[SS 2.85] Bad Vibes (Part 4/4) (Patreon)

[Summoner Rank: Novice Lv.25]

[Passive Skill: Speed Studying Lv.1 unlocked]

As soon as the deluge of new information hit Angelica’s mind, the Skill unlocked immediately. It didn’t even require any learning on her end as she’d initially planned for her unlock attempts, since all she’d gleaned during her previous Summons was how much of a creep Giatour was. Though, she had at least somewhat contributed to the effort from her time as a frog, because apparently the tongue played an integral role in Angie’s experiments, but before she got to that:

[Speed Studying has been enchanted to Transmissive Speed Studying]

[Transmissive Affix: After a study session is complete, new information learned from Duplicates can optionally be transmitted directly back to the original existence instead of needing to wait for reabsorption. This only applies to information specifically gained through the use of Speed Studying. No other new knowledge will qualify]

Interesting. So if Angie suddenly learned a person’s name, that likely wouldn’t count, but if she read a book with the purpose of learning, that could all be sent to her immediately. And it was likely optional so that they could decide whether or not to have her suddenly bombarded with an information dump. Very cool, and GP saved, and there’d also apparently be another Gnostic, Egoism double-Attuned Skill when she raised it to Lv.15. She wondered just how much faster her reading and learning capabilities were now, probably not a ton at Lv.1, but any experimenting would need to wait. First, she needed to parse through the results of what had been gained.

[Poison Chef Lv.5, Poison Eater Lv.11, Discerning Palate Lv.3]

Wow, that was a significant jump for Poison Chef, and that was with the heavy reduction in experience transfer. And geez, just how much food had she gone through. Without even looking, Angelica now knew her fridge and freezer were completely packed to the brim with tainted meals that’d last for an absurd amount of time. And she didn’t really need to worry about them spoiling, because, well, they were already spoiled. Though, not all of them, because it took a while for her Duplicate to get Poison Chef to trigger the first time. 

The important knowledge after that was Angie had confirmed that Poison Chef could in fact be guaranteed with Reprint. However, there was a tradeoff. At Lv.5, Poison Chef currently had a 17% chance of triggering, or a bit more than 1 in 5 odds. In order for Reprint to guarantee success, she had to simulate those odds for a practical guarantee, basically negating the percent chance. Meaning that to create a single dish perfectly with poison applied, it currently required just over five times the amount of ingredients. 

That was extremely wasteful when she could just use Toxic Imbuement. However, that now allowed her to poison objects, though in an obscure way, using Irritant, and any other poisons she may get in the future. She was excited to see how it tasted too, but that would need to wait until she was done processing everything. Currently, Irritant was quite limited in how it could be applied, so any flexibility was welcome. And if she got Force Feed in the future, that meant it could become fully effective at range, exceeding the current distance limits of Poison Breath. 

Speaking of Force Feed, Angie had tried to unlock that, but had failed. She’d attempted to Manifest Ice directly into her stomach, but that hadn’t worked. Apparently, at least with this Skill, generation inside of a living creature was off-limits. Well, at least with herself, but that was likely the case with others. Not that it was something she was likely to test anytime soon. Maybe the own magicalness of their bodies interfered with her being able to cast the ability at a distance. That was the best guess she had for now. 

However… there was a loophole: the mouth. Well, at least her mouth. It probably wouldn’t be the same for others, but she had a way to use magic in her maw. The revelation that the tongue counted as an appendage was coming in handy, since it was apparently fully capable of using Skills. Angie had solved the poison pill dilemma she’d been toying with. It was probably easiest to just follow the steps directly, and if she understood it correctly, she’d unlock two things.

First, she used her tongue to make a very small Frostbite ice pellet with max stacks of Toxic, then immediately shoved it away to Second Stomach. Then she repeated that but with Potent Toxic pills. The basic Toxic pill was dropped into her stomach, triggering the effects of Poison Eater, followed by the Potent Toxic one. Immediately, her health shot up to 100%, but then the regeneration stopped entirely, not that there was anything to heal. But she knew immediately that if she took damage, no further regeneration would happen. Angelica scried herself just to confirm the results. 

[Poisoned: Potent Null - 1,181 Stacks]

She watched as the Null stacks slowly trickled down back to zero. As for why they’d turned from Toxic to Null, apparently the answer lied with her new Skill.

[Active Skill: Instant Digestion Lv.4 unlocked]

[Poison Eater Lv.12, Plague Resistance Lv.13]

Angie had asked the DGS why the Skill had unlocked, and the apparent answer was that it was an act of self-preservation, that she would have died without it. Not that it would be such a terrible thing, since she was just a Duplicate, but it was thanks to that, Angelica knew she’d be safe repeating the act. And she was kind of surprised the DGS hadn’t yelled at her for doing something that she knew could get her killed, but she already had the “Shaking Our Heads” Achievement. 

As for what Instant Digestion had done, well, for starters, it had crushed her hopes about the Skill, refuting the reason she’d wanted it in the first place. Well, it both did and didn’t at the same time. To understand why, she read through the description once more. 

[Immediately digests food in a target's stomach, providing all nutritional benefits and detriments. Cost: Variable MP. Depending on Skill Level, Famine Attunement, volume, and digestibility] 

Benefits and detriments, those were keywords. In most situations, poison would only be a detriment. It was only thanks to Poison Eater that there was any positive. So yes, Instant Digestion did immediately convert all remaining stacks to Health in accordance with Poison Eater, distributing the benefit. But apparently, it also circumvented the detriment mitigation aspect of Poison Eater, meaning at the same time, she was instantly damaged for the same stacks. As an example, if she had a hundred stacks of Poison in her stomach, she would both heal for a hundred stacks and take a hundred stacks worth of damage at the same time.

However, using Instant Digestion on the poison resulted in a net Health positive thanks to her other Skills. Poison Eater boosted the healing to be more than Toxic’s innate damage slightly with each level, and Plague Resistance—for which this was apparently a great way to train—reduced how much it would hurt her. That excess Health had been enough to immediately heal her in full, despite it being far less than she normally should have gotten if Potent Toxic had healed her through Poison Eater naturally. 

The DGS had given her Instant Digestion to stop that from happening for some reason, which it then went on to explain that If she hadn’t taken a good amount of damage to counterbalance the healing, that apparently would have killed her. In the same way that someone could overdose on medicine, a Demon could be killed from overhealing. Maybe it had something to do with their weakness to Holy?

So Instant Digestion was the savior. Without it, Angelica would have overhealed dozens times more than her max Health due the the sheer number of Toxic stacks at once after Potent Toxic was applied. It would seem she had some leeway, a few seconds to cast Instant Digestion before it became too much, and then the overhealing reduced down to the regular 100% Health. This meant, at least with her current Health pool, there was nothing stopping her from jumping back up to full Health when needed.

Unfortunately, that was not something that could be done perpetually, because the limit of Potent Toxic still remained. Using Instant Digestion didn’t actually get rid of the Potent Toxic stacks themselves. According to the DGS, being inflicted with a stack of something was innately neither a benefit nor a detriment, and thus was not affected by Instant Digestion. So the poison stacks remained even after using the Skill, becoming “Null,” which meant they were no longer poisoned, and wouldn’t hurt or heal her, but would still deplete as they normally would if she were poisoned, requiring time for them all to diminish. 

The Null stacks retained the effect of Potent Toxic where new ones could not be applied to her body until they were all cleared. That meant she couldn’t inflict herself with new Null stacks until the original ones were gone. So if she used Potent Toxic again before things were all good, Instant Digestion couldn’t be used to take damage and convert them to Null stacks. Therefore, boom, dead from too much heals. Effectively, it meant that if she used Potent Toxic to heal, she had a cooldown; waiting for the stacks to clear before she used it again, or it would kill her.

On the other hand, this cleared the way for regular Toxic stacks to be applied again. She could go back to the good ole regular regenerative healing in the interim between Health explosions. Regular Toxic, when consumed, worked a bit differently. The number of stacks mattered, but they didn’t diminish like stacks normally would. Instead, Poison Eater seemed to calculate the overall amount of healing and distributed it evenly over time until the poison was spent. 

Annoyingly, regular Toxic didn’t play well with itself. If she swallowed two ice pills of the base stuff at the same time, only one would give healing benefits until it was fully depleted, while the other sat patiently and waited its turn to activate. Fortunately, the mitigation aspect of Poison Eater kept her from getting damaged during the wait. 

However, according to Angie’s tests, if the ice melted from regular digestion during this time, those beneficial stacks were lost. Definitely the detriment of using ice over something slow to digest like reliable and sturdy dirt. That just meant she’d have to keep them in Second Stomach and manually transfer them over as needed, instead of consuming a ton at once and forgetting about it.

If Instant Digestion was used on regular Toxic, the same thing would happen. The stacks would become Null, stopping the regenerative process, but she’d receive a bit of instant Health due to the same net positive reasons as before. But in this case, she could pile up the Null stacks as much as she wanted, as long as no Potent Toxic debuff was in play. So in a sense, she could brute force 100% Health through this method whenever she wanted. It would just take time—though significantly faster than regular regen—and a bit of MP, actually, a lot of MP.

Using Frostbite to that extent was costly, in itself. Though that could be surmounted by being prepped ahead of time, similar to how Conductive Attunement Skills worked. After this, once her MP was high again, she’d be stockpiling ice pellets for days. Maybe she’d also swallow a couple pill bottles just to make organizing them easier, and in case she needed to spit them up at some point. Definitely better than having a bunch of loose deadly balls rolling around. 

Instant Digestion was the other big expense. The ice itself didn’t require much MP at all, not even really noticeable. It fell perfectly under the qualifiers of “volume and digestibility.” Really, not much could be better than a small piece of ice. However, poison absolutely sucked for both. It came in mass quantities and was one of the worst things for the body to digest. Meaning, each cost of Instant Digestion, especially when paired with Potent Toxic, cost way more than just the base healing items. At least for now, until the Skill levelled significantly.

Just from that one dose alone, Angelica’s MP had dropped significantly, putting her back under a hundred MP for the first time since the Malignant Geyser fight. She’d been pretty good about keeping it high, but today had just been an oddity. Sleep definitely needed to be in the near future. 

So to summarise, she could now heal to max Health on a moment’s notice, but that cost a lot of MP, and had a cooldown of currently almost two minutes. She could use Instant Digestion to rapidly regenerate with regular Toxic, but that also cost a good amount of MP, though less than with Potent Toxic. And thanks to Angie’s innovation, she could stockpile Toxic ice pills for virtually perpetual regular healing at all times, as long as she took care to prepare. 

Meaning, unless she was taking constant damage that would mitigate the regeneration, such as a worse version of the Zebub poison maze, was debilitated by some status condition where she couldn’t heal, or took enough damage to end her life in a single hit, she was virtually unkillable. Damn. Was she already near-invincible as just a Puck? That was amazing, she was amazing!

[Egoism Attunement heftily increased]

[Pride Attunement monumentally increased]

[Pride Attunement has improved from Touched to Embraced]

Crap, crap, crap, reign it in. That, uhh, was probably not a good sign. At this rate, her Pride would be the death of her. Yes, she still needed to approach every situation with a significant measure of caution. And she also needed to remember that if her MP ever ran out, she’d be screwed regardless. There were a lot of factors at play with this new healing system that could be detrimental if she ever forgot or overlooked any. But fortunately, she had something new to help her out with the intricacies.

[Combo Skill: Health Factory Lv.1 unlocked | Using your tongue, create edible portions of Toxic or Potent Toxic through Frostbite to be consumed and trigger Poison Eater. Continue the production line and consumption for healing as needed. Utilize Instant Digestion to enhance the healing as needed and/or desired or as a safety measure from overhealing. Additionally, Second Stomach may be used as intermittent storage during the process]

Yes, that should help her with running through it all, and then there was the added benefit of higher Combo Skill levels reducing the MP needed. That was definitely needed with something as costly as Health Factory. Maybe someday, some very far day, her MP reduction and regen would allow for perpetual 100% health at all times. A goal for sure, but probably not one she’d achieve until a much higher Rank. Also, the benefits from Angie’s hard work kept on coming.

[Achievement: Second Hand unlocked | A Duplicate has provided you with the knowledge of how to unlock a new Skill. That alone is impressive, but common enough, and not Achievement worthy. What is, though, is that they further flexed their creativity to use that new Skill in a Combo Skill of their very own. Perhaps together, the two of you can come up with something even greater. Duplicates may now be used in Combo Skills, either as integral parts of existing Skills, or to make entirely new ones]

Wow that really was incredible, and had the chance to really let her creativity shine. The first thing that instantly came to mind was Parry and Riposte. She could use herself to block an attack, disorient or debilitate an enemy, then have Angie suddenly appear, either through a fresh summons or Recall, and deliver the decisive blow herself. There were certainly a lot of opportunities besides that, but it was what came to mind for now.

Angelica went ahead and remade Angie, so she could take care of the measuring task. The poor girl didn’t even have twenty MP to her name now, but had plenty of Health. In the meantime, Angelica gave herself an Order to nap until at least her clone's return so that she could recover a bit. That passed in the blink of an eye before she found herself woken by herself. She’d probably go back to sleep soon, but first, she went ahead and texted Vystal her sizes, but also had a question for her.

『Merlina: Hey, have you guys ever heard of an Abstainer name Giatour? He’s just an Initiate, and doesn’t live anywhere near here, but Gelic had a really weird experience with him. Nothing happened exactly, but he seriously creeped her out.』

『Vystal: Wow, it must take a lot to disturb a Demon. Sorry, I’ve never heard the name before. I can ask around a bit to see if anyone knows anything, and see about getting him added to our blacklist. Thank you for letting us know, and be sure to mention it if he tries to contact Gelic again. We could assist more then.』

『Merlina: Apparently, Gelic made it so he can’t reach out to her telepathically, but I don’t think that’d prevent him from calling her. Is there any way to prevent specific people from summoning her?』

『Vystal: Well, that’d be up to both of you. Demons can naturally resist summons, just like they can resist Orders, but that usually only goes up to a certain rank and power. If he’s just an initiate, she should be able to resist it on her own. I think the Skill is just called Reject Summons. But yes, any higher would be a problem.』

『Vystal: That’s where you can help out, though. There’s no specific name for it, but should you not want another Summoner to snag your Demon, you can use your own power to make it harder for them, ideally cancel it out. Gelic would need to let you know for now, though, when she needs help. Eventually, around Apprentice, you’ll be able to tell when someone else is trying to Summon her, and can make gut calls, but until then, teamwork is best. Since you’re strong, it should help a lot』

『Merlina: Thanks a bunch. I’ll look into it. Hopefully, I’ll never need it, but best to be prepared』

『Vystal: You’re welcome. We’ll get these measurements to the tailor. Technically, Sperado should have been the one to get them from you, but it was decided that’d be too intrusive and not something he needed to know. The outfit will be ready the day of, assuming you’re still planning to come, yes?』

『Merlina: Yep! At least right now, unless something urgent comes up.』

『Vystal: Great, see you in a few days.』

So… DGS. As soon as one exchange ended, Angelica immediately started up another. Why the Hell don’t I have Reject Summons?! All Demons are supposed to have it, right?! So why don’t I?!

[Active Skill: Reject Summons Lv.1 unlocked | Attempt to reject the call of a Summoner. Cost: Variable MP. Amount required and chance of success scales with Skill level, Summoner’s Rank, quality and complexity of Summoning Circle, Summoner’s will, and any additional mana spent, Demon’s Rank, and Obstinance. Additional factors that reduce chance of success and increase cost: If Alias is known. If Summoner uses a catalyst related to the Demon, such as Relics, bodily remnants, and Scriptures of Legends. Should the Demon’s True Name be used, Reject Summon will automatically fail regardless of any other factors]

Wow, that was a bunch of unexpected new stuff at once. Relics? Scriptures? Too much to think about in her tired state. But basically the gist was, if they owned anything of hers, or knew a lot about her, they could utilize that in their Summons. She definitely hadn’t heard anything about stuff like that so far. Nor was it ever mentioned in her book. Maybe it wasn’t a common practice, at least in this world. Okay, so why didn’t I have that at the start? Despite getting what she wanted, she still had to complain.

[You had it, but never attempted to use it. The Skill was simply unlisted]

Okay, well, if I knew it was there, I definitely would have! Yeah, like with Hijir, that could have come in damn handy. That all worked out, but if he’d been a worse dude, that could have saved her the trouble. Sounded like it could have been costly with a low chance of success, but at least being given the option would have been nice. Well, any other unlisted Skills you’re holding out on me? Mind handing them over?

[Certainly. If you can name them]

Ugh, you piece of… It was hard to argue with that. Maybe other Demons could tell her, though if they always had them, then maybe they wouldn’t even know. It wasn’t crucial at the moment. Well what about the Summoner side? Mind adding it so that I can understand it better? There was no response for a moment, but then suddenly:

[Summoner Skill: Hands Off unlocked | Exert your will as a Summoner to keep others from taking what’s yours. Any Summons that your Bound Demon receives which you don’t want them to take will automatically pit your strength against their measure. Additional MP may be spent to further tip the scales in your favor. Should you succeed, their Summons will fail, and that Summoner will receive a penalty in any further attempts while the Demon remains under your care]

Wow, now that was great. Hopefully, she could leverage her Summoner side first, and save the MP she’d use for Resist Summons. After that, it’d come down to which was more economical. And when she did start summoning other Demons, it was nice to know that there was a way to keep them safe besides just using better Summoning Circles. Alright, she was satisfied for now. So back to sleep. Then when she woke up, there was more work to do before her next outing as Merlina.