For the next few days, similar events occurred. Every ti I wanted to see the magma forge, sothing would co up, and I'd be forced into resolving so ergency for the island.
I obviously had my suspicions that sothing was up, but Vanessa seed so distraught that I was finding it hard to believe it was foul play. Considering that I didn't actually need the refined deepstone, I didn't press on it, and with each of these requests, I kept hoping I'd eventually run into a rn.
Plus, if it involved any monsters, it was worth good experience points, and soon I had reached level twenty-six!
Just four more to go. I wonder when my next racial level will be? I know I put it to the lowest distribution, but now that I'm a tier-five monster, it will probably take ages.
I also had a sneaking suspicion that once I reached my milestone for Elentalist, I'd see my class-race distribution set back to fifty-fifty by Gramps. I was honestly still surprised he even let change it this way in the first place, and I wondered if it was so agreent he had reached with Mother.
As for the tasks I was doing for Vanessa, they weren't all monster exterminations. At one point, they wanted to clear out so land, which I did so with [Air Magic].
Another mission was to retrieve resources from a nearby wreck. The first ti this happened, I had a small crew to help , but after that, I was allowed to do similar tasks solo, as they effectively just held down.
Thanks to [Hydrokinesis], I could singlehandedly do almost anything underwater, including harvesting, catching, and gathering all at once. My control over my magic was spectacular, making the surrounding area effectively my domain.
And so this beca my life for a bit. Of course, when I was alone, I made progress towards creating [Terra Step], and when I hit a roadblock or grew bored, I would switch to [Warp]. Also, whenever possible, I would use [Elental Step] to increase its proficiency, as I wanted a big payout when I finally used [Skill Deconstruct] on it.
Of course, after every mission, I would be invited to stay with Vanessa. There were tis when even [Roleplay] was suggesting I accept, but I would always disable the skill and ultimately reject her.
Truthfully, I was growing a little concerned with how the skill wanted to behave around her, and the warning I'd received to not lose myself in the imrsion from Loreleia was still fresh in my mind.
As for Vee, aside from her relentless teasing about this situation, she had actually found a few islands that were now on her shortlist. However, since we weren't settling down yet, she was still looking to see if she could find anything better.
Her quest, on the other hand, recently got an extra exclamation mark added to it, although neither of us knew how to actually approach it. We'd co to the supposed location, but we hadn't seen even a whiff of the rn, leading us to a dead end unless the quest provided more information.
We even tried openly lanting our frustrations, hoping it would cause an update in the quest if one of the gods happened to be watching, but it fell on deaf ears. Either that, or Unc was being blocked by Gramps or Mother, which, obviously, we could do nothing about.
On the positive side, I was pretty happy with my progress and had several skills increase during this ti.
My traits didn't see as much progress, but there was a little bit of movent, and I got an unexpected level in [Core Storage] with all the sli I was storing away, thanks to the influx of monster at. I was once again well supplied and could easily detonate a worm or two without worry.
With [Core Storage] now at level seven, I was curious if it received any new features beyond its maximum capacity increasing dramatically, as per usual. An earlier upgrade had granted the ability to sort and keep my sli in various states, but this ti, nothing imdiately jumped out.
I kept trying a few things out and was going to write it off as just a size upgrade when I suddenly stored a [Sub-Core] inside of the space. It was sothing I had tried so haphazardly that I hadn't expected any result, and yet I was suddenly proven wrong.
With this, I don't need to worry about my minimum sli size too much—I can keep them in storage if I really need to!
What was interesting, however, was that they remained connected and active while in storage. I imdiately tried a few experints, like seeing if they could still help with spellcasting, but sadly, they couldn't interact with the outside world at all.
The one thing they could do was interact with all the sli in my storage and perform refinents, density changes, and even craft sli weapons for . This feature alone made ecstatic, as now if I left so workers in there, I could skip needing to withdraw sli to manipulate it.
This text was taken from . Help the author by reading the original version there.
I did try to see if I could have them cast spells in storage, but that didn't work. If it had, I would have had a way to train in secret, but other than my sli, everything seed to be in a state of stasis, including Mana.
I was a little upset, as I had a rather fun idea of casting massive spells inside my storage and then ejecting them. To my opponents, they would appear as if they were instantly manifested, which I had to assu would shatter any of their expectations.
Since they were the newest of the bunch, and their Vee wrestling duties were long passed, I threw Lambda, Mu, Nu, and Xi into storage to be the dedicated crafting team. Depending on how it worked out, I would throw more in there, or possibly buy so more [Sub-Cores].
If I didn't need to save points for uncapping, I'd buy more right now. Ugh, this sucks… I need a way to earn more trait points other than leveling.
Other than that, the only progress was my derived elents, which hit a rather significant milestone.
I saw no reason not to incorporate it imdiately, so I did, permanently gaining it and cleaning up my massive profile in one swoop.
Magma had gotten there sooner than the others, thanks to it being my test subject for taking apart magical skills… which I'd forgotten about due to recent discoveries. I still wanted to get back to it, but I hadn't really found an opportune mont to cast the spells.
As for my derived steam and dust elents, they were at level eight and seven, respectively, from just passively going up. I knew I'd need to work on them eventually to create [Interdiate Elental Magic] as they needed to be the sa levels as my ice and lightning magic skills.
It's fine. I'll do all of it on the side when we're creating our island ho.
I was getting into a bit of a groove, and the magma forge had almost left my mind, until one day Vanessa suddenly brought it up.
"Thanks again for all your hard work, Sylvain," she said, fluttering her eyebrows. "I think you've more than earned a break and a visit to the magma forge."
"Really?" I replied, quite shocked that I wasn't being thrown into another situation as the universal solution.
"Yes, really," Vanessa said with a pout. "I didn't want to use up so much of your ti, but you effortlessly solved so many problems for us as if they were nothing. We were concerned that you'd leave us, and so we wanted to make the most of the limited ti we had."
Is that the reason? I guess that makes sense…
"I have no current plans of running off," I chuckled. "Honestly, I'm still looking forward to so more dangerous missions."
"Maybe after this we can see about that…" Vanessa replied, looking a little lost in thought.
I was escorted up to a workshop that had been built into the side of the volcano, with Vanessa humming the entire way there. Compared to the rest of the town, it seed out of place, as it was made with what looked like the best materials available. If anything, its quality almost reminded of one of the dwarven forges I'd visited.
"This is where the magic happens," Vanessa explained excitedly.
The way they were harnessing the magma was different from what I expected. Considering the losses they suggested in the process, I thought they were dunking the deepstone into the molten rock to refine it.
What they were actually doing was completely different: they had channels dug out that could be opened and closed to release the molten rock, and they simply used it in place of fire. I watched as one of the workers was currently refining so deepstone, but he appeared to just heat it up until it was soft, then hamr it into a bar shape.
I was imdiately confused. Was this all there was to it? Why did it need to be magma? Where was the loss in material? None of this made any sense at all; in fact, my current impression was that this was a scam set up by the settlent to steal deepstone on the side.
While I was ruminating on this, Vanessa, who had still been humming to herself, suddenly started singing. Her voice was lodic and beautiful, like nothing I'd heard before. Even the elven virtuoso Dewdrop felt like an amateur in comparison.
Even though I had to admit the performance was delightful, this was definitely not the ti or place for it. I then noticed the workers were lost in an entranced rapture and suspected sothing was wrong.
What!?
The first notification had startled , the second nearly drove to a murderous rage. I was split seconds away from attacking Vanessa when [Roleplay] suddenly scread at to stop. I'd never felt it behave like this before, so I restrained my murderous intent and tried to see what it wanted, causing it to gain an unexpected level-up.
Seeing that, I decided to trust the skill and let it take full command despite my paranoia. I did still have my hands tightly on the leash, ready to pull back control and unleash my full, slimy wrath if needed.
[Roleplay] had Sylvain take on a relaxed and delighted appearance, his shoulders slumping slightly and his gaze filled with adoration.
I was wondering what the point of all this was when Vanessa finally stopped singing and approached. She caressed Sylvain's face while smiling like a predator that had caught its prey.
"I was beginning to worry that I'd lost my touch, but it looks like even archmages are putty in my hands," she said with a giggle.
Since I had relinquished control, it was almost like I was watching it happen to soone else, which made the experience a lot easier to stomach. If she had touched "" with that fiendish smirk, I would have fired a point-blank [Fireball] right then and there.
I guess this is the full power of [Roleplay]... but I wonder what it hopes to accomplish by playing along?
"Sylvain, dear, can you please hand the rest of your deepstone?" Vanessa asked.
"Of course, it's all yours!" Sylvain said, positively delighted to receive a request.
I watched as [Roleplay] had Sylvain take out another bag, filled with more deepstone. It wasn't all I had, which made feel relieved that [Roleplay] was still on my side.
Vanessa was delighted and threw the bag at one of the workers.
"Refine it imdiately! We have places to be," she commanded.
"Yes, mistress!" the worker replied, throwing his full effort into refining all the deepstone he had.
Another worker began collecting and distributing the deepstone into two piles, with the lion's share evidently going towards Vanessa. Imdiately, I understood where the sixty-percent loss was truly happening.
While I was watching this, I couldn't help but wonder if this was the reason why [Roleplay] had wanted to go ho with her all those tis. Had it sohow detected her treachery? But what was her ultimate goal?
I guess I'll just have to watch and follow to see where this goes. The only silver lining is I don't feel like I'm participating in this, only an outside observer… Is this what Loreleia warned about?
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