I sighed in relief as I respawned, thanking the System that one of my many spare daggers broke, and not my Training Spear. The other three were nowhere to be seen, so I ignored my blinking notifications to do a quick damage check. 

Shield’s gone. Not surprising, probably missed that notification mid fight. All my armor needs to be repaired, but nothing else is broken. 

My messages were filled with more complaints from Alice about the volcano area. Mostly about how uncute the town and monsters were. Felix was pretty much silent, which was easily explained by his persisting Do Not Disturb status. Fred had thanked me again, letting me know that Artemia was back on shift and he was off for the night.

The moment I finished sifting through the mess, Patricia, Seb, then Liz materialized in front of me in a puff of distorted sparkles. 

“Yo, how’d it go?” 

“Pretty terribly. We barely managed to take down the guards before the three goblins from your end joined up. Those mages were vicious.” Seb exhaled his longest sigh yet. 

“Not like it mattered. You were out of mana by the third goblin and Patty was all of out of Rage. No way I was getting a third Charged Arrow off.” Liz patted my shoulder as if to console me. 

I guess taken the wrong way, Seb’s words could’ve seemed like he was blaming me.

“Well, still my bad. I got a bit carried away and tried to take down the second goblin warrior. I got caught and died because of it, you guys could’ve gotten more research time.” 

“No, you were probably dead anyways. That second goblin warrior was an elite, right? You were going to die in seconds regardless.” Patricia chimed in, her slow speaking indicating that she was deep in thought. “The Grahob Grahble wasn’t taking us seriously and still making our lives incredibly difficult. I doubt we were going to make any progress with our current skills – it might be required to actually level up the Goblin Killer title.” 

We stood in silence, letting her words sink in.

“If these goblins are this hard, how hard are the bandits gonna be…” Liz broke the stillness for a moment, before it immediately settled in again.

Ding! 

My quiet contemplation was interrupted by another notification from Alice.

Alice (All Icy): tell felix that i figured out how that dumb plate works

Alice (All Icy): log out and look at my view when you can

Alice (All Icy): its getting late anyways so lets sleep after

I said my goodbyes and collected the two friend requests from the girls, promising to explain what Alice had found in the morning. Seb quickly told me about the Reminder feature, where I promptly recorded a few notes before logging off.

After the usual cleaning ritual, I went over to the couch and turned the TV on. I shot her a quick text to let her know I was ready to see what she was up to. 

“Oh, you’re there? Okay, nice!” Alice responded by speaking into the open air, and then twirling around to let me get a good look at her character. It was pretty much a copy and paste of her usual self, except her hair was a shade of hot pink. I wrinkled my nose, expecting a white or blue color, considering what her character name was.

“I’ll be waiting for your texts to move on, but basically the Tabula Rasa is a template for a unique skill.” Alice’s inventory window blipped open, and the Tabula Rasa was nowhere to be seen. I was pretty certain I hadn’t found a bank in the town and the item was definitely untradeable and indestructible. As if my silence indicated my lack of trust, the skill window opened soon after, and I squinted to look at a completely unfamiliar icon. 

–

“So this thing is the unique skill. I had to really mess with the configuration since apparently conjuring weapons is already a thing, but the game isn’t shy about guiding you towards something if you have a plan in mind.” 

Isaac (Isaac): Wouldn’t Felix have gotten it pretty fast then? No way he doesn’t have a clear image of what the Black Fire Laser Cannon is supposed to do.

“Well, how am I supposed to know that. I’m not in Felix’s head. Aren’t you two friends since high school because of some test prep camp? You should know how his problem solving works.”

The memories of Felix slacking off and refusing to do any logic questions came and went.

Isaac (Isaac): I mean… you know him. He likes having the answer be obvious or just handed to him.

“I will still never understand how he graduated with top honors from university.”

…

“Anyways, here’s the skill.” Alice reached underneath her and pulled out a red slime from the ground, probably to start a fight for testing.

The unfamiliar red resource bar for Rage appeared under Alice’s health bar, which was the choice that I had expected her to take. I watched her take a slow and deep breath, before she started chanting what sounded like an uncharacteristic prayer. 

“I offer my feelings, my emotions, and my Rage. I thirst for the thrill of battle. I desire the power to fight my foes. Forge yourself into my hands, The Axe of Agony!” 

A wry smile forced itself onto my face. That type of chant was definitely something that Felix would be extremely into.

Alice’s Rage bar plummeted to nothing as a shoddy, fuzzy, and dark red war ax materialized into her hands. She twirled the massive weapon around effortlessly, a crackling crimson energy trailing behind its movement. 

Isaac (Isaac): What are the benefits of the skill? Why not just use a normal weapon?

“Man, can you not see how I’m swinging this thing like it’s nothing? Well, I guess you haven’t read the skill description yet. Let me kill this slime and send you the details.” 

The slime didn’t even have time to squeal as the sharp blade shattered the weak Block and split it in two.

The Prayer for Battle - Manifest  -X [RAGE]: A beautiful prayer for violence inspires the soul, crafting an extension of destruction. Due to the extremely low proficiency of the skill creator, merely an echo of the full capabilities of this skill are present. 

“How much can you see? I have an entire list of effects listed below the normal flavor text, but I’m wondering if that’s because I made the skill myself.”

Isaac (Isaac): Yeah, just the normal flavor text for me. Could you summarize? It doesn’t seem like the viewer screen has a workaround for that feature.

“Mhm. Basically, I can summon any type of weapon by using an incantation. The weapon is set to a comfortable weight for me, but is extra heavy for anyone else, which is why I can swing it around so easily. There’s a minor physical stat boost for strength, and the rest of the boosts are locked behind higher tiers. The major downside is that I can’t use offensive skills if I have it equipped, which is totally fine with me.”

Isaac (Isaac): You can’t even use magical skills like Bolt?

“Nah, I get an error when I try to slot them. It’s not too bad though, I can always unequip the skill and practice the form by doing it normally. Oh, and it seems like the weapon is either indestructible or has some extreme durability. I ran it into some spooky skills and it’s never even cracked.” 

We chatted a bit more about the skill as Alice wandered around and effortlessly eradicated dozens of slimes. She theorized that each swing was probably considered an enhanced attack, which was why it shattered the weak barriers so easily. The System had also sent in a tooltip about how she could sell skill books of her unique ability, but the cost to create the skill book was prohibitively expensive.

“Yeah, even with a boyfriend discount, giving you this for free would set me back a week. I doubt you even want this anyways, considering you like having your options or whatever.”

Apparently, she had been killing slimes for hours so that she could keep redeeming the repeatable quest at the guild, which was how she was able to afford so many different training weapons. 

“Well, I’ve gotten enough goo for another turn in. Let me log off and we can head to bed.”