Chapter 956 - The irresistible human desire to add more light everywhere

Since the usual elimination method was unadapted this time, Sofia could only slowly think over the thousands of possibilities, and create a shortlist of promising combinations. Since she had to pick one Lumian keyword no matter what, it helped narrow things down quite a lot, and after a few hours, she had come up with about fourteen combinations that she deemed good enough.

The first one was simply ‘Awakening monument’ with any of the Lumian keywords.

I can totally see this as an active skill letting me place a long-lasting structure that I would get passive buffs from by staying nearby. If I can only place one, it’s terrible, but if not, I could leave them behind just about everywhere, especially in Ser’Extra, and be super strong in defensive battles. Meanwhile in something like the trials, I could still place just one on the fly so it wouldn’t be fully useless. And then the more Lumians there are in the future, the better it would be. Every one could leave awakening monuments everywhere, benefiting the entire race.

That is, if that’s what the skill does.

Since I’m aiming for a stacking buff this one… I suppose it would go best with mana weave.

So ‘Mana weave awakening monument’. I could add an ‘ultimate’ in there, but if the idea is to have a skill I can use often, there might be a theming conflict there, so maybe not.

This definitely stays on the shortlist for now.

Sofia copied the skill name to a second bone slab, and continued down her list.

‘Ultimate mana weave golden awakening’.The same idea but a more selfish version of it. Adding the golden keyword in there gives me hope that it would incorporate my muscles with a better… A mana buff of some sort? Since gold has such good conductivity. Definitely not what I would take for a purely physical buff skill. I’m imagining something more akin to a temporary huge power increase or channeling speed buff? Or maybe it would be physical anyway, which would not be a terrible thing either. A last resort ‘get stronger now’ skill definitely has its uses.

That being said… I already have Crystallized suffering and Avatar of Zeus for when I am on the backfoot like that. Ideally I would rather just be strong enough not to end up in a situation like that in the first place. I guess this one is a skip.

Mana weave wave hammer blasting.

I’m not even sure what it could do, but I do lack a strong purely physical skill to take advantage of all the strength bonuses I have, and this sounds the most like it. I guess Wave could be switched for ultimate if I wanted a singular big attack but I think this is better…

The weak point is it might not be great for other Lumians when the time comes, for a pure spellcaster this would be bad. I'll keep it for now, but it’s not really the perfect contender.

Next… Right. Hammer wave lash mana weave. Same spirit. Well, I think I like the previous one better so this one can go.

And then next up… The two Restore ones. Mana weave Intercontinental restore flash. Hmm… The flash I still find a bit annoying, but… I guess if I move it around. Intercontinental mana weave flash restore? My issue is it’s basically impossible to put it in a way where it’s guaranteed to be an ‘intercontinental restore’ of the world itself… The idea here was using mana weave hoping the conflict between the physical and– I’m confusing myself. Maybe, wait…

If I use it with Exhaust? I could see the divine essences being used to heal the world, after all the wisps and elementals are also clumps of the divinity of the land…

Exhaust Intercontinental Prismatic Restore? With the Prismatic in there to hopefully avoid blasting Death and the Deep’s essence everywhere it’s not needed?

Probably extra pointless in battle. But it would certainly be nice to have if it lets me worry a bit less about collateral damage in the future. Keeping this one.

The other idea was ‘Restore golden dead light wave’ but it feels more like a self-healing skill if anything. Or a skill healing all Lumians? Pretty pointless as long as I am the only one… Scrapping that.

Getting almost halfway through her shortlist, Sofia was starting to get impatient.

Intercontinental dead light prismatic flash.

The idea was… Right, A skill to use in conjunction with [Extinguish] and [Lightsoul curse] all the while avoiding using Exhaust and its potential Essence-related issues.

Well…

If I hadn’t learned that [Extinguish] ‘all light’ was REALLY all light but my own after using it that one time in the forbidden layer, I might feel more free to actually pick that but… At this rate if I use [Extinguish] for longer than a fraction of a second, I’m inevitably going to cause someone’s death, am I not?

I can’t really justify using it unless I am in a life or death situation.

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Better skip that…

My next idea was Dead light intercontinental lash… But thinking about it, anyone hoping to escape me when I have [Roaming free] is a bit unrealistic isn’t it? It would be powerful for other Lumians to have, but I don’t really need this.

Prior to starting her leveling, Sofia and Pareth had conducted some quick tests and after leaving [Roaming Free]’s Inquisitor’s mark on Pareth, they couldn’t find a way to sever the connection at all. Even when Pareth hid in Zangdar and Sofia transposed herself light-years away in the physical plane, then into the spirit plane with the help of the graveyard Nymphs, she could still reach through the void and grab Pareth by the neck if she wanted, and even forcefully pulled him to her. She was limited to a single mark at a time and it required her to touch whoever she wanted to leave it on, but after that, it was impossible for the marked to escape her.

Quickly discarding the combination idea Sofia moved on.

Cyclonic dead light golden monument. I can easily imagine a tall golden light monument overflowing with mana surrounded by a gigantic cyclone.

Could be a fine offensive tool, or a good defense if the eye of the cyclone is wide enough to cover the city for example. Just the ability to conjure a giant cyclone with devastating winds when my helmet’s [Ultimate enhanced flight enhancer] enchantment reduces wind drag by 95% would give me a huge mobility advantage, and most of my skeletons have so little surface area, they do quite well in high winds also.

Yeah, I like that one. And a cyclone is already a sky weather anomaly so adding some lightning into that later for extra synergy would probably be pretty easy. Strong contender.

Finally the exhaust ones…

Not too many here… They’re all inherently dangerous, considering the essences I carry. Even if I’m to forget Looming and the Deep, just scripture and Death…

Well. Prismatic exhaust monument and Prismatic exhaust awakening are two possible different flavors of the same thing, just hoping for a targeted buff I can control with ‘Prismatic’ separating the kinds of divine powers… But I’m not sure I want to gamble with that right now.

Let’s just not.

Second to last, Exhaust cyclonic lash. I get the image of a cyclone using divinity to whip or bind targets. Might be a good tool to suppress gods, which would pair well with [Mockery of the divine]’s different abilities.

Sofia looked at the last line of the shortlist.

Well, if I’m going to fight a god I might as well go all out, so that last one is probably better.

Ultimate exhaust intercontinental flash. Same issue as before in that it would be best used in conjunction with [Extinguish], and would probably be quite devastating, but not something I can use often at all. Still, in terms of raw power, leveraging the essences I have like this is probably the best I can get. And it would be a powerful skill for all future Lumians as well.

So I’m down to five options…

Sofia scratched her head, looking at the list.

“And now the unfunny part… Which ones would be useless for the next trial? The restore one pretty much… Pains me because I’ve had it for so long and it’s the best I’ve managed to ever build with it. I also really like the idea of the Lumians in the future being a race capable of healing worlds like this… But I need power so badly… I just can’t. Restore… Will have to wait until I kill scripture, I think…”

Shaking her head, Sofia crossed out the restore combination.

After some hesitation, Sofia also crossed out Mana weave wave hammer blasting and Cyclonic dead light golden monument. Hammer blasting was eliminated for the crime of sounding too weak compared to the other options, and the Cyclonic monument for being likely to take a while to do anything. After all, a truly strong cyclone would surely take some time to form, even with magic, just with consideration of the sheer volume of air getting displaced.

“The final choice is between Mana weave Awakening Monument, and Ultimate exhaust intercontinental flash… Well, the choice is pretty easy, since there is only one of those I would feel free to use all the time. Is Mana weave Awakening Monument really what I want, though?”

After thinking a bit more about it, Sofia felt that it was indeed the safest and all around better choice, though slightly un-exciting, but she had to think about both the immediate utility for her and her race’s future.

That being said, she realised she had settled on using the Awakening monument with mana weave a bit too fast.

Her muscles, after all, would disappear after being cut off, they were not permanent matter, unlike her bones, and now the idea of an impermanent monument of flesh was engraved in her mind, making her reluctant to pick it.

Frowning, Sofia brought up her list of racial traits.

“I can’t believe I forgot about that!”

[Dead light]: Your hair, teeth, nails and bones are made of tangible solid light. After its permanent death, your entire body becomes a shining light that never fades away.

“Dead light already creates a monument! When I die, sure, but it does create a ‘monument’ that never fades. With anything else, the monument might be invoked matter and disappear after a while, but if I pick Dead light, it might just be there forever! What’s left is whatever would a dead light awakening monument do exactly? And should I make it ultimate, golden or prismatic? Or intercontinental, even?”

It was a tough choice, but Sofia eventually settled on Golden, thinking that if being near the monument could only just get her bones to reach the mana conductivity of gold, the extra channeling and casting speed that alone would likely give her would be worth the skill slot.

[You have selected : Dead light - Golden - Awakening - Monument. Are you sure?]

“No. But I’m still going with it. Don’t let my entire race down now, Mr.Scribe, Clint, DATABASE…”

You have acquired the Progenitor Active racial skill :[Nova Legacy Beacon] - Lv.349