C61: Echoes Well Spent.
We will be returning to hunt in the next chapter.
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"What might your question be, dear Hunter?" The Doll asks in return to my query and I bring up a strange idea had for a while.
"We call them blood echoes and you harness them to temper my body through the memories of blood. Are you able to use the memories to fuse them into my mind so that I could fight better?" I introduce my theory and lay down the actual question in hopes that she could satisfy my curiosity.
Yet to my shock, she also appears shocked as if my words introduced a whole new world to her as she asks for a few echoes from me and I easily squander 10k for her to play with. Just some leftover 'cash' i got from even meeting the fake hydra in forbidden woods.
I wait patiently for half an hour before the Doll approaches me with her discoveries.
"I have taken the time to test your theory in a hope to extract specific memories within the echoes themselves. I can not with certainty proclaim that your theory was valid." my hopes seem to flop over as I was hoping that with said memories, she could somehow boost my skills in addition to strengthen my body via echoes.
"It had worked" after pausing, she had spoken again with the idea of finding the right word for what she wanted to say. "Preliminary tests do show certain skills could be extracted and infused into others yet I can only provide basic skills with my current proficiency."
"By basic skills you mean what exactly?" I ask with a slight mote of happiness. Afterall, my theory had in fact worked. Even something basic could be subsumed into a higher grade skill and thus provide xp. Quantity is its own quality afterall.
"From the echoes you shared with me. There was those related to Carpentry and general woodworking, brewing, steelworking, smithing and choir singing"
"...."
'Guess I'm leveling up my crafting skill after so long.'
"That works, there could be techniques which could make hunting easier hidden beneath all this information. That or I can find a new way to modify my gear to make it of higher quality" I thank Doll for her hard work but she seems to feel that im just saying this to make her feel good.
As such she clarifies that with more practice, she might be able to dig deeper and extract more prevalent information from the memories but having those related to fallen or maddened hunters would prove more useful.
To help her start out, I give her the second tier reward for my hunting sidequest which was 100k Blood echoes. She tucks them away somewhere and I ask her to use at least 50k echoes to infuse those crafting skills into me. I also spent another 10k for the singing just for shits and giggles.
[Woodworking, smithing, brewing have all been subsumed into crafting. Xp has met threshold, Crafting level 2 -> level 5]
[Banshee's cry has subsumed (good) choir singing]
'Ey buddy, fuck you! My singing is on par with god damn angels.' i mentally cursed the system as while I was prepared for the merger, it did not have to give it that specific prefix to mock me.'
Seeing that the results were relatively good. I hand over another 300k and my crafting skill rises to level 12 by that point and my banshee cry reaches level 8 in one go. I'm pretty satisfied with the results thus far and upgrade them a bit further with crafting reaching level 16 and banshee reaching level 10 before I'm satisfied.
I did this to help crafting get a higher chance of a better modifier while i just wanted to evolve my singing skill.
[Crafting has evolved into (Master) Expert Craftsman. Epic modifier detected. Congratulations on your new skill]
[(Egregious) Banshees Cry level 10 has reached level limit. Evolve skill?]
"Damn, not even a higher level limit for special modifiers? Oh well, yes" I mutter to myself in annoyance that I couldn't raise it's level even if I wanted to.
[Banshees cry has evolved into (Egregious) (Enrapturing) Hell Choir level 1]
…
…
….
"Okay, where is the task manager when I need it? Or control panel. I need to uninstall an app" I curse the system again for turning the newfound knowledge flowing into me just to make it more negative again.
'And what the hell is enrapturing meant to mean? I can charm those I sing to. If they don't die after a single second of singing of course. Honestly that doesnt sound too bad if I wish to turn ally against ally.
Though I'm more liable to think that if I reach such a stage where my singing doesnt kill then it won't be very useful due to various resistances of those advanced enemies but I'll certainly see how it goes in the future.
While my nitpickings with my singing skill ends, I then experience an influx of information due to the skills epic rarity, especially so since I achieved this by fusing multiple crafting professions into one skill multiple times.
As such, the proficiency of all these fields is reaching an equal level. Carving wood, shaping it with various tools, tending to the wood and from there carving it again into desired shape that would last a lifetime. Similar thoughts flow through my mind regarding smithing such as tending the flames, shaping the metal, controlling the power of a hammer.
Leading up to this point, I had already learned the rudimentary stages of the forging process but even with the few tidbits of Forged in Fire running through my head. The techniques I learn now are far more detailed and advanced that I could probably recreate an iron man suit with ease.
Of course it would only be the framework build of it, nothing that actually works…obviously. Since I know only the basics of electrical work from a special class back in high school. I'd need to absorb plenty of information about that to make it even plausible.
Overall, I'm satisfied with the amount of progress i've made in such a little time and I still have over 500 million echoes to blow through. I could probably reach some sort of divine level of craftsman if I kept going, but I'm not gonna as my resources are still limited, so it's not like I can forge some super weap….oh my god.
I just realized but I can essentially buy hundreds of hunter weapons from the messenger fountain. Smelt that down and then buy hundreds more to get the materials I need. Kirkhammer for stone and some metal. I can easily get leather from all weapons combined with more metal from each of them until I get whatever I can make for myself. The tontritus is one of the ones I want to dismantle most to figure out how it works.
With my mind decided, I splurge a few million on all types of weapons that I got a new achievement.
[Achievement Gained: Preparing for War: Spending over 300k Blood Echoes on hunter weapons and various hunter tools. Reward: 50 bold hunter marks]
"Hmmph, do you take me for some beggar that still needs hunter marks when I can just kill a single boss to make more than any farming run could ever give me." I dismiss the system and its faulty logic which no longer applies to me.
After making my purchases, I move to the gravestone shrines and teleport to old Yharnam as I begin my hectic search for a smithy. I release Gerald so he can go up the staircase and roam around wherever he wants to help get used to his power. As for me, I begin my search alone, afterall, asking my brother would be a last case scenario if I was truly helpless. I have the master keys he gave me afterall.
Spending an hour searching and avoiding the beasts since I don't have my brother's permission yet, I continue looking for the smithy to no avail. I have nearly reached the chapel where I fought Gerald. It's only when I reach the end do I finally find it. I could have saved myself all the trouble if I had simply started from the chapel but I thought with all the smoke fuming out across the bridge, that it would be connected to some smithy but it's just a basic furnace to burn bodies that is still going on.
Having arrived at the smithy, I get to work on stripping all the dozens of thousands of weapons of their materials and separate them into metal that can be reforged, leather and straps which I would have to manually reshape to whatever form I choose and the last is wood would have to be modified to the shape I want but I have plenty so I can merge or break a few if it doesnt work to my specifications.
Of course, I'm not just mindlessly doing this. While my body works on stripping the materials, my mind moves to the pet system as I analyze the rune of aberration and all the benefits it gives in greater detail.
The most obvious is that I can spend echoes to get random traits which I can then fuse into any 'pet' I have. Of course there is also the possibility of gaining pre-hatched pets which only come in the form of preset aberrations.
Ink-like monsters that would give BatIm enjoyers(bendy and the ink machine) an orgasm from the horror-inducing statures and random traits. Other horror enthusiastics would surely peek around every corner to avoid being scared if some of these monsters were allowed loose.
As for me, I learned that as part of the aberration set kit, I could fuse them to create more capable aberration pets until a max of 5 mergers. Though each merger would have to be on equal levels. By this, it means a two merger creature can only fuse with another two merger creatures and not a single random creature to make a 3 merger.
The design is very human.
The growth is very multiplicative if I play my cards right. Afterall, the previous rules of 3 elemental modifiers also applies to them but to all parts, yet this counter is reset when creatures merge as it's a brand new creature. Of course there are some negatives, When creatures merge, they can only keep a select few of their actual traits in the new form.
Essentially, a 2 merger could pass on 2 or three traits depending on rarity and that is also true for the other partner merging with it. As a result, a three merger could have up to 6-8 traits while at worst would be up to 4. The reason for this variance is due to innate skills which have a higher chance of being passed down without being considered as one of the two or three normally passed on by rarity.
The difference there is that sometimes the innate skills merge into a new one. Greater power and adaptability along with precision for merged skills but it's possible both remain separate and just have two of them.
"Hmm, so there is 1x, 10x, 100x, and so on for the various 'draws' from this damned gacha system. Oh well, I have a few hundred million and my current physique is plenty strong for essentially the rest of the world, it's only purpose now is to keep striving higher with the challenge modes. But I am kinda interested in seeing what the ultimate fifth tier creature could look like.
I push the 100,000x draw and im soon blinded by the inky darkness rather than some colorful gacha colors. No animation, just ink spilling out like sludge as Im soon transported over to a new space
[Owner has entered Space of Aberration]
[100k x draws have been redeemed]
From the sky of this strange bubble is various clear colored bubbles radiating various lights of different colors as they get bundled up into their specific typing while those of a higher grade are equi-distant.
The greatest of the draws which is primarily transparent are those related to random body parts like extra limbs like arms, new limbs like wings or tentacles, while the last type is multiple sets of internal organs like hearts or lungs and stomachs. There is roughly 40,000 of these in total.
The second group is composed of common level aberrations equivalent to tier one creatures which have at most their innate skills while a rare few amongst them might have a subsidiary skill linked to their innate one.
From here, the grades rise to uncommon, rare, epic and legendary like so many features of the parent system. Elemental affinities and traits like them only appear from epic and above. Really goes to show how amazing Gerald's new transformation is.
Going into it in more detail. Uncommon aberrations are also equal to first tier creatures but they have a higher chance of having 1 or two extra skills. Only from rare do they increase to tier two, epic for tier 3 and legendary for tier 4. According to the system there is supposed to be another grade above it but I'm not even allowed to touch that until I can form one tier five from my own effort first.
Oh right, of the two types of traits I got from the fake hydra, the multi heads is considered an epic grade trait. I can somewhat see how that could work but I think the only real value of it is to be able to simply create more limbs that can hold elemental affinities and the like.
I interlock my hands and stretch as I say, "welp, it's time to get to work"
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Word Count = 2451
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