The Skill I decided to focus on was Endless Hunger of the Ocean. It had a lot of fragmented Keywords, which I suspected would give me interesting results.
The next moment, the System screen moved to the Skill customization menu. It was... complicated. When I looked at the Skill Customization menu, it didn't look like a clean list of things I could change. Instead, every time I focused on a single word of the Skill, I saw dozens of 'branches' split off. Each branch seemed to indicate a way I could modify the skill. The problem was that there were so many options that I felt dizzy just looking at them. After entering the menu, I scrolled through an endless stream of possibilities, jumbled together in a salad of eldritch chaos. Trying to find anything was a headache, and the user interface was... cluttered. Very cluttered.
I rubbed my forehead as I looked at the cluttered menu, before I started poking around. I started looking at different 'branches' of the Ability, and was treated to a dizzying array of possibilities. The largest number of 'changes' I could make to the Ability were rooted in the 'hunger' part of the Ability. The ability that let me steal up to three abilities from monsters I had hunted and killed.
However, there were several ‘other’ ways that the ability could work, if I was willing to change some of the mechanics of it.
The first ‘possibility’ I saw was unusual. Instead of absorbing a skill every time I killed something with water, the skill’s requirements would change to ‘drowning’ a creature. No other method of killing a creature with water, including extinguish, would allow me to absorb abilities. In exchange, the abilities I actually absorbed would improve. I could create stronger versions of the abilities I stole, and even surpass the original creature.
Another possible customization went even further in this direction. Not only would I have to drown a creature to steal an ability, but I would also need to feed the water itself my essence. In exchange for this penalty, I would be able to pick and choose what ability I stole, and how it 'upgraded.' However, I would also lose an Ability slot, dropping me to two. That benefit was appealing, but I wasn’t sure if it was worth the need to drown enemies in essence-soaked water. The only way I would ever be able to pull that off was if I was far stronger than the creature I was hunting... which meant I would never get any great abilities from it in the first place.
That wasn't the only way my ability could be 'customized.' There were dozens of other possibilities. For example, I could emphasize the 'hunger' aspect of the ability over the 'water' aspect of it. In that case, I would need to eat any creature I killed to steal an ability and I would need to kill it with water. In exchange, I would be able to store 4 Abilities, instead of 3.
As I clicked through the cluttered mess of a user interface, I found more and more weird directions that I could take my ability absorption. I found options that would made hunger overtake my rationality, in exchange for greater power. I saw options that would make stolen abilities temporary, in exchange for making them stronger. There were even options that let me take the physical form of things I killed with water and then ate, almost like a body-snatching ability. The possibilities were so numerous that they felt overwhelming.
After several minutes, I started to get a better idea of what I wanted. Ability customization almost always had an upside and a downside. At its core, Ability customization would never offer me a perfect upgrade. Instead, it was more like a sculptor. It would take the building blocks that comprised my Abilities, and then tweak them to fit my needs.
However, Abilities were limited in how much customization could happen - I couldn’t outright change an ability from the ground up. All modifications still needed to operate under the same ‘framework’ as the original. I could also only customize an Ability once per Ability evolution. Any more than that, and the Ability would grow fragile and unstable.
As I looked through endless lists, I started to notice the best use for customization. The biggest upside of Ability customization was that it could build ‘synergies’ between abilities. Normally, every single ability existed in a vacuum. My abilities were all incapable of ‘looking at each other’. That wasn't the case when it came to Ability customization. After customization, some Abilities would grow reliant upon each other.
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For example, the ability-stealing component of {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}. In its current form, I stole abilities by contributing to a fight enough, and harming an enemy with water. However, if I made it so that I could ONLY steal abilities through extinguish, I could make huge improvements to the Ability as well.
I spent half an hour going through every possible change I could make to my two abilities, before I finally settled on what I wanted.
For {Echoes of the Deep}, I decided to change nothing. The ability had been trimmed to a very bare-bones form. I liked that, because it meant I wasn’t dealing with excessive clutter and costs. It would make upgrades to the Ability cheaper and more efficient. That was what I wanted from my primary magic System. I could support it with other keyword abilities, but I didn't need a crazy amount of clutter in my primary ability source. However, It also meant that I had very little to work with for ability modification. I didn’t think that was a bad thing. I would pick up more materials for Ability modification next time the ability evolved.
However, {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} had a lot more moving parts to it, most of which I was happy to tinker with. After looking at the many, many variations to the ability that I could create, I kept coming back to the ability stealing component. It had so many potential uses, and there were many ways I could make it more useful to me.
Eventually, I found a variation of the Ability that fit my needs perfectly.
Hunger: (Fragmented Keyword): Killing an enemy with Extinguish for the first time in each body will allow you to form an enhanced skill related to that creature. You have a moderate level of control over what ability is formed, as long as it’s based off of a biological characteristic of the creature you just killed. (Some ‘abilities’ may be unavailable if they require fundamentally distorting your biological functions or shape). You may absorb this skill into your current body in order to permanently enhance yourself.
Note: Only Achievement-granting creatures can form abilities. Only five abilities from this effect may be ‘held’ at once. You may delete a copied Skill from this ability at any time to replace it with a new one.
Held Abilities:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Sure, the ability had a few more restrictions now. It worked with extinguish, and ONLY extinguish. I could not get new Abilities through any other source. In theory, that was a huge limitation on the Ability. I could no longer drown enemies, or crush them with water pressure, or kill them in any other way with ‘water’ or 'ocean-related things'. In theory, that was a huge downside in exchange for the upsides I had gotten.
In practice? I basically only ever got this ability to work using ‘extinguish’ anyway. There was almost no practical difference between the old and new activation condition. In exchange, I could now hold two extra abilities, and I had some level of control over what I stole. It was a huge upgrade for the ability, in exchange for an extra cost I would almost never notice. The only real time I could think of that it might be a problem was if I developed something better than Extinguish. However, I didn't think that would happen for a while.
The whole thing cost me an extra 700 Achievement to pull off, dropping me from 6,032.09 Achievement to 5,332.09. My Glut costs didn't change at all. It was completely worth it.
After that, I spent a few minutes skimming through my Status Screen, before I nodded to myself. I was happy with the changes I had made. I still wanted to look at new non-keyword abilities, and get hints on how to evolve my abilities… but I felt it was time to let my friends have a turn. I had hogged the skill customization bed for almost an hour already.