[2.56] Every Waking Moment (Part 3/4)

Angelica had been fully utilizing all limbs, but her mouth was pretty much remaining idle besides eating plates from the buffet of leftovers she still had in her fridge, which she poisoned for extra flavor and to help keep her Health up to combat the lack of sleep. She’d also now frozen some of it so they wouldn’t spoil before she got through them. So she looked around for something small and mouthsized, eventually just deciding on a bottlecap.

After popping it into her mouth, she made it vanish, then had it reappear again a moment later. This was repeated infinitely to train Second Stomach. The Skill received a minor amount of experience perpetually just from items existing in there, but the bulk came from transfers. Normally, doing such an action would take all of her attention, but she was able to write it into her training Order to do so repetitively without thinking about it, doing it in time with her breathing so it felt natural.

Angelica then switched over to doing commissions for a while. Her inbox was overflowing with them. A bunch had come from the generosity fiasco, though only a few of the requests had since been rescinded, so that felt good at least. And there had been a steady trickle since, as readers were catching up to that chapter. Honestly, it was more than she ever had, so many that there was no way she could get through them all while maintaining any sort of semblance of other hobbies or art projects.

At least, that was previously the case. Now she could blitz through them without worry, and she didn’t even do so with her dominant hand. Lefty had been working hard, training endlessly. Coupled with obtained levels, while still not on par with her right-hand workhorse, it was quickly becoming a competent understudy, more than capable enough for the majority of the commission requests, so she let it loose on the inbox, letting that side of her mind pick the work that it would do. Angelica was even so kind as to give it use of her new laptop for a while, since her main mind and right hand were going to take a bit of a break.

She wanted to delve into some reading. It was one of her main hobbies growing up, why she fell in love with fantasy, magic, and witches, but sadly, it had withered away. When she got older, she had less time, and even when she did, she either found herself not feeling like it or used it for art when she was just getting started, until that basically consumed her entire life. And now that she was working for a book publisher, she definitely wanted to get back into it again, both to learn more about the works she was making art for, and to hopefully increase her own stories, both in style and marketability.

First up, though, was the one she’d taken from Adora’s magical bookshelf: Sold Guardian, which she suspected was written by a Demon. That suspicion both shrank and grew as she trudged through the pages. The writing style felt very human, but the perspective was far too on the nose for the Demon culture she’d come to know. It was either by a genius author, a well-studied Summoner, or a Demon. Annoyingly, despite the delicately written flow, it was taking her a while to get through because her reading speed had gone way down. It had been noticeably slow when reading her Demon Summoning book, but that was more due to the missing words and trouble understanding the intricacies of what she was reading, more like it was a textbook.

This appeared to be more than that, though, since pages were definitely going by slower. She used to be able to burn through a book of that size in a day, heck, even a very focused afternoon, but at her current rate, it’d take much longer. Improving that was another part of why she had decided to get back into reading now, for more reasons than one. After getting Fatigue Resistance, two new Skills were available for purchase, which she didn’t wait to learn about this time.

The first of which actually tethered to Gnostic Attunement, breaking the dam of progression that had been previously erected. It made sense in a way, self-improvement and the desire for knowledge went hand-in-hand, very aptly as part of this Skill.

[Passive Skill: Speed Studying | Unlock: 3 GP | Consume and retain new information at increased speeds. Speed of learning scales with Skill Level, Competence, Lucidity, Gnostic Attunement and Egoism Attunement]

It was a simple Skill all things considered, but it could only be considered a definitive quality of life improvement. Angelica wanted it without question. The ability to read, learn, and process information faster felt like a necessity now that she knew about it. Maybe not the tippy top of her priorities, but it was definitely up above the average. And she wanted to get it for free if possible, hence the reading.

Regrettably, she didn’t get it by the time she finished the book, though that was to be expected. If it was gained so simply, then it may as well be a free Skill like Scrying Eye. All she’d gotten from it was reading a pretty good book. It was surprisingly right up her alley, cozy but a bit dramatic at times, filled with slice-of-life but also tense and cool moments. The majority confirmed what she already knew about Demon society, their desire to grow, to improve their Worth, and to be impeded by Summoners as little as possible during that path.

However, it developed and ended differently than she suspected. Ultimately, the Demon decided that their own personal Worth wasn’t as important as they first believed. Instead, they found worth in raising the child, watching them grow and flourish, until he became an adult and they eventually parted ways when the boy lost his Magical Proficiency and the Demon was freed from his binding—some allegory for the end of youth, since that wasn’t how it happened in reality.

The ending was a bit of a tearjerker, and was only increased when it was revealed that despite now being invisible to the human, the Demon regularly visited and watched over him for the rest of his life. Ultimately, it left her with more questions. Were there human and Demon relationships like this? If other Demons had read it, did they find the notions to be nonsense? Or were there more than she thought who expressed themselves beyond their base inhibitions? Sadly, these weren’t answers she’d find for now.

So she moved onto her next book, well next two books. One was the first volume of Penultimate Level 998. It was definitely one of the biggest from Lemon Literature, and she wanted to read it specifically just in case she ever got the chance to meet Adora again. Then they’d have something in common to talk about. Interestingly, the book focused on the idea of growing stronger way more than the Demon one did. Overall, it was a decent read, and she could see why it was popular, giving her a few ideas of how she could introduce similar concepts into Merlina’s, though probably more so into other stories.

For the final book, it was a literary classic from quite a while ago, definitely the driest of the bunch in terms of entertainment, and not something she’d normally read voluntarily. Why she had purchased it, though, was because it came in an interesting format. The words were embossed on the pages, so that the seeing impaired could run their fingers along the letters and read that way. Sadly, with the dawn of audiobooks, the format had all but been abolished, meaning only old works like this remained, at least that she could get without paying an exorbitant amount to a reseller since the majority were out of print.

Rather than running a finger along the words, though, she gave one of her feet a break from being an igloo construction worker and used her toes. At first, she’d tried a wing, but the nerve endings just weren’t sensitive enough to decipher the individual letters. Plus, Cherub would have damn near thrashed the book moments later, deciding it was time for another hunt, but she managed to move it out of the way in time. Reading in such a way was significantly slower than with her eyes, and by the time she finished Penultimate Level, she’d only finished a few chapters, maybe a tenth of the book, which was honestly plenty for now. Damn, it was a slow burn.

Sadly, she didn’t get Speed Studying from that either. But it felt like the right track, as if she was prodding the lock, just with not enough force for it to break. Maybe in the future, when she could do more planning, she’d give it another go while having all of limbs study something, to see if that did it. If not, she’d probably just go ahead and buy the Skill when she had the GP, since it wasn’t all that expensive, and would likely open up more Skills in a similar vein that she’d be interested in.

As for the other new Skill that was available. She was a bit more conflicted about whether she should get it or not. Like, yes, damn she wanted it, but it likely was never one she could get naturally, and it was pricey. Since it hadn’t triggered when her Health was critical when fighting the Eel Malignant, odds were she would never get it for free unless she was a literal single hit away from Death, which wasn’t a situation she wanted to ever be in.

[Passive Skill: Borrowed Time | Unlock: 8 GP | Cutting it close, are we? This will provide the strength to carry on for just a moment longer. When you're near death, or on the brink of exhaustion, you will gain what you need, either in the form of temporary Health or energy, borrowing it from your future self. When the effect of Borrowed Time ends, the added Health or energy will be removed, and take quadruple the amount of rest and recovery to pay back what was borrowed]

[Borrowed Time will not trigger again until the debt has been repaid. Amount of Health or energy gained and the duration of Borrowed Time scales with Skill Level, Vigor, and Egoism Attunement. Additional Unlock Requirement: Touched Egoism Attunement]

Maybe she could get it if she was on the literal verge of passing out and got a second wind. Though if she failed on the first try, that would undoubtedly increase Fatigue Resistance, making each subsequent attempt even harder. So her hopes weren’t high. Yes… it could save her life. However, there was also a good chance she’d never need or use it if she was cautious. Plus… what a damn pain it would be to train.

But that was enough of a reading break and time spent worrying about unlocking Skills, largely because she got her first round of feedback on the book cover. And it was… barely anything, just praise. According to the email, the author was, “surprised by how well you captured the feeling of the story.” There were a few requested alterations about tech enhancements he wanted the cyborg and crowd to have, but other than that, no notes. They were easy enough to accommodate. Barely an hour later, she’d performed the revisioned and had the Reprinted grayscale version to send off, but she set it to send via scheduled email the next day

So she dove into another chapter of Merlina’s in the meantime, since she still had to get back into that routine schedule. The left hand was still completing commissions, but had to be shoved back over to her old computer. Performing proper art on both was much easier now thanks to her training, but also because of a trick she managed to pull off while reading, which helped her speed greatly because she no longer had to move her gaze away from the book to check on the art every few seconds.

Angelica currently had three eyes thanks to Transfiguration. The third was on the left side of her face, close to her temple, letting her stare straight at the computer monitors while facing her laptop. It… sucked to get used to. Suddenly having fifty percent more ocular information was a lot, though not nearly as much as Gawk’s shared vision, so that probably helped quite a bit with adapting.

She was hoping that the third eye might possibly unlock a Skill that altered her field of view at will, but no such luck. Maybe if she spent time as a spider or something else with multiple eyes or skewed perceptions, it’d work out better. Interestingly, though, it led to a few Lucidity increases, and even stranger, Scrying Eye got a twinkle of experience from it, even though she technically never activated the Skill at all.

On the more annoying side was that the extra peeper cost a noticeable amount of Manifest Points to maintain. Her base human form cost nothing with Transfiguration, and any other human appearances had minimal drain, to the point that her natural MP regeneration would now offset it entirely if that’s all she was doing. Her Puck wings were also causing minimal drain, not because of their initial form, since they were hers after all, but because of the scaled size. It took a simple test of shrinking them down to their natural state to confirm that.

However, a third eye, that wasn’t something she was familiar with. No humans had it, neither of her Demon forms had it, so it was a complete foreign object, meaning it required actively using her power to keep it in place. Really, it wasn’t all that much, something she could do endlessly and then replenish with sleep. But because of all of her other actions, Angelica had been keeping a close eye on her MP so she didn’t burn through it accidentally. It was why she was spending so much time building with her ice manifestations instead of just repeatedly recreating them, since that was her main drain at present.

After finishing up the comic chapter, she switched things up a bit with her hands. Right hand took over commissions, letting her work on some more complicated ones, while she tasked left with drawing Runes in her much less fancy sketchpad. As soon as it finished one, she ripped off the page and let it catch fire, just because she didn’t want to have the unstable flashpaper lying around to accidentally set her apartment ablaze. Thanks to her Heat Resistance, she could hold it the entire time it was alight without worrying about getting burned as well.

She still got the experience for Runic Artist without that, when the Rune first activated, but it was a piddly amount. As she recalled, the Runes she’d made before actually gave some decent progress, so it must have to do with the strength of the Runes she was making. Without a proper catalyst, they were all junk Lv.1s with no durability. Meaning that if she wanted to train the Skill properly, she’d either need to use her body or her limited supply of Runestone, neither of which felt worth it.

Angelica still pushed through with the practice until she brute forced the Runic Artist level, literally burning through nearly every notepad she had. Interestingly, How Intriguing provided the most experience per creation. She would have guessed Deterring Field, as the supposed strongest of the Skills, would provide the most, but nope. Either way, she had been cycling through all the ones she knew, because the more she repeated one, the less experience it provided.

The decaying training was proving annoying across the board. It impacted some Skills worse than others. Editable Reprint, slow as it was already, was the least affected, if affected at all, probably because its whole shtick was doing the same thing endlessly. Swipe was the most affected, since hitting the same person in the same few spots could only provide so much growth, apparently. By the end, Swipe’s experience had slowed down significantly, even with her changing up to more obscure body parts. And she’d even stop using it on occasion when MP was low, instead free-handing, or rather, free-winging her assault.

Slash became available for purchase once she’d hit Lv.7, but was never unlocked, undoubtedly because she wasn’t actually doing any real damage to herself. She couldn’t really switch up to training any of her other attack Skills either, because the wings weren’t suitable for Stabbing or Bashing, even when she balled up the end of the wing into a makeshift fist. Second Stomach, Irritant, and Venomous Strike saw minimal drop-off, however. And since she was increasing the weight of her dumbbell regularly, the Might and Vigor increases kept coming.

The only other method she had to change up a few times was the ice building blocks for Manufacture. Its decay was pretty slow too, but a bit more notable than the others. Honestly, adding more variety was more for her feet's sanity, getting tired of stacking the same shapes endlessly. Who knew feet could get bored?