With the magic book thoroughly skimmed and Nyoka still asleep on the ground Catherine decided to move on to another book to pass the time. This time Catherine picked up the book on skills, which explained the basics of skills and how they worked. She cracked open the book and began skimming it.

Skills, according to this book, corresponded with what Catherine has been told so far. Skills were set in stone effects that anyone could learn or acquire through various means. Some ways included: Being taught a skill, learning it in a book, randomly getting it as a result of an activity you do often, or if you got it via your bloodline. The book gave examples for each.

Being taught meant someone with a skill showed you it, and with enough practice you were able to learn it from them. This way was limited, and only applied to basic skills or some skill done with a tool or weapon. Like a swordsman teaching someone how to do a powerful slash or a cook teaching their skill with a pan.

Learning a skill from a book required you to first meet the prerequisites to get the skill, and for you to fully understand the skill being described by the book. This was also limited to basic skills, you couldn’t learn how to do anything too crazy by reading a book.

Learning via an activity you do often is just practice, and hopefully the world would reward you by giving you a skill suited for it. New skills could be discovered this way, but it generally followed the pattern of common sense. Or another way to put it would be “A rouge that only backstabs would eventually get a backstab skill.”

Bloodline was the most straight forward and only required you to be a member of a species to get a skill. If you were born a vampire, for example, you would have skills to suite a vampire like blood manipulation or turning into mist. Or in extreme cases if you are apart of a family that has for multiple generations practiced and maintained a skill you would acquire it.

After this the book goes on to explain using skill. Which the book states that using a skill you possess only requires two things, unless the skill specifically states otherwise you only need to know you have the skill and have enough mana to activate it. A common restrictor for skill activation is requiring a tool. You’d obviously couldn’t activate a sword skill without a sword, for example. Knowing your skill and how it works is important.

Catherine stopped skimming and went back to reread the last passage, focusing on the requirements for activating skills. “Enough mana to activate it…” her mind went back to the ship, remembering a particular moment when she unable to use a skill she saw someone use “A girl… name was jill? Ah, not important.” Standing up and storing the book she thought back to that moment, remembering the girl with the crystalizing arrows that teleported.

Back then she just shrugged it off, was disappointing but wasn’t the biggest loss. Now that she had been through all that shit in the testing area with Frig and Delvin’s dungeon…being able to teleport would have been insanely useful, especially against Rose who could just freeze her body splits. But after reading that… her not being able to use the skill was maybe not a fluke? And she just didn’t have enough mana to activate it?

If that was the case then she’d have to question just how much mana that girl had but surely by now she might have enough?

Catherine once again thought back to that moment with the girl, how she killed her and stole her two skills she had shown her. Trying to remember the feeling of her using her skills she focused back to the moment she first tried to teleport. This time, now that she was more aware of it, she felt *something* try and manifest, a lump of mana forming inside her for a brief moment but fizzling out.

She frowned “if I’m doing it right I guess that means I don’t have enough mana?” once again she pictured the girl, remembering her successfully teleport “how much damn mana did that bitch have!?” she yelled in frustration but then sighed in defeat. Glancing at the still sleeping Nyoka she considered continuing her skimming of the book but decided against it. Surely she got all the information she needed and Nyoka had been sleeping for long enough.

There was still the matter of food for the poor girl but that wasn’t Catherine’s problem. If worse comes to worse Catherine would just shove some random *food* she had in her storage into Nyoka’s mouth and call it a day. The slime walked over to Nyoka, tapping the girl with her foot “time to wake up, we have to get moving.” Seeing the lack of response from Nyoka, Catherine frowned and kicked the young cat-girl “I said get up! We slowed down enough already!”

Still not getting a response Catherine lifted the girl up, shaking her violently before stopping “She isn’t dead… is she?” Catherine questioned, she couldn’t think of a reason why she would be, she hadn’t messed around too much inside the girls body, and she seemed healthy enough given the circumstance. She brought Nyoka’s face closer to her own, noting that she was at least breathing.

“OK, not dead… I think?” She had enough common knowledge from the people she killed to know that ‘breathing = alive’ but couldn’t understand why the girl refused to wake or was unable to. Catherine groaned, once again the girl was proving to be more trouble than she was worth at the moment. Figuring it might help she went with her earlier idea, she forced her hand into Nyoka’s mouth, transforming it into a tentacle before blasting *food*into her stomach. A mix of blood and dissolved monster parts with a bit of alcohol.

After filling her stomach and not getting a reaction she withdrew her hand. Nyoka was still breathing but was out cold. ” Great…” with no other option and still wanting to move on Catherine swung Nyoka over her shoulder and left the passageway, jumping down to the nearest pipe and trotting down The GUTS.