Sofia sat down on the ground, and Pareth did the same. She brought out the rest of the necromancers’ stuff and looked through it.
“What do you guys think? The robe is beyond saving, but I guess I can take it to the clothier; he might find that interesting. The wands are also rotten, so really it's only about the books and the cursed chest.”
Wait, actually, maybe we can do something with that…
Sofia told Bookie to summon the engineer skeleton and had him break down the wands into their components. They broke down into three piles, one of rotten wood, one of gold powder, and one a small stack of cylindrical red gems.
Those were hiding inside?
[Kuvaldr Amber] : Fossilized resin of the Kuvaldr tree. Useful as a catalyst to reduce projectile spread. Once powdered, it is also considered a delicacy by some races.
People will really eat anything huh.
Well that's it for this, I will read the books later. Let's get started with the chest, I just need to empty the ring first.
Sofia quickly threw a small piercing bolt at the cavern wall to test its hardness. She did not even make a dent into it. The mana inside the Ring was also still plentiful. Since she was going to cast a lot of bolts to empty the ring anyway, she decided to train them. In particular, what she aimed for was to find a way to charge the bolts faster. When she had seen the Angel use them, both times his charging process had been much faster than hers, and even with the scepter doubling her channeling speed, 2000 mana per second was starting to become too slow. The higher-level enemies wouldn't stand still for her to charge the bolts forever.
Holding her scepter to absorb the inevitable backlash that would happen whenever she failed a cast, she started tinkering with the piercing bolt’s mana patterns as she cast it, hoping to find ways to charge it faster.
A few hours and a lot of bolts thrown at the walls later, she made a breakthrough much faster than she had anticipated. What she had done was quite simple; she had cast the spell several times with and without the scepter and tried to observe the minute difference between the two to understand how the scepter did what it did. Like this, she understood how the scepter managed to hasten the channeling. It was a surprisingly dirty solution.
So it just copies that starting part and then merges it with my spell later down the line. And that works?
If it's so easy, can I not just do that myself? If I double it on my side, then will the scepter copy the doubled version too? Seems like it would. So I would jump to channeling 4000 mana per second just like that.
Sofia was pretty sure that her theory would work. It was easier said than done, though, and the bolt exploded in her face every time she tried to alter it like that. She tried a lot of different ways, but the spell was never stable. This would be another thing she needed to spend more time on later. But the good thing was the ring did not care that the spells were failures; it boosted them all the same, which gave her a hard time with her healing but eventually emptied it, so she could now try to open the necromancer’s chest.
Just to be safe, I should put on a rune or two.
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With everything ready, Sofia created an elevated bone platform in the cubic cavern, just in case the use of the ring near the walls might interfere with the ‘mana leyline’ the old Exidian had talked about. There, she stood as far as she could from the chest, so that it would still be in the ring of Zar’s range, and had one of the graveyard skeletons open it.
Sofia activated the ring as soon as she saw mana erupting from the chest. It was not as much mana this time, and she barely felt it course through her arm and to the ring.
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The chest was now opened and with apparently no more tricks to it.
That was easy enough; I didn’t even need the runes. Let's see what this wanted to protect like this.
Red silk cloth enveloped the contents of the chest. Sofia took it out and unfolded it, revealing three small items: a silvery brooch, a thin mithrium ring, and an ornate goblet like the one Sofia had seen on Bookie’s illustration of the necromancer, carved in very dark wood and covered in small shiny red gems; it was very well preserved.
The first thing Sofia grabbed was the ring.
No way, mithrium? This much is probably worth about the same price I bought the whole thing, isn't it? It looks enchanted too!
On the ring were small runes Sofia did not recognize; it looked nothing like the modern rune system popularized by the avians, but mana was already moving around them before she even put it on, so it was obviously of a magical nature.
Go on, Sir Scribe, and give me the advanced [Identify] analysis straight away, just use the mana.
Sofia read the description of the ring and was so surprised her mouth lay agape.
[Ring of the fallen legion]: This mithrium ring was made for a Lich’s lover in hope that they could walk among their legions of undead without worry. Nearby undead are more likely to be neutral toward the wearer of the ring. The wearer of the ring may spend mana to influence nearby undead. The cost and efficacy will depend on the intelligence and strength of the undead as well as the nature of the influence being exerted.
This is just [Lead the Dead]! It’s a [Lead the Dead] ring!
So, just like [Angel’s bolt], [Lead the Dead] was magic that already existed and that the system just copied! And well, [Erredian Rot] is like this too.
Do I have other skills like that? This is an interesting discovery, not too terribly useful considering [Runeforged Overlord] already dissuades undead monsters from attacking me, but I guess it’s worth wearing. Also it’s a few grams of mithrium, so if I ever need some I know where to find it.
Next Sofia grabbed the brooch, it was a wavy pattern made of silver, that Sofia did not think represented anything in particular.
[Bard’s brooch of facial concealment] : This silver brooch absorbs the light reflecting from your face, obscuring your likeness to observers with regular vision. Will overheat if worn for too long, must be placed in an unobstructed area near your head for optimal efficiency.
I can see how that would be useful to a necromancer. I probably won't be using that one much.
Sofia stored the brooch and grabbed the goblet next. It was surprisingly heavy for its size and covered in the same esoteric runes like the mithril ring. In Sofia's hand, it looked like a small cup, which made her giggle as she remembered it looking quite large in the necromancer's hand on Bookie’s page.
Let's hope this one is a bit more useful.
[The Overflowing Chalice]: This Chalice of dubious origin is decorated with 48 blood rubies which are entirely useless to its functions. When fed mana or otherwise placed in a mana-rich environment, this chalice will produce endless amounts of dangerous freezing mist. This does not affect the Undead.
Oh! I’m not undead but I should be immune to this thanks to VPPV. I don’t really think I could use this in a fight but I can see how that would be useful to protect a fortress full of undead. That might be a good thing to bring into dungeons too, like a less destructive rot that also spreads by itself.
Sofia filled the chalice with mana and a thin layer of mist started flowing from it, dripping down to the ground and spreading in all directions until it met the rivers of magma and couldn’t go any further.
The mist feels fresh, I guess. The ground is covered in a thin layer of ice already, I imagine this could fill up an entire room quite fast if there were no magma rivers…
Sofia was decent at calculating the volume of fluids with all the mucking around she had done with [Summon Blood], so she already had a good idea of how fast the chalice produced mist, but she wanted to be sure, since gas wasn’t quite the same. She created a bone cube large of about one meter and held the chalice above it, the cube was filled with dense mist in about ten seconds.
About a hundred liters a second, as I thought. It’s really quite fast. Also eats through a lot of mana, a few thousand points a second. Quite the gluttonous artifact.
Searching for some meat in her storage ring, Sofia threw the first chunk of flesh she found into the cube and watched it become an ice block under her eyes.
Colder than it looks. What happens when I store the Chalice?
The source of the mist now gone, it quickly lost its cold nature and dispersed.
Well, more random things in my storage ring, I guess. Worth more money than I paid by far, but not as exciting as I’d hoped. The best part so far was the upgrade for Bookie.
Unsatisfied, Sofia started throwing bolts at the walls again, thinking she had nothing to do until the end of the week anyway. Later, she stopped and returned to speak with her students who were done being evaluated by Tartaros. She explained very briefly why she had been the cause of their group being attacked by a space mage. All was fine until Shaily brought up something that Sofia had completely forgotten about. She only had two days left until her first public class.
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