Mornn
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Chapter 591 - Calm before the Sofia
🕑 Added 2024-12-16 16:58:45 +0000 UTCErredis sat down on one of her workshop’s tables, “I would take Odalite blood without even thinking if it were me, but you shouldn't let that influence you,” she told Sofia.
“So you do know about them? Or is the prospect of a new crafting material just that enticing?” Sofia asked.
“Both? Both. There isn’t much I know about the Odalites, that goes for pretty much everyone else, since they’re a race that went extinct during or at the end of the lost epoch. What we have are some old records and carvings, a few partial skeletons and old broken scales. As for what they were exactly, I think… Flightless Dragons is the best way to describe them?”
“Like drakes?”
Erredis clicked her tongue, “Come on now, I said dragon not lizard. Some people out there think Odalites were actually just Dragon Kleptra halfbred, but we haven’t had that kind of freak accident ever happen in recorded history, so who’s to say?”
“Oh… I don’t know why I never even imagined that this could be a possibility…”
“Nor would any sane person? Seriously, who in their right mind would want anything to do with the Kleps when it comes to this? They’re about as far removed from the concepts of romance and family as is gold from dirt.”
“I guess I should count myself lucky to have never encountered one personally. Is there any evidence that Odalite blood will do anything useful though?” Sofia continued to ask.
Erredis shook her head, “Aside from what the system is spewing? None at all. But it’s not uncommon for the blood of stronger races to have funny properties, just look at yourself. So it’s”worth a try.”
“What about the other options?”
“Hmm… You are correct in your analysis, as far as I can tell, Underworld water is not the easiest to procure and can be very useful especially for someone at your level, so pretty great for now, but it will become underwhelming as you get stronger. Everything else I wouldn’t give a second glance. And of course Leviathan is stupid, forget it. Might as well just kill yourself now in any other less painful way if that’s what you’re going for.”
“Is it that bad?”
Erredis laughed, then became serious again all of a sudden, “There isn’t one person who has ‘fought’ the Leviathan and came back alive to tell the tale.”
Sofia nodded, and was about to jump to another subject when she picked up on a little something, “Is that implying some people did come back, just not alive?”
Sofia visibly saw Erredis shiver at the question, which said more than any answer ever could.
“Trust me, you do not want to know.”
“Erm… Alright. Should we try the Odalite blood, then?”
“Decided already, sweetie? Take your time, I’m working on something big at the moment so I won’t have time to play with that much no matter how much I want to.”
“Ah, really?! Sorry for taking up your time…” Sofia apologized.
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m not a few hours short, but learning how to properly handle Odalite blood could take me months depending on what it really does, so I can’t do that now.”
“Oh, thank goodness. Then… If it’s not too much of a bother, I have another request,” Sofia started, before walking close to Erredis and whispering something.
“Are you crazy?!” Erredis asked, shocked at Sofia’s demand, “Do you not remember what I said about that before? It’s…-” She stopped, looked at Sofia, and sighed. “Listen… If you really want, I can take you there. But I won’t come to rescue you if anything happens.”
“Of course! I would appreciate it if you could tell me everything you know about it so that a rescue won’t even be necessary in the first place. I couldn’t find anything when I looked for information on it.”
“Yeah no wonder, kid, the little that is known is better not recorded anywhere. I’ll tell you about the time I went there myself, but that won’t take you far.”
“Better than nothing! Thank you so much for helping again…”
“Don’t mention it, kid, that's what a grandma does, isn’t it? I’ve not even been doing a great job at it, I even forgot all about that crazy ass Stebron and his obsession with divine essence… Gotta thank Phillip for reminding me about this one.”
After several hours spent chatting with Erredis in her workshop, Sofia left and started to wander around Zephir’s Obsidian mountain sect. Despite her not recognizing anyone here, most of the sect’s disciples actually knew Sofia as Saria’s sister and stopped to greet her. It wasn’t until she found a huge statue of herself and Saria fighting over Victory’s crown atop a fountain that she understood how they all recognized her.
It even has the usual details of my bone armor and everything. Seriously, isn’t that a bit excessive? Whoever sculpted that is seriously talented.
Looking around, Sofia ended up walking into a tavern inside the sect, managed by the largest orc she’s ever seen, who promptly offered her free drinks once he recognized her. Not one to refuse free things, Sofia walked up to a free booth in a corner of the tavern’s upper floor, and watched the lively night market of the sect starting outside around the fountain plaza.
A masked, cloaked figure entered the tavern a while later, while Sofia was relaxing, sipping on her drink. They ignored everyone and silently walked up the stairs of the tavern before sitting at Sofia’s table.
“Found something you like?” Sofia asked.
The person took something from under their large black cape and put it on the table; it was a rather thin leather-bound tome with the title ‘faces of the divine’. Sofia opened it, quickly looking through a few pages.
Another book full of drawings.
The first few pages were of people Sofia didn’t recognize, and they were all unlabeled illustrations, so it was hard to get anything out of them, but Sofia stopped at the drawing of someone she recognized.
Moon?
The signature mouthless face of the Goddess and her strange white and blue attire were unmistakable, and exactly as Sofia remembered. She closed the book and read the title again. Before opening the book again, and looking through all of its twenty eight pages with renewed attention. She recognized a total of four Gods from the book, Moon, Sun, Life, and Victory. All captured in their physical form in vivid details.
Sofia closed the book again and looked at the masked figure.
“Where the hell did you even find that, Pareth?”
A skeletal hand came out from under the cape, pointing at a book stall in the market outside, managed by one of the sect's disciple orcs.
“Really?”
For once, Sofia spent a while analyzing every drawing with Pareth.
Much later in the same night, Sofia received some news from Mr.Scribe, who had been busy ‘negotiating’ with the admin dagger. The idea was to try to do something about how Sofia received her new skills, as she was lacking skill slots and the dagger’s fully random keywords weren’t helping with making relevant skills.
Since Sofia had the skills for level 260, 270 and 280 to pick, the Scribe had suggested trying to see if the dagger would allow for one stronger skill instead of three regular ones, but the dagger apparently was not very easy to communicate with, and was not especially compliant. Still Mr.Scribe had spent much time trying, and he finally brought results.
[It was hard but I have managed to finally push one of my attempts through.]
[Here is the deal, we only get one skill instead of three, as we wanted, and it will be of the relative complexity normally allowed for the next filter.]
So far that’s great!
[It can be made with up to four keywords arranged in any order.]
More than great!
[But I still do not get any say in what the dagger actually does with it, we only get twenty keywords instead of the thirty we should have gotten, and they are to be completely random.]
[That is to say, absolutely random words from the dagger’s entire language database, not even skill parts…]
Oh.
Mr.Scribe gave Sofia control of her mana back leaving her with the choice to accept that deal over the regular three skills or not. Since she was already relaxing with Pareth anyway, she explained the entire situation to him and asked for his opinion, hoping that he would be able to express it somehow despite his restrictions.
His answer? A shrug followed by a few nods.
“Pretty close to what I was thinking as well… Alright Mr.Scribe, give it to me.”
[Generating skill nodes, please wait.]
Comments
Draxas
Leviathan blood just feels right
Mornn
Life happens, glad you're back o7
Tejing
Finally got back to reading this. Life was complicated there for a bit. Sounds like Odalite Blood is the standout, as I expected. Hmm... One high-power skill definitely sounds like it has more potential to be useful. It's a bigger gamble, too, though. I guess that's just how Sofia rolls.
Matt Grayson
Makes sense. That's what I was alluding to with the "Board of Advisors" option.
E
System is likely the same as Gluttony. Both are "gifts" from Ed The Annihilator to assist mortals. Really makes you wonder what that God eating ring is capable of if it truly has the same origin. Still waiting on the Eye of Creation to come back. That was way too significant and powerful of a "thing" to not become a focal point of the story. Placing bets on Sofia being tossed into it at some point.
Sky
I am hoping for a few words from the hero world language. I can picture Sophia wondering what something like 'Laissez-faire' even means.
Footer -
Thanks for the chapter :3
Matt Grayson
The System is only 3,000 years old, but knows more about the Odalites than any of the 5-digit folks. Does it have Kleptra and Fae knowledge that the Elder Dragons don't? Maybe it's pals with Leviathan? Maybe it's bluffing? Were Lords on its Board of Advisors? (Yes, we haven't forgotten "Scion".) I love the depths of World Building that have yet to see the light of day.
Matt Grayson
Yeah, that sounds right. XD
Emily Gurnavage
It doesn't say what kind of tears =p What they do, is find a newbie adventurer whose a bit of a sack of bricks mentally and who thinks his muscles can take on anything. *Anything*. And they sail him out. The seriousness of his absurd challenge and the conviction in his voice is enough to make the Leviathan shed tears of laughter and briefly let its guard down. This is when Ascended space mages are able to work mana close enough to teleport away tears just before they hit the ocean. Edit: Oh and then it eats him while the Ascended space mages struggle to teleport away with the tears safety. The odds aren't high.
DrakkonWarrior
Rolled in a few days ago after finishing book 3 on Kindle Unlimited, just caught up to current, regret not a cent of the subscription and eagerly awaiting more Sofia shenanigans!
Emily Gurnavage
Aaaaand im caught up. 5-ish hours of mostly reading. What a ride the recent chunk was. I wonder if any of the keywords will be in other languages to extra fuck with her? If its the dagger's **entire** language database... lol. She knows Draconic, but what if it tosses her some Dwarven or Elven words?
Jonathan Wint
She Needs a Leviathan blood transfusion she really does! She needs to! (Its like sticking your hand in a fire! its a Sofia thing to do! Or licking the inside of a lamp bulb socket plugged in! it's just so HER! She so CRAZY! LMAO) And there that Leviathan tear-infected body buried out there!
Chance Rose
What's that? I don't remember hearing about that.
Chance Rose
That's my thoughts as well. She told her to wait until level 400+ so she doesn't like it.
E
I disagree that leviathan's blood is too dangerous for Sofia to handle due to what just happened between Sofia and Ed The Annihilator. Ed's automatic defenses kicked in to annihilate Sofia. The reason Orator chose the moment he did to expose her to Ed was because Sofia was finally ready to survive each stage of annihilation. If Sofia can survive Annihilation (granted, she was reduced to a light bulb), then she is on track to reach a point where she can survive the lethal biology of the Leviathan.
Cyclone001
I think the destination is ormonclef's cathedral.
Emily Gurnavage
Yay, thanks. Time for a big binge =) edit: looks like my last read was 558 lol. In October.
Custus
Thanks for the chapter!
John Grizzly
Just read a comment mentioning it was leviathan tears. Not blood. Which means holy he'll thatd be a lot worse. Wtf is a leviathan in this world that an effing elder dragon is scared of it. Fricking eldritch offspring??
Ceasar Salas
Thanks for the chapter! Is Sofia thinking of visiting the 2nd moon like a mad woman? I can’t think of where else Erridis was so apprehensive about
John Grizzly
Sofia is locked out of the main system. It's why she can't level normally. Skill level ups are done by Mr scribe. The admin dagger is their little work around because it is basically a database from or backup of the system currently in use. Odalite is still in consideration vs leviathan but risky does not equate obvious stupidity. Leviathan blood, just a drop almost offed Sophia early on iirc. There is absolutely no pros to it other than a nuclear option but the consequences to everything and everyone wouldn't be something Sophia would want. Plus it'd lock out a skill till who knows when.
Mornn
Yep, left the pyramid for a good few chapters already
Mornn
you don't 'know' but you could guess if you've a good memory and have been paying close attention, otherwise you'll get to know soon :p
Emily Gurnavage
I think I last asked back in the like chapter 570s somethin range - but anyway - is the Pyramid fight-club stuff over yet? Been waitin to binge the rest of it after that Dwarf fight. Done, rewards gotten, talks done, and left the Pyramid is what I mean by done. Arc concluded.
E
Do we know what Sofia is asking Erredis or is that intentionally hidden from the reader? Can someone refresh my memory on why the system can provide Sofia's skill level ups but only the Dagger can provide new skills? Replicating blood of a race from the Lost Epoch is definitely a good idea, but I still feel like Leviathan Blood fits more inline with Erredis point about long term thinking. Sofia is all about asymmetric, chaotic progression. Odalite feels too "safe" and doesn't align with the "I want to be a False Lord and screw the warnings" Sofia I know.
Matt Grayson
It does make you wonder how anyone obtained Leviathan Tears. Probably showed it a bad Anime adaptation where it was played by a large cute slime.
Matt Grayson
Steady as she goes!
Wensber
Glad to hear you are doing better!
Wensber
Thanks for the chapter!
ArtTheGreat
I feel like some sort of gigantic drop of water representing your tears should fall somewhere in the world and no one besides maybe the Lords of the Deep should have any idea where it came from.
Songy
♬ She is the storm that is approoooooaaaaachiiiiiiiiiiiing ♬
Cyclone001
A little disappointed Sofia appears to have chosen Odalite when Holy seems so much more useful - especially against Scripture's soul parasites. Interested to see the new keywords though. 4 is going to make a lot of interesting combos.
Mornn
It still feels like someone is in the room cutting onions, but my eyes are doing well enough for me to write again now :D
Quentin Cozzi
Thanks for the chapter!
