. Bearer of Ink was high on the list — summoning pens from her storage items was simple, but creating a custom made, disposable pen with ink that never ran dry was an incredible convenience. Almost all of Zoe’s Elemental Shaman skills found their way onto the list, as well as Cosmic Rift and Cosmic Armour.
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A letter was slipped under Zoe’s door a few months later instructing them to come to the nearest royal office at their earliest convenience, so Zoe and Emma put away all of their belongings and said their farewells to Bruce next door for at least a while.
The process was the same as the first time Zoe did it, with just as much paperwork to sign but far more expensive options available. The cheapest was thirty five gold per month for a three story building with an expansive basement in a textile district, surrounded by other near silent districts. The most expensive was one hundred gold per month for what Zoe could only describe as a lavish mansion set in a district of opulence. The employee described it as mercantile, but it was neither warehouses nor shops so it seemed to be just where the very wealth merchants lived, Zoe assumed.
Zoe and Emma settled on the cheaper option since it would be quiet enough, and after some extensive paperwork and agreements for both of them, were teleported into the living room of their new home. It was in the north-east of town not far from the central massive royal or noble district, whichever it was. Surrounding them were quite, scentless seamstresses and weavers working with fabrics and putting their beautiful creations on display.
“Three bathrooms.” Emma said after they took a tour through the home for themselves. “And a lot of extra rooms. I think the cats will be fine with it for a bit, probably?"
“Probably.” Zoe agreed. “Only problem is getting them here. I can teleport them but I’m not sure how they’ll feel about that. There’s a chance that they really don’t like it, and then we probably shouldn’t really do it.”
Emma nodded, kicking her feet about on the floor. “I know. But I wanna explore the city some more and I miss my boys. If we can get them here, that would be really nice.”
“Well, lets spend a few days getting things ready here for them and then go see about picking them up I guess.” Zoe said.
The next few days flew by as Zoe and Emma got themselves acquainted to their new home and where the district they were sent to was in the town. The last thing Zoe wanted was to end up at a royal office asking for help getting back to her own home.
Emma checked what the process for getting the cats into town would be at the nearby royal office — and it was quite simple, thankfully. She had to fill out some paperwork ahead of time, and then she was given a slip she could show to the guards when she came back with the cats to get through without any more hassle than normal.
With a quick trip back to Foizo and some brief Cosmic Steps across the cats’ room with the boys in hand, Zoe and Emma decided the cats would be alright for the journey and brought them back home. Along with an abundance of their toys and furniture they were used to from their room. Oliver was a little uncomfortable with the move, choosing to find a dark corner beneath some of his furniture to hide away in.
But Fennel seemed to love the change, sniffing at every new floor and wall as he explored the house with the curiosity of, well, a cat Zoe supposed. They watched the cats for a few days to make sure they were alright, and when both of them seemed to settle in to their normal behaviour for the most part, Zoe and Emma got back to their normal lives.
Emma ran off for most of the day, exploring the city only to return late at night and collapse on the floor with the two cats at her side. While Zoe stayed home working on her skills, and getting more than a little distracted by the two feline companions she now had.
“Yes, Fennel.” Zoe sat at one of her tables, petting Fennel on the floor, behind his ears as she watched the mana coalesce into a twisting mass of purple shapes that seemed to exist both now and in the future.
Cosmic Familiar was a complicated skill — all of her Cosmos skills tended to be. But she felt like she was getting closer to something, now. Seeing so much space magic wielded so effortlessly by everybody she’d met since she last tried and gaining a deeper understanding of her own self, and how she wielded her magic, helped a lot.
The mana twisted and churned, lurching forward through time and space to form different shapes that all overlapped with each other. The system’s mana raced throughout the mess of cosmic mana, throwing its own annoying wrench into the mix as it did whatever it did to her skills. Obfuscated them? Improved them? Zoe still wasn’t sure what it was doing, but it never failed to do it, to Zoe’s eye.
Bit by bit over the months, Zoe had begun to piece together her Cosmic Familiar skill. Her Bearer of Books skill full of different summoned notebooks with diagrams and notes on failed experiments, each one a little closer to success, she hoped.
“Ouch!” Zoe pulled her hand back when Fennel bit her finger. It didn’t really hurt, but it was about the principle, for Zoe. “Gentle."
She put her hand back behind his ear and scratched a few times, his little head pressing up against her hand before he turned and chomped on her finger again. “Hey! Gentle!”
Zoe held a finger out in front of Zoe, and he lashed out at it with his claws, scraping against her skin. “Fine, fine. No pets then.”
Fennel laid down, resting his head against Zoe’s foot.
“It’s so tempting though, little Bennel. You’re so cute.” Zoe moaned. “Ah well. I feel pretty close, buddy.”
Zoe dismissed her Cosmic Familiar and summoned another, watching a specific cluster of wisps as they fluttered through the maze, and noticed a tiny almost imperceptible ring of mana that they seemed to weave throughout. “Aha!” She exclaimed, scribbling down more notes in one of the notebooks sprawled out on the table in front of her.
She went over the diagram she’d drawn out a dozen times, studying each thread of mana, every twisting path and step through time it took. She watched one more time as her Cosmic Familiar coalesced from mana into a twisting mass of shapes and followed along with all of the mana, peering past the system’s obfuscating mess.
“Think this time I really found everything, little fennel?" Zoe looked down at the black cat lying at her feet. ”I bet it’s different from the last few dozen times where I thought I found everything. All those other attempts that I was sure would be the one? Nah, they were just practice, alright. I wasn’t really serious.
“And don’t tell me I said that too on all of those attempts. Or that I also said that. You know what, I’m not taking your sass today, even if I am making it all up. This is the one, for realsies.” Zoe chuckled to herself as she took a deep breath.
Zoe pushed mana out of her body, following the diagram she’d formed as close as she could, each step careful and practiced, and a familiar twisting mass of shapes appeared a few feet away from her.
*Ding* You have unlocked the Cosmic Familiar skill.