Chapter 489 - We are so back!

[Class Quest: Find the missing skills!

You picked an experimental sub-class not meant for use, three out of four skills could not be retrieved, but there are traces of their recorded locations.

Warning: This class’s skills cannot be learned.

Hints:

• One of four skills was discovered in a labyrinth.

• One of four skills was discovered in the deepest trenches of the ocean.

• One of four skills was discovered on the warped moon.

• ‘Singularity Edict’ was discovered in ruins of the lost epoch beneath an unholy cathedral. (LEARNED)]

“Cannot be learned? And then it says ‘learned’ right below that? Mr Scribe, this is handled by the dagger, right? It’s not making a lot of sense.”

Besides, Singularity Edict works perfectly well, I’ve tested that.

[Singularity edict] : Any one attack can only damage you once.

The testing Sofia had done consisted of channeling a piercing bolt with her bare hands. It burned her and caused her to continuously lose life, which made her think that somehow the skill actually did not work, but then when she tried stabbing herself with the bolt, it simply did not work. In the end she released the bolt aimed at herself and watched it disperse in a mist of sparkly mana as it harmlessly hit her.

It was a bit strange that the continuous burn counted as a single instance of damage, but that was just how the skill worked. A workaround she found for that was to start channeling the bolt, and when she started taking damage, she would carefully expel some of the bolt’s mana, shortly bringing it back below the threshold where it would hurt her. When it then started to burn again, that counted as a second instance of damage and got negated from then on.

Another thing she had tried was stabbing herself with the key. She took damage from the stab, and then, that was it, no more damage no matter how much she tried to move the key around. Of course she could still break through the protection of her own skill if she wanted by simply cutting off all the mana keeping it running, something her mana heart allowed her to do without much effort.

In general managing her mana felt a lot more natural and easy now than it ever did, though Sofia was not sure how much of that was to be attributed to her mana heart and how much to her new race.

Reminding herself of her testing, Sofia felt like she understood why the skills ‘couldn’t be learned’.

When I learned the skill, I felt that it was connected to Ormoncleths’ essence in some way… I got stranded in the Deep right after so that had kind of left my mind, but that clearly happened! It would make sense that one needs the Lord’s essence to learn the relevant skill, I suppose?

And there are exactly four skills. What a totally coincidental coincidence.

I guess Time doesn’t get one, since it’s dead.

So… I need Orator and Annihilator’s essences if I want to learn their skills.

I’ll probably get Orator’s when I kill scripture, going by the description of the quest rewards. 

Then I should try to find Aphenoreth’s skill first.

[Singularity Edict] was found beneath an unholy cathedral… That’s got to be the Cathedral of the holy lich the Dragon admin had maps of. I still have those. Might be worth taking a look later.

The labyrinth feels like it has to be the one from the second trial. Too much of a coincidence. So this is probably Annihilator’s skill.

That leaves the two others, one on ‘the warped moon’, which has to be the hidden moon. Erredis did say it had something to do with the Deep, so that makes sense. The other in the deepest trenches of the ocean… That could be anywhere. 

Hopefully it’s far away from the Leviathan…

One of these is Aphenoreth and the other is Orator. I guess I’ll ask them which is which next time I get to meet one. It’s been a long time since Aphenoreth showed up…

Sofia grabbed the midenicite tablet from her storage ring.

Is he happy when I call him Uncle?

Sofia released her magic, and the lightning bolt shot forward, soon losing itself in the black void.

“Seventeen seconds!” Bookie announced from the side.

“Right about sixty thousand mana per second with the summer melody… Not bad. Considering this takes forty percent of my mana away, this means my new best bolt options… Fifty seconds for a three million mana bolt, or just under three minutes for a five million one without the channeling speed from the music. I’ll say this is good enough.”

“Huge improvement!” Bookie enthusiastically cheered on.

“The mana heart helps a tremendous lot. And the singularity edict too. Makes the heat a lot more bearable.”

“But doesn’t it mean the dragon arm is useless now?” Bookie asked.

“Useless? No, it’s still very much an almost unbreakable piece of armor. I find punching with it in demon form to be very comfortable too,” Sofia commented, clenching and opening her fist in the dragon armguard she almost never took off.

“Sofia!”

“Yes?”

“What’s your favorite thing?” Bookie asked, walking up closer to Sofia.

“My favorite thing? You mean like, skeletons?”

“Nooooo, your favorite thing! Like an object!” he explained, looking up at her from below.

“Does your Book form count as an object?” Sofia asked, picking him up and starting to walk back toward the castle.

“No, Bookie is Bookie, not an object!”

“Of course, of course, then… I would have to say my scepter. It’s durable, reliable, and assists me in a lot of ways. If you asked about my most useful thing then it would be the storage ring, but my favorite? Totally my scepter,” she explained, while said scepter floated at her side, following her as she walked, ready to be grabbed and used at a moment’s notice.

“What about the Uncles’ gifts?” Bookie asked.

“I like them a lot too, but it’s not the same. Maybe my mind will change in the future, who knows. What about your favorite thing, Bookie?”

“My magic gloves!” he immediately answered. 

“Everelle was nice to give you the second one. Right, didn’t you say you wanted clothes? Let’s try to make you some.”

“You remembered! But, Sofia… Do you know how to make clothes?”

“I can sew a bit, I’m sure we’ll manage somehow. I think I might be able to make bone cloth, even, look at what I managed to do when I was messing around with the bone leaves for the trees,” Sofia said as she placed a handful of bone leaves in Bookie’s palm. They were soft and springy, almost like real leaves.

“Woah! Squishy bones!”

“It’s nice, right? I was also thinking of using it to make special clothes for my demon form.”

“Why are you guys freaking out so much?” Cinthia wondered, watching her chat being flooded by a lot more messages than usual.

Scrolling up, she found the cause of the mess, a message by the Recessed she knew to be Sorrow.

[Crybaby] : I feel her! She’s back!

[|||||] : Σ(°ロ°)?!!!!

[Daddy Hatred] : Really? I thought she was gone for good this time. Black holes suck. You’re lucky your daughter's such an anomaly, Crybaby.

[TheJailed] : I don’t know if I would call that luck.

[Halfsies] : If I had a coin for every time a child of ours entered a black hole, I would have two coins, which is not much, but it is interesting that it happened twice.

[Crowface] : And she found her way out in what… Two hours? The last one never even came back. Rest in peace, Pharene.

[ResoundingEchoes] : WHY DO YOU HAVE TO REMIND ME!? I hate you guys…

[|||||] : o7

[Crowface] : o7

[TheJailed] : o7

[Halfsies] : o7

[Daddy Hatred] : For free? Why, thanks. 

[Crybaby] : Poor child…

[TallBro] : So… About Vakaria. Where??? Look with concern

[Halfsies] : And how? I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone do that. Unless this hole was fake or something? Not that many ever took a chance at jumping in, but still.

[Unclean lord] : True, we barely had time to be worried for Crybaby and she’s already back. Smells fishy.

[Twistyface] : Crybaby said even the yellow succubus backed out, that shit was real and you know it. Unless you two suggest that she lied?

[|||||] : 💀

[Halfsies] : I never even entertained the idea, Crybaby might be our most trustworthy member after myself, after all. It is a curious happening, is all.

[Crybaby] : She transformed. I can feel her outside of the planes…

[|||||] : (°д °)!

[Daddy Hatred] : She ended up in the Margin somehow?! Quick! We have to retrieve her to fix Cinthia’s memory!!! Someone call the lich!

Cinthia bolted out of her room, running through the sect’s corridors. 

“SARIA!!!”