Sitting in a triangle on the floor of one of the castle’s bedrooms, Sofia, Pareth and Bookie stared at the system window.
Available Active Skills :
* [Restore ] : Infuse the target with mana to
* [9853 ] : ERR
* [9854 ] : ERR
* [9855 ] : ERR
* [9856 ] : ERR
* [9857 ] : ERR
* [9858 ] : ERR
* [9859 ] : ERR
Available Passive Skills :
* [ 12056] : OR
* [ 12057] : OR
* [ 12058] : OR
* [ 12059] : OR
* [ 12060] : OR
“Sofia… Is this normal?”
“Clearly not… The disconnection must have broken something, there shouldn’t be so many lines to begin with, not to mention the other things… I’m guessing Mr.Scribe must be fiddling with things sti- oh hey, it’s gone.”
“So are you not getting any skill?”
“”Ah, Scribe is taking over,” Sofia told Bookie as she started feeling a lot weaker, “let’s see what we have to deal with this time.”
[Hi… Working with the dagger as a Database substitute is turning out to be harder than I expected. It is working somewhat, however, but there are things I could not fix…]
“Database like theHigh Scribe?” Sofia commented, “Yeah I could see how the dagger might not hold up well in comparison. So, how is it going to work?”
[The dagger has many safety features in place, so this is the best workaround I managed to find.]
[We get one shot for active and passive each, there will be more keywords than usual but they are completely random (Spell fragments from the dagger’s records), you can choose one combination of two keywords, and the rest will be lost.]
[I have absolutely no control on the final result, but do note that our specialization will alter the first skill that you take.]
“Interesting, I can work with that. What about [Restore ]? Do we lose it if I don’t use it?”
[This one will stay, you can also choose to add it to the active skill but it has to go at the very beginning.]
“Great. I’m waiting on the list then. Thank you for your hard work!”
[Feelings shared.]
With Mr Scribe’s last message, Sofia felt her strength come back, and her mana started to flow normally again.
“You read all that Bookie?”
Bookie shook his head, “I can’t see Mr Scribe’s messages but I did hear you read them,” he explained.
“Is that how it works? Pareth must have heard too, right? Let’s all pick the skills together this time!”
Pareth nodded and straightened his spine.
“Alright, the lists are here!” Sofia told the skeletons, sharing the active skills system window.
Available Active Skills :
* [Restore ] : Infuse the target with mana to
* [Greater ] : Shield yourself with a
* [Quick ] : Doubles Processing for a sho
* [Blood ] : Invoke a whip of highly caustic bloo
* [Hollow ] : Temporarily discard all thoughts to gain a massive
* [Back ] : A swift attack that deals additional dam
* [ shower] : of sharp icicles.
* [ curse] : gravity, making it impossible to swim up.
* [ of cake] : in perfectly equal parts.
* [ ball] : explosive ball of fire.
* [ forging technique] : of the Fire fiend shadow valley clan.
“Blood of cake!” Bookie said after reading through the keywords.
Sofia giggled, “After [Summon Blood] we can probably get [Summon Sugar].”
Bookie nodded, and Pareth shrugged.
“Ah! Better yet, [Restore Hollow of cake]! We get infinite cake!” Sofia proudly announced, which made Bookie giggle in turn.
When Bookie managed to calm down, he asked, “Why does a skill even have cake, Sofia?”
“Humm… Probably from a cooking-related class? We had a [Baker] in Verenha, this might just be a baker skill. And with the half description we got… [Slicer of cake], maybe? Probably part of a low-level skill. Most of the keywords aren’t that impressive by themselves so they are probably mostly low-level skills overall actually.”
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“[Greater ] and [ curse] could be from high level skills! It might even make a good skill!”
“[Greater curse] certainly sounds like it could be good. But it is also a very generic name. It could work well with the alteration, though. We might get [Greater eclipse curse] or [Greater skeleton curse], something along those lines.”
“[Greater skeleton curse]!” Bookie repeated with awe in his voice.
“Well, it’s a gamble,” Sofia continued, “but I do think curses would be a good addition to our arsenal, and Zerei would be able to help us upgrade the skill when it reaches maximum level. What about you, Pareth, any idea?” she asked, turning to the bigger skeleton, “Actually…”
A large bone slate appeared on Sofia’s lap, and she split it in small rectangles which she quickly engraved with the keywords. She spread them on the floor between her and the skeletons. “Can you work with that?” she asked, looking at Pareth.
Pareth seemed uncertain, he extended a hand to touch one of the keywords, and, surprising even himself, it worked. Pareth’s jaws hung from shock for a second, but he quickly caught himself, and started rearranging the bone bits, forming a few combinations.
[Restore ][Hollow][ ball]
[Blood ][ forging technique]
[Quick ][ curse]
“Restore hollow ball…” Sofia read, “Following Erredis’ advice to try to get some way to fix the destruction we spread? Is that what you were going for?”
Pareth nodded with all three of his heads.
Sofia spent a few seconds analyzing the possibilities of the combination. “Well, it might work. But it also might not, the combination feels very uncertain. I feel like if we go for something like that, then [Restore Back forging technique] might also work? Meanwhile [Restore Back curse] might turn out to be a healing spell.”
“I think all the combinations work with curse,” Bookie commented, “[Quick curse] could be very useful! Or [Blood curse]!”
“Curse is definitely one of the best contenders for the back keyword. As for your third choice, Pareth… [Blood forging technique] might be like [Bone dominus] for blood? And I do have [Summon blood] so it’s a good synergy, but then again, we do already have [Bone dominus], so…”
Pareth rested his chin on his joined hands. The room was in silence for a bit, as Sofia and Pareth thought about the keywords seriously while Bookie played with the bone bits, making random combinations. After a minute Sofia broke the silence.
“Too bad that we can only use [Restore] for three word combinations, I might have just picked [Greater shower of cake].”
It made Bookie giggle again, and the bone slates he held fell from his hands, clanking on the floor.
“Well, enough joking around, the front keywords are honestly all fine, so let’s proceed by elimination for the back ones,” Sofia directed.
The conversation picked up from there, and the trio’s first choice was to eliminate [ of cake] as a potential pick, since it had no serious combination. [ shower] was then given the same treatment, its only potential decent combinations were [Hollow shower] and [Blood shower], but the former was so strange that it was impossible to tell what it might do, and the latter Sofia could literally already do with [Summon Blood].
Eliminating one of the remaining three was a bit more tricky, but they eventually decided on removing [ ball], as its only decent-sounding combination was what Pareth suggested, but the description of the [ ball] keyword was too much on the opposite side of ‘fixing damage’, and it might influence the final skill negatively.
“That makes it much easier already!” Sofia rejoiced, “For [ curse], it’s either [Greater curse] or [Hollow curse] in my opinion, these just sound better to me, although all the combinations could work. Well, [Back curse] maybe not so much.”
“Could [Restore Back curse] not still turn out well?” Bookie asked.
“No, as I said earlier, it could end up being a healing spell, and we don’t want that at the moment, but it could also be a spell to restore curses that have weakened or something like that, and that would actually be utterly useless, so we can’t gamble on that.”
“Oh! Understood!”
Sofia nodded in approval, “Then we have [ forging technique], and while this one would be an instantaneous rejection if it was a passive keyword, for an active skill… [Restore ] with any of [Quick], [Back ] or [Hollow ] and [ forging technique] could all give us a land repair skill like Erredis suggested, which would be great.”
“[Restore Hollow forging technique] sounds the best!” Bookie interjected, “You make big holes with the angel bolts so this restores holes!”
“Not a bad reflection, Bookie, let’s keep this one then…” to keep track of the possibilities, Sofia brought out a bone-paper sheet and wrote the current keepers.
[Greater curse]
[Hollow curse]
[Restore Hollow forging technique]
“There’s still more we can do with the forging technique,” she said as she looked over the keywords, [Quick forging technique], [Greater forging technique], and also [Hollow forging technique] without the restore all could work at doing something, but I couldn’t really say what, since they’re not passive skills. I wonder if [Greater forging technique] could be used to make some sort of shield, considering the [Greater ] keyword description.“
Pareth looked at Bookie, and Bookie told Sofia, “I think brother Pareth is trying to say something but I don’t understand what…”
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After a lot of trial and error with bone slates, Sofia and Bookie finally understood that Pareth wanted to mention the specialization alteration, and that it might work well with [Greater forging technique]. Sofia had to agree with that, especially if it was going to be some sort of shield. ‘[Greater ‘skeleton shield’ forging technique]’, if the end result of the spell effect was something like that, then it was absolutely the kind of thing they could use.
[Greater curse]
[Hollow curse]
[Restore Hollow forging technique]
[Greater forging technique]
“Any other ideas?” Sofia asked. Both skeletons stayed silent. “Then let’s keep that decision and whether or not to use the alteration on one of these for after we look at the passives!”
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