A few minutes later, the three of us returned to Fallcry, my draconic form casting a shadow on the ground below. I could see several people looking startled, but none of the panic that I had initially been concerned about.
I landed just outside the city gates, allowing Bella and Diane to dismount before I returned to my normal form. Diane had a satisfied look on her face, her one visible eye squinting happily. “Dragon riding is always the best.” She said with a firm nod. Then, she turned to look at the two of us. “I’m going to go ahead and log out, see what I can find out about ammunition. While I’m gone, Drake, there’s something I want you to use that last enchantment book on.”
I blinked, looking down at Diane curiously. “Since we’re going to be spending some time in Fallcry, I want to do some training of my own. So, try making a novice version of a shadow manipulation skill. You should be able to do it with Martial Intent and Shadow Arsenal, right?”
After a moment of consideration, I nodded my head. This skill certainly fit Diane, especially her Chosen. More importantly, she would be able to freely use it whenever she entered her shadow dragon form. “Alright, I’ll see what I can do.”
After I said that, Diane’s brand went dim, and her Chosen sent a brief, thankful glance before heading into the city. Not wanting to be left behind, Bella quickly followed while I pulled the enchantment book out of my inventory. We still had three demotion books, so I didn’t need to worry about not getting it completely right, as long as the enchantment didn’t fully fail.
I closed my eyes, focusing on combining Martial Intent-X and Shadow Arsenal-X, downcasting both to their most basic forms. A moment later, the book began to glow in my grasp, its cover turning pitch black.
A quick appraisal confirmed that the skill book had transformed into the predictably named Shadow Shaping. To make things easier, I learned the skill myself, and then quickly chased after Diane to assign it to her as a quest.
When Diane saw the quest, she blinked slightly. The quest requirement that I created for her was to have at least five other skills with the dark attribute, all at least at the intermediate rank. Normally, this would be an unreasonable quest just to get a novice ranked skill. However, I knew that Diane already met this condition.
In other words, as soon as she accepted the quest, it was marked as completed. And because of the strict requirement, she even gained a fair bit of experience for the skill, raising it to level ten in an instant. “Thanks.” Diane said, smiling beneath her face mask.
Bella looked at me pointedly, eager to get her own custom skills. I let out a light chuckle, reaching out to pat her head. “I’ve already got ideas for yours. I just need to wait for Kelly to get back to show me that quest trick she mentioned before.”
Originally, I had four skills that I wanted to make for Bella. However, if Kelly’s trick worked, I wouldn’t need to have Diane get more enchantment books to create them.
Bella pouted slightly, but nodded her head. “Fine, but it’s a promise!” She said in a serious tone, before turning to quickly head for the house.
I shook my head with an amused smile, simply walking through the town for now. An hour later, as I was passing through the town square, I saw Kelly simply materialize out of nowhere, and my eyes widened in surprise. Had she killed herself to save the trip back? Given how fast she was, that didn’t make sense.
Kelly looked around, soon spotting me and grinning. “Oh, good, you’re already here.” She said with her usual, smug tone as she walked over to me. “I handed the key off to Nora before I came back.”
“Did you…” I hesitated, gesturing to where she appeared.
Kelly blinked, before letting out a laugh. “Oh, you thought I died? No, course not. I used my World Walker skill to get back. You should be pretty close to getting it, right? It’s the upgrade to Glancing Step-X. Lets me go anywhere I’ve previously been.”
My eyes widened at that. “Uh, not quite… my Glancing Step-X skill is only level forty-nine. I’ve been using vehicles for travel with the others for a while.”
Kelly clicked her tongue when she heard that. “You can’t neglect your training, Drake. Especially when it comes to you.” She spoke in a meaningful tone, and I nodded my head. “Now, let’s get this quest thing set up.”
After saying so, Kelly began to walk me through the steps of assigning ‘subskills’ as quest rewards. It wasn’t that hard, but it involved focusing on a narrow application of a skill when choosing it as a quest reward, which wasn’t something I was used to doing.
With her help, I created the four skills that I wanted for Bella: Shadow Bullet, Fire Bullet, Water Bullet, and Ki Bullet. There were still more bullet types that I wanted to make for her, but those would require enchantment skill books, such as Mana Bullet, Spark Bullet, Poison Bullet, Crystal Bullet, and Sand Bullet.
When I asked Kelly, she said that the more ammo skills I prepared, the more likely there were to be powerful combos. If we counted the basic gun proficiency, this would be a total of ten skills. Hopefully, she’d be able to get some interesting combinations out of them.
A short while later, Diane messaged me, asking how many enchantment books I’d need for Bella. When I told her to just prepare as many as she could, in case of failure, she hesitated. Still, she passed the message along to her player, who logged back in about ten minutes afterwards. After rushing to the mailbox, she found me and traded me ten enchantment skill books and ten skill demotion books. “The people who are buying these up from the market have started selling them as a ‘skill creation’ package for real world money.” She informed me. “I traded a Transform book for these, so I hope it’s enough.”
My eyes widened slightly. If that was their trade, they probably wouldn’t make the same deal again. After all, they could print their own Transform skill books with the one they had now. “Got it. This should be enough. Did you find anything about the ammo?”
Diane nodded her head at that. “Pistols and rifles use two distinct types of ammo. Thankfully, the system set it up so any pistol can use the same pistol ammo, and same for rifles. For now, I bought enough bullets to hopefully get Bella to the intermediate rank.”
“Let her get started training, then.” I said with a smile. “I’ll go find her after I’ve got these skills set up.”
Diane gave me a knowing look, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t push yourself too hard.” She said, seeming to understand what my plan was.
I simply chuckled, scratching the back of my head. “They’re just novice skills, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”
Diane sighed, but turned to leave with one last look. Once she was gone, I sat down on the floor and got to work. Aside from the Crystal Bullet, everything I was making was going to be based on magic skills. Naturally, this meant that I was in for a world of hurt.
One by one, I began enchanting the skills, using a total of three demotion books in the process to get them all down to the novice level. Most of the skills succeeded on the first try, right up until the last one, where I was converting Sand Lance into a Sand Bullet. For some reason, this one decided to be difficult.
It took me a total of five tries just for this one skill, coating my floor in a generous helping of blood in the process and leaving me once again with just a single enchantment skill book…
Still, I managed to get it all done, one way or the other. After healing myself and cleaning the floor, I sent a message to Bella, asking where she was. She told me that she was at the training center, so I started making my way over there.
Unsurprisingly, I found Kelly at the training center, as if she had taken up residence there. She only gave me a small nod, before pointing her thumb back towards the area at the back. “Assume you’re looking for your friend.” She said, and I nodded my head, moving to the back.
The training center was a building purchased from the city shop, so it naturally had its own special properties. No matter how much damage was done to the training dummies, they would quickly recover. In addition, the sound inside was isolated, so the entire city wasn’t flooded with the sound of her gunshots.
When I entered the yard of the training center, I saw Bella crouched at one end, holding her rifle up with a crate of ammunition next to herself. She took deep breaths, steadying her shot and firing at the most distant target. I saw a small hole piercing into the target’s arm, which quickly ignited.
“You already have a fire bullet?” I asked in surprise, causing Bella to look over and blink sheepishly.
“Huh? Oh, no. Sorry, that’s just the innate effect of this rifle.” She said, gesturing to the gun that we got from the raid dungeon. “The pistols that Diane bought for me don’t have anything like that.”
“Diane got you pistols, too?” I asked, and Bella quickly nodded.
“Yeah. I told her that I wanted to master both pistols and rifles. Your bullet skills should be able to work for either one, right?” She had a pleading look on her face when she asked that, so I simply chuckled.
“We’ll find out, I guess.” I said, before assigning her the four quests that Kelly helped me make. Bella’s eyes lit up as she received the quests, lifting her rifle to begin carrying them out. However, I stopped her before she could resume firing. “Not so fast. That’s not all.”
Bella looked at me in confusion, her eyes widening as I pulled out five skill books from my inventory. “Go ahead and learn these, too.” I told her, holding the books out for her. “And a word of advice, don’t evolve any of them until they’re all level twenty.”
Bella nodded dumbly, her hands slowly reaching out to accept the skill books. “W-wow… this is… a lot.” She muttered, and I gave a light chuckle.
“Consider it an investment. Applying things like Power Shot or Twin Shot to your guns is your own business. But with this, you should never have to worry about what element your target is weak against, at least.”
Bella gulped slightly, learning the skill books one by one. “Won’t it take a really long time to train all of this?” She asked, her voice shaking. “I don’t want to drag anyone back. If you need to go ahead without me…”
I shook my head firmly. “I’ll be staying here, using the aura of my King of All Trades to speed up your training. Diane and I are also both going to be training our new Shadow Shaping skill, so it’s not like we’re missing out on anything.”
Although reluctant, Bella nodded her head hesitantly. “R-Right. Sure. In that case, thank you.”
