Chapter 592 - Golden opportunity

[Skill nodes successfully generated. You may select up to four to create a skill.]

[Skill will be passive or active depending on chosen nodes.]

[Skill may be permanent depending on chosen nodes.]

Available skill nodes:

• Golden

• Smartphone

• Storm

• Overclock

• Triangular

• Of

• Salt

• Consequences

• Tower

• Crystal

• High

• Velvet

• Amulet

• Ripples

• Ichor

• Swarm

• Fork

• Fire

• Order

• Splintering

Sofia quickly read through the list, and sighed, before showing it to Pareth.

“No skeleton…” she complained, fully aware that the chances of getting that particular word had been extremely thin, but being disappointed nonetheless.

“There are a few good ones there, but I don’t even understand all of them… Say, Mr.Scribe, it wouldn’t be possible to get me a definition for Smartphone, Overclock and Ichor?”

[Smartphone] : CENSORED

Oh. 

Really? Are we doing this? I guess I’m not using this one then… Must be a hero thing, I could ask Alith or Everelle...

[Overclock] : Overclocking is running the CENSORED of a CENSORED at a speed higher than that intended by the manufacturers, improving speed and performance, at the cost of a higher energy consumption and the risk of overheating and or damaging the CENSORED.

Alright, this one I at least get partial information… Forgetting about the censored parts… This could mean pumping more mana into a spell to make it stronger, kind of? Isn’t this what I am already doing with the angel bolts? Am I overclocking the bolts? This one could be useful.

And last…

[Ichor] : The blood of gods in the ancient CENSORED mythology.

Wait… The blood of gods in some mythology? What… I’m pretty sure there isn’t a thing like the blood of gods. They have essence and that’s it, isn’t it? This could go one of three ways…

Either the dagger makes Ichor real somehow and creates a new kind of blood; or it just means divine essence; or it does nothing at all.

I think I could try this one.

Sofia shared those three system prompts with Pareth, and while he read, she quickly created twenty bone cards, inscribing the words on them, before frowning and storing the smartphone one away.

Since Pareth seemed to be done with his reading, Sofia talked to him, “Not too bad honestly, no skeleton in there but most words are usable. Smartphone we’re leaving out since it’s fully censored, and I’m guessing we are not going to use Salt either, but that’s about it. Any suggestions?”

Since Sofia’s usual way of trying all combinations was a bit of a dead end with so many keywords at once, she decided to just play around until she found enough good combinations to choose from.

Pareth hesitated for a bit before moving some bone cards around.

‘Storm of Golden Fire’

“That has got to be the most basic combination possible, but I can’t argue with the fact that it would at least create something useful. ‘High Storm of Fire’ also works… Wait, actually, even better, get rid of the ‘of’; ‘High Golden Fire Storm’,” Sofia analyzed.

Pareth seemed very happy about that suggestion, nodding along with Sofia’s train of thoughts, so Sofia spawned a bone tablet and wrote a first line: 1- High Golden Fire Storm.

Sofia played with the bone bits, moving the storm card around, “Hmm… Storm in general is a great base, but it doesn’t go well with many of the other words. Fire works, I think Crystal and Splintering could also work well… Storm of Consequences also sounds interesting. And I don’t know why but Velvet Storm feels like a funny combination.”

Since the last other couple of people on the upper floor of the tavern beside them had just left, Pareth took off his mask, and he thought about Sofia’s rumblings while scratching his chin. After considering things, he started moving the bone cards. 

‘Splintering Velvet Ripples Storm’

“Oh! I like the sound of that!” Sofia reacted, etching that on the second line of her bone tablet, and ‘High Splintering Crystal Storm’ on the third line. “That should be enough storming for now. Amulet is an interesting keyword too, that could create a nice invoking skill. Let’s see… ‘Amulet of High Overclock’ feels like it could help make other skills stronger, maybe?”

Pareth had no suggestion right away, so Sofia continued, “Golden Triangular Fire Amulet’ sounds like it would just be Sun’s divine rune, doesn’t it?”

Although she said that, she didn’t think it would be a good choice, if anything, she thought it was time to stop relying so much on the gods if possible, too much of her power was tied to Sun in particular already.

Pareth came up with another combination he thought worthy of showing Sofia.

‘High Tower Of Order’

Sofia was a bit surprised by the strange suggestion, before she caught on a few seconds later. “Oh! That kind of feels like an alternate name for the system’s trial towers. Is that it? Yeah I can see it. Not sure what the spell could do though. Tower is going to be a hard keyword to use, honestly. Maybe ‘High Crystal Tower’ can summon new midenicite buildings for Zangdar?” She suggested with a giggle.

But these are all kind of bad… Or, not very exciting, rather. That was to be expected considering the words are random, but it’s still a bit disappointing.

‘High’ might just be the luckiest word of the lot just because it intrinsically makes everything that follows it ‘better’. 

“I see you playing around with Swarm a lot,” Sofia noticed, “I’m thinking about it too, but there aren’t many good combinations with it at first glance…”

Pareth seemed to agree; fumbling around with the bone cards, he put together: ‘High Order Crystal Swarm’.

“Yeah I thought about this as well, especially putting together ‘High Order’, it lets us use Order in an actually meaningful way. But then again it also just works better with storm. ‘High Order Fire Storm’ just feels stronger than crystal swarm, doesn’t it? Sotm just eclipses swarm in general despite swarm being quite good.” 

Again, Pareth seemed to agree with Sofia’s opinion, but he kept moving the words around swarm, hoping to find something good.

“Alright, this might be ridiculous but hear me out: ‘Storm of Tower Swarm.’ Doesn’t it sound like it would start raining towers? That could actually be good. Or maybe… ‘Consequences of High Order’? Golden Ripples of Ichor? High Overclock Order Storm?! I feel like there is no obvious choice. This is going to drive me crazy!”

Pareth reached over the table to pat Sofia on the shoulder, and seeing that that calmed her down, he suggested something new, making a simpler combination of only two words :’Golden Tower’.

“Right! Up to four words. Meaning… We could even pick a single word? That actually… You know, a spell named ‘Consequences’ sounds really fucking strong. Or literally just ‘Overclock’ or like… Golden Swarm?! Ichor Crystal? Splintering Order?!”

This last one seemed to resonate with Pareth, and he pointed at the bone tablet that Sofia had completely abandoned, with only three lines written on it.

Sofia immediately understood, and started to write new lines on it, starting with that latest one, Splintering order.

“I can imagine it. Just point at something and order it to explode, basically. The Splintering Order. Insane! Oh, also, isn’t ‘Consequences Fork’ literally just Sorrow’s [Regret]?”

About two weeks later, Sofia met with Alith in one of the sect’s meeting rooms, before entering the room, she checked again on the skill she had picked, sighing as the dagger was still not finished creating it.

“So?” Alith called out to Sofia, leaning back on the couch, “Is no one else coming?”

“I’ve only asked you. Not only because you’re probably the only one who isn’t going to try to change my mind,” Sofia replied, ”You’re also… Uniquely suited for what we’re about to do. Remember how I said this was going to be extremely dangerous?”

“Ohoh? As I thought, it’s time to revive the dream team, just us and your skeletons, like the good old times?”

“That was like… Five years ago?” Sofia waved off, “Not that long.”

“That’s like a sixth of my life and you call it not long? Well, whatever, get to the point! Where are we going this time?!” Alith asked with stars in her eyes.

“You’re not going to even pretend to be reluctant to jump right into some dangerous place?” Sofia asked.

“I knew what I signed up for when I accepted to go with you,” Alith answered with a smirk.

Out of her storage, Sofia produced a bone slate with a drawing of Veliadren as seen from space. She pointed at the farthest of two dots drawn on the side.

“Alright, since you trust me sooo much. Here’s where we’re going. To the moon. The hidden moon.”