A month later. Sofia and Alith stand at the bottom of a large silo, in front of them multiple headless skeletons fall on top of a huge pile of bones every second.
“This is really ridiculous…” Alith comnted, watching the constant rain of bones.
“Eve called this design an xp tower. That’s a thing they did in ga, apparently. Not that far from the trash sli experience room, just a more optimized design.”
“How many Skelems do you have up there exactly?”
“About three hundred.”
“And you still run out of bones every day?” Alith asked.
“Because it’s a swamp, the foundations need to be very tall to prevent flooding, apparently. Also it makes it easier to add basents and dig a sewer since I can just carve out the bone foundations,” Sofia explained, “I just have to follow the plans I’m given.”
“Still crazy. You’ve even automated harvesting your wings… I rember when I used to help you with that.”
“Feels like yesterday… So, I’ve shown you most of what we’ve done now, are you going to show what you’ve been working on, or do I need to wait another two months?”
“Hey hey now, it’s not my fault if the scroll Shaily gave was incomplete! You’ve no idea how hard I worked on that damn thing. But look at this beauty!” Alith said, an octahedron-shaped white crystal appearing in between her index and thumb.
“I told you I can’t identify anything, right? Is that so kind of diamond?”
“It’s a catalyst, actually. Had just enough reagents left from the cerberus mountain elental to make three of them. You can have this one,” Alith offered, handing out the tiny gem to Sofia.
“A catalyst?” Sofia stopped the bone device on her back which was automatically swinging her dagger around to cut off her wings every second, and grabbed the dagger out. “Just about fits in there, that’s lucky,” she noted, pushing the catalyst inside of the dagger’s slot.
“Doesn’t look too out of place. Don’t rember the dagger having that hole tho,” Alith noted.
“Yeah it’s new, speaking of which, I need you to give your weapon so I can give it one as well. My staff’s new catalyst is… It… Tskk, I’m not really allowed to give details because of the censor. Basically it can enhance any weapon, permanently.”
“Oh shit that’s nice. Well, about my catalyst though, feel anything different about the dagger?” Alith asked.
“Not at all, no.”
“Well that’s normal. Now, what you need to do’s very simple! Summon a sprite, BUT– you need not to pick which one you summon, very important that you let the highest affinity one co by itself. If not, the effects are worse,” Alith explained, demonstrating by summoning a fire sprite herself.
“Oh you know how to do that, now? Sounds like you’ve been hanging out with Shaily more than I have.”
“Well yeah, we worked on this together while you were out advertising your city project instead of taking your trial,” Altith answered with a light smirk, “So, you summonin’ or what? We both know it’s gonna be one of those exploding lightning sprites anyway. Shaily’s was an Ice on, if you’re curious.”
“Why didn’t she co with you?” Sofia asked, a bit bumd at not seeing Shaily after so long.
“Heheh, she was way too impatient, she stord right off to the ranking tower. Too bad we can’t watch because I bet it’s going to be spectacular. I’d be you, I'd leave my ranking window open, you never know.”
“... I’ll leave it open. But I don’t know if she can do it. The last floor is so serious stuff…”
“Gotta trust in your student a bit more. Speaking of, Bookie said you wanted to train ?”
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“Not just you, since you go in the fourth trial as a group, I was thinking of training you, Ihuarah, Eve and Asty, so you can crush this thing. There’s a reward you’ll really want in there, but you need to perform at least as well as my sister to get it.”
“That one might be hard… Sar’ a damn beast, you know? Spending all my ti cooking up potions and crystals in a lab hasn’t really helped keep up.”
“I’ll make you. Pareth seed to want to be the one to coach you actually, we’ll see when Iwa gets here, shouldn’t be long now, he was coming but stopped midway, probably stumbled upon so old dungeon if I had to guess.” 𝙧𝖆𝐍ỐꞖĚ𝓢
“Hmm…” Alith’s eyes darted around as she opened up a few system windows, “Oh yeah that’s totally it. Damn, that kill log is crazy, he’s been hunting Thrombbers, looks like.”
“Eww.”
“Yeah those things sound disgusting from what I recall. Back to the subject tho’, summon that damn sprite, Sof!”
“Right, it has been a while since I did this… Let’s see which one cos out…”
Sofia raised a hand and wildcast [Call elental Sprite].
A dot of faint gray light materialized next to her hand. It made strange clanking sounds, and seed to be rubbing itself against her palm like a cat looking for attention.
“Huh, never seen Shai’ summon one like that. A musical sprite?”
“No…” Sofia denied, as she rapidly ca to terms with the absurdity of the thing she had just summoned. Using nothing but her aura, she moved the tiny sprite around. “This… I think it’s a bone sprite…”
“Oh, yeah, right, of course, that makes sense, huhuh… BONE SPRITES DON’T EXIST, SOFIA!”
“Didn’t,” Sofia corrected.
After Sofia played around with the bone sprite, she finally had it enter Alith’s tiny catalyst, and Alith finally shared the item’s Identify.
“I don’t even know what to say… Have a look at mine and Shai’s while you’re at it. You tell if you think it was worth the months of work.”
[Sprite dwelling catalyst]:
Binds with a sprite to grant different effects to a weapon. The better the user’s affinity with the sprite type, the greater the effect.
[Alith’s Fire dwelling catalyst]:
Effect: Attacks and spells using this weapon deal an extra 23% of damage as fire damage.
(Weapon must be charged with mana or be able to gather fire essence from nearby sources.)
[Shaily’s Ice dwelling catalyst]:
Effect: Attacks and spells using this weapon inflict build of [Curse of freezing].
(Weapon must be charged with mana or be able to gather Ice essence from nearby sources.)
[Sofia’s Bone dwelling catalyst]:
Effect: This weapon is an inanimate skeleton.
Sofia stared at the description window then at the thing she had just created. “So that’s what it does… Yeah, I don’t know what to say either. Yours and Shaily’s are really good, yours especially. Mine… I’m not sure.”
“It probably gets the regeneration from your aura…” Alith said.
“Yeah, I’ve never seen it even get scraped though… That being said, it probably gets the stat buffs from both Runeforged Overlord and Pareth’s sanctified grounds… That might make it sharper? Maybe it can actually cut through Asterite easily with everything combined? We’ll have to try. I don’t think it can use my aura’s other effects though. Aside from being 150% sturdier I assu? At this rate this dagger might be as sturdy as aunty’s unbreakable sword.”
Alith took out the rapier in question, “Speaking of which, think your catalyst will be able to upgrade it? If it gets a catalyst slot I could actually use it as my main weapon and not just a parrying sword.”
“Let’s test it right now.”
As it turned out, not even Ormoncleth’s unbreakable rapier was able to avoid the power of Anna’s catalyst, and it received not only a catalyst slot, but also [Greater flight speed] as its randommagical effect.
Alith was flabbergasted at seeing the unassuming crystal carve a hole inside of the sword not even Erredis had managed to damage, but Sofia was not too surprised.
“I an, that thing worked on both Pareth’s light sword AND my invoked spine of the black sun weapons… It literally gave my invoked weapons a new effect, so yeah. If you want to know, we even tried it on armour pieces with protruding spikes and kitchen knives. Anything that can remotely be called a weapon gets slamd. Look, even that damn thing got a catalyst hole,” Sofia said, grabbing the Abereth that floated behind her and pointing at a small divit in the black stone near its top.
“Are the fourth trial’s rewards all this good?” Alith asked, wide eyed.
“Not all. But so. You’re motivated for the training, now?”
“Ah, Sof. You should know, I already was!”
“Well, don’t get too excited yet, we’re not even done. Dopple, are you awake?”
“Hmmm?” the black stripe of clothing answered, seemingly just waking up from hearing its na.
“Ever got a taste of Mithrium-coated Mithril armor?”
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