Chapter 140: Stacking Skills (1/2)

Having heard Lu and Ying analyze that the three figures might be illusions, Zhao Xu's attentiveness had already been pushed to its absolute limit when he saw them.

The three mages looked practically disheveled, their robes in an even more pathetic state than those of Zhao Xu and his companions, already torn to shreds in several places by the jagged thorns.

Zhao Xu immediately raised his hand, preparing to cast a spell at these inexplicable beings.

Yet the three mages, who had been fleeing for their lives, suddenly widened their eyes upon seeing the three of them, as if gazing upon something utterly beyond belief.

Their desperately churning legs seemed to turn to jelly, causing them to drop to their knees and kick up a cloud of dust.

"You—" the three uttered in unison, their voices so faint that even Zhao Xu could hardly catch them, sounding more like dry gasps rasping from their throats.

Immediately afterward, the three hastily whipped around and scrambled away on all fours, retreating deep into the primeval forest from whence they came.

As though some horrifying demon were lurking right in the midst of Zhao Xu's party.

A creeping sense of spine-chilling suspicion instantly swept through the hearts of the three companions.

"This scene really feels like one of those cliché stories where, after a mountaineering accident involving an avalanche, a few friends tell a girl her boyfriend didn't make it, only for the boyfriend to suddenly reappear and claim that everyone else actually perished and only he survived, ultimately leaving the girl to choose who to believe," Ying said, wearing a mocking expression as she watched the clumsy performance of the three fleeing figures.

Lu offered a gentle, mild smile at this. "I believe that Wind and Ying are both real, living people."

Zhao Xu, meanwhile, cast a disgruntled glance into the distance.

This sort of manipulative tactic was, needless to say, Leian's customary modus operandi.

He didn't even need them to fully believe it; planting a seed of doubt was quite enough.

"Let's go decipher the stele first," Zhao Xu said, feeling that certain matters were best resolved as early as possible.

The three of them then crouched side by side in front of the stone tablet, studying the unrecognizable mysterious symbols carved along its base.

Whenever such a situation arose on Earth, one would simply throw the unfamiliar text onto a search engine.

But Arthurian mages like Zhao Xu and his companions connected directly to the Source of Knowledge to make their checks.

Yet the process of making this connection inherently carried a probabilistic gamble, which was why none of them had rushed rashly into interpretation.

"Is it a language?" Zhao Xu guessed.

There were only a few dozen common languages on Arthur.

However, obscure and remote dialects, not to mention the tongues of other planar worlds, were virtually countless.

Just as Earth possessed hundreds of languages and scripts, though they shared relatively similar structural patterns.

"It's definitely not one of the mainstream dozens," Ying said with a definitive tone after observing the inscriptions.

"I have a first-circle spell scroll of 'Comprehend Languages'; we could give it a try," Lu added. "Though looking at this structural layout, it doesn't really resemble the form of a language."

Comprehend Languages was a spell Zhao Xu also knew. It allowed the caster to understand and read previously unknown tongues, effectively achieving the utility of a universal translator via a first-circle spell.

As for reaching the point of being able to speak the language oneself, that would require the second-circle spell Tongues.

"Shall we make an Arcana check then?" Zhao Xu gazed at the symbols on the stele. He felt a vague sense of familiarity, yet could not recall anything concrete, ultimately leaving him with only this suggestion.

"Our current skill ranks in Knowledge (Arcana) simply aren't high enough," Ying emphasized.

Though her rank in Knowledge (Arcana) was roughly on par with the other two, her mastery was by far the most solid.

A genius with a photographic memory would never be at a disadvantage anywhere.

"A single person's rank certainly isn't enough, but there are three of us. We can pool our statistics and then bring out our respective supplementary means. If we concentrate everything onto one person, we might just be able to bend fate," Lu said with a hint of cheerfulness.

Hearing this, Zhao Xu felt the idea was indeed sound.

If ordinary players heard the phrase "supplementary means," they would surely scratch their heads in bafflement, wondering what sort of backup could possibly exist.

Yet the three of them were different.

"Knowledge (Arcana) 5 ranks, plus a 6-point Intelligence modifier," Ying spoke first.

Zhao Xu stared unblinkingly at Ying, carefully appraising her figure. For a human to possess such attribute bonuses felt altogether excessive.

A +6 Intelligence modifier meant Ying currently possessed an Intelligence score of 22. Even if she had allocated the maximum possible 18 points to Intelligence at character creation, it meant she still outstripped other players by a staggering 4 points.

A Headband of Intellect granting +4? That would be far too extravagant, not to mention how strictly controlled such items were.

He felt certain Ying could at best possess an item granting a +2 bonus.

Moreover, the base Elven racial traits only increased Dexterity while decreasing Constitution.

Where on earth did those remaining 2 points of Intelligence come from?

As Zhao Xu scrutinized Ying's physique, he turned the puzzle over in his mind.

It wasn't until he recalled the color of Ying's eyes that sudden comprehension dawned upon him.

In this world, he was not the only one playing a beta-test character.

It appeared he had crossed paths with a player utilizing a special racial test character. Judging from her build and performance, she was likely playing one of the powerful hidden human subspecies.

Zhao Xu could only sigh inwardly. When innate genius combined with a beta-test character, even a time-traveling reincarnator like himself felt a touch inadequate.

"Knowledge (Arcana) 5 ranks, plus a 5-point Intelligence modifier," Lu stated next.

Hearing these conditions, Zhao Xu found them finally within the realm of conventional norms.

Yet he still felt a lingering puzzlement. He had relied on the Knowledge domain to smoothly and rapidly advance his knowledge skills, yet even so, having just returned from an adventure, he was still stuck at rank 4.

He truly had no idea how the two female mages had managed to max out their Arcana skill ranks.

Merely judging by Zhao Xu's own level of knowledge proficiency, he was already more than enough to crush the vast majority of players.

According to forum statistics, among the officially graduated mage players, at least two-thirds didn't even have a single rank in Knowledge (Arcana)—simply because very few people possessed the sheer perseverance to keep studying books within a video game.

Those whose Knowledge (Arcana) reached rank 2 were already as rare as phoenix feathers and unicorn horns.

As for other, more obscure knowledge skills, they were invested in by even fewer.

"Knowledge (Arcana) 4 ranks, plus a 3-point Intelligence modifier." Seeing both women waiting for his answer, Zhao Xu had no choice but to speak up.

He suddenly felt that his status as a second-circle mage was slightly lacking in substance.

However, once these figures were laid out, the resulting calculation was obvious: with stacking bonuses, Ying's total modifier for Knowledge (Arcana) reached +10, while Zhao Xu provided a minimum bonus of +7.

"Shall we begin then?" Ying asked inquiringly.

"Wait a moment, I have a surprise," Lu said, continuing to fish into her magical item—which looked like a sack but was actually a bag of holding—and pulling out a small book crafted entirely of silver, which she handed over to the other two.

"This is the *Tome of World Memory*. Reading it for one minute grants a +5 competence bonus to your next Knowledge check," Lu explained.

Zhao Xu clicked his tongue in silent wonder as he looked at the little silver volume in Lu's hands, feeling a pang of injustice for all those mages who studied bitterly day and night.

"Is this that little book that can be used three times a day to increase competence bonuses for knowledge skills?"

Ying, who possessed a collector's streak, instinctively took the book and eagerly flipped through its cover.

For Ying, possessing books endowed with such wondrous magical capabilities was quite simply the greatest happiness in the world.

"In that case, my Knowledge (Arcana) skill check modifier will reach a total of 15."

At this, Ying also began to gaze at the stone tablet with renewed confidence.

"Wait a moment," Zhao Xu chimed in. "Lend me your headband of intellect first."

Hearing Zhao Xu's request, Ying arched an eyebrow at him, though her movements did not halt. She reached beneath her hood, removed her Intelligence-enhancing headband, and handed it to Zhao Xu.

This action also allowed Ying's neatly pinned-up hair to cascade down her shoulders.

Taking the headband, Zhao Xu immediately pulled a small spool of black thread from his pack's side pocket.

Back when he had learned all the first-circle spells, Althea had simply tossed him a sack of spell components, and Zhao Xu had dumped them all into the side pocket of his backpack, taking them out as needed and restocking them periodically.

Having retrieved the component, Zhao Xu wound the thread around the headband, and then, holding the headband in hand, began to execute the required somatic gestures and casting movements.

This particular spell was one of the rare few that required no verbal component whatsoever.

Roughly six seconds later, the spell slot in Zhao Xu's mind converted directly into energy, pouring through the black thread and infusing the headband.

"Here you go. If you make the check while wearing this, you'll gain an additional +3 circumstance bonus," Zhao Xu said.

At this, both Lu and Ying were left momentarily dazed by his actions.

"How come I've never heard of this spell?" Ying asked with surprise.

"There are plenty of things you don't know," Zhao Xu replied with a smile.

According to historical records, this spell actually originated from another planar world, brought to the world of Arthur by the very first Archivist who arrived here, and it had been kept under strict secrecy ever since.

This resulted in very few mages actually knowing the spell.

"As expected, the quiet ones are usually the ones hiding their true depths," Ying said, casting an appreciative glance toward Zhao Xu.

Lu also offered her praise: "For you to be able to copy and master so many spells in such a short span of time is truly remarkable, Wind."

Having mediocre innate talent was not terrifying; what was terrifying was someone who, despite ordinary talent, expended vast amounts of energy to transcribe a mountain of spells. Such individuals were universally revered as industrious geniuses.

Hearing the two female mages heap praise upon him without knowing the inside story, Zhao Xu found it rather difficult to expose his own shortcuts.

Ordinary mages typically spent twenty-four hours learning a single spell. Those gifted with esoteric spellcasting abilities or high skill ranks in Knowledge and Spellcraft could compress that time somewhat, yet it still required anywhere from six to twelve hours.

Only Zhao Xu had stood within the supreme, artifact-transcending mystical space of the Ultimate Scroll, learning spells at a rate of one per minute.

Even so, it had taken him close to five hours just to learn those three hundred spells.

Thus, when Ying had initially whispered the name of the spell "Resurgence" to Lu, it had mostly been a case of treating a dead horse like a live one—merely offering a direction.

At this moment, Ying composed herself and began flipping through the pages of the *Tome of World Memory*.

Yet only a few seconds passed before Ying closed the booklet and handed it back to Lu.

"Didn't it take a minute?" Zhao Xu asked.

"Not necessary. Once your knowledge skill reaches five ranks, a few seconds are quite enough."

Ying spoke simply, her gaze locked with absolute focus onto the stone tablet.

Her right hand traced lightly down the weathered grooves of the stele, feeling the passing of the ages etched into its surface, using that tactile connection as a lever to pry open the power of the Source of Knowledge.

Hearing Ying's explanation, Zhao Xu's estimation of the little book rose considerably; if it could be utilized in such a short window, it possessed genuine strategic value.

It was already scarcely inferior to his own *Song of Scholarly Pursuit* spell.

However, a moment later, a look of perplexity crossed Ying's face. With a trace of vexation, she said, "I failed. I was just a hair's breadth away; there should still have been a chance."

"Lu, looks like you'll have to give it a try," Ying said, handing the headband—enhanced by Zhao Xu—over to her.

Lu, however, shook her head with a wry smile. "No chance left. Actually, that last attempt was the third and final use of this book for the day. It won't recover until tomorrow."

The atmosphere instantly lapsed into an awkward silence.

"Then I'll give it a go," Zhao Xu said with a bright smile.

For a mage with spell slots remaining, naturally all things were possible.