Chapter 55: Chapter 54: Bloom & Magic

"...ah. Completely forgot." - Garami

"What is it this time?" snapped the witch at me while she was busy cleaning my Player Room. She must be really against cleaning to take that tone even when I'm running [Demon's Presence] here. Or maybe she got used to the fear.

"Your name." - Garami

"What about it? I never liked my old name. It was a damn embarrassing one those horny caretakers at that sorry excuse of an orphanage forced on me. It's good riddance not having it anymore, nor having to worry about being used as a dress-up doll. I hate costumes and their likes." - Witch

W-wow. No mercy. And her backstory is damn detailed. That's impressive work there, Terra Sol AS.

"Then..., how about "Bloom"?" - Garami

"Bloom?" - Witch

"For your new name." - Garami

"Bloom..., Bloom..., I like it!" - Witch Bloom

Let's keep the origin of the name, that I hope she'll "bloom" into a proper lady with the corruption experiment, a secret.

The name's properly shown on her status page now, which I have completely neglected up until now. Shame on me. 

Skill List:

Crafting Skills: Active Skills: Passive Skills:
Perception Skills:
Elements:

Titles:

Hunting Titles:
Status Titles:

Traits:

She's..., unimpressive? Compared to Nyx and Nala, her stats are pretty low. Is this the standard for humans? Now I get why monsters can boss around in the wild. Outside the fact that this is a game, of course.

There's a lot of different abilities here that I'm seeing for the first time..., but humans are such cheaters. Not with their stats, but with their trait. Making an army of humans would be easy for a skilled commander.

To clarify, I need to talk about "Leadership Skills". These are divided into three categories: the skills that can form different types of groups based on something called "Leader Points", skills that improve the abilities of those in the same group as you, and skills that alter one's Leader Points, aka, LP's value. 

All creatures start with a "5 times their racial rank" amount of LP, and the number of people they can form groups with is centered around how much LP they have. This extends even to skills like [Party]. If an E-rank, who has 15 LP, tries to make a party, they can only accept people with an original, total LP of 15 or less. Meaning that without any tricks, "parties" will just consist of "duos". 

That's where the third category of Leadership Skills comes in. They can change how much LP you have, how much LP that's required to hire someone, or lower the LP required for you to join someone else's group. And they are pretty easy to level up as well, according to the BBS. You just need to find a commander or something, even some towns guards would do the trick, and have them teach you.

Ferno herself complained to me that she needed to boost her Leadership Skills before she could form proper parties with other players. Turns out she's gotten a nice, demon-based skill along the road, which explains how she could make a party with me and Jill.

And as for why I find this annoying is because I can only bring one demon with me through [Demon Taming]! Both Nala and Nyx require 15 LP after all, and that's all I have!

The good news is that each group-making skill doesn't share the same LP, so if I got [Party] like Ferno, I could make one and take either demon into my party, which would make the party register full, while still being able to use the other demon through [Demon Taming] like normal! 

But it's still annoying that simple humans get to have such an advantage in numbers...

"Hey, you know magic?" - Garami

"Sure I can. I ain't called a witch for nothing. Why do you ask?" - Bloom

"I want your help with something then," I said before retrieving a certain book from the item chest. It's the "Beginner's Introduction to Magic" that I got from the magic shop from the time before I owned the Fort.

"This is nostalgic. Does this mean that master is learning magic?" - Bloom

"I want to." - Garami

"Then I have no choice~. Leave this to this beautiful future witch, Bloom~." - Bloom

Ah, she's all for the idea. That's good, but I'm afraid she's the type to easily get carried around by others' compliments. And I didn't even do that. Uh-oh...

"*Cough*, magic is divided into two skill varieties: the single-action types and the library-types. I own two skills of each category myself.

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"First is the single-action types. These types of skills execute a single magic spell, therefore the name. This makes it easy to mistake them for a normal skill, such as a superhuman-like ability had they not been influenced by the MAG-stat, a common point for all magic spells. 

"The library-type however is a collection of various magic spells of a certain category, such as healing, attacking, or spells of a certain element. Each level these skills have gives the magic caster one or more magic spells.

"However, one needs the [Magic Operation] skill to access the library-type skills, and you cannot have a library-type skill with a skill level that surpasses [Magic Operation]'s skill level. This makes the library-types similar to Battle Arts-skills, as they require a proficiency-type skill to some weapon if one wants to use the Battle Arts.

"Ah, and this beginner book grants both [Magic Operation] and the [Basic Magic Ability] skill. The latter is a collection of low-ranking spells, mostly the first spells you learn from the library-type skill from the primary elements, but they are useful so it's not a loss to improve this skill." - Bloom

That's a lot of info, but Bloom smoothly repeated whenever I seemed to miss something, so it wasn't that hard to understand. This makes [Mystical Threads] a single-action type then. And to learn the library-type skills, I have to start studying. 

Proceeding with studying...

---

"Master, are you still not done yet?" - Bloom

"...give me a sec..." - Garami

The quest related to the book, which is the true giver of the two magic-related skills, is quite easy. It takes the shape of an assignment you need to fulfill, just like the ones you would do in school. And all the questions are about stuff written in the book. The problem is...

"Master, your drawing skills sucks." - Bloom

"S-shut up! It's these circles that are too difficult for a normal person!" - Garami

The problem is the "practical" part of the test, which is drawing magic circles. I've always had a bad drawing hand. As if I wasn't already falling behind due to the writer's cramp from earlier. Just a small derivation will make the circle useless, even if I don't get why we gotta learn how to draw it by hand. Aren't the skills taking care of that part?

In the end, after several tries and hours wasted...

I did it. I cleared it. And my hands are killing me. 

They're working just like how Bloom explained them. [Basic Magic Ability] comes with a whopping 4 spells right from the start, but they're nothing impressive. Ignite produces fire with the same strength as a lighter. Create Water just makes drinkable water, and not much either. Breeze is just a fancy AC.  And Create Earth gives you just a handful of earth. 

The skill description only shows you what spells are available at the skill's current level, as Bloom's [Basic Magic Ability], which is Lv.3, tells that she got the spell Make Light at Lv.2, which produces a floating ball of light for lighting-purposes, and the spell Turn Dark at Lv.3, which just makes things darker nearby. 

I tried out all the spells I had, but the result wasn't that different from how Bloom had described them. They're useful for non-combat stuff though. Even if I wasted two hours trying to learn this stuff...

"...let's continue tomorrow." - Garami

"Oh, okay..., wait! Master, where should I sleep and eat!?" - Bloom

"Huh? ...ah, right. The slave-thing..., guess I could get some more stuff..." - Garami

While feeling tired to the bone, I opened the Blackmarket tablet again and looked for a place where Bloom could rest. Having her sleep in the same bed as her owner (= me) would be sorta strange. And I've neglected to customize my Player Room all this time except for the essentials, plus I got money for it now. Why not splurge a little?

Ehm, there's a "slave's pen"..., whoa. This place is nasty. Isn't there something..., oh? "Servant's quarters"? This looks cool. Almost like a cheap apartment, with a proper bed and even a couch. There are different sizes for this, so let's add a big one in case I wanna get more "servants". It feels better saying it that way. Then I want this thing here, an expansion there, and this...

Mwa-hahahaha! This is the power of money! Even furniture that enhances my stats is possible to obtain! 

...but I'm left with 10.000 sol to my name... I splurged again...

"Master, this is awesome! I love the design!" - Bloom

"Yeah, yeah..., also, don't leave this place until I come back tomorrow." - Garami

"As you wish. Besides, I want to test out these new clothes," said Bloom with a smile as she picked up the bag filled with clothes for her that the lolicon had provided her. 

If she's got something to kill time with, no need for me to worry then. Log out.

...hmm? Didn't she say she hated playing dress-up? Hmm???

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