Chapter 557 - Wait… How much health? Huh?!

The stairs took Sofia deeper than ever before, she had gone down what felt like at least a hundred thousand steps, and was easily several kilometers deep.

The darkness did not extend that far down, so at some point she had stored the candle and let the light trails of her demon form light the way. This led her to a grand room the layout of which was reminiscent of Peace’s throne room, except there was no throne, but two massive stone doors guarded by a singular knight in black armor.

Big guy with a big sword, timeless classic.

Sofia tried to identify the knight from the other side of the room, with no success.

A glowing scroll appeared at Sofia’s feet.

“At least I get to see the enemy before deciding who to summon, I guess.”

Even if I’ve already decided to trust Cinthia and call Pareth.

It makes sense too, Pareth will be the best at dealing with a single tough enemy like that.

Sofia picked up and unfurled the scroll, finding its contents shorter than usual.

                             ‘Grand Crusader Vakarian awaits

                                  Do you have the strength?

                                 Currently available helpers:

                                                      Pareth

                                            Velanihuarahton’

Looks like Everelle was too slow this time. Hopefully she hasn’t failed, I need her for the next fight…

Wait… Vakarian? Like Vakariazrehafin?

Oh… Now that I think of it. Hearts of Velania? And Ihuarah is Velanihuarahton? I see, Sorrow named us after her previous followers.

So this guy is my namesake?

All the more reasons to have Pareth here.

Without thinking about it more than that, Sofia summoned Pareth. Her non-existant heart filled with glee as she watched the massive hellspawn-abomination skeleton appear near her.

“Welcome back, Pareth! Has it been fun on your side so far?”

Pareth shrunk down to a Sofia size, and approved with a slight nod, not elaborating any further. Something about him had changed, his armor of light had taken on a much darker, more bone-oriented design that Sofia could only approve of.

“Your armor looks different. Found a soul for your signature skill?”

Pareth opened a shared system window for Sofia.

[Chimeric armaments]:

Soul slots:

Weapons (Spirit of a Webber; Blunt Webbons)

Armor (Spirit of a Mindless Skeleton; Armor Shards)

Shields (Turgescent Soul Ochiaran’s turgescent soul; Turgescent shields)

“More than one! I didn't realize you snatched one of the Ochiarans’ good thinking… Blunt Webbons, though? Are you sure about that one? It sounds…” 

Pareth shrugged and opened yet another system window for Sofia.

[Blunt Webbons] modifier : Hits with a blunt weapon form leave temporary sticky webs around the point of impact, hindering the target’s movements and lowering their Speed.

“Hmm, not as bad as the name sounds, still we should be able to find better. Maybe right now, even,” Sofia suggested, turning her head in the direction of the stoic man in armor guarding the doors. “Right, with all this, are you getting used to your new skills yet?”

Some time before the jungle expedition, an afternoon in Zangdar.

Sofia came down from the second floor of the castle, she had gone to check up on Remia.

“Well, she’s still sleeping,” she announced with a shrug to Pareth who was in his human skeleton, reading some book sitting in a bone chair next to the salon’s decorative chimney. “Maybe I’ll stock up on firewood later. It doesn’t really get cold here but a good fire would make the place more lively.”

Pareth seemed to agree. He closed his book, looking pensive, and as Sofia wondered what he might be thinking about, she saw a system window open without warning.

‘Classless Skills (0 / 5)’

“Right! It’s about time we dealt with that! I hate to admit I’ve not been giving it too much thought yet… Let’s see….”

Sofia scrolled through Pareth’s frighteningly long list of available classless skills, these seemed to be classified in no particular order. 

“Sprint might just be a good start. You would probably get it at a pretty high level already… Hmm, but you can always teleport straight back to me so movement speed maybe isn’t what you need most…”

Sofia muttered to herself, “We could try to find some kind of flight skill for you in there… But your signature skill should also be able to do that, so…”

“Oh! [Hero’s grit]! Alith didn’t have this variant!”

[Hero’s grit] : What is it that makes a true hero? Is it the goodness of one’s heart or the capacity to pull through no matter the odds? 

Keep fighting!

Allows the hero to survive for a time even after their health hit zero, (cannot be healed), if you kill your current main enemy during that time, restore your health back to 1%.

Restrictions : Only one Hero exclusive classless skill may be learned. Once forgotten, this skill will become permanently unavailable. 

“This one’s not bad… Not great either. I think. I was honestly thinking about more combat-trick types of skills for you, since you’re stuck with very few attacking options… Stuff like [Quickstep] that can be used offensively.”

Pareth had moved to stand behind Sofia, he also looked through the list. Sofia summarily read through the skill titles, only looking up the description when the name sounded promising. Pareth pointed out one skill with an extended bone finger.

[Elite Skeleton]

“No way, there are skeleton-exclusive passives?!”

[Elite Skeleton] : Reinforces the flexible mana-weave of your bones to allow your skeleton’s overall structural integrity to remain intact even when bones are broken or missing.

100% Structural integrity is maintained until you reach 80% (100 - (Skill level*20)) Health.

Cost : Reserve 10% of your Maximum Mana.

Restrictions : User is a Skeleton above level 200.

Sofia’s eyes glimmered as she read the skill. “That’s one slot filled!” she declared without hesitation. “Mind giving us all other Skeleton exclusive passives Pareth can take if there are any, Mr.Scribe?”

After a few seconds, a short list of four entries presented itself to Sofia, the first three results seemed to be a set, so Sofia opened all three descriptions.

[Ske-Lethal] : Stamina is converted to a bonus strength multiplier up to 1x per filter, progressive rate depending on base strength.

Current multiplier : 2.833x

Current max multiplier : 4x

Restrictions : User is a Skeleton. You may only use one Stamina converter at a time.

[Bone-Headed] : Stamina is converted to a bonus Health multiplier up to 1x per filter, progressive rate depending on Max Health.

Current multiplier : 1.24x

Current max multiplier : 4x

Restrictions : User is a Skeleton. You may only use one Stamina converter at a time.

[Marrow-Minded] : Stamina is converted to bonus Max Mana at a rate of 3 to 1.

Current Bonus : 1 437 011 mana.

Restrictions : User is a Skeleton. You may only use one Stamina converter at a time.

“There was something like that... Those are really good. It’d be a waste not to take one. In fact, if we could somehow get Bookie to learn [Marrow-Minded]... It would be great for him to have more fog, but who knows if he can even learn skills. He’s still struggling with [Summon self]...” Sofia commented watching Bookie through the window, who was playing outside with Crowie chasing the little crow in Sofia’s forest of new Death-domain-inspired bone trees, before her attention returned to Pareth. “Which one do you want?”

Pareth seemed uncertain.

“Yeah… I don’t know either. [Ske-Lethal] is just great on paper, more strength. But since this is a bonus multiplier and not a base multiplier, it does apply after after the strength bonus of your blessing of bloating but only stacks additively with [Sanctified Grounds] and [Runeforged Overlord], so the final difference might not be that great… Let me do the math.”

Sofia took out a bone slate and started writing.

‘For base strength = 1

Sanctified ground strength bonus = 40% *4 for skeletons = 160%

+20% effectiveness due to [Stellar Corona] = 160 + (160/100*20) = 192%

Runeforged overlord T2 = 24.9%

Runeforged overlord T3 = 124.5%

192+24.9+124.5= 341.4%

Current final strength = 1+341.4% = 4.41

With [Ske-Lethal] = 4.41 + 2.83 = 7.24’

“Never mind, it's greater than I thought.”

Pareth nodded, but he still kept looking at the two others.

“Let’s see for the other two… Your current health with the improved bloating and with sanctified… It was like 134 million, right?” Sofia asked, getting another nod in return.

We really have to thank Creation for that one, to think he would improve bloating to give a whole 0.05% extra health per Kilogram, actually crazy.

“Hmm, so even if it’s just a 24% increase because your health is already so stupidly high, [Bone-Headed] is still like a free thirty million health? Something like that? Tiny proportional increase compared to the other two skills but actually the most raw stat, probably. And that makes you even harder to hurt at all since it pushes the 10% threshold up from thirteen to almost seventeen million damage in one hit just to actually damage you. And then we have [Marrow-Minded], it currently would quadruple your mana, which is the largest proportional increase, but also you have never needed that much mana so far.”

Pareth begged to differ, opening the descriptions of his new mana-heart spells [Sunless Pulse] and [Arclight] which were both pretty greedy in terms of mana usage as both spells’ strength was directly proportional with how much mana was spent on them.

“Right… By increasing your mana it would also quadruple your mana regeneration since it’s proportional, that’s really hard to pass up… Honestly I’m… I don’t know, Pareth. I think you should choose by yourself, I have no idea which one is better. They’re all great in my opinion. I’ll just check the last exclusive skill while you decide, the name is intriguing.”

[Humanoid Ghost and Skeleton QOL patch v2.06 (placeholder name)] ♢