The Skill I decided to focus on was Endless Hunger of the Ocean. It had a lot of fragnted Keywords, which I suspected would give interesting results.
The next mont, the System screen moved to the Skill customization nu. It was... complicated. When I looked at the Skill Customization nu, it didn't look like a clean list of things I could change. Instead, every ti I focused on a single word of the Skill, I saw dozens of 'branches' split off. Each branch seed to indicate a way I could modify the skill. The problem was that there were so many options that I felt dizzy just looking at them. After entering the nu, I scrolled through an endless stream of possibilities, jumbled together in a salad of eldritch chaos. Trying to find anything was a headache, and the user interface was... cluttered. Very cluttered.
I rubbed my forehead as I looked at the cluttered nu, before I started poking around. I started looking at different 'branches' of the Ability, and was treated to a dizzying array of possibilities. The largest number of 'changes' I could make to the Ability were rooted in the 'hunger' part of the Ability. The ability that let steal up to three abilities from monsters I had hunted and killed.
However, there were several ‘other’ ways that the ability could work, if I was willing to change so of the chanics of it.
The first ‘possibility’ I saw was unusual. Instead of absorbing a skill every ti I killed sothing with water, the skill’s requirents would change to ‘drowning’ a creature. No other thod of killing a creature with water, including extinguish, would allow to absorb abilities. In exchange, the abilities I actually absorbed would improve. I could create stronger versions of the abilities I stole, and even surpass the original creature.
Another possible customization went even further in this direction. Not only would I have to drown a creature to steal an ability, but I would also need to feed the water itself my essence. In exchange for this penalty, I would be able to pick and choose what ability I stole, and how it 'upgraded.' However, I would also lose an Ability slot, dropping to two. That benefit was appealing, but I wasn’t sure if it was worth the need to drown enemies in essence-soaked water. The only way I would ever be able to pull that off was if I was far stronger than the creature I was hunting... which ant I would never get any great abilities from it in the first place.
That wasn't the only way my ability could be 'customized.' There were dozens of other possibilities. For example, I could emphasize the 'hunger' aspect of the ability over the 'water' aspect of it. In that case, I would need to eat any creature I killed to steal an ability and I would need to kill it with water. In exchange, I would be able to store 4 Abilities, instead of 3.
As I clicked through the cluttered ss of a user interface, I found more and more weird directions that I could take my ability absorption. I found options that would made hunger overtake my rationality, in exchange for greater power. I saw options that would make stolen abilities temporary, in exchange for making them stronger. There were even options that let take the physical form of things I killed with water and then ate, almost like a body-snatching ability. The possibilities were so nurous that they felt overwhelming.
After several minutes, I started to get a better idea of what I wanted. Ability customization almost always had an upside and a downside. At its core, Ability customization would never offer a perfect upgrade. Instead, it was more like a sculptor. It would take the building blocks that comprised my Abilities, and then tweak them to fit my needs.
However, Abilities were limited in how much customization could happen - I couldn’t outright change an ability from the ground up. All modifications still needed to operate under the sa ‘frawork’ as the original. I could also only customize an Ability once per Ability evolution. Any more than that, and the Ability would grow fragile and unstable.
As I looked through endless lists, I started to notice the best use for customization. The biggest upside of Ability customization was that it could build ‘synergies’ between abilities. Normally, every single ability existed in a vacuum. My abilities were all incapable of ‘looking at each other’. That wasn't the case when it ca to Ability customization. After customization, so Abilities would grow reliant upon each other.
For example, the ability-stealing component of {Endless Hunger of the Ocean}. In its current form, I stole abilities by contributing to a fight enough, and harming an enemy with water. However, if I made it so that I could ONLY steal abilities through extinguish, I could make huge improvents to the Ability as well.
I spent half an hour going through every possible change I could make to my two abilities, before I finally settled on what I wanted.
For {Echoes of the Deep}, I decided to change nothing. The ability had been trimd to a very bare-bones form. I liked that, because it ant I wasn’t dealing with excessive clutter and costs. It would make upgrades to the Ability cheaper and more efficient. That was what I wanted from my primary magic System. I could support it with other keyword abilities, but I didn't need a crazy amount of clutter in my primary ability source. However, It also ant that I had very little to work with for ability modification. I didn’t think that was a bad thing. I would pick up more materials for Ability modification next ti the ability evolved.
However, {Endless Hunger of the Ocean} had a lot more moving parts to it, most of which I was happy to tinker with. After looking at the many, many variations to the ability that I could create, I kept coming back to the ability stealing component. It had so many potential uses, and there were many ways I could make it more useful to .
Eventually, I found a variation of the Ability that fit my needs perfectly.
Hunger: (Fragnted Keyword): Killing an enemy with Extinguish for the first ti in each body will allow you to form an enhanced skill related to that creature. You have a moderate level of control over what ability is ford, as long as it’s based off of a biological characteristic of the creature you just killed. (So ‘abilities’ may be unavailable if they require fundantally distorting your biological functions or shape). You may absorb this skill into your current body in order to permanently enhance yourself.
Note: Only Achievent-granting creatures can form abilities. Only five abilities from this effect may be ‘held’ at once. You may delete a copied Skill from this ability at any ti to replace it with a new one.
Held Abilities:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Sure, the ability had a few more restrictions now. It worked with extinguish, and ONLY extinguish. I could not get new Abilities through any other source. In theory, that was a huge limitation on the Ability. I could no longer drown enemies, or crush them with water pressure, or kill them in any other way with ‘water’ or 'ocean-related things'. In theory, that was a huge downside in exchange for the upsides I had gotten.
In practice? I basically only ever got this ability to work using ‘extinguish’ anyway. There was almost no practical difference between the old and new activation condition. In exchange, I could now hold two extra abilities, and I had so level of control over what I stole. It was a huge upgrade for the ability, in exchange for an extra cost I would almost never notice. The only real ti I could think of that it might be a problem was if I developed sothing better than Extinguish. However, I didn't think that would happen for a while.
The whole thing cost an extra 700 Achievent to pull off, dropping from 6,032.09 Achievent to 5,332.09. My Glut costs didn't change at all. It was completely worth it.
After that, I spent a few minutes skimming through my Status Screen, before I nodded to myself. I was happy with the changes I had made. I still wanted to look at new non-keyword abilities, and get hints on how to evolve my abilities… but I felt it was ti to let my friends have a turn. I had hogged the skill customization bed for almost an hour already.
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