Chapter 457: DIY resolution

Chapter 457: DIY resolution

“AAA a a a aueughk-” Sofia’s voice cracked in the middle of her improvised vocalization exercise.

Crap... Manually controlling bone lungs to speak is harder than it sounded in my head. Getting there, though. This should be enough if I meet someone, but I might as well keep training as we go.

She turned to her skeletons, Pareth had downsized to the smallest he could go, putting him at almost the same size as Alith, and he was teaching Bookie how to properly avoid sword attacks.

“Let’s get to woOrk, guys. We ha–ve two hearts to upgrade.”

Before going, Sofia re-read everything one last time.

[Nascent mana heart of Knowledge]: /C tier/

Imprint progress : 1200/ 1200

Small Catalyser : 0/1

Effects (on use) :

All stats +45% (C rank base)Health +8500 Mana +21 500 ??? Skill shard (5/10) (Sunless Amalgam Skill)[Relocate Core][Arclight][Destroyer’s Nascent mana heart of Aphenoreth]: /B tier/

UNABLE TO CALCULATE SETTING TIME

Imprint progress : 2000/ 2000

Small Catalyser : 1/1

Medium Catalyser : 0/1

Keystone : 1/1

Effects (Stats will be doubled) :

All stats + 70% (B rank base)All stats + 50%Health + 10 561Stamina + 10 000Mana + 159 439Slashing resistance + 5%[Relocate Core]Destroyer Signature Skill ModifierSpeed shard (1)

[Quest: Upgrade both hearts to SSS RankNe/w novel chapters are published at novelhall.coments:

(1) Forge a small catalyser for Pareth. (Focus on this step for instruction)(2) Fill Pareth’s imprints, be sure to finish the Amalgam skill.(3) Forge two medium catalyers. (Focus for instructions)(4) Travel to designated location and fill imprints.Later steps are a work in progess]

If nothing else, we really got a lot of mana imprints from Everelle’s dungeon. Too bad we couldn’t get the catalysers... It took Mr. Scribe three hours to come up with these steps 3 and 4. Don’t overwork yourself, alright? We’ve yet to complete step one.

The instructions for step one were not as hard as Sofia had feared them to be, the crafting of the small catalyser was relatively simple, in theory at least, she was just missing some reagents and a proper setup. The main ingredients, perhaps unsurprisingly, were a single piece of small Sunless debris and a lot of mana. The crafting instructions also ended with the precision that there were alternative recipes if this one failed.

According to the ‘recipe’ a bright flash of light should occur after hitting the black lump and breaking the catalyser out of it, that would signify the catalyser was ready.

The hammer crushed the black lump. There was no flash of light, when Pareth dispelled the hammer, there was only black dust left under it.

Bookie ran up to the slate, sounding shocked and disappointed, “Did brother Pareth hit it too hard?”

“No, the instructions say that the harder the hit the better. I would have even added the third tier [Runeforged Overlord] boost if I had any mana left. This must mean I messed up somewhere... Sorry, let’s start again...”

It took three more failures before Sofia understood where she was messing up. The flow of mana she fed to the Sunless debris through the entire cooking process was just not stable enough, and it showed when observing the ritual circle with her mana senses, the unsteady flow of mana disturbed the ritual.

The reasonable solution to this would have been to train for a few days until she was capable of supplying a smoother and steadier flow of mana, but was Sofia opted to do instead was to use a long bone rod as an extension to her already bone-made arms and to feed the mana through direct contact. Had she been a bit more confident in her fire resistance, she might have even jumped directly into the furnace instead.

Finally, when Pareth hit a black lump for the fourth time, the flash of light occurred, and they had finally created a viable something. A small shiny rock.

[Small Crushing Heart Catalyser]: A contraband heart catalyser crafted by a rag-tag team of bone-people. Allows one to upgrade their Mana Heart from rank C to B once sufficient imprint power has been collected. Gives the Mana Heart the added attribute : +5% Blunt force damage resistance.

“We did it!” Bookie exclaimed, jumping around the camp.

Sofia picked up the catalyser, it looked just like the one from Tarren’s dungeon. Smiling to herself, she passed it to Pareth along with his mana heart.

Not bad for a first-timer.

Sofia immediately turned around to face the man who had just spoken from behind her, almost completely out of mana, she brandished her dagger. Bookie and Pareth were instantly ready to fight.

The stout man who had appeared behind the trio without anyone noticing raised an eyebrow. He was human-looking, and taller than Sofia, wearing only dirty brown shorts and a worn-out leather apron over his hairy bare chest.

That’s a nice knife you got there. I get why the others found you so hard to find. He said with a lighthearted smirk, his posture completely open.

Sofia could not feel a single speck of mana from the man, and trying to Identify him got her no response at all.

“Who are you? Why were you looking for us? How did you find us?” Sofia asked in a controlled but accusatory tone, without lowering her dagger. The core member privacy mode should have made her completely invisible to the system like it had done for Hugo, and VPPV protected her from things like divination, so, considering she was in a random spot on a vast, mostly uninhabited planet, someone finding her so fast was just unbelievable.

Me? I’m just an old craftsman. Been looking for you three on behalf of Kyle. As for how, I just followed the essence you’ve been feeding me all afternoon. Was quite simple really, since there’s no one else out there.

A God...

Hoy, I don’t like those eyes. Are you done here? We’re going.