chapter 92
Walking into this skill shop was a different experience. From the web, we knew that this one was the biggest skill shop in the city, but nothing could have prepared me for this.
The other shop I’ve been to was more like a place you would find in a mall. This one was the size of a large wholesale shop. At first, I just thought that it was part of some shopping complex because the building was so large, but no. There were just rows and rows that seemed to go on endlessly, filled with skills.
The shelves extended all the way to the ceiling, which was almost 9 metres in height. Every shelf had a ladder attached to it. There were skill stones, but they weren't individually laid out, they were in boxes that had at least dozens, if not hundreds, of the same skills.
There were plenty of people buying skills, but these weren’t adventurers looking for individual skills, they were merchants buying by the crate load.
“Oh wow, Sam is gonna be angry you didn’t take him with you,” Dean commented, snapping me out of the state of bewilderment I was in.
“Well, I didn’t fucking expect something like this.”
“Fair enough, but where should we start?”
“I honestly have no idea. Normally, places like this... Yes, you can see hanging from the ceiling there are sections for different types of skills.”
“There are plenty of guards here as well. I don’t think stealing would end well for anyone.”
As soon as Dean said the word stealing, so many of the guards looked towards us. That was creepy.
“I bet you they’re loaded with skills specifically for guarding this place,” Dean commented, which got us even more attention, even though there should have been no way of overhearing our communication through my bond.
Finally, out loud, I said, “Can you stop that? It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny,” he answered back.
That seemed to relax the guards just a bit, but it was time to start looking for skills that I could use.
Almost immediately, we saw quite a lot of warnings not to touch skill stones by hand, which made sense. There were other warnings as well that seemed to be for people with other types of skills than mine.
I really needed to dial down my affinities and their ability to listen to the call of skill stones, because if I didn’t, everything here felt so overwhelming.
There were large stretches as we walked between the shelves where nothing called to me, but when a box was quite filled with skill stones and they all started to call out simultaneously as we got in range, it was like someone next to you suddenly starting to yell.
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“Are you getting this?” I asked FH.
“Yes, I can still see visuals even as you’re so far away. I do believe that there are similar places around other tomb worlds as well, they seem to be the main supplier of skills.”
“From what we’re seeing here I can probably get my entire build here. The problem is, if we got every skill stone from this place, everyone would know my exact build, so I don’t know exactly what to do.”
“Give me a moment, I think I have a solution.” I was curious as to what FH could be thinking. As soon as Bob joined the conversation, I understood.
“From what I can already see, we can make a great profit if we buy the skills here for cheap and sell them at basically any trade hub. Right now just scout the skills, the next time we will bulk buy a large enough range that no one will know exactly what skills you might take or won’t.”
“That sounds like a good plan. Do we have enough capital for this?”
“I think you’re misunderstanding. How many of each skill we will buy will most likely not be more than 10 per skill, but we’ll get a wide range. It will tie up a lot of our resources, that’s true, but we will soon start generating quite a lot as soon as we start clearing portals, so it shouldn’t matter too much.”
“Yeah, that makes more sense. I don’t know why I thought we would be buying hundreds of the same type of skill, that would be a waste.”
So Dean and I continued to scout the place. The number and types of different skills truly was staggering.
It didn't take long for me to find the section on defensive skills, and soon I found more resistance skills than I knew what to do with. I certainly didn’t have enough skill slots for all of them. Lola should be able to help me pick a good combination of them to mitigate most problems.
My smile vanished when I realised that it would mean I would have to endure more beating. Well shit, this didn’t bode well for my future.
The mind section was quite interesting. There were even skills that would allow you to use your psychic potential, which I seemed to have, because my mind affinity did accept this skill that allows you to shoot a beam of psychic power from your head like a laser.
This was in a smaller box than the ones at the start, and as we got further in, the large boxes filled with skills changed for smaller ones filled with only a few.
In this area was also the mechanic skill section, although I was quite disappointed as it was basically desolate. The prices here were also quite high, and when I questioned one of the shop assistants, she said that these skills basically sell as soon as they appear.
Of course, there needed to be some problem like that. It did make sense why these skills were so sought after. They were incredibly useful especially for keeping tech functioning on the tomb world.
There were a few skills that did have a few stones left, like minor repair, that would basically allow me to use mana to fix tiny things. No question I was going to get this one, and in fact there was no need to wait.
We picked up one of the foldable boxes at the side of every shelf where you could place the skills that you wanted to buy. With the first skill, and probably the last one I was going to buy here, secured, we continued to look around.
We had been walking around the skill shop for basically three hours, and there was still plenty of space to cover. There was a whole section dedicated to communications, and just in case, we were properly looking around here. This turned out to be a brilliant decision.
There was a skill here called hardened connections. Its description was more for people who used communication devices, to make them less susceptible to tampering. The listed affinity did have mind, but the thing was my mechanist affinity also seemed to accept this skill.
That definitely wasn't on the list, and from my 6th sense I got a good feeling about it. So while the description didn't say anything about bonds, there was a good chance that it might actually work with them as well. This should be able to help me protect against someone who could manipulate unprotected bonds.
There were specific skills for technopaths and mechanics that would allow for such protections, but none of them seemed to be for sale, as those boxes were empty like almost every other one in those sections.
This skill was definitely coming with me. This also shouldn’t raise too many suspicions and perhaps would even alleviate them. This would just indicate that I would be wanting to use more traditional methods of controlling drones. It could be a good idea, but technological bonds wouldn't give the same type of protection from mana as more magical bonds did.
Buying the skills was easy enough, even though they cost quite a lot. Of course, I didn’t bring enough hard currency with me, but Bob had sold off enough that we now had plenty of the local currency to buy everything we wanted when we came back here to bulk purchase a lot of skills.
As the purchase completed, I absorbed the skills. While the skill stones were gone, it will still take me a bit of time to properly integrate the skills.
“So, back to the ship?” Dean asked me as we stepped outside. There were other skill shops as well that were probably more high end, but we could visit them later and this time bring Sam with us.
I was about to answer yes when my 6th sense flared up, indicating trouble was approaching.
“Let’s head back fast, something’s coming and it’s trouble.”
The atmosphere around us immediately changed as all of us focused fully on our surroundings, as we started to move as fast as possible while not bringing more attention to us. That brought down the feeling of danger, but it didn’t disappear fully.