Standing in the middle of a now cracked and uneven field where the spell circle once was, Sarah picked up the three rings from the other remnants of the sacrificed sword. Mana was condensing around them, yet it was far too little for what she would have normally expected in this world. They were usable for the moment, but ultimately failures. Not the worst possible outcome, but it seemed she had been too slow. If she had to guess, something was probably wrong with souls. She genuinely would have liked it to somehow get more informa-

[Mana Gathering Ring

Quality: poor

Effects: Slightly increases the mana recovery rate.

Description:

A ring which traps a half dissipated soul and uses it to accumulate mana through complicated engravings. While a genius worked at this item, due to the inadequate materials and circumstances during its creation the rings quality is rather poor. It is nearly a miracle that this item exists in the first place.

]

She could have thought of that earlier. There would probably be a way to check the effects of items, when Eas already quantified the attributes of its inhabitants. The description was still a bit meager and missed that, even though all three items had the same, they accumulated different amounts of mana, though the differences were minute at best. At least it confirmed that she could still capture souls and use them to gather mana. Sarah wanted to ask a bit more about how the item info-box worked, yet after Eas offered only very general infos she already expected she couldn't bring herself to ask Nia.

Having finished the ritual and an initial check of the flawed items, she threw two of the rings to her companions. Keeping the strongest of them for herself, her sister obviously got the next best one.

As Sera was already experienced with her sisters terrible physical abilities she didn't have any problems catching it. The same was unfortunately not true for the assassin. At first surprised by the sudden throw and then thrown off by the aim she had some issues grasping the small item, yet her superior stats didn't let her down in the end.

"Hey, say something before you throw items around!" The new addition to their team could only respond in indignation to the sudden action of the small girl, however then quickly got lost in thought after seeing the item description.

Even though Sarah was exhausted, mostly mentally, though her stamina would also need some time to fill up again, she decided that she shouldn't leave behind the ritual site as it was. The spell circle was destroyed from the mana she pushed into it, but who knew what being could find the ritual and use parts of her invention without her permission.

Acting on the thought, she created another sphere of water, though now much bigger, before getting to the border of the clearing, on top of a few roots and relinquishing control over her creation. The water, following its nature, turned the grassless ground easily into formless mud and displaced the remaining items of the dead. It would still look weird, but hopefully people would just think of it as a fire and water mage fighting and the three being collateral damage. Or something else along those lines. Not that she really cared as long as whoever found this place didn't come to bother her.

The ease with which she had summoned the sphere also reminded her that she had to check her gains.

[Your Water affinity has reached Lv 6.]

...

[You have created 3 Mana Gathering Rings (poor).]

[Your ##### extra class has reached Lv 1.]

[The Chrysopoeia skill has been awarded.]

[You learned the Soul Sense skill.]

[Your Chrysopoeia skill has reached Lv 1.]

[Your Searcher of ##### class has reached Lv 19.]

[Your Searcher of ##### class has reached Lv 20.]

There were a lot of messages, so she didn't bother looking through all of them and just looked at her status.

[Sarah Goldschmidt

Age: 3

Species: Human Lv 3 -> 6

Classes:

Searcher of ##### Lv 18 -> 20

##### Lv 0 -> 1 Ex

Affinity:

Water Lv 0 -> 11

#####

Condition: Mindmelted

Titles:

Genius of Mind

Progenitor of a new Age

The first Mage

Nemesis of Gods

Breaker of Reality

World Invader

Witness of the Unthinkable

Dungeon Destroyer

Attributes:

Hlth 80/ 80

Stmn 21/ 80

Snty 32/560

Mana 20/630

Vit 7 -> 8

End 7 -> 8

Str 8 -> 9

Agi 9 -> 10

Dex 11 -> 12

Wil 45 -> 56

Sol 52 -> 63

Int 33 -> 39

Prc 32 -> 38

Mnd 32 -> 38

Skills:

Chrysopoeia 1 (new)

Mana Efficiency 2 -> 4

Mana Harvesting 9

Mana Sense 4 -> 5

Micro Magic 10

Overmind 1

Perfect Memory -

Sacrifice 1

Spell Carving 10

Spell Casting 10

Spell Creation 5 -> 6

Spell Hacking 3

Soulbond 1

Soul Sense 1 (new)

]

The gains in her affinity as well as old skills were as she expected. She probably would have also gained levels in spell carving and micro magic if they weren't already at their highest level. Yet again, her status screen surprised her with new additions, at least now it was in a positive sense and not another weird condition.

... or at least she hoped it was positive.

If she had to guess, whatever she sensed moments before the completion of the item must have been the souls used as material. That could have been the reason for her gaining the soul sense skill. Though she had no idea how her extra class and the chrysopoeia skill was connected to all of that. It would literally mean transmuting or turning something into gold, yet she didn't interact with gold and it leveled after she gained the soul sense skill. Maybe it happened due to her creating the rings? Though she wouldn't have awarded herself a level for that performance.

So many more questions she had to answer. Hopefully the skill descriptions from Eas would be helpful.

[Chrysopoeia]

[A skill unique to the ##### extra class. Eases the acquisition of skills. Transforms normally unobtainable skills or their effects into obtainable ones.]

[Soul Sense]

[A skill derived from the Elemental Sense skill. The effects of this skill are normally only available to those who have the elemental sense skill as well as the ##### affinity, however through a lot of effort and living over a long time together with souls your Chrysopoeia skill allowed you to gain this ability. Allows you to sense the souls of the living and recently deceased.]

She started to think that Eas enjoyed it to withhold information from her. The descriptions were at least on the point and while chrysopoeia had a weird name for what it did, she could see where the name came from.

Maybe it was also just an issue with adjusting the local language to the ones she knew.

Much more of a mystery was the description of soul sense. Sarah was pretty sure the hidden affinity wasn't the same as the one she had. Otherwise she would have just gained elemental sense and chrysopoeia didn't need to change anything. Her next best guess was soul affinity, as it was in the name, but why was soul affinity censored, when the system otherwise didn't mind to mention souls?

[Can entities living in the Realms censor words and concepts?]

[Privileges can be used to prevent other entities from acquiring knowledge. Knowledge blocked this way may be acquired if more privileges are paid than were used to block the knowledge. Privileges to block or unblock knowledge can be paid by multiple individuals and over time.]

An interesting feature, yet very annoying to her. Also it would mean that some being or organization on Eas has an interest in keeping the fact that souls or at least affinities related to them existed hidden.

[How many privileges are needed to-]

She stopped. Privileges could be used to acquire knowledge, not only by her but by others as well. If there was something out there, which wanted to prevent people from acquiring knowledge about souls or her own affinity and had enough privileges to block access to it, it wouldn't be unthinkable that they were also checking for and disposing of arising issues. Like someone looking up the amount of privileges which was currently needed to unlock the knowledge. In this case Sarah and her two followers.

It was only an assumption, but they should get some defenses against soul attacks. She wasn't sure what they could be searching for, maybe her soul sense skill put her already on their kill list, however she didn't want to risk anything.

Though even if they dodged the metaphorical bullet, having ways to defend the soul couldn't be a disadvantage. Her summoning showed that there were more ways to damage the soul than some organization or entity with a potential existing soul affinity. Maybe someone of the three should also try to get said affinity, though she had no idea how to evolve any of their current elements to souls... Not that she knew how affinities evolved in the first place.

"Sarah, if you are done, can we get going?" Her sister interrupted her thoughts. Sarah just nodded in response, before getting closer to Sera, who had also fled to a nearby tree to prevent the water of the mage to wet her shoes. Not that the few centimeters of flood would have done any actual damage.

After a quick tuck on Seras coat Sarah whispered a few more questions for Nia. She didn't want to talk and asking the questions this way shouldn't be much of a problem.