A Sky Full of Tropes [Reincarnated Psychic Child LitRPG]

The Hearthkeepers manage to make a delicious meal out of the spicy salamander meat, and no one perishes in the attempt. It's one that leaves some of us reaching for cups of devil-goat milk after every bite. Once I finish eating, I receive a system notification.

I really would have expected to have unlocked that by now, but I'd stopped trying to stab giant centipedes with small knives before I could get a skill from resisting their venom. The experience didn't count for nothing, though, and waited around for something else to push it over the edge to the point where the system would register a skill. I'm sure I'm not the only one with a new skill here today.

I've been thinking about the logistics of how to handle my next trip to the City. (Have been ever since my first trip to the city. Actually, I've probably been thinking about visiting the City ever since I found out it existed.)

I still technically have the deed to an apartment in Flux that used to belong to the sky pirate Lance Tresco. I do not know how Flux property law works, nor what condition the place is in after the Epic battle that took place there. Hopefully I'll have a chance to check it out without the place simply being a trap. As skeezy as the place is, it would be useful to have a place to rest while in the City. It's a long flight from Tempest.

I consider what I might need to do if I wanted to do Harrow's quest. Re-attune the bell. Without any further details, I'm pretty sure that's going to involve Invocations, and that's something I wanted to look into anyway.

I need to learn more Invocations. Every level of an Invocation skill helps a little with every other Invocation skill. Aunt Rosemary had been giving me pointers and suggestions on skills I might try to unlock, but I'm going to need to talk to her about a bell. And for skills related to musical instruments, I will need to talk to Uncle Falcon, the Bard. Who is currently in Hush Domain running the Canterbury Epic-rank story dungeons over and over. I have never been to Hush, but it's essentially directly below Tempest Domain.

The alternative is to ask the my own past life as a Bard. His name was Galliard and he died a failure at Basic rank, but he was a Bard nonetheless. Perhaps I ought to pursue different insights than whatever Galliard gleaned from life. Uncle Falcon attained Epic rank by performing a great feat of music magic in combat with pirates. I will trust his guidance instead.

Still, Galliard is awake and close to me on the astral vine, and as a Novice-tier Necromancer, a crappy ghost to conjure would still be good practice.

[Galliard? Did you ever feel like haunting a musical instrument?]

[Oh, that sounds fantastic,] Galliard replies. [Just please don't put me in a meat body. I would prefer to experience nothingness than human biology, thank you.]

Polite Necromancers ask the ghosts of their past lives for permission before getting them to do stupid things. As it turns out, eternity is boring and many of them are game for whatever stupid thing you might ask of them. They're already dead, why not? This will still get them a trickle of experience.

There's another person familiar with Invocations I'd like to question a bit. [Mystic Guardian] Griza Grubwick, namely. The Legendary goblin did once tell me to feel free to come back to study with her once I reached Elite.

After gathering my party and supplies, we set off north again and stop at the goblin village of Grubwick on the way. A summer storm has brewed up on the surface, and ducking into the caves is a good opportunity to get out of the rain.

Every time I visit, things have changed a little more in Grubwick. From crude tents of bone and hide behind magicrete walls, now they're starting to incorporate copper. Griza isn't in Grubwick at the moment, however. She and Milo are still reportedly out making friends with humans.

There's a dungeon in the underground not far from Grubwick called the Bat Cave, and Anise stays in the village to let us run it ourselves.

Once we step inside, I cast my [Ghostly Watcher] to scout the area and watch my back. As one might expect, it primarily contains bats of various types. I'd avoided it before, but I take the opportunity to run it now for Invocation practice. Small, flying enemies are much less obnoxious when you can cast paralysis spells and lightning bolts. I freeze a few with my frost wand to add some Wizardry practice for good measure as well.

I am, by the way, already addicted to lightning bolts. How did I ever live my life without Invocation, and just being afraid of poking things with sharp objects for fear I'd wind up with a combat class? I no longer have that worry. I'd be more than fine with an Invocation and/or Wizardry-based class if I wound up with one. But I won't get another class change until I turn 14 or reach Heroic rank. It took me 9 years to reach Elite and I have plenty of time to grind skills.

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Swarms of bats swoop down on us, bouncing off Rowan's shields (both magical and physical). Most of them are just Basics, at least on the first floor, but there's a lot of them and they're good target practice. The bosses are weak Elites with additional abilities beyond being merely slightly larger, tougher bats, like elemental attacks.

"Ugh, I need a ranged spell like Jade," Rowan grumbles when we take a break after killing a fire-breathing giant bat. "Invocation (Smite) was great against the spiders but these things are too fast. I know I should be leaving most of that to my party members, but I don't want to be helpless just because one flying enemy with a ranged attack showed up to taunt me."

"I got Striking (Stone Hurling)," Amethyst says cheerfully. "That should be fine for a Basic-rank dwarf who isn't planning to be a primary fighter. I could use a good sling, though."

The staircase to the second floor is blocked by a gratuitous Towers of Hanoi puzzle that makes absolutely no sense to be there, which I let Amethyst solve. The monsters down below prove to be not much more difficult. Slightly tougher Basics, slightly more annoying Elites. We collect some minor loot, which mostly goes to Amethyst.

The final boss is a sort of humanoid bat. Not like the actual comic book hero. More like what you'd get if you asked a very confused computer to generate a bat man for you. It's three meters tall with two legs, hands on its wings, and a malformed face like a Halloween mask. As soon as we get into range, it lets out a sonic attack that staggers us briefly, but it's only Elite so we're hardly outmatched here.

Once it's dead, a notification window helpfully pops up to inform us we're done here.

The final chest is locked, so after determining that if there's a trap, I can't detect it, I pull out my lockpicks and get to work. My Mechanics (Lockpicking) skill is only at 1, but there's no rush and I welcome the practice.

"We should've brought Jade and Basalt," Rowan says.

"Either of us could have soloed this dungeon," I say with a shrug. "We'll pick them up once we get back. Hopefully they're done with whatever they wanted to get done before leaving."

"Can't you just magic it open?" Amethyst asks.

"I don't know any spells for that yet, but I'm sure there's got to be an Invocation that will help," I say.

The lock proves to be very easy even for someone who barely knows how to pick locks (and only because the system gave me credit for playing video games with sufficiently realistic lockpicking minigames in another life) and I get it unlocked without unlocking any other skills. (People say they 'unlock' skills, but is it really unlocking when the system says you 'acquired' it? Alas, I've thought the word 'lock' and its variations too many times in the past few minutes and will stop thinking about locks and identify my loot now.)

The chest contains a solid wooden bat of the sports ball type rather than the flying mammal type, a magical utility belt, and a handful of coins.

"Hmm," I say. "I think the club has a bonus to hit flying objects. That would definitely be cheating if you used it in an actual game of baseball, but I have yet to see one in this life."

"Man, I'm focused more on [Bladework] than [Bashing] and it doesn't look like it would work well with a shield," Rowan complains.

We pass the cudgel off to Amethyst for the moment, and I pick up the belt and try to figure out what it does. It's not a bag of holding, but I already have one of those and am unlikely to find an upgrade in such a low level dungeon. It does, however, have room to hold a bunch of tools and gives a small bonus to Dexterity, so I put it on.

After spending the night in Grubwick's inn, we head back out in the morning. It continues to sprinkle on and off until we arrive back at Nefern, at which point a downpour sees us ducking into the guest house for a hot meal by the hearth.

While I was off making sigil ink, Nefern got the ropes and masts ready for the physical repairs. Colt and Poppy have been spending days on rope. I'll need to wait for it to stop raining before I can repaint the sigils, though. Sigil ink doesn't run with the slightest moisture or it would be useless in Tempest, but I'm still not going to try to use a calligraphy brush in the rain.

Anise heads down to Hebron and returns with Basalt and Jade, and we get repairs going in due course.

"Your mom filled us in," Basalt says. "So we're heading to Gleam next?"

"Never been to Gleam before, myself," Jade says. "But I look forward to flying again. And running dungeons. Does my [Apprentice Pirate] class still get bonuses if I've been recently on a boat but didn't actually take it into the dungeon?"

"I have no idea but will let you know if I find out," I say. "I'm still not quite sure how classes work, exactly. Definitely beats sitting in a cave, though. What did you stay behind to do, anyway?"

"I was working with Teacher Rosemary to try to learn some new skills," Jade says. "We even made a boat mock-up in the training room. But I still haven't managed to unlock anything but Invocation (Wind Slash). I guess the system was unconvinced that a roughly boat-shaped training platform counted very much as a boat. I'm gonna try to stay close to a real one from now on."

While we're working on getting the ropes sorted out, I manage to unlock another skill I've been hoping to get.

"Finally!" I exclaim gleefully. I will a rope to hover up into the air where it remains for about half a second before I run out of Inspiration and it flops back onto the ground. "Ack. Well, at least I got the skill, even if it will need more levels."

"Congratulations," Anise says. "At this rate, we'll be back in the air in no time."