The night had finally settled. Bella was carried inside, woken up, and had dinner alone in the dining hall. Almost used me as one of the silverware, I have a feeling it's inevitable that someone will mistake me as part of the dining set.
After dinner, Bella went with her servants to take a bath somewhere in this huge mansion. I don't even know if I should be calling this place a mansion. Calling it an estate should be enough, given how big their lot was.
But what do I know? I'm a butter… knife.
I transformed back to my blade form as Bella dozed off earlier. I assumed it's how the summoning aspect works. I tried summoning myself back, but it won't let me go back to my butter worm form. My desire for liberation depended on Bella.
So, now I'm just being a useless butter knife. At least, Bella placed me on her comfortable bed.
Wait. How can I check my divine properties again?
I focused. Tried to recall the sensation I felt this morning at the ceremony. Then, an energy vibrated through my steel body.
[Evermore Butter Knife]
F-Class Beastblade
Souls: 0/100
Affinity: Butter
Abilities: None
It showed up. The texts floated through me and were suspended in front of my eyes.
Whoa. I can check it out on my own!
There is nothing much to check. It was all plain and simple, direct to the point. But I had a feeling that there was more to this than just texts hovering in the air.
I turned my gaze to my classification. Nothing. Then, I focused on the soul count. Nothing. But when I squinted at the affinity section, the word 'butter' glowed. I instinctively pressed on it mentally.
[Butter]
A dairy product made from milk. It contains fat. This affinity is versatile, able to make use of its firm gel structure. Highly adaptive to different elements but can be extremely unpredictable.
Whoa! It gives me more info about my affinity. But what does it mean that I'm extremely unpredictable? Well, who cares? It says a lot of good stuff about it, so I'm happy.
I swiped the texts with my eyes, and it returned me to the first set of information. I squinted again, but this time, I focused on abilities. It glowed, and two words appeared.
Skills: None
Slots: 0/10
I hovered my eyes on the slots first, and a paragraph popped up beside them.
You can only use a total of 10 skills from the skill tree.
I see. So, that means I am limited, but why only 10? I wonder how many skills I can get.
I moved my eyes away and squinted at skills. It glowed, and I pressed on the word. It transferred me to a convoluted web of nodes divided into different tabs. It showed so many words that I hurt my eyes and blinked for a second. The whole thing disappeared.
Holy hells. What was that about?! There's so much information in it!
I didn't get to read everything, but I only caught a glimpse of the words basic, offensive, defensive, and passive. There was more, but I think I'm only going to focus on these four.
So, I turned my divine properties back and went through the same process until I reached the skill tree. Before it finished loading every single word that assaulted me, I aggressively focused on the basic tab, my perspective zoomed in, and I could finally read the items on it properly.
Basic Skills
- Headbutt
That's it? I seriously thought there was more to it.
But there is more to it. Headbutt was the only node that was glowing. It was just part of a circular set of disconnected nodes. The rest of the nodes unrelated to it were locked and hidden in grey.
I stared at the grey nodes. There are parry, bite, melt, morph, and five more I couldn't be bothered to read.
But I tried to unlock parry, since I think that's pretty useful. A sentence popped up beside it, which only explained that I should spend 10 souls to unlock it.
Damn it! 10 souls?! There are nine nodes here, a total of 90 souls!? I need 100 souls to evolve so that I can be an E-Class Beastblade! How can I grind that many souls if I'm just a butter knife whose only basic skill is 'headbutt'!?
After I calmed down, I sighed and decided to think about my problems later. For now, I should just keep exploring my divine properties. I might find something useful.
Focus. Let's see what else is in here.
I went back to the headbutt node. I somehow missed its glow, so I pressed, and more information about it showed up.
Headbutt
Deal 1 health point damage to your opponents, and suffer one health point every hit.
Curse you, whoever did this to me! I really hate you! Don't you know the other Beastblades at school look at me funny and think of me as food!? If you are a god, then you are a cruel one! I may have woken up today in this world, but I won't let you step on me! I'm no pushover!
I shook in place, physically. My butter knife body bounced on the bed. After collecting my thoughts, I tried to calm down again. For real this time.
I continued to mess around. Went next to the offensive tab. Unlike the basic skills, this tab has more nodes connected to each other, leading to different branches. There are still the occasional lone nodes and a few nodes that don't branch out much.
Now this is a skill tree.
I don't have anything unlocked here yet, and I could spend the whole night reading every node, planning for what skill I should learn. But my eyes landed on a single, lonely node, far away and distant from the rest of the offensive nodes. It was locked, greyed out, and I had to spend 100 souls for it.
Golden Dominion
Raise your fallen target as your creamy minion.
Using my imaginary buttery lips, I formed a grin.
Interesting.