[Your Mana Efficiency skill has reached Lv 6.]
[Your Mana Sense skill has reached Lv 6.]
[You annihilated the Elder Grotto Spider Lv 19, boss of the Foggy Grotto.]
[You have cleared the Foggy Grotto.]
[You have cleared a Quest.]
[Your Searcher of ##### class has reached Lv 22.]
[You have reached Lv 7.]
Apparently not getting her rewards directly Sarah quickly opened her quest list. Finding the one she was searching for wasn’t that hard since it was her only quest so far. The quest description appeared again, however now with a check mark behind it and its single objective. Also a button with the text “Claim Rewards” was displayed at the bottom.
Without waiting any longer she chose to claim them. Why shouldn’t she?
The answer to that question came prompt, as the scientist nearly collapsed.
Knowledge was streaming into her head. She wanted to think over all the new information, but also had to be careful to not lose focus of her surroundings, become overwhelmed by the knowledge and actually collapse.
Affinity was only an instinct. Chrysopoeia probably worked either on a subconscious level or was only a marker for Eas. But whatever the system was giving her now was much more.
And it stopped.
[Your Overmind skill has reached Lv 2.]
[The ??? skill has been awarded.]
All the knowledge fragments she thought would soon join into a bigger picture were simply lying there.
Instead of getting an answer a hundred more questions appeared.
Even with her control over her own emotions it was hard to get out of the weird mix of frustration and happiness.
Frustration, that she had even more questions even though she had expected to get answers. Happiness, that she got so much knowledge.
Maybe a good comparison would be that one got unlimited access to a huge library, but the last ten pages of each book had been removed.
[???]
[A skill fragment filled with knowledge. Rarely awarded to those who manage to achieve extraordinary feats and wish to walk their own path instead of following the footsteps of those before them.]
Sarah didn’t expect to actually get an answer to the inquiry, but at least it improved her mood somewhat. If she considered skills as the footsteps, did it mean that one could create their own skills?
Though before she got lost in that question, she started to search through the knowledge she had gained. Maybe she could find some way to finish her soul defenses…
Or she tried, as Nia had other opinions. “Stop daydreaming! You have killed the boss, but we still need to get out of the dungeon and back to the town.”
At least it didn’t mean Sarah had to stop, she could continue, as long as she followed her team members.
A pillar of blinding light shone from the ceiling to the floor in the center of the now mostly destroyed boss room in the place, where the boss had once waited. Now that the mage was looking around, she also had to notice that the spider was gone. As Nia had explained to them earlier, dungeons apparently reclaim their bosses much faster, however offer other rewards in return.
Passing through the light the three found them-self in an endless seeming black room, though it wasn’t dark, as they could still see each other. The black room also wasn’t empty.
A sphere with a radius of about two meters was placed in the apparent center of the chamber, slightly hovering over some kind of platform.
Another pillar of light indicated the exit. If they appeared on one end of the room and the sphere was the center, then the light was on the opposite side of the room, though without any visible walls judgment about the true center of the room was hard.
Lastly an altar could be found in front of the sphere with a wooden staff resting on it. A bigger light blue-ish crystal, surrounded by multiple smaller ones, was floating on one of it’s tips. The tip itself was then wrapped in metal, which seemed to wind a bit in the direction of the crystal, yet never touched it.
If one went with the legends and stories about magic in their old world, it was definitely a weapon for a mage. Not interested in giving her sister a chance in discovering that she actually wanted to become a mage, Sarah quickly claimed her other price for defeating the boss.
“This is what we call oracle core.” Nia explained, while pointing at the giant sphere. “Some say it’s also the dungeon core, others say those are different objects or that system managed dungeons don’t have dungeon cores, however, regardless of that, it’s used to trade in privileges. You should have gained those as you have entered this room, together with your dungeon clear level. Normally you wouldn’t have enough privileges to gain anything, however with your low levels and since we were a small party, you could have enough for some of the cheaper trade options.” Walking over to the sphere herself she looked to Sera. “You still don’t want to get rid of your unnecessary classes?”
Shaking her head, the sword fighter answered their guide. “No, thanks. It’ll work out somehow. Besides, I leveled just fine until now.”
Sarah was a bit interested in seeing the list of trade options, however she had also just found a few of the missing pieces for her spell, which was still floating around her. So trying to implement them, she decided to look at the list later, if she still had time.
At first she changed the flow of mana to encapsulate the souls, which should prevent them from causing undesired reactions. Then she brought the mana construct closer to herself, intending to bind the flow of mana to herself. Skills happened inside the body, mana flew inside the body and any additional souls wouldn’t have any effect on the body. So technically there shouldn’t be any issues.
It still seemed a bit risky to her to just stuff the spell inside of her-self, but spatial magic was unfortunately not part of the knowledge package.
Taking a deep breath the mage at first started to move the mana in her body. The normal in and out flow of mana would probably be too weak to sustain the spell and she needed something which she could later reshape into the spell.
[You learned the Body Enhancement skill.]
Moving mana without a purpose felt weird to her. Well, it was enhancing her physical abilities, but as those enhancements were based on the physical attributes, they were quite limited.
So Sarah concentrated on integrating her spell into her body. Twisting the flow of her own mana into shape, she started to connect it step by step to her mana construct. At first the integrated spell felt itchy and became harder to control. In addition the generated mana sharply declined, something Sarah had expected as the spell covered far less space.
Though while she was integrating the spell, she took care to only affect the outer layer of her own flow. She didn’t want to create some weird side effects by changing the natural flow too much and she still wanted the ability to project parts of her spell outside of herself.
Merging the last part of the spell within herself, the itchy feeling suddenly stopped. Her mana flow, which she had to guide before, accepted the new part of itself.
[You have created the Soul Orrery skill.]
[You gained the title Skill Creator.]
[Your ??? skill evolved into Soul Orrery.]
[Skill Creator]
[A title for those unsatisfied with the existing paths. For those who chose to become the trailblazer of a new one. An extraordinary achievement. Improves understanding of skills and helps slightly with the evolution of existing as well as creation of new ones.]
[Soul Orrery]
[Your first self created skill. In your search for a defense against ##### you developed something so much more. A storage for souls. A powerful weapon. A strong shield. A spell to prevent the revival of your enemies. A way to further improve your already abnormal mana recovery rate. And yet, even at this point it seemed incomplete. Though why are you even reading this? Should you not know best, what this skill is able to do? Can be used as a shield against specific attacks in its inactive state. Can be partially or completely activated to drastically improve the mana recovery rate and become usable as a weapon.]
[Your Mana Harvesting skill has reached Lv 10.]
While her skill fragment had officially vanished, after looking through her knowledge, that was at least still present.
Also testing her newly gained spell or skill, Sarah had to note that while the skill was much better integrated into herself, projecting it to the outside was much harder and required some concentration. Hopefully she could either solve the flaw or an increase in her attributes would let her ignore it later on.
Sarah also shortly thought about teaching her sister and maybe Nia the skill, however dismissed it for the moment. It had a few to many flaws. And then there was the issue of her now basically being a sun to anyone with soul sense or something similar. She had ignored the problem as it had only affected the three rings and one could easily store them in a bag if needed, but now she was essentially screaming to any soul mages that she was one too.
She could still hope that it wasn’t that bad, but she preferred to err on the side of caution. The ability to hide should be a valid strategy for defense too.
A few moments later Nia also finished whatever she had been doing with the oracle core. “If you are done, can we go?”
With her getting a short “yes” from Sera and a harder to notice nod from Sarah, the trio went to the pillar of light.
Though at the moment the mage passed by the core, she decided to quickly throw a look at the list of possible trades.
Having memorized it in moments, the party left the dungeon.
