A Sky Full of Tropes [Reincarnated Psychic Child LitRPG]

I send Hemlock to the docking tower to help out Anise in the rain. In the meantime, I practice drawing the sigils I'll need to add for the sigil lock. Vervain helpfully provides key crystals from the town storage as well.

The principle behind a sigil lock is simple. It blocks the flow of vis unless you have the proper key. The book shows a diagram of the sigils required, makes note of where it ought to be drawn to add it to an existing sigil complex, and describes how to bind a key crystal to it.

I still have plenty of sigil ink, so I bring out my calligraphy pen and write a simple scroll of light as practice, and attach a sigil lock to it. It takes a few tries, but I get it working before bed.

By morning, the rain has tapered off and the skies have cleared. I head up to the docking tower with my calligraphy supplies in hand. Anise is boldly dozing in the back of the boat next to the activation sigil. I'm sure she'd wake up if someone tried to make off with the boat again, but hopefully we won't have to deal with that again. (Unless someone steals a key, too.)

"Mom?" I say, nudging her lightly with a foot. "Good morning, dear Mother."

Anise wakes with a start. "Ahh, you're not stealing my boat, I'll defend— oh, good morning, Drake! It's azure already? Ugh, too early."

"I found a book on sigil locks in the local library," I say. "So if I can get past you there, I'll paint that on right away."

"Oh, that's great!" She starts to move away, then pauses and narrows her eyes. "Hey, isn't that what an impostor would say to get me to stop guarding the activator and tiller so they can steal the boat?"

I snort softly, then send her telepathically, [Hi, Mom. Yes, it's actually me. C'mon.]

Anise chuckles and moves out of the way. "Alright, alright. That kid Hemlock came up last night and was offering me Aethernaut pointers. I got some good practice in."

"What was your impression of him?" I ask as I start setting up.

"He seemed okay," Anise says. "A bit too eager to please, but I can understand that given, you know."

I carefully paint in the sigils for the lock next to the activator, following the instructions in the book to redirect the energy flow. Once that's done, I attune a key crystal to it and test it to make sure it's linked properly before attuning the other two. I hand one to Anise, and take the other to Basalt.

"Hemlock makes me nervous," Jade says. "Nothing about him specifically. He didn't do anything wrong. It's the cores I don't trust. What if Halkyn suddenly changes its mind and tells the guy to do something bad?"

"It's a vassal of Corwen, so it shouldn't tell him to betray us or do anything that acts overtly against us, but you are absolutely right and I don't trust it at all. I will be keeping an eye on any quests he receives, but…" I shake my head. "Well, let's at least see if we can get some training from him if nothing else."

"What's our next stop?" Anise asks. "Are we still going to Dolwen?"

"Let's stop at Amroth," I say. "I don't want to try flying to another domain until I'm sure we won't need more touch-ups. We need to hire on someone from Gleam, if we can. A few more dungeon runs would be nice, too. Maybe hit up the Forgotten Tower or other dungeons that might be good now that we're Elite?"

"Yes, dungeon runs!" Jade exclaims. "And skill practice along the way. If we can do some steady flying, I want to try to level [Stoneworking]."

"Why?" I wonder.

"So I can carve a statue of myself and live forever, of course!" Jade says.

"Oh," I say. "Right, of course. Good luck with that? I can't promise a rock-solid foundation."

Once I've finished touching up the sigils and everyone's on board, we set off on a short flight to Amroth. I'd still rather be somewhere safe and familiar if the repairs don't take, but everything seems to be working well enough now. [Vehicle Diagnosis] reports no issues.

Along the way, Hemlock gives skill pointers. He has more flying experience than us and actual training, and knows it. His aura wafts with desperation and not arrogance, though. That's probably the only reason I haven't thrown him off the boat already. He's trying to make the best of a bad situation and doesn't have a lot of options. If not us, he'd probably have to sign on with a foreign crew. Reasonably speaking, the larger of a ship I wind up with, the more crew I'm going to need to be able to handle it. And I definitely want a larger ship someday soon.

The halfling politely gives her nonsense name as Fina Oxford. My [Naming] skill is likely a long way from parsing phonetics, and confidently took a bit of a literal interpretation of 'Oxford'. I'm surprised and pleased that it even tried, though.

At the guildhall, I'm forced to do some paperwork to get my party's information up to date. I add Hemlock as a probationary member and register Amethyst as a temporary party member/escort quest.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Sage Fina is used to dealing with halflings (such as herself) and reincarnators and doesn't bat an eye at a nine-year-old filling out paperwork. Of course, she has also been taking extra shifts to try to catch up on the paperwork I've generated recently. I suppose I should not be surprised at being locally famous now.

I ask the clerk, "We have a quest for Gleam and we're looking to recruit a local from around there to accompany us."

"There's a few Gleams about that are available for quest swaps," Sage Fina says, handing me some names to track down. "Looks like two of them are in the guildhall at the moment and the third is staying out in town."

I wouldn't bother to recruit yet another unknown here if it weren't for the domain penalties. According to everything I've read (which includes a lot of fiction that milks it for as much drama as possible), you take various penalties when you're in a foreign domain if you don't have someone in your party from that domain. It's something of a safeguard against invasion. If you can't convince a local your cause is a worthy one, you eat debuffs, including just flying there.

The first candidate on the list is located in one of the guest singles in the Adventurers' Guild. I still have my mom knock on the door first and hang back to play dumb at first and keep my [Ghost Eyes] open. We pretend to strangers that the Heroic adult is the actual party leader. If someone hasn't heard of me yet, I don't see a need to volunteer the information, and these Gleams are partyless and have been keeping to themselves.

A clean-shaven young man opens the door. He appraises us with pale gray eyes beneath a positively anime shock of spiky white hair.

Alas, [Naming] failed to parse Diamond's Hearth name, Barnet, though I know what it is already from the list the clerk gave me. My aura reading skills have been doing so well lately.

"Are you Diamond Barnet?" Anise asks. "We're here about your Looking For Group request."

"Oh, that's good," Diamond says, his voice devoid of expression. "Are you willing to do my quest with me, or are you just looking for a Guardian?"

"What's your quest?" Anise asks.

I read it from his aura as he's telling us. And… he's lying.

Kill Bucky Harrow, reads the message waiting on Diamond's aura.

Rage spikes in me as Anise and Diamond keep talking casually about some completely innocent quest I'm too pissed off to get the details of. If ever there was a cause to tamper with someone's quests, murdering a seven-year-old boy is definitely one.

I hold that feeling in my soul and bring to mind Aunt Rosemary's discussions about Sorcery. Anise says you can't teach it, though, only feel it. At its heart, though, Sorcery is about using one's own emotions and desires to directly alter reality using Willpower alone.

Reaching out with my vis, I take hold of the vile quest and crush it into sparkling shards that sublimate away.

I touch an astral tendril to Diamond's connection to his core, ignoring his wide eyes and gaping mouth, and send telepathically, [No more quests to murder children, Barnet!]

"But… but…" Diamond stammers. "What did you… How did you…"

I let out a ragged sigh. All the rage I had experienced bled out into the spell, leaving me feeling drained and my Inspiration meter nearly empty. "Sorcery (Defiance). I can delete quests."

My mom can use her Willpower to set things on fire, repair boats, heal people, even pop corn. So far, this is the only Sorcery skill I've managed to unlock, and it's rather more subtle than that. I'm not sure whether to be thrilled or disappointed. I'm going with thrilled. I'm tired of the people around me getting manipulated by crystalline entities playing games, and being able to disrupt mind-affecting spells too is a nice bonus.

"What am I supposed to do now?" Diamond wonders aloud.

"Whatever you want?" Anise suggests.

Another quest popes up in Diamond's aura. Barnet wants him to go home.

"I'm going home," Diamond snaps, slamming the door in our faces.

"Not everyone is ready for freedom, I suppose," I comment.

"Right then," Anise says. "Next on the list?"

"Do we really need someone from the list?" Jade asks. "How much harder is it to fly? Couldn't we just circle around and pick up someone in Mayfair that our contact has vetted?"

"Let's at least check," I say. "The next one can't possibly be worse."

[You really shouldn't say things like that,] Basalt comments telepathically.

The next person on the list is a few doors down, by the name of Loon Sutton. I could swear there are more people just living in the Adventurers' Guild than the town itself.

Loon is a young woman in her late teens, clearly not quite 21 yet given that she's still an Apprentice. I scan her aura for information while Anise makes small talk with her.

Kill Bucky Harrow, says the quest on her aura. Another one? Oh for crying out loud. My Inspiration meter is still low from the last one. I'm probably going to attract the attention of some cores whose policies I'm not going to get along with at this rate, but I don't care.

Once I have the Inspiration, I rip the quest away and delete it just like I did the last one. Loon blinks in puzzlement and cocks her head as I send the same message to Sutton that I did to Barnet. She's not nearly as unbalanced by the unexpected situation as Diamond was.

"You've chosen the side of Chaos," Loon says quietly. "I don't begrudge you that. Without Chaos, Order has no meaning."

"Why do the Hearths of Gleam want Bucky dead so badly?" I wonder. "He's younger than me!"

"He committed a terrible crime," Loon says. "That he is a child is unfortunate."

"You would have been killed even if you succeeded," Anise says.

Loon shrugs. "I would have been reborn into a world of perfect order and harmony."

I put my face in my hands and sigh. "So both you can Diamond have just been sitting here for how long plotting to assassinate a small child?"

"I have only been here a month," Loon says. "It seems this is not to be. Chaos has chosen unusual champions, as is its wont. Take care if you play with fire that you do not get burned. Chaos does not care about you."

"Great, I don't care about chaos either," I say.

We return to the lobby and approach the guild clerk's desk.

"Were you aware that Diamond Barnet and Loon Sutton had quests to murder a seven-year-old child?" I ask pointedly.

Sage Fina blinks, and her aura swirls with enough alarm that I'm sure that was a 'no' even before she opens her mouth to deny it. "Are you certain? Of course you're certain. That's horrible! What sort of a place is Gleam if it gives out quests like that? Thank you for informing me, though it doesn't set my mind at ease one bit that these people are using the Guild as cover for that sort of thing."

"Well, hopefully, those two will be leaving shortly," I say. "We're on our way to talk to the final name on the list. Hopefully this one's sane."