Chapter 48: Climbing the Ability Tree

  Crack!

  Crack!

  Crack!

  Having ascertained the true purpose of these delightful little gems, Chastity crushed them in quick succession. She was flooded with pings and notifications.

  A total of four new Ability Points, without leveling up! Sitting cross-legged on the floor of ‘Sprout Home,’ she tingled with excitement. Why and how did these special crystals end up in the world? Some artifact of the game-like System that governed the workings of this fantasy world? Divine intervention?

  Chastity thought of her not-so-little little sister, Charity. She used to be obsessed with a certain online game called ‘E.S.O.’ There was a mechanic involving finding hidden shards to earn skill points or something. Chastity could hardly remember. She found the game utterly boring to watch and now wished she had paid more attention to her sister’s enthusiastic ramblings on the subject.

  Regardless–Ability Points! Woo!

  Chastity opened her Character Record and navigated to her Ability Tree.

  At her current level, she had access to the following options (not including Recall Knowledge):

  Two skills ready to be unlocked. Another to be advanced.

  That made the first two choices very easy.

  Chastity double-checked the Ability description for reference.

  She now could imagine more contexts in which this might be useful. If she ever found and freed those captives, this Aura could help them work together to escape. She also remembered the seemingly otherworldly dread that fell upon Charlie during their brush with that Infernal.

  Moving on, even though she currently had no shield and therefore presumably could not yet use the Ability…

  Again, she referenced the Ability description.

  I currently have a cap of 30 Focus Points, Chastity calculated. If I use this ability at full, then I would have 20% holy damage added to this attack if I’m reading this right. It can scale with my level, but there are times it might confer no holy damage at all. So far, holy damage seems like the only thing capable of truly harming any undead creature. And I’m running low on pickles!

  I doubt there are any shields to be found in all of Goldenberry. The best I could do is borrow the lid off one of Mrs. Underfoot’s cooking pots. Hmm… would that even work?

  Kobelt shot Chastity a curious sidelong glance as she appeared to be mumbling to herself and staring intently into thin air. But he soon went back to his tinkering.

  Two more Ability Points, but I can only spend one. The question is, do I advance to Detect Evil II or do I split the ability to Sense Evil?

  Automatically detecting nearby evil creatures seemed SO much more useful, but at the cost of a permanent hit to her max Focus Point capacity. That soft cap decrease would impact her potential holy damage with Sacred Shield. Yet, she really saw very little point in detecting evil objects.

  Like what, Chastity thought, an Evil Spoon?

  She snickered at the thought, drawing another glance from Kobelt.

  But then a new thought occurred to her. She could spam Detect Evil II on random objects to quickly increase her Ability Proficiency. Then, with her remaining ‘free’ point, she could possibly take the Ability Split and gain Sense Evil II. It was an interesting idea. That is, if ‘splitting’ was still an option; never again since she spent her first Ability Point had she seen ‘Detect Good’ on the list.

  “Agh!” Chastity sputtered, tired of overthinking it. Tired in general, really. It had been a very long past couple of days.

  I hope I made the right decision. Let’s test this out…

  Looking around the bare shack, Chastity fixed her eyes on the curious ball of metal and wood scrap that Kobelt was working on.

  “Detect Evil,” she said.

  Next she got up and walked to the snow-catcher contraption hanging down from the ceiling.

  “Detect Evil.”

  And so Chastity continued, detecting evil on anything she could find: her boots, her bedroll, the pickle jar. Now Kobelt really must have thought she was off her rocker, but he kept any such opinions to himself.

  By now, Chastity had fully depleted her reserve of Focus Points. She sat down again and accessed her Character Record, zeroing in on the Detect Evil II skill.

  Aha! So she would still be able to split off into the Sense Evil branch after all. But even with her +5% Ability Leveling boon, she was less than halfway towards being able to advance the new skill, not knowing for sure how much her proficiency had continued to grow after reaching the previous advancement stage for that Ability.

  For now, she would have one additional Ability Point in the bank. But her Focus Points were spent, and so was she. Smoothing out the bedroll, Chastity tried to get comfortable for the night, thankful for the shelter, for the fire, and for Kobelt’s nonjudgmental company.