A Sky Full of Tropes [Reincarnated Psychic Child LitRPG]

"What did Estelle make you do?" Jade asks Melody as we're leaving the Spooky Grove.

"I had to analyze lyrics in different languages," Melody says. "And why Incantations care about rhyme and meter when it doesn't matter what language you're using."

"Of course she had to bring French into it again," Amethyst says.

"What's our next stop?" Melody asks.

"We can head for the Forgotten Tower next," I say. "There's a boss in there with music-based powers, though I'm not sure if you can actually hear them. It's kinda weird."

"It would be good to have a chance to clear it now that we're Elite rank, too," Rowan adds.

We set out the next morning, not to waste any further summer than necessary. I only vaguely remember where the Forgotten Tower is, having visited it on foot once years ago, but Anise points us in the right direction. It rises up out of the forest, though it doesn't clear the tallest trees by much.

This part of Tempest is densely forested, and the trees crowd almost up to the tower gates. It takes some careful maneuvering to put the skyboat down in the narrow clearing outside without snagging the sails on a tree branch or running afoul of the dungeon's aether currents.

Since the first two floors are just Basics with Elite bosses, we leave most of the group with the boat and head inside with just me, Rowan, Melody, and Amethyst. The darkness inside is punctuated by the eerie music rippling upon my soul, and I wince involuntarily at it.

"What does it sound like?" Melody wonders.

"Well, I immediately unlocked Clairvoyance (Spirit Hearing), at least," Amethyst says. "That's the best thing that can be said about it."

"Man, how am I supposed to do a puzzle I can't even hear?" Melody grouses.

"Some of history's greatest composers were deaf," I say. "There's the boss up ahead. He's called… the Subwoofer."

The big black dog with eyes glowing like red LEDs stands on his dais waiting for us eagerly.

"Come play!" says the dog in canine body language, as interpreted by my [Communication Analysis] skill and also the fact that I have met dogs before.

I don't need subtitles to interpret his excited posture as he bounces from paw to paw to paw to paw, tongue lolling and tail wagging.

"Come play! Come play! Come play! Come play! Come play!"

I have no idea why I thought using a universal translator on a dog would yield interesting results.

"[Forgotten Bard]?" Melody says as she reads my system window. "Strange class for a dog. Well, if the good boy wants to play, I'll play."

She puts her fingers to her hurdy-gurdy and starts playing. At first, it doesn't mesh with the spiritual music at all, and I shudder involuntarily at the clash. But as she keeps going, the Subwoofer bounces around gleefully, altering his music to jive with hers.

After several minutes, a burst of glittering experience surrounds her, and Melody stops and pets the dog. "That did it!"

The Subwoofer wags his tail enthusiastically, and my system helpfully subtitles him with, "Happy! New friend! Happy!"

We move on after looting the chest, and let Amethyst get the first shot at the next section. The air is full of frigid mist, but at least the ambient background music is more cheerful now.

Monster cats chase monster rats through the second floor, none of them stopping to rest for a moment. Amethyst watches them, frowning thoughtfully.

"We left our provisions with the boat," Amethyst says. "Can I go and grab something and come back?"

"By all means," I say. "The monsters aren't going anywhere."

We head back down and Amethyst grabs a loaf of bread from the boat before returning to the second floor. She tosses it out into the middle of the room. Several rats dive for it, resulting in cats catching up to them and immediately being reduced to protean plasm. When the dust has settled, most of the cats are peacefully napping in chairs and in windowsills.

These poor cats really should be napping in sunbeams. There's no warmth to this room.

I focus on one of the windows and imagine a sunbeam streaming in and bathing this cat in it, and channel my vis into it. A shaft of warm, faint yellow light streams in through the window and lands upon the sleeping monster cat, who starts loudly purring in contentment for the brief time it lasts.

Without the light, the animals seem like nothing more than silhouettes, but in sunlight their fur takes on warmth and color.

I cast it again on the window in the room with the big boss cat who is lying on top of the chest. I position it on him and let him feel it for the first cast, then for the second, I focus on having the beam fall on a spot on the far side of the room. Like a cat, he leaves his post in favor of going to lie in the sunbeam. I keep it up as long as I can while Melody gets the chest open. Grabbing the loot without looking at it, we leave the tower to regroup with the others.

"What did we get?" Amethyst asks once we're safely outside.

Melody lays out some coins, a bone-shaped consumable that's actually a dog biscuit, a soft catnip mouse toy, a studded cat collar, and a sheet of music labeled "Fur Elise" and decorated with paw prints.

Basalt peers over curiously. "Isn't that supposed to have an umlaut or something?"

I chuckle. "Dungeons making multi-lingual puns nobody else is going to get, I guess."

"Well, aside from the music, nothing else seems to be for people," Amethyst says. "I suppose the cats back at Hebron might appreciate the toy, but who wants a dog biscuit? What does it give a bonus to?"

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Health, it looks like," I say. "And it definitely looks like it only works on animals, but I don't think it has to be a dog, just something willing to eat a dog biscuit. Maybe we could give it to Nessie the Newt?"

Melody doesn't care about the pet loot in the slightest, poring over "Fur Elise" and testing out a few notes on her hurdy-gurdy experimentally.

Since the upper levels have tougher monsters, we swap out the group and leave Amethyst at the boat and pick up Basalt, Jade, and Hemlock to run the rest of the dungeon with. As we're making our way up the cleared floor, Basalt and I share what we can remember of Beethoven with the curious Melody.

"Wow," Melody says. "You think I might be able to meet his reincarnation sometime?"

"Who knows?" Basalt says. "We probably can't afford to reincarnate him ourselves, but some version of him might be kicking around the Crystalline Heavens somewhere."

The six of us emerge onto the third floor, where giant ephemeral moths rest innocently on chairs and tables, their gently shaking wings emitting clouds of icy mist that roll across the ground and down the stairs to fill the lower floors.

I focus on the closest window and ignore the ceiling braziers and giant spiders waiting on the ceiling, pouring Invocation (Sunbeam) into the foggy glass. I've gained a few levels in the skill and the beam is a little stronger this time, but it's still a serious Inspiration drain to maintain. Drawn to the light, the moths immediately lift into the air and flutter toward the window, only to find themselves caught in spiderwebs.

Once I've cleared out the moths and made the spiders fed and happy, a chest appears. Jade opens it up and collects the loot, and we head for the stairs. I haven't been on the upper floors before and I'm eager to see what's up there.

Upon emerging onto the fourth floor, flapping silhouettes in the dim light make me think that we're dealing with bats again at first, at least until I scan their auras.

Flying books, apparently. There isn't enough of an emotional state attached to them to pick up on any mood. Not that monsters usually have complicated moods, but at least the dogs and cats on the lower floors used to be animals.

One aura in here is much stronger than the others. A shadowy owl the size of a full-grown man sits in an office chair at a large L-shaped desk in the center of the room, watching us with gleaming azure eyes.

"I think we should capture the books and put them back onto the shelves where they're supposed to be," I say.

"Easier said than done," Rowan says, eying the flapping folios critically.

"I don't suppose anyone brought a butterfly net?" Basalt says.

With some effort, I manage to grab and subdue one of the animated books. It's written in gibberish. The title uses the usual Latin alphabet, but I don't recognize the language. The author's name, Tuki Ashford Hush Tiganna, is embossed in shiny letters on the leather cover. No pictures give a hint to the subject, but it doesn't matter. Holding the book firmly to make sure it doesn't fly away again, I examine the bookcases to see how the library is organized.

The bookcases seem to be sorted by skymote first. Three are dedicated to authors from Tiganna, one for Sustern, Mindor, Menevar, then a miscellaneous section. Names of places I don't recognize. This place might be a wealth of knowledge if any of it were written in a language I could understand.

Well, we don't need to understand them to alphabetize them by author's name, at least. I locate the shelf for Hush and shove the book in between 'Ascot' and 'Ashmore'.

We manage to get a few books put away before a terrible rip resounds through the library. For a moment, everyone goes still, and all eyes turn to look at Hemlock holding incriminating torn paper in his hands.

"I'm sorry, it was an accident!" Hemlock exclaims, letting the paper fall and stepping hastily toward the stairs.

The shadowy owl doesn't care, his disposition swinging from Neutral to Hostile in an instant. He spreads his massive black wings and lets out a soul-piercing HOOT! that my system helpfully subtitles, "Transgressor!"

"Alright, we'll try non-violence again on the next run," I say. "Let's kill this bird."

Flying books swarm us and attack us. Sheets of paper fold themselves into shuriken and hurl themselves at us.

[Folding Paper]? Oh come on. This is obviously Invocation (Origami). Although insisting on using the Japanese word is probably an unnecessary quibble when being attacked by it. I duck beneath a reading desk to avoid papercuts.

Abandoning our attempts at organizing the library, we engage in chaotic battle. Spells and paper fly. Angry hoots fill the air. A 'wounded' book lands on the floor next to me, fluttering its torn pages weakly.

Once the boss is down and nothing is moving but us, Jade searches for treasure while I heal everyone up. There's no chest, but the desk contains some minor loot that she grabs before we head for the stairs up.

The fifth floor is full of alchemy equipment and ingredients. While I'm tempted to call them all treasure and be done with it, they're all Basic-rank with very low essence. Nothing more than set dressing and potential puzzle pieces.

Another oversized bird guards this level, this time a two-meter-tall raven perched on a stool and watching us with eerie purple eyes.

"I guess we're probably supposed to make a potion," Basalt says.

"But there's countless possible combinations just from the stuff in this room," Jade says.

Everyone looks at me as if expecting me to have the answer. Which is probably true as I'm the one who has been filling out a [Mental Encyclopedia] with information on plants just so I can figure out people's names. Analyzing the aspects in the various ingredients directly might be more useful, though.

"Those are forget-me-nots," I say, pointing to some hanging dried blue flowers. "This is the Forgotten Tower. Maybe we should make something memory-related?"

"Sounds like as good an idea as any," Melody says. "Let's try not to piss off the nice bird this time."

Fortunately, the Forgotten Tower has a functional magitech sink and Bunsen burner, sparing us climbing down five flights of stairs to get water and firewood and climbing back up with them. Unfortunately, while I vaguely know what retorts and alembics are, I don't know enough about alchemy to pick out which is which. This is not going to be a very good potion, but that's fine. The first shot at a complicated puzzle isn't expected to be perfect.

Hemlock turns out to have the highest [Brewing] skill and most potion-making experience among us, so he gets roped into making sure this potion actually becomes a potion properly. We prepare forget-me-nots, rosemary, and sage from the available ingredients.

"There's no mystic moss or other activation ingredients here," Hemlock says. "But the equipment should do that part, so it's not necessary."

Determined to make up for his mistake in the library, Hemlock brews the potion to the best of his ability. The resulting fluid sparkles azure, and we bottle some up and take it to the raven for inspection.

The monster raven somehow picks up the bottle with his wing.

I suppose Enhanced Hands is extra useful when you don't actually have hands. The giant bird inspects the potion critically, then puts it to his beak and chugs it in a very un-birdlike manner.

"Mm… I commend your efforts, challengers," the raven squawks. "I begrudgingly offer you a reward of shinies." He gestures with a wing toward a chest that has just appeared.