Chapter 591 - Calm before the Sofia

Erredis sat down on one of her workshop’s tables, “I would take Odalite blood without even thinking if it were me, but you shouldn't let that influence you,” she told Sofia.

“So you do know about them? Or is the prospect of a new crafting material just that enticing?” Sofia asked.

“Both? Both. There isn’t much I know about the Odalites, that goes for pretty much everyone else, since they’re a race that went extinct during or at the end of the lost epoch. What we have are some old records and carvings, a few partial skeletons and old broken scales. As for what they were exactly, I think… Flightless Dragons is the best way to describe them?”

“Like drakes?”

Erredis clicked her tongue, “Come on now, I said dragon not lizard. Some people out there think Odalites were actually just Dragon Kleptra halfbred, but we haven’t had that kind of freak accident ever happen in recorded history, so who’s to say?”

“Oh… I don’t know why I never even imagined that this could be a possibility…”

“Nor would any sane person? Seriously, who in their right mind would want anything to do with the Kleps when it comes to this? They’re about as far removed from the concepts of romance and family as is gold from dirt.”

“I guess I should count myself lucky to have never encountered one personally. Is there any evidence that Odalite blood will do anything useful though?” Sofia continued to ask.

Erredis shook her head, “Aside from what the system is spewing? None at all. But it’s not uncommon for the blood of stronger races to have funny properties, just look at yourself. So it’s”worth a try.”

“What about the other options?”

“Hmm… You are correct in your analysis, as far as I can tell, Underworld water is not the easiest to procure and can be very useful especially for someone at your level, so pretty great for now, but it will become underwhelming as you get stronger. Everything else I wouldn’t give a second glance. And of course Leviathan is stupid, forget it. Might as well just kill yourself now in any other less painful way if that’s what you’re going for.”

“Is it that bad?”

Erredis laughed, then became serious again all of a sudden, “There isn’t one person who has ‘fought’ the Leviathan and came back alive to tell the tale.”

Sofia nodded, and was about to jump to another subject when she picked up on a little something, “Is that implying some people did come back, just not alive?”

Sofia visibly saw Erredis shiver at the question, which said more than any answer ever could.

“Trust me, you do not want to know.”

“Erm… Alright. Should we try the Odalite blood, then?”

“Decided already, sweetie? Take your time, I’m working on something big at the moment so I won’t have time to play with that much no matter how much I want to.”

“Ah, really?! Sorry for taking up your time…” Sofia apologized.

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not a few hours short, but learning how to properly handle Odalite blood could take me months depending on what it really does, so I can’t do that now.”

“Oh, thank goodness. Then… If it’s not too much of a bother, I have another request,” Sofia started, before walking close to Erredis and whispering something.

“Are you crazy?!” Erredis asked, shocked at Sofia’s demand, “Do you not remember what I said about that before? It’s…-” She stopped, looked at Sofia, and sighed. “Listen… If you really want, I can take you there. But I won’t come to rescue you if anything happens.”

“Of course! I would appreciate it if you could tell me everything you know about it so that a rescue won’t even be necessary in the first place. I couldn’t find anything when I looked for information on it.”

“Yeah no wonder, kid, the little that is known is better not recorded anywhere. I’ll tell you about the time I went there myself, but that won’t take you far.”

“Better than nothing! Thank you so much for helping again…”

“Don’t mention it, kid, that's what a grandma does, isn’t it? I’ve not even been doing a great job at it, I even forgot all about that crazy ass Stebron and his obsession with divine essence… Gotta thank Phillip for reminding me about this one.”

After several hours spent chatting with Erredis in her workshop, Sofia left and started to wander around Zephir’s Obsidian mountain sect. Despite her not recognizing anyone here, most of the sect’s disciples actually knew Sofia as Saria’s sister and stopped to greet her. It wasn’t until she found a huge statue of herself and Saria fighting over Victory’s crown atop a fountain that she understood how they all recognized her.

It even has the usual details of my bone armor and everything. Seriously, isn’t that a bit excessive? Whoever sculpted that is seriously talented.

Looking around, Sofia ended up walking into a tavern inside the sect, managed by the largest orc she’s ever seen, who promptly offered her free drinks once he recognized her. Not one to refuse free things, Sofia walked up to a free booth in a corner of the tavern’s upper floor, and watched the lively night market of the sect starting outside around the fountain plaza.

A masked, cloaked figure entered the tavern a while later, while Sofia was relaxing, sipping on her drink. They ignored everyone and silently walked up the stairs of the tavern before sitting at Sofia’s table.

“Found something you like?” Sofia asked.

The person took something from under their large black cape and put it on the table; it was a rather thin leather-bound tome with the title ‘faces of the divine’. Sofia opened it, quickly looking through a few pages.

Another book full of drawings.

The first few pages were of people Sofia didn’t recognize, and they were all unlabeled illustrations, so it was hard to get anything out of them, but Sofia stopped at the drawing of someone she recognized.

Moon?

The signature mouthless face of the Goddess and her strange white and blue attire were unmistakable, and exactly as Sofia remembered. She closed the book and read the title again. Before opening the book again, and looking through all of its twenty eight pages with renewed attention. She recognized a total of four Gods from the book, Moon, Sun, Life, and Victory. All captured in their physical form in vivid details.

Sofia closed the book again and looked at the masked figure.

“Where the hell did you even find that, Pareth?”

A skeletal hand came out from under the cape, pointing at a book stall in the market outside, managed by one of the sect's disciple orcs.

“Really?”

For once, Sofia spent a while analyzing every drawing with Pareth.

Much later in the same night, Sofia received some news from Mr.Scribe, who had been busy ‘negotiating’ with the admin dagger. The idea was to try to do something about how Sofia received her new skills, as she was lacking skill slots and the dagger’s fully random keywords weren’t helping with making relevant skills.

Since Sofia had the skills for level 260, 270 and 280 to pick, the Scribe had suggested trying to see if the dagger would allow for one stronger skill instead of three regular ones, but the dagger apparently was not very easy to communicate with, and was not especially compliant. Still Mr.Scribe had spent much time trying, and he finally brought results.

[It was hard but I have managed to finally push one of my attempts through.]

[Here is the deal, we only get one skill instead of three, as we wanted, and it will be of the relative complexity normally allowed for the next filter.]

So far that’s great!

[It can be made with up to four keywords arranged in any order.]

More than great!

[But I still do not get any say in what the dagger actually does with it, we only get twenty keywords instead of the thirty we should have gotten, and they are to be completely random.]

[That is to say, absolutely random words from the dagger’s entire language database, not even skill parts…]

Oh.

Mr.Scribe gave Sofia control of her mana back leaving her with the choice to accept that deal over the regular three skills or not. Since she was already relaxing with Pareth anyway, she explained the entire situation to him and asked for his opinion, hoping that he would be able to express it somehow despite his restrictions.

His answer? A shrug followed by a few nods.

“Pretty close to what I was thinking as well… Alright Mr.Scribe, give it to me.”

[Generating skill nodes, please wait.]