Wrathkal

Tensei Skill Shop Chapter 7

Added 2024-11-16 12:12:21 +0000 UTC

Tensei Skill Shop

Disclaimer: I own nothing

Chapter 7:

After I said the password, the door opened by itself, allowing me to enter. As I crossed the threshold, I immediately started hearing something in my head.

<...ere… ome this… ay…>

So this is what thought-speak is like… reminds me of the Animorphs books I read when I was younger. The further I went, the clearer the telepathic voice became. Yep, it even sounds feminine.

<I’m wai… ahead… on the second…>
<Show… bravery. …will… wait for you.>
<Very close now.>

I was advancing cautiously because of how dimly lit the place was, even with enhancements to my night vision, but I soon spotted a glow up ahead, and finally emerged into a room illuminated by no visible light source.

Up against the wall on the opposite side was a woman. She was restrained by chains, shackled around her wrists and ankles, stretching all the way to the corners of the wall she was against, like in a crucified pose.

The next thing I noticed was her looks; she was quite the beauty, not just with a pretty face framed by long blue hair with creamy unblemished skin, but a rather voluptuous figure as well. Her body’s shape was emphasized by the white one piece dress that molded itself to it and showed off her cleavage. The only other articles of clothing on her was a red sash around her waist, and golden bangles on her biceps, so her feet were bare.

Yet despite this strange setup, the woman wasn’t moving at all. Her eyes were closed as though asleep with no facial expression whatsoever.

<Come closer.> I heard her voice ask in my head, more clearly now. <Place your hand on my head.>

Taking one last look around the room, and at her body, I approached and did as she said. The moment my hand made contact with her head, knowledge began pouring into my mind.

She was Olivia Servant, one of the best adventurers, standing far above many others. I knew that already, of course, but I just continued to absorb what she was sharing with me. She happened to stumble across this dungeon and managed to solve the puzzle to enter it, but a monster she killed on the second floor also activated the trap that she was currently in, causing her to be sealed like that for the past two hundred years or so. Unfortunately, I couldn’t free her so easily, because the chains had a lethal curse that would kill her if they were broken.

“Two hundred years… like this…” I patted her head some more. “It must have been hard on you.”

<It really was! I’ve been so lonely waiting for someone to talk to! I kept calling and calling… but you really came!> While Olivia didn’t show any facial expressions, the tone of her telepathic voice was enough. <Uwaaaaa~>

Her voice has definitely gotten clearer after I touched her. Status. Sure enough, the screen indicated the presence of a mental link to her. And she could just put that on me so easily.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just continued to pet her head consolingly. Eventually, she calmed down enough to ask me to tell her more about myself. I was pretty sure she had some ability to tell if I lied, so I decided to just go ahead and tell her the truth.

“I’m from another world, one where I saw a version of the future where a different boy came several years later. He wanted to become strong, so you gave him your skills-”

<WAIT! Wait wait wait! Another world? What do you mean?!>

“Exactly what I said. This world has things like levels and skills, right? I came from a world where there isn’t any such thing.” I don’t think Sano’s shop counts towards it.

“Umm, kinda. The story takes time to develop.”

As expected of the personality I saw in the canon content, Olivia didn’t take long to move to teasing. Well, she’s definitely got the looks to back it up… but most beautiful is a bit…

<Hm? Why are you suddenly so quiet? Surely that has to be the reason you came to see me, right?>

I poked her in the forehead. “Hear me out fully first, will you?”

<Cheh, fine.> Her voice sounded pouting.

I continued to talk, telling her about how I was working for a god that liked to make and sell skills to other gods in their own worlds, and had taken the job of obtaining skills of my own in other worlds to trade for the ones he had. I mentioned how those worlds could be very similar to the stories I read before, and when I found the story set in her world, I just had to give it a try. The attempt turned out to be successful, thus landing me here.

“Yes.”

There was an uncomfortably long silence, before Olivia finally spoke again. This time, she didn’t sound so teasing.

“Sure.” I was expecting this request.

I told her about Noir Stardia, the son of a baronet family whose intended job was stolen by a higher-ranked noble, leaving him with no choice but to join the Hero Academy. He had the skill Great Sage that led him to this place to become strong, and that Olivia had taken a liking to him, thus granting Noir her skills. There was a sidestory chapter that explained Olivia’s past, about how a different boy asked her to train him, though she refused, apart from teaching him a simple method to kill a goblin. However, she later found out that he died saving some kids from a more dangerous variant, and that made her regret-

<Stop. Don’t say anymore.>

I shut my mouth, and waited for her to come to a decision.

“Deal,” I accepted instantly. “That said, do you have enough Life Power to create a copy of those skills?”

<Who do you think I am? I’m Olivia Servant, the strongest adventurer in history, and I’ve collected millions of LP. Even if I’ve been trapped here for years, I still have a lot to use!> She boasted, back to her peppy self.

“Well, just in case you might need some points for yourself when you get free, I did come prepared with a version of my own.”

<Oh? Do tell.>

“The god I’m working for gave me a skill that’s meant to mimic one skill from a different person, and I was planning to use that.”

I touched my chest and extracted the skill.

<You can do something like that? I’m amazed,> Olivia did sound amazed too, <But I was going to ask you to put your head against mine.>

Shrugging, I replaced the skill back inside me and did as she said. Almost instantly, I could feel her reaching through me, locating the skill and examining it. A moment later, she did something to adjust it, and left something else behind with it, before she withdrew back into herself. A moment later, I pulled my head away from hers, and examined my status screen.

[‘Creation’] [Editing] [Bestow]

The three skills that Noir had gained were now with me. Though my eyes quickly spotted the quote marks on the first one, which was the copied version.

I nodded and just let her talk. She probably just wants to act like a teacher.

[Creation] allowed Olivia to create any skill she could imagine, which was how she became so strong; she just made whatever skills she needed to become strong. [Editing] was what she used to modify skills, whether on herself or on others. So she could enhance normally weak skills to powerful levels, or debuff the skills on her enemies. Imagine having a skill that allowed you to move ‘swiftly’, suddenly reversed so you ended up moving ‘slowly’ instead. The last one, [Bestow] enabled her to put the skills she had on others. An ally could be enhanced, and an enemy without a good skill to edit could be cursed. It was also how she granted me her skills.

All three skills required Life Power (LP) to use. The more LP used, the more powerful the skill’s effects would be. Just as the name indicated, LP was something gained by enjoying daily life, with more gained the happier one felt. Thus the easiest way was to fulfill one’s desires, whether it be lust, appetite or materialistic gain.

<I’m sure you’re the first one. Just like me. Ufufufufu~> Her telepathic voice laughed teasingly despite her stoic facial expression.

I won’t deny that. I examined the oddity in the skill I had.

The version I had of the first skill, [‘Creation’], appeared to be more fragile. When I asked Olivia for an explanation, counting on her wider range of experience, she explained it as the skill being unsuited for copying the whole breadth of what [Creation] could do at first, so she made some modifications to allow it to do so.

<It’s a bit unstable because of that, so you probably can’t use it too much.>

“I see… Guess I better bring it back to get it fixed up first,” I decided. Maybe because the original is dependent on the world’s system?

I paused. “What?”

“...I thought the deal was that I come back more often to visit you?”

<Sob, sob~ How cruel, a beautiful girl like me is being used and discarded by a loathsome guy…>

Ouch, even though I know she’s just teasing, being called ‘loathsome’ hurts. “Fine, what exactly did you want me to do?”

“You know I would have done that on subsequent visits, right?”

<I’m asking for you to tell me now~!> Olivia whined.

“Fine, fine…”

<Oh, one last thing…> She paused for a moment before saying, <If your LP reaches zero, then you’ll die.>

That’s something you should say earlier, dammit. “Yes, I know that.”

<You’re the type who likes to spend cautiously, but will spend excessively at certain times, right?>

“Yeah, I guess I am,” I admitted.

I did as she said, and a number instantly came into my mind.

[6400 LP]

Noir started out with 550 LP, so I would naturally have more than that, since I’m older and experienced more stuff, I realized after thinking about it for a bit.

<Alright, now tell me more about your world…>

In the original story, Olivia started teaching Noir how to use [Creation], but it seemed that she was just being her flighty self, latching onto whatever interested her at that moment. I wasn’t going to point it out though, and simply obliged her by telling her about how my mundane world worked and advanced without magic. Despite her interested verbal reactions, I couldn’t help feeling like I was just talking to a voice inside my head while standing in front of one of those artificial sex dolls, because Olivia’s body never moved even the slightest bit.

After I had caught up to modern times and its conveniences, I insisted on finally leaving, and Olivia relented as well. She did teach me how to use [‘Creation’], and I spent 400 LP to learn [Full Focus Breathing]. It was the Total Concentration Breathing from the Demon Slayer series, but for some reason the name just came out that way.

[Full Focus Breathing: Control one’s breathing in such a manner as to enhance the body’s physical capabilities to higher levels.]

<That’s an interesting skill. Is that from one of those stories you told me about?> Olivia asked me.

“Yeah. Normal humans used it to be able to fight monsters that were stronger than them.”

“Next time,” I said firmly.

<Booo~>

“I’ll be back. Bye, Olivia.” I turned to leave.

Once outside the room, I headed for the exit. Despite my caution, I wasn’t attacked at all, so I didn’t get to see how my Blizzara would work on an enemy in this world. The view outside the cave entrance was totally dark, since I hadn’t spent that long inside for the sun to rise, but I didn’t need to go all the way back to the city anyway.

…

“You’re a few seconds later than expected,” Sano remarked, “I take it you were successful?”

“I guess so.” I told him about how I ended up earlier in the timeline compared to canon, and the deal I made with Olivia for skills. “So I’ll have to go back a few times in the future.”

“You’ve already paid the price to visit that world, so I won’t charge you for future visits, but-”

“You have to be here if I want to go there,” I guessed.

“Correct. That might change in the future, but don’t hold your breath.” Sano turned slightly in his seat. “Now, why don’t you show me the skills you got?”

I extracted the three skills, [‘Creation’], [Bestow], and [Editing], and passed them over to him. Sitting down in the chair, I watched the god examine the skills first, before remembering to do the same for the analysis skill as well. He nodded to me when I included that one, putting it together with the rest for simultaneous inspection. Eventually, the verdict I was waiting for arrived.

“I see… this [Creation] really is a powerful skill, about worth as much as three of the higher quality ones in my stock.”

I could recall which ones he was talking about due to memories from handling them in my job persona. “You mean the ones that are like ten to twenty minor skills combined?”

“That’s correct,” Sano replied without looking away from his examination, “But you’re not going to trade this one away, are you?”

“No,” I admitted, “I’m planning to use it to create more skills with which to trade to you.”

“And that’s the smart thing to do. If not for one thing.” He finally looked away from it to meet my eyes.

I wasn’t sure I was going to like the answer, but I asked for the reason why anyway.

As it turned out, [Creation] was quite akin to the way Sano created his own skills, just that it was dependent on the world’s system to generate the skills the skill holder wanted to make. In fact, I had kind of predicted it already. It was like getting the program to create AI art, but lacking the proper hardware with which to make use of it. Thus in order for me to really make use of the skills, not just [Creation], but the other two as well, I needed to be in that world so that I was connected to its system.

Apparently, Olivia had predicted that, which was why she modified the copying skill that I got from Sano to assist in that purpose. [‘Creation’] was something like the trial version of the real thing. According to Sano’s explanation, it would work like the actual skill if I was in that world, but now that I was away from it, the skill would only work about five times, before I needed to go back and refresh the number of uses, so to speak.

I started to suspect that Olivia wanted a guaranteed way to make me come back to visit her.

“So what if I go to another world and try to use it there?” I asked Sano.

“That’s actually the beauty of it, because what this Olivia did was to modify the analysis skill to enable it to link with a world’s system more easily,” He was impressed by the sound of his tone, “So the longer you spend in that world, the more uses you’ll get from it.”

I couldn’t help but let out a whistle of amazement. “Wow.”

“Of course, there are still limits, since she’s just a human.” The god pushed his glasses up on his face. “Good thing for you, I can make the adjustments to make it work even better.”

“Could you tell me about it in more detail?”

Realistically speaking, Sano should already be able to create any skill that [Creation] can, but he admitted that he found it tiring because he had to take a lot of details into consideration. Whether the world’s system would support it, the various minor details that ensured it worked properly, and so on. [Creation] automated a lot of those, along with several safety measures to prevent the creation of something unstable. It was the same for the other two; [Bestow] worked with the transfer process, while [Editing] handled the modification functions.

The adjustments he mentioned would help my version of the skill link to a world even more easily, and with the analysis function mixed in, he could easily break down the skills I create into modifiable portions that were more convenient to work with.

I wasn’t sure what sort of reaction I should be having. My job in this store was something that could be handled by an artificial intelligence, but now this side job of obtaining skills for my boss is also being affected by the same.

“No need to worry, I won’t be ending your employment because of this,” Sano reassured me.

“That’s good to hear.” I could only say that. “Anyway, will it take a long time to modify those skills?”

“Yes, it might take some time, since I have to make the same modifications to all three of them.”

“Oh, what about the whole LP cost thing?” I asked. “Is there some way to negate it, or at least lessen it?”

“Negating the cost is out of the question, because…” Sano gave a lengthy and complicated explanation about how the soul’s energy fuelled the process, “But I can reduce the cost somewhat.”

“Then please do that.”

“It will be expensive though,” Sano warned.

I winced, but decided to go through with it.

Thankfully, he was willing to accept the remainder of my DP to cover the cost of making the modifications. The downside was that it would take the rest of the weekend to handle, so I couldn’t visit another world until the next week.

That was fine with me, because I wanted to test a few things. When I told Sano about what I had in mind, he checked my [Status] skill to ensure it had the function I needed, before shooing me off so he could do his work.

Since the trip to the Hidden Dungeon world didn’t even take an hour, it was still early evening outside in Tokyo. I returned to my room to change my clothes first, then I went out to search for a karaoke parlor.

First up, let’s sing my heart out!

I got a small room all to myself, and started queuing up various high energy songs on the machine. I also made sure to check the menu for any food items that looked interesting enough to try.

Picking up the mike, I took a deep breath as the music started to play. “JIBUN WO~!”

…

“Tomaranai~! Karada-juu ni~!”

…

“I’m burning through the sky, yeah~!”

…

“SKILL MY HEART!”

…

“Shooting star… and crescent moon! Shizuka na~!”

…

“We’ll carry~ on~!”

I ended up singing all the way until dawn, enjoying a dinner of snack food followed by a dessert of ice cream waffles along the way. When my phone let me know that dawn had arrived, I made sure to end with that MCR song, finally bringing up my Status screen once it was done.

[‘Creation’] apparently interfaced with that skill to allow me to check my LP, without having to focus my mind the way Olivia taught me to do so. So now I could see just how much I had at any time, though I couldn’t spend it without the skills.

[7800 LP]

So that one night of full-out singing and delicious snacks netted me a total of 1800 LP, which was a pretty good amount. Olivia might have resorted to lust to earn her LP, but the modern world had a lot more options.

Though I have to admit, I’m kind of tempted to see what lust can do…

I spent the weekend testing out various other sources of LP; resting and lazing around gave me around one or two, while listening to my favorite songs and laughing at funny videos rewarded me with varying multiples of ten, though they diminished the more I did them. The food options from the various restaurants near the shop were the same. I even tried visiting Disneyland on Sunday, enduring the weekend crowd just to enjoy the various attractions and rides there. The whole experience gave me a few hundred LP, with more from the exciting rides.

[8500 LP]

‘Still out?’ Sano messaged me through LINE as I was on the train.

‘On the train back from Maihama’ I texted back.
‘Should be about 50mins’

‘Alright, I’ll be waiting in the office, so drop by first.’

‘Okay’

I closed my phone, and considered what I wanted to do next. So now that I can make a bunch of skills, perhaps I should consider stuff that could empower me up further, so I can visit tougher worlds…

With that thought to remind me, I started to practice [Full Focus Breathing] again, though it was a struggle to maintain it for a full minute.

Yeah, I ought to start doing some physical training too. Tanjiro needed to do lots of running to build up his body for this. Also, I glanced at some of the commuters around me, I seem to have developed a rather thick skin about being observed while practicing my breathing skill.

As expected of Japanese modesty, nobody approached me about what I was doing the entire time. I did enjoy seeing how fast my stride had become on the way back from the train station.

“Had an enjoyable day out?” Sano asked me amusedly when I entered his office.

“Yeah, I did.” I spotted the glowing boxes on his desk. “Are those…?”

He nodded. “That’s right. Go ahead and take them.”

[‘Creation’] still had its quote marks, and the other two still had the same name, but I could tell there was a slight difference about the skills. Since it was late for both of us, I just thanked Sano and went to turn in for the night.

Over the next few days, I continued to work as usual. The skill-imbued weapons seemed to be well-received, especially since I could talk a lot about their advantages to the customer deities, being quite experienced in their use. A few were okay with having it as rewards for their most faithful acolytes, while others paid for the premium option. There was one god that planned to reuse the sword between the multiple transmigrators going to his world, in order to save the trouble of giving them individual skills. My job persona helped me avoid showing any reaction to that cheapskate behavior.

I also met a few other humans brought along by their patron gods, some before their impending transfer, while one was a late bloomer whose god wanted to make up for not granting skills earlier. Neither of them got anything overpowered, but I was glad that I could recommend really useful ones based on the settings they were in.

Sano even called the store to let me know that one of them had contacted him directly to praise my service, which was nice. I took the opportunity to let him know about the reception of the weapons, to which the god said he would make more for the next shipment.

There were a few bad customers as usual, but overall this week was a good one.

Outside of my working hours, I did practice using the skills I had received from Olivia, all three of them. All in all, I spent about a quarter of my LP, which was quite beneficial when considering the effects; [Stamina Recovery Boost] made it easier for me to continue my physical training, I also [Edited] one of my minor ones to increase training benefits, and [Bestowing] [Enhanced Rest] onto my bed gave me wonderful sleep despite the short amount of hours I got each night with all the stuff I was doing.

Said stuff naturally included researching other worlds that I would like to visit.

I knew that Sano said before that he wanted me to go to One Piece or Naruto, and while I still didn’t feel up to it, I had them on my list for the future. For now, I would prefer to have some easier worlds to tackle, and in fact, I had a few that I wanted to suggest to Sano the next time I saw him.

When the shop closed for the day and I headed for Sano’s office, I was a bit surprised to see a new door in the corridor there, and it was slightly ajar. Feeling curious, I went to peek in there first, and found the god surrounded by several boxes.

“Rick,” He noticed me in the doorway, “Good timing. I’ve brought several packs of skill equipment for you to display in the shop.”

“Did you make them modular?” I asked, entering the new storeroom.

“Yes. I’ll update your job knowledge later so you’ll know how to handle these, but basically I’ll be installing a device behind the counter so you can grab an item, and load it with the selected skill.”

Oh joy, more work. At least his method cuts out the majority of the required training. “Alright.”

I assisted him in putting the boxes away on the shelving racks, before we adjourned to his office for the weekly update. I decided I would send some money back to my family with the next week’s salary, since that would be my first full month of work by then.

As for new skills, he did manage to craft a few stealth and enchanting versions based on the skills from Skyrim, among others, but I couldn’t afford any of those because I had used up all of my DP before. So for now, I focused instead on the next world to visit.

“Okay, how about Konosuba? They have gods who do transmigrating there, right?” I remembered that the characters there could gain skills by spending points gained from leveling up.

Surprisingly, Sano’s reaction was not favorable. He crossed his arms and sighed.

“That’s a rather difficult world to reach out to, actually,” The god admitted.

“Huh, why?”

According to his explanation, the Konosuba world was rather restricted. Technically I could get in easily, but getting out afterwards would be very difficult because the gods there were on guard against such stuff. If I really wanted to go there, then I needed to wait for Sano to negotiate with the gods there for permission to leave when I was done.

And that wasn’t the only problem related to it; because the gods there were paying such close attention, my going there to obtain skills from that world’s system would be easily seen as thievery, which Sano did not want because of that attention.

Dang, that sucks. Guess I’ll shelve it for now. “Alright, then just put that idea on hold first. I do have other options.”

“I do have some suggestions if you’re willing to hear them.”

I paused, having been about to speak. “Sure, what are they?”

Sano leaned forward with his elbows on his desk. “Have you thought about recruiting others to help?”

“You mean… get them to work in this shop?”

“That’s right,” He nodded, “I can expand the shop’s living space easily, and with the increase in job responsibilities, it might be something to consider for the future.”

“I guess I can do something like that, but I’m not sure where to start,” I admitted, slightly uncertain. Though I do have a few ideas, just not sure if they might be the right picks.

“That’s simple. Pick a world where you’re likely to find people who are willing to join, that’s my suggestion.”

“Alright, I’ll keep that in mind,” I agreed. “I thought you had a specific world to suggest, to be honest.”

“Oh. How about another Final Fantasy world?”

I considered it for a moment, then shook my head. “I think I need to prepare a bunch of basic skills before I try some of those I’m familiar with.”

“Revisiting Skyrim for the skills you missed?” He sounded hopeful for that one.

He’d be the type of gamer that tries to go for 100% completion, isn’t he? “Maybe next week instead.”

“Then I’m out of ideas.” He made a helpless gesture.

I had expected that; it was this lack of creativity that made him ask me to gather skills for him to work with in the first place. I wasn’t going to call him out on it though, since I didn’t want to risk offending a god, least of all the one that was in charge of my employment.

So it fell to my backup plan in the end. I had it written on my phone this time, instead of a piece of paper, so I handed it over to Sano to take a look.

“How about this one? It definitely has a system related to jobs and skills for all its inhabitants.”

“Let me see…” Sano made some sounds of interest as he perused the notes I had written. “This certainly works. How long will you be spending there?”

“Not that long, actually. Apart from trying out the labyrinths there, I also intend to use [‘Creation’] to gain some skills from the world’s system. Once that’s done, I’ll come straight back.”

Sano nodded. “Alright, I’ll get started on the preparations for you to go there. The price for visiting this world is a bit cheaper compared to Ivalice, so I’ll be deducting this amount from this week’s pay.”

He tapped out the number value on my phone and returned it to me. I took one look at it and accepted without hesitation. I still would have enough to send back to my family afterwards, especially when considering next week’s pay.

While Sano prepared for the transfer, I went back to my room to change into the appropriate clothes, as well as to get the proper equipment for dungeon diving. That meant armor and weapons. Once I had donned them on my body, I returned to the office in time to see Sano finish the skill tuning.

“Since you’re only there for a short while, remember that you only have five uses of [‘Creation’] while you’re there,” He reminded me.

“Got it.”

“Alright, I’m sending you there now.”

Once more, I found myself in another world. The weather in this one looked quite nice, and my insertion point was on a hill overlooking a large town, with a wide path leading down towards it.

From what I could see of the place, it was shaped like a square bordered by walls, and there was a river cutting through one of its halves. If my knowledge of this world’s locations was correct, this was the town of Vale.

[Linking…]

The message window appeared in front of me, letting me know that my skills were connecting with the world’s system. It didn’t indicate how long it was going to take, so I decided to make my way towards the town first. I needed to see just how much of my knowledge matched this reality. For that purpose, I had Sano adjust [Observe] into becoming [Appraise], and was spamming it on the people I could see.

[Villager] [Farmer] [Adventurer] [Villager] [Villager] [Farmer] [Merchant]...

As expected, everyone in this world had their own job class. There were also other races; I saw beastmen with animal ears and tails, dwarves with short status and pointed ears, even elves who looked amazingly young despite their ages. Also, quite a number of the women were beautiful-looking.

No wonder that guy built a harem while exploring the labyrinths in this other world…

With that thought, I entered the town.

Afterword: That’s another chapter down. The start of this came out smoothly, but towards the end I suddenly had difficulty trying to imagine where Rick would develop from here, because just the weekly episode of gathering skills in a different world each time would be boring. In the end, I thought of having him gather fellow colleagues to join his team, though it’s only a proposal at this point of time. For now, it’s another world with potential skills to mine for the shop. Whether it’s a chance to get a new recruit, that remains to be seen.

Anyway, thank you to all my new patrons! Glad you’re enjoying this story enough to subscribe.