ALL NOVEL Chapter 12: Jokes
:Just place it on the cover page and I can absorb it:
Geth did as he was told and placed the card on the cover page. The card quickly turned into particles of light and fell through the pages. Another page was formed just in front of his Inspection Skill.
'What determines the page placement?' He asked curiously.
:Well, there are multiple grades and types of Skills. I'm not sure of the ranks beyond Inspection at this point. The Grades that I know are Common, Uncommon, and Rare. The Skill you just learned is Uncommon, while Inspection is a Rare Skill. Items have similar Grades.
'Sounds eerily similar to a video game.' Geth squinted his eyes at Albus.
:Whatever created us likely wanted humans to adapt smoothly, so they used concepts that the majority of you understood:
'Well, thank you again to whatever being made it easy to adapt.' He refused to call it a God, he stopped believing in omnipotence long ago.
Geth walked back towards the mouth of the cave to ask Zolis if she wanted to kill one of the big Slimes for a Skill. He certainly wouldn't force her.
It would be safer for them inside the cave as well, he didn't want the other nearby people to sneak upon them. This was a strange situation, and he wasn't sure how the others would react.
Once he stepped out of the cave, he found that it was starting to get dark outside. The deep shades of pink, red, and orange could be seen to the west.
Melody was running around with his Inventory Pouch like a purse and had almost finished collecting all of the cores that were laying around. Kael had some in his hands and was chasing her, trying to put them in the bag.
He walked up behind Zolis, speaking up once he'd gotten close. "Looks like we've got a good clean-up crew." He laughed.
She just sighed and shook her head. "We would have been done already if Kael hadn't dumped the bag out shortly after he'd woken up."
He shook his head and quickly briefed her on the situation. She nodded in agreement and they quickly finished picking up the cores, also cleaning those up on their walk back through the dungeon.
While cleaning up, Geth Leveled his State Change: Earth Skill twice. It took one SP to Level it once and two SP to get it to Level 2. Getting Inspection to Level 2 would have taken three SP.
He tried it between levels and found that with each level, he could create a larger amount of mud and that it was easier to manipulate.
The best he could do as far as turning it back into a solid was making a small spike. It was about the length of a fork and was barely sharp on one end. It reminded him of a small railroad spike.
The Mana cost was insane when he first started, but the better he'd gotten with his control, the lower the cost had become. At this point, it cost him 20 MP to turn a 4-foot section of earth into the mud, the effects were only about 6 inches deep.
It cost 1 Mana per second to manipulate a strand as thick as a garden hose. He only had enough concentration to manipulate two at once, and the cost shot up to 4 per second.
Turning a small section into the spike cost 50 Mana! He couldn't believe it, the thing was almost useless. With his current 130 Mana, he could only make two at most in battle.
After having this thought, he started using the mud manipulation to grab onto cores and hand them to his daughter. She would laugh every time the tendril slithered towards her.
It took a lot of concentration and was using about 3 Mana per second, but he was able to dry a small bit of mud on the end of the tendril to use like tongs.
He could sense the Runes that had been etched in his mind. As he used them, they would try to heat up, and the Mana would cool them back down. He had tried to use three tendrils at once and the Runes heated up to a point where they actually caused him damage!
Through their walking, he managed to learn quite a bit. It didn't take long to reach the end of the tunnel, just before the bend.
"All right, the big Slimes are right around this corner. Melody, can you and Kael go play over there?" He pointed as he asked and handed her some stone marbles he'd made while practicing his manipulation Skill.
"Since that's settled, let's get started."
Geth brought Zolis around the corner to show her the situation. The Slimes were still evenly spaced out, but now they couldn't see the bend, and could barely see the next Slime in the tunnel.
"Holy shit, that's way bigger than before!" She exclaimed.
He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her comment. She scoffed and rolled her eyes. "Even in this situation, you can make jokes, huh?" She asked but still smiled a bit.
He smiled and turned serious, "All but two of them have been affected by the earth element, while two are water. You have to choose which one you want a Skill from. The earth Slimes have either a rock-throwing ability or my mud manipulation.
I don't know about the water Slimes, the few that were outside never used abilities. And there's no sunlight or strong winds in here, so I highly doubt there will be other options further in."
She didn't even bother to think as he finished explaining. "I definitely want the rock Slime ability." The constant pelting of the small pebbles from earlier still weighed on her mind.
She had finished healing at this point but realized that she had no recovery in battle, her HP only replenished while resting.
The three Slimes closest to them were all light brown rock Slimes. "I'll show you how to deal with them without getting hurt."