[Skill optimization available]

[Your point balance is ‘983 882 025’]

[Skills available for guided optimization:

‘Spine of the Black Sun’

‘Graveyard of the Nymphs’

‘False immortality’

‘Runeforged Overlord’

‘The Book of Skeletons’]

Her hand on the optimization device, Sofia stared at the last line with narrowed eyes.

“This can’t be another trap, can it? Bookie?”

Bookie summoned himself next to Sofia, “Hmmmm?”

“Were you sleeping again? You’re strangely tired these days.”

“I’m alright! Why did you call me? Are we playing cards?!”

“Not this time no, we’ll have plenty of time to play when I build the city, though. Here, look at what the machine is showing me.”

“Oh! I can be optimizized?! I bet it’s uncle orator messing with the toybox!”

“He could certainly do that. Bad things happened last time this machine showed a weird upgrade though so I’m a bit wary. Should be fine, but still. Let’s check it out together.”

“I want to be optimizized!” Bookie happily said, raising his arms. Sofia grabbed him up with her free arm before clicking on the optimization path.

[Skill : The Book of Skeletons - Skill version index FORBIDDEN009_1.0]

Current version :

[The Book of Skeletons] :

As I predicted, you must have reached level 300. You are still a long way from completing your quest, mortal. Let not this success get to your head.

Oh that does sound like Orator, but more like he was at the start. I assume he left that message within the skill when he first made it. Forbidden 9… There are 8 other forbidden skills then? Let’s see what Bookie gets.

[Available branches (same version lettered upgrades are mutually exclusive):

2A - The summoned skeletons can now freely supplement their lifetime and mana reserves with ambient mana - 0 TP

2B - The Book of Skeletons gains 50 extra pages - 0 TP

2C - The Book of Skeletons’ pages can now contain significantly more skeletons - 0 TP

2D - The Book of Skeletons gains extra stats depending on the power and type of stored skeletons - 0 TP

You will be able to pick a second one of those four optimizations at class level 400]

Well… This is going to be tough…

“So, Bookie. What do you want?”

Bookie looked up at Sofia after reading it all, “I… I’m not sure, Sofia.”

“Alright, then let me break it down for you like I usually do with my skills. Version A would allow us to constantly have some of your summons around, but since mobility is an issue, that would probably just be Pestle, most of the time. And it would allow us to have skeletons as permanent workers for both Zandgar and our new city. We could have skeleton guards, farms, smiths, and all, but that would mean we discard a significant part of your battle-ready skeletons and only keep the smarter and strongest ones.”

“Hmmm… Having skeleton workers everywhere would be very nice! But if we have to get rid of a lot of our fighting pages… I don’t really like it! Even the dumb and weak pages are very useful!” Bookie protested, “Look at all the Kijikkikik!”

“That’s true, but it’s undeniable we’ll have to sacrifice some flexibility if we go with that. I’m sure Pestle would like it, though.”

Bookie shook his skull, “I am sure if we asked her now she would say ‘Pesle don’t care! Where leg?!”

Sofia couldn’t contain a giggle, “Why don’t we just do that then, care to get her out?”

Pestle appeared on top of Sofia’s head. She grabbed Sofia’s horns and quickly scanned the room, “Who kill?!”

“There’s no fight, Pestle, we’re choosing an upgrade for Bookie. And we want your opinion.”

“Pesle opinion?!”

“That’s right, can your read that?” Sofia asked pointing at the screen, “The first option concerns you, in particular.”

“Ack! Pesle concern?” She worriedly said, looking down at the screen, “Hmmm… Pesle has opinion!”

“We’re all ears,” Sofia told her.

“All ear? Luman and skelton, where ear? Pesle not ear,” the fairy asked in incomprehension, inserting her fingers in the empty ear holes on the sides of her skull.

“... I think you’re going to need more language lessons.”

“ACK! Lesson no! Pesle very language! Has opinion!” she cried out, “A is no care, Pesle escape Boki self self! No need! B bad! More page is Pesle less summon, no good! C is no care, very bored. D Boki kill! Very do violence! Pesle like!” she quickly said before unsummoning herself to escape the mortal threat of Sofia’s common language lessons.

“Well. You were about right,” Sofia told Bookie, “It looks like she thinks she can escape your pages by herself eventually.”

It was Bookie’s turn to giggle, “I think she would not even if she could. Sofia gives her too much free leg.”

“We’ll see how it goes, but I agree that I don’t really see her escaping. I agree with her on path B, it’s bad. We’re not really in that much of a need for extra pages quite yet. Plenty of less used skeletons we can afford to replace if we find something better. Though I think it would probably have to be our pick at level 400 no matter what we choose now.”

Bookie nodded along, “50 is still enough for now. I cannot summon too many at once anyway…”

“So next we have path C, which I think is just bad, honestly. The occasions to get that many skeletons at once aren’t so common in the first place, aside from the Kidjikkik army we don’t have too many repeats due to lack of space.”

“Pestle is right, it’s boring!”

“Who knew Pestle’s analysis would be so good, right? She may take a weird path to get there but she does get to the correct conclusions. Path D would help you get stronger in fights, and would give you a lot more fog to work with if pages give extra mana. If we take this it also makes taking the extra pages next time even better since it will give you extra stats.”

“But we don’t know how much the pages give! What if it’s bad?”

“Do you have no faith in your uncle?” Sofia asked with a smirk.

“But I’m bad at fighting…” Bookie mumbled. For more chapters visit novel~fire~net

“This would make you better. If you don’t want it, we go with path A and get permanent summons. We could have them work for us on many different things, even sending the Kidjikkiks to mine rare ore. The choice is yours.”

“I don’t know…”

In the end, it was how useless Bookie had felt during the Lilith fight that pushed him toward a choice.

‘You have spent 0 tournament points’

‘[The Book of Skeletons] has been optimized following branch 2D’

Bookie froze in place for a second, his bones shivered, and he was back to normal.

“All good?” Sofia asked.

“I… Do not feel any different,” Bookie deadpanned.

“Oh really? Hmmm… Maybe because I have technically not leveled up yet?”

“This must be it! Ah!” Bookie exclaimed like he just got shocked, “Ouch!”

“You’re hurt?!”

“N- no. My pages… They burned a bit, for a second, it felt like.”

Worried, Sofia let Bookie down and opened his book form.

She let out a sigh of relief seeing that the pages were all still intact. One thing had changed, however, at the bottom of each page, cursive letters spelled out a stats bonus.

The first page wage Crowie, and the bottom of the page read: ‘Processing 10%’

Not a bad bonus for a single 10 mana Crow. Even the pages recognize how smart he is.

Sofia quickly flipped through a few pages, before stopping and taking out her notepad. Let’s update the list!

Favorites

1 Crowie10+10% Processing

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1 Elven Engineer500+25% Processing

1 High priest50 000

+5% Mana

1 Emperor pearled Snake300 000+20% Health

1 Pestle500 000+300% Speed, Aura & Charisma

Recon units

1 Rat (New and improved)10+5% Agility

50 Crows500+5% Processing

52 Black turvins520+10% Speed

100 Rats1000+10% Agility

100 Three-eye spinews10 000+20% Speed

5 Spellhounds50 000+10% Agility

500 Red Flailer (Blood fish) 50 000 +5% Health

Utility units

1 Forgotten30+1% All

10 Worker Kidjikkik500+5% Strength

1 Elf caretaker (Strong)1000+10% Strength

100 Digger Kidjikkik5000+10% Health

100 Worker Kidjikkik5000+10% Strength

100 Cleaner Kidjikkik5000+10% Health

1 Solar mage

20 000+5% Mana

1 useless hero toxic plants30 000+20% Charisma

1 Firebird (My new oven)35 000+15% Speed

Mounts

1 Saltwater Spinefish(Fish)5000+20% Speed

1 War horse10 000+15% Health

1 Quetzalcoatlus10 000+15% Agility

1 Sandworm100 000+20% Health

Support units

1 Soldier with bow (5rat)50+5% Agility

1 Guardian Kidjikkik1000+5% Health

25 paladins5000+10% Health

5 Fire salamanders15 000+10% Strength

5 giant ice spiders50 000+10% Processing

1 Sirhellion50 000+3% Mana

10 Female stone Ogres100 000+25% Strength

Defense units

3 Templars30 000+25% Strength

20 Guardian Kidjikkik

20 000+10% Health

5 Quetzalcoatlus50 000+25% Agility

100 Guardian Kidjikkik100 000+20% Health

100 Guardian Kidjikkik100 000+20% Health

1 Quartz Giant (Gemite)10 000 000+1000% Health -200% Speed

Attack units

20 Soldier Kidjikkik20 000+10% Strength

4 Withered Vampire 40 000+25% Speed

1 Tall Mimic(SPEED!)100 000+50% Speed

100 Soldier Kidjikkik100 000+20% Strength

100 Soldier Kidjikkik (More.)100 000+20% Strength

100 Soldier Kidjikkik (MORE!)100 000+20% Strength

3 Sirhellions150 000+5% Mana

1 Wind-Ice-Lightning-Mana Aura mages (Wilma) 400 000+5% Mana +10% Aura

5 Sandworms500 000+50% Health

1 Chimera5 000 000+100% Health, Strength, Speed & Agility

1 Fortune Dwarf5 000 000+10% Mana +100% Processing +100% Agility

Pain10 000 000 000+1000% Health +100% Mana

Total bonus stats:

+2296% Health

+256% Strength

+341% Speed

+271% Agility

+134% Mana

+151% Processing

+321% Charisma

+311% Aura