Chapter 682 - All roads lead to humans

Author note:

Hi! Unfortunate news, I'll have to take a few days off soon. I don't know when and how many exactly, but I need the extra time to finish book 4's edition for amazon (It was slated to release in January...), so yeah...

Other than that, things are going great though, five more events incoming for this arc, hope you'll enjoy them all, and have a nice weekend ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

[You have selected: Convergent evolution.]

[Your access to mana has been temporarily disabled.]

[Please sit still as we operate on your physical body. You may experience severe dizziness and nausea during the process.]

Reading the messages, Sofia put her half-eaten slice of cake back on the table and sat comfortably in the back of her chair. It did not take long for the world to start spinning around her. She closed her eyes and waited for it to be over.

This is a joke compared to the filters but it’s still much worse than getting a regular skill.

I hope this doesn’t last too long.

This is going to make me throw up…

It took a good minute and a half before everything stopped spinning and the nausea started to calm down. Mana rushed back into Sofia’s body, and she could clearly feel that her mana heart was different, it linked all of her skills togethers in a way that it did not use to instead of simply fueling them.

Woah… Can it still move around when it’s like this?

Oooh, alright, it can, but that sure looks strange. It’s probably best to leave it in its neutral position unless I’m fighting.

Should I try doing a fusion right now?

Name : Sofia Aphenoreth

Age : 21 ♢

Class : [Saintomancer] ♢

Sub-Class : [False Lord] ♢

Level :  250 ♢ (299 EX22)

Health : 1 026 527 / 1 026 527

Stamina : 373 142 / 373 611

Mana : 76 853 / 5 365 182

Divinity: 102 / 102

(Mana Regeneration: (0.16%) + Other sources = 11376/s)

(Mana Regeneration in Sunlight : (0.16%) + Other sources = 27777/s)

Main Specialization : [Eclipse Skeleton]

Alteration chance : 100% (Unavailable)

Secondary Specialization : [Heat Death]

Tertiary Specialization : [Sovereign of Unshackled frames]

Post Racial Skill Awakening Note: Some skills now have an estimated ‘true slot’ usage annotated. More and better estimations will take a few weeks to calculate but un-annotated skills should take around 1 slot each.

Signature Skill (ULTIMATE)

[Awakening of the five calamities]

Mana Heart Abilities (4)

[Infinity Engine] Lv.3

[Relocate Core] ULTIMATE Rank

[Slashing Resistance]

[Explosion Resistance]

Remaining possible skill slots : 6.2

False Lord Skills (2 / 2)

♢ [Singularity edict] ♢

♢ [Paradise Toybox] ♢

Active Skills (8 / 8)

[Spine of the Black Sun] - Level 263

[Summon Odalite Blood] - Level 260 (~5S)

[Graveyard of the Nymphs] - Level 278

[False immortality] - Level 4 (~3S)

[Skull Choir] - Level 295

[Reign over shadows]

[Saintomancer’s Star]

[Avatar of Zeus]

Passive Skills (5 / 5)

[Blessing of the Deep] - (2/4) (0S)

♢ [Vakariazrehafin of Sorrow] ♢ (~3S)

♢ [Venerable physique of the primeval void] ♢ - Peak of Light forging realm (~4S)

[Runeforged Overlord] ♢ - Level 294

[Sixth Melody]

Classless Skills (7 / 7)

♢ [Dreams Of a Demon which Gods Envy - March of the Envoy] ♢ (~2S)

[Summon Self] - Level 57

[Mana manipulation] ♢

[Radiance] - Level 100

[Quintessential] ♢

[One with Suffering] ♢

[Crystallized] ♢

Racial Skills (4)

♢ [Edgewalker] ♢

♢ [Pillar of Creation] ♢

♢ [Mockery of the Divine] ♢

♢ [Convergent Evolution] ♢

Special Skills (1)

♢ [The Book of Skeletons] ♢

Wildcast Skills (~3S)

[Angel’s bolt] ♢

[Identify]

[Call Elemental Sprite] ♢

Summoned heroes (4 / 4)

• Lv.299 Pareth (Holy Hellspawn Abomination Eclipse Skeleton)

• Lv.293 Alith (Alith)

• Lv.299 Book of Skeletons (Book)

• Lv.293 Ihuarah (Heartless Shade)

[Mark of Aphenoreth]

Lords… Summon blood takes up that much space?! I knew it was big but… I might have to reconsider keeping it in the long term. Maybe I should start making Odalite Blood reserves in Zangdar as soon as I’m done with this trial…

There are a lot more lock marks than before. And 6.2 free slots, hmm…

Also I gained 2 points of divinity somehow?

[This is a result of our mana heart starting to awaken from the fight against Tartaros]

[I expect it to keep going up as we progress toward leveling up]

[Seek out as many fights as possible, we are still a long way from full awakening]

Hey this takeover was smoother than before, at this rate soon you will be able to send me messages like this whenever. Thank you for the update. Now let’s get fusing.

Hmmm… I do have a few ideas but let’s see, maybe I should figure out which skill would have the best overlap if I want to save more space. Some skills are bound to have a better natural compatibility than others…

Sofia closed her eyes again and focused on her mana circuits.

What a mess…

The demon form spells are partially there, it feels like they take up a bit more space than they used to… Probably because the skill is going to evolve soon. Hopefully it will let me transform whenever. Let’s see, my classless skills in particular could use some refreshing…

[Quintessential] and [Mana Manipulation] have a lot of similar pathways. Messing with quintessential is a bit scary considering it does most of the heavy lifting for the range of my aura… But I should trust my new racial skill, right? Nothing better to do until we get the results from the casino anyway.

Now how do I do this? It should be just like when I made [Dodge - Me], I think?

Sofia’s mana senses faltered as she started to mess with her mana circuits. There was no system help, just her own mana heart now being capable of shifting and fusing her circuits with ease instead of life-endangering difficulty.

Even with the help of the racial skill, it took Sofia a good hour of painstaking rerouting of her mana circuits, sometimes having to blindly follow the mana flow without knowing what it was going to do to the fused skill, for the two classless skills to properly fuse together. The results of the trial were still not in, and the cake was completely gone.

Sofia checked her status.

Remaining possible skill slots : 6.9

All of that for 70% of a full slot… My mana senses feel the same as before.

The skills was blank, currently, it took a few seconds for Mr.Scribe to come up with a proper name and description.

[Essence Resonator] ♢ : 

Aura +10% per possessed divine essence.

Manually altering your mana circuits is around 8% easier per possessed divine essence.

That’s pretty good? The effect descriptions have been rewritten but it’s just the same things they were before. Except that the alteration part from mana manipulation changed from ‘double’ to 8% per essence. So I’m at 152%.

That should make future fusion 52% easier? Am I understanding that right? That was a good starting point.

Ah, wait, Mr.Scribe, the classless says 6/6 now? Did I just screw myself out of a classless slot?!

[Our system classless allowance is actually at 9, independently from the number of slots, so we could learn an extra 3 right now.]

Wait, really?!

Good to know.

… We have the potential to do something really stupid right now. Imagine if we take a few new classless, fuse them, and keep going until we have some sort of ultimate classless skill. Nothing is preventing us from doing that right this instant aside right? Aside from it being a stupid idea?

[Indeed.]

Too bad we can’t afford to do that… It will still cost me the slots no matter how well I fuse. Still, maybe I can get a new passive right now? Or should I try another fusion since it looks like we have some time…

[Radiance] is prime fusion material, it’s got so many overlaps with my other skills, I could fuse it to practically anything.

I almost want to just slap it onto the unlife runes but the prospect of potentially ruining the runes is a bit scary, especially since I still haven’t bought any of the skill’s optimization upgrades. Maybe I keep this fusion in mind and try it after buying the upgrades. If it could finally allow me to heal through the unlife runes…

What else…

Sofia peered through her mana circuits for a while before she realized that two of her classless had an unexpected similarity. [Crystallized] and [One with suffering] each had a whole sub-section that looked completely mirrored from one another.

It wasn’t obvious because they were so far apart but the more I look at it the more the look alike. I just need to flip one around and I could make these two sub-sections completely overlap. That would be a great fusion, wouldn’t it? I could gain a lot of space!

There no telling what fusing these two skills might do, though. Especially with such a large overlap, one function from one is likely going to be replaced by the other… I’m not quite at the level where I can predict what that would be… 

After giving it some thought, and finishing her slice of cake, Sofia went ahead with the fusion.

The trial results came up midway through this time, but Sofia ignored them and just kept her mind on the fusion from her bed, while Bookie had to explain by himself to Mornn and Kuli what was going on.

Remaining possible skill slots : 7.7

[Crystallized Suffering] ♢ : For each % of Health lost during a singular battle, your body will produce a suffering shard. Gain 1% increase to Strength, Agility, Speed and Processing for each suffering shard until the end of combat. When you reach 500 suffering shards or the battle ends with at least 100 suffering shards, stop producing suffering shards, and all shards gather to form a suffering crystal. Consuming a suffering crystal grants a temporary Processing multiplier of 1% per shard contained in the crystal but also inflicts immense debilitating pain and soul damage.

That’s… Uh… Well losing the mana regeneration part is not too bad considering I no longer needed it. And I get the Processing during battle now, which is great! Not sure how I feel about the suffering crystals though, or even the shards, for that matter…

Sofia finally opened her eyes and sat up on the bed. The others had left the room by now, even Pareth. Bookie was the only one still there, playing some kind of board game with the room’s Odon shopkeeper.

“Hey Lepo. Any new items in shop?” Sofia greeted.

“Hi! I do have a few new things, but no uniques except the one you unlocked as a casino prize. Congratulations on that. You’re the second person to grab this one earring actually, but as you can guess the other person did not end up buying it.”

“Can I know who that was?”

“Forbidden information, sorry!”

“Alright, thanks for confirming it’s there, I guess.”

“Sofia! Do you want to play with us?” Bookie asked, turning back.

While Bookie was not looking at the board, Lepo moved one of the gamepieces, giving a wink to Sofia.

“I’m good Bookie, maybe later, depending on how much free time we get.”

“Oh… Alright…” Bookie answered a bit miffed, he turned to the board again and immediately noticed Lepo’s trick, “Hey! What happened to my knight?!”

“Ah! He must have fallen from his horse while you weren’t looking, that’s unlucky,” Lepo said, barely suppressing a smirk.

Sofia left them to their game anb checked her own things. First she looked down her shirt, finding that the weird blue-purple scar the pearls used to grow from had become a much fainter and smaller reddish one.

At least this one looks a bit like a real battle scar instead of a weird blue patch… No longer having damn pearls growing from there is nice, those were really awkward. Hopefully the size of the scar is a good sign and the crystals won’t be too big… Now let’s see how many points we got.

[Gambler’s end - Second Death Casino : Event rankings]

[Rank 1 - Historic 3rd - Eternal Lights] 

[Rank 2 - Historic 4th - Hero’s Journey]

[Rank 3 - Historic 8th - Obsidian Mountain]

[Rank 4 - Historic 16th - Holy Human Empire]

[Rank 5 - Historic 19th - Gurudur’s Golden Gals]

[Detailed results for Eternal Lights:

Tier 3 event - Maximum point reward : 50 000 000 TP

Retrieved item value :

Special prize - 777 777 777 TP

Precious metal - 8 553 242 TP

Secrets of Chronomancy - 13 666 TP

Total value : 786 344 685 TP

Total earned (MAX): 50 000 000 TP]

‘You have received rank 1 reward : Ark’s Gold Star Pin *1!’

‘You have received 50 000 000 tournament points!’

‘Current balance : 218 577 021 points’

[Tournament activities will resume at 6:00 am tomorrow, please enjoy your break exploring the Ark!]

Somehow, I feel a bit disappointed…