[1.33] Life Planning (Part 2)
Well, I’ll be damned. Angelica checked the Skill. Poison Chef now had a progress of 50% to Lv. 2. She didn’t know if the size or contents of the meal had any effect, or if it just improved by a set amount per activation. If the latter, hopefully, it meant just one more activation to improve.
And thank goodness there had been a notification. Now she wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally poisoning Cherub when feeding him. Since she hadn’t given him wet food yesterday—forced to choke down the dry stuff available—he was clearly in a pouty mood. Though, he hadn’t put up too much of a fuss because even he could see how rattled she was after the museum incident. And she’d been stalling thus far today, seeing whether the cat’s patience would give out before she could convince herself there was no way opening a can could be considered cooking.
So this was a huge relief, no longer having to fear starving the poor beast. If it came down to it, she wasn’t above making herself his personal food tester. As his owner, it was her responsibility to make sure he was both fed and safe, so if it meant she had to take a nibble of wet cat food everyday, she would have made that sacrifice. Thankfully, it hadn’t come to that.
After detouring to feed the cat his food with no message triggered, Angelica then scrutinized the dish she’d made. It looked fine, scrumptious even. There were no color distortions, no drippings of poison, nothing that gave any indication that it had been tampered with. Same for the smell. The only thing that came about taking a big whiff was making her even hungrier. As a last measure, she examined it with Scrying Eye.
[Food | Poisoned: Toxic - 1 Stack (Only you can see this)]
So it really was poisoned, and only she would know about it, apparently. Made sense. Otherwise, every Demon in existence would go about leering at anything before they ate it. Being able to clearly detect the poison would remove most of its purpose. Still, if she ever needed to poison another person for an Order again, she had a lot more confidence, assuming she could get the skill to trigger.
Despite knowing that it was safe for her, Angelica still stared at the scoop of food on her spoon for a while. There was no way Poison Eater would fail her, right? It was a Passive Skill with no mention of percent chances, which meant it was always 100%, right? There was mention about it being disabled, so she made sure to demand, “Activate Poison Eater.”
[Poison Eater is already active]
It felt like the system was mocking her a bit. If she kept up the one-sided staring match with her dinner, she really would level her Hunger Resistance, so Angelica took a very small, trepidatious bite. She chewed with caution, but her mouth unconsciously made her swallow faster than anticipated. The food itself tasted fine, though a bit off, somehow. Perhaps just a mite bit sweeter, while also somehow more sour than she was expecting. It also left a slight aftertaste that coated her tongue and throat, but it wasn’t one she minded.
Gelic looked at her Health percentage. She was still recovering from her almost-fatal wounds from the museum heist, but the day of recovery had brought her up to 68%. It probably wouldn’t get much higher than that since it sat around that area generally, but maybe the effects of Poison Eater would push it past. And lo and behold, it suddenly jumped to 69%.
Well, it was hard to really judge if that was natural recovery or the Skill working its magic, so she took a bigger bite, her stomach happy to finally get some real scuffing food. Then she watched her health climb to 71%. Yes, it was working wonderfully, so she wolfed down the rest of the meal. Since the Skill provided regeneration over time, it took a bit before it caught up and stopped working even after she’d taken a break from eating to dwell on her life plan some more.
Her Health had settled at 82%, and frankly, she felt amazing, completely reinvigorated, the most energetic she had been in years. She couldn’t help but want to see what 100% would feel like. There was still plenty of food left, at least three more servings, so she could probably push it. But at the same time came another problem. After forcing down a bit more, getting it up to 84%, Angelica was completely full.
That was the inherent problem with the Skill. While the health recovery was fantastic, it could only provide so much before she literally couldn’t consume anymore, the curse of her small stomach. Maybe she could throw it up, but she wouldn’t be surprised if such an action would decrease her Health, making no net progress. Plus, since there was still such a low trigger-rate of poisoning, it wasn’t really reliable. But… maybe that could be fixed.
While eating, she had dwelled a bit more on her Skills. Of course, she’d want Inspiration to improve as much as possible, but that would come on its own while doing art. Then for Attunements, she ultimately decided not to worry about them, since they would come with Skills. She wouldn’t know how to really raise them naturally, otherwise. How could she become more attuned with something like Famine, anyways? Literally steal candy from babies?
Secrets, Achievements, and Talents were all in the same boat. Since she was so ill-informed, it was best to just let them happen on their own for now. So it was time to look at the Skill Weave, uncover everything she could currently buy, and chart out the best upgrade path.
While Gelic had seen the benefits that the Pestilence path could provide, her first stop when digging into her available Skills was actually the Gnostic Attunement section. Thanks to the tip from Fioso, she knew one skill to immediately be on the lookout for, and she found it right away, connected to Scrying Eye.
[Hybrid Skill: Divining Ear | Unlock: 1 GP | Hear whispers of secrets about a target. Information revealed depends on deemed usefulness. Can additionally filter unwanted information and noises passively. Active Cost: MP Drain. Amount of information scales with Skill Level, Lucidity, and Gnostic Attunement. Range of hearing scales with Skill Level and Lucidity. Range becomes unlimited if directly interacting with the target. Growth scales with Lucidity]
So if she understood it correctly, she could “listen in” on someone, and would hear whispers about them? Who exactly was telling her all these secrets? The world, the Demon Growth System? She supposed it didn’t matter, as long as it was reliable. By the sounds of it, this was a way to gather intel at a range when Scrying Eye would be unavailable. Though since it would also work for direct interaction, maybe it would provide different information? Maybe a mix?
While assumedly a good Skill, and one she would definitely be getting because of the recommendation, what really interested her was the passive aspect. Is this how I turn off the damned voices?! Ideally, she’d be able to use it to turn off the calls of other Summoners when she didn’t want to hear them, or maybe she could somehow filter it to only give her the ones she’d be interested in. That sounded like the sort of thing she’d get from a level-up, so it probably was best not to expect it out of the box.
Still, she was going to buy it right away. Better to do it now while she could afford it before risking being tempted by another Skill. Gelic speculated that Growth Points were theoretically limited, so she had to take that into consideration. When she hit the level cap for Imp, there probably wasn’t an easy way to get any more, at least until Evolution. Maybe that would increase the level cap to thirty, or forty, or something. She had to assume that wasn’t the end of levels and Ranks, or it would be a frits-ass growth system.
However, while it would ideally allow her to gain more at that point, there still had to be an end-all be-all, right? If she were to max out Demon Lord, was that it? Locked with her choices with no further way to improve? That was still an eternity away, so she probably shouldn’t worry too much about it, especially since the DGS had mentioned obscure ways to get them. But still, the less she wasted Growth Points, the less potentially dangerous situations she’d have to put herself in, so she’d probably be a bit frugal, at least until she felt safe in her very hairy puffball skin.
[Would you like to consume 113 Essence to reach Imp Lv.5?]
Interesting, it was giving her the option to jump straight to five since she had enough. If she didn’t want to, could she just go with four?
[Would you like to consume 49 Essence to reach Imp Lv.4?]
Nah, I’ll go with five. Just then, the euphoric wave hit her, increased in potency since it was a double level—delicious dessert after dinner.
[Demon Rank: Imp Lv.5 | Essence: 35 / 82 | GP: 2]
Dang, the cost of levels was getting expensive. Quick math told her that it was about 30% more Essence per level each time. Just by a rough estimate, assuming she didn’t heavily increase her Malice for its reduction effect, then from Lv.19 to 20, it would cost approximately 4,200 Essence. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be that much, and the curve would taper off. There did seem to be a slight reduction comparing what was needed between Lv.5 and Lv.6. Otherwise, she’d definitely need to heavily increase her Demon rates.
[Spend 1 GP to unlock Divining Ear?]
[Hybrid Skill: Divining Ear Lv.1 unlocked]
[Lucidity increased]
[Gnostic Attunement increased]
[Gnostic Attunement has improved from Aware to Touched]
Something else Angelica had noticed was that acquiring new Skills of the same Attunement seemed to provide more progress than increasing those Skills. Unlike Skills now, Attunements didn’t show the percentage. Maybe that was a higher Scrying Eye level, or perhaps it was more arbitrary.
She looked over at the cat on the bed and activated the skill. It made the usual mental voice whisper into her mind.
[The cat is sleeping]
Well, that wasn’t very insightful. But what could she really expect? It was a Lv.1 skill and used on a target that wouldn’t exactly have many secrets. It had at least told her the type of creature Cherub was, and what he was doing. That last part was different from Scrying Eye, at least. What about at a distance? That was the more important part. Unable to think of anyone else off the top of her head, the tenant went with her dear landlord.
[Lurren Gate is female]
Okay, how exactly was that helpful? Angelica was already starting to get buyer’s remorse. The skill description mentioned useful information. Maybe she had to dictate what would be useful? Can you tell me something about where she is or what she’s doing?
[Lurren Gate is at home]
Okay, that was better. Not significantly better, but better. At least she could check whether her landlord was going to randomly spring up on her or not. What about Summoner relations? Is she a Summoner or connected to them or Demons in some way?
[You are not wisened enough to divine that information]
That was probably the skill’s fancy way of saying that either the Skill level or her Lucidity wasn’t high enough, but it was promising that it didn’t rule it out entirely. It definitely made her want to train the Skill to see what else it could provide. However, she’d definitely need to find a more interesting subject to train it on. Maybe she’d pull out her old high school yearbook and do a snooping check in.
For now, she also requested, please mute any summoning calls until I’m ready. The voice didn’t respond, but hopefully it registered, not needing the distraction while she continued working on her life plan. Now it was time to dig deep into the rest of her available Skills. It wouldn’t hurt to save her remaining Growth Point for one of the more expensive Skills, but if there was something immediately useful, she probably wouldn’t hesitate. And to her surprise, there was another 1 GP skill connected to both Scrying Eye and Divining Ear.