Chapter Eighty-Six

  HELP! Harmony sent through her bond with Hyacinth as she weaved through the woods on the first floor. And, of course, he was ughing.

  Heat nipped at her back, so she knew she hadn't lost it yet. This should be her st trip on this floor, yet, here she was facing one of the true terrors of the floor.

  The ball of fire with teeth and cws screamed in rage and pain as it chased her.

  The trick with [Manipute Dead] and [Beautician] to poof their hair didn't work while it was on fire. And as for [Cold Touch], it was delving on fire!

  Hyacinth ughed because this was her fault. That didn't mean he couldn't help. How Was she supposed to know one little [Light Shot] Would have the wooze explode like a spark to an oil-soaked torch? The cimed skill was on its st leg, barely working, and marked to be repced on this floor.

  The snapping crunch behind her ended the pursuit. Hyacinth's mouth completely enveloped the wooze with his bite. That immediately smothered the fmes. The shadow toad swallowed his prey. Spicy. He Projected at her, gave a croaking burp, and let out a blow of faint smoke.

  At least it hadn't been a pack of fming fuzz balls. Hyacinth had only managed his intervention because she'd crossed through a space in the woods big enough to hold his mass.

  As nimble as he was, his size was hampering him. She'd hoped this trip to the capital would shrink him or at least stop his growth. As much as it was a benefit when she needed his bulk to crash down on mossifants or pesky guardians, tight spaces were an issue and one that would be costly. [Shadowed Graves] pushed out to help him out of his tight spot.

  Harmony didn't use [Light Shot] for the next batch of woozes. Lesson learned. Standing over those cold hairless corpses. Harmony let her fingertips touch her skin as she metaphysically reached inside to [Cim the Remains of Power]. There she accessed the skill she'd taken from the beetles by the Deadwoods and yanked it out. It was half decomposed and living off fumes of energy [Renew Spirit] had provided dozens of times as she'd tried to maintain it. It was such a waste to have no way to save it. The moment she let the borrowed skill fall from her fingers outside of her soul's container [Light Shot] dissolved into necromantic goop.

  That hunger rose around her new emptiness. If she hadn’t managed to maintain the skill she would have been forced to hunt to satiate that hunger maybe twice a day. Now that would have been inconvenient and still might be. Here and now, with bodies in front of her, she wouldn't need to wait long.

  Wooze were simple beasts. They only had two skills. Their extreme unrelenting rage and their extra senses to see and smell past their fur. [Cim]’s instinct was to take the most powerful skill, the rage. And if she activated it with no control that is what would be plucked up.

  Setting a wooze on fire was one thing. Grabbing that rage that could cause a mindless frenzy would be a bigger problem by a magnitude. Soul sight let her choose. Taking the sense skill she added it to the empty space.

  As it snapped in a whole new version of the world opened up to her. There was no activating this skill as it was a passive one that was always present. Stamina flowed out to grip and massage it into action automatically. The draw was not greater than her [Heart] provided, so it didn't come with a sense of fgging energy. [Wooze Sight] was degrading quicker under the pressure though. [Renew Spirit] would need to be used every hour to keep it up. If the rage skill simirly kicked on, Harmony shuddered at that thought. The act leveled [Cim] up to two.

  The additional awareness made [Small Armor] pulse with happiness at having no blind spots. She could see behind trees, Bushes, and rocks. Everything will be easier now to the point that it would be sad to let [Wooze Sense] go when it was time.

  It was time to see how much faster and stronger actively using stamina let her be. This would be easier with weights, but wooze would have to do.

  Twice she burned through stamina to test what she could do, needing to abandon [Wooze Sight] to recharge quicker and then harvest a repcement. That emptying and having the [Heart] recharge her leveled that skill once. The rate of recharge seemed inconsistent.

  Harmony entered the brood mother's clearing to find a very bored Hyacinth sitting on the cold corpse of the guardian.

  “Maybe I wanted to test myself against the guardian?”

  "Kreuptt.” He croaked a reminder they didn't have all day.

  The second floor was amazing. [Wooze Sight] marked every vinestrictor and twiggy. Gentle application of stamina allowed for quicker bursts of movements to out-speed attacks. All the knowledge gained at the Deadwoods and reted powers inside [Cim] made silent strikes more efficient, nearly halving the previous amount of time needed between strikes.

  Twiggys id out nearly indistinguishable from fallen trees. It was time for some deeper experimentation. [Stride Before the Fall]. Harmony watched and felt as she removed the [Wooze Sight]. With rage, this hadn't been an option. Too risky to fight herself. Twiggys had two skills, one was reted to toughness and another was what allowed them to move. Time to get defensive, she reached into the corpse. Taking that armor skill she hooked it into her. Also a passive, it automatically became active. [Hard Wood], she’d put [Hard Wood] into herself? It might have been funny. Rather than humor, paralysis hit as her body locked up while bark grew over her skin as it thickened. Her lungs clogged, her throat not swelling shut, but covered with that thick hard material. Not able to dismiss that version of her soon enough, she died a tree. It stood as a living monument to stupidity.

  “Delve that.” [Cim the Remains of Power] was more dangerous than she’d suspected. What if that briar light beetle had blown up her head or the teeth out of her mouth? No wonder this skill wasn’t in the Grave Society’s book, people probably killed themselves trying it out.

  When the body dissipated along with Night it left a bark shell around it, implying the skill results were not part of her. Yet it had duplicated the [Wooze Sight] when she first used [Stride]. That could be something to research, but sacrificing yourself to create a wooden statue felt like an inefficient way to craft.

  The skills that allowed twiggy and vinestrictors to move were not lethal. But they were useless. Both were different. Giving yourself flexible controlble bones did not seem worth keeping, while the one that made her joints more flexible felt funny. Both had her feeling sick like the pnt-based skills didn’t mesh well with her flesh-and-blood body. The feeling was very much like shoving a square peg into a round hole.

  As for the tree lord. They skipped it.