Zarek gave Priya a kiss on the cheek and tucked her into bed. She had a glow to her right about now, and a bright smile that said she had long forgotten about her favorite pair of jeans.
Behave, Zarek thought, looking down at a certain thing swinging between his legs. Honestly, he wanted to go for more, but he realized that he had gotten a bit carried away due to the excitement of it all.
This was a twist that he certainly wasn't expecting, but he had to investigate more.
…
Profession: [Anato Scribe (S)]
Profession Tier: [F-]
Profession Talents:
>[Inscribe (F-)]
>[Decode (F-)]
>[Infuse (F-)]
--
'Inscribe… I see… so it seems like the purpose of this Talent is to take Treasures, Formulas, Blueprints, or things of the like, and then distill them down into a form that my body can take advantage of.'
Zarek looked down at his tattoo.
'It seems temporary, though… but I think that might actually be related more to Temp Duplicate than anything else… Are the other Talents here supposed to be doing that instead…? Hm…?'
There were a lot of overlapping layers here, things that were difficult to see through in a single sitting. It felt like the Profession and Talents were overlapping in all sorts of complex ways.
'Then what is Decode?'
Zarek tried to use it on the blueprint, but it failed.
'Hm… there's nothing to decode here, so does that mean…'
Zarek suddenly stood to his feet again, but this time he was less fidgety as he didn't want to wake Priya up. He zoomed to the bedside table then used Decode on the small parrying shield he had ended up giving to Priya.
When it started, Zarek almost started to laugh.
Unfortunately, when it was halfway there, it failed. However, that did exactly nothing to throw Zarek off. If anything, he had another belly full of laughter that was moments from exploding out of him.
He knew exactly why it failed. Decode was too low level to complete what it needed on what was a substantial E Class Treasure.
Why?
Because his Profession Tier was F- right now.
Then why did the crossbow shield succeed despite also being E Class?
That was because Decode and Inscribe were two different abilities to begin with. Zarek hadn't been trying to understand the crossbow shield—he already understood it to begin with because he had the blueprint.
Then, on top of that, he used Harmonic Recall on it, bolstering his comprehension of it further. By the time he was the one drawing the crossbow shield on the scroll, he had "dumbed" it down enough that despite it being E Class, his currently F- Profession Mastery was still able to complete its task.
But that left an obvious conclusion to grasp.
If he could lower the difficulty of getting Inscribe to catch on, then he could probably do the same with Decode as well.
Zarek cast Decode again, but this time, he tapped into his sensory perception from Harmonic Recall as well. He had already used Harmonic Recall on this shield in the past. Since then, Harmonic Recall had progressed substantially, but he wanted to see how far that previous dissection could get him first.
As expected, Decode caught on with much greater ease this time. If before it only managed to make it about 15 or 20% of the way, this time it immediately shot to 50% before slowing down.
It demanded more Godsfall of Zarek than Inscribe did, especially as it worked to fill in the gaps for him, but slowly but surely…
It finally hit 100%.
Zarek grinned wildly as thoughts flashed through his mind. Quickly, he activated Inscribe and the scroll and quill appeared. With a flash of his hands, he was already drawing, the blueprint of the parrying shield coming out in greater and greater detail.
However, after Zarek was finished, he looked at it and shook his head. It felt… lackluster compared to the crossbow shield blueprint despite the fact both should be about the same in quality.
'Hm…'
Zarek cast his new Harmonic Recall on the parrying shield and his comprehension deepened by leagues. Then he tried Decode again and everything flowed even smoother than before.
He was draining his Godsfall quite quickly, but even after all of this it had only taken about 20%.
The benefits of a high Growth Potential Profession and Talent were simply off the charts. Even at such low Mastery, it was hardly asking anything of him.
Zarek used Inscribe one more time and a more perfect modified blueprint appeared before him. There was a flash of light and the scroll slowly did its thing. Soon, a new set of Matrices were before Zarek.
With a grin, Zarek activated Temp Duplicate.
'All these damn abilities are going to drain me dry.'
Despite his thoughts, his smile was only growing wilder. This time, instead of aiming the Temp Duplicate on his arm, he did it right on his chest over his heart.
A swirling golden mark took shape, solidifying into a dull dark gold moments later.
'Alright, let's see how many attempts it takes this time…'
The effort was quite substantial. It took Zarek a full 67 tries before he got just one success, but when he did succeed, there was a flash at his chest and a reflective light took shape. It remained for about a second before fading away slowly.
'Amazing…'
There were obviously several weaknesses with this, but most of them were related to his poor Intelligence Potential. However, after succeeding once and memorizing the path, doing it again would be easier, and then the third time would be even easier.
Anything he could train into obedience with effort wasn't something Zarek minded at all.
What he cared about more was the result of the ability. The sudden impenetrable skin to catch an enemy off guard was one thing. The fact he could stack these on his skin with no additional weight to what he had to carry around was another bonus. But the best part?
The strength of tattoos when activated wasn't weaker than the original at all. In fact, they were identical in power and strength.
He lost nothing in the conversion.