NOVPUB"Aiwass... really does know a lot."
Isabel’s eyes widened, her emerald-like pure eyes sparkling under the bright moonlight.
The full moon outside the window was as bright as a mirror, and the moonlight, like gauze, poured over the two figures through the windows. Whether it was Aiwass’s body or the white nightgown that Isabel was wearing, both shimmered under the moonlight’s glow.
She looked at Aiwass with admiration, "Whether it’s the Lower City District or the Round Table Hall... you even understand the lost rituals and the traits of the Path. I can’t do that... I have a hard time just memorizing the tables my teacher gave me. They’re really too hard to remember."
Hard to remember?
Aiwass was intrigued and asked curiously, "What does the trait recommendation table that Master Yanis gave you look like? Is it complicated?"
"Mhm."
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Isabel nodded and whispered her complaint, "It’s a table that the teacher made for me not long ago. She said that it doesn’t matter during the first promotion, because you can’t choose any good traits anyway. But from the second promotion ceremony on, you can’t just choose randomly.
"It’s mostly stuff like ’If you have mastered a certain ability and haven’t mastered another, then when certain Path traits appear at this time, you should choose this, don’t choose that.’
"For instance, unless there really is nothing else to choose from, I should not choose container-type traits, even if they are purple, because the ’Art’ abilities of the Path of Beauty essentially don’t consume mana.
"Like this time when I chose [Resilient Illusion]. The teacher specifically said, if [Cunning Spell], [Resilient Illusion], and [True Illusion] appear together, prioritize [Cunning Spell], followed by [Resilient Illusion]. And if you haven’t mastered [Resilient Illusion], don’t choose [True Illusion] when you see it; but if you have already mastered [Cunning Spell], don’t choose it even if you have [Resilient Illusion].
"Or, if you see [Resilient Illusion] and [Voice of Miracle] together, then choose [Voice of Miracle]; but if what you see is [Cunning Spell] and [Voice of Miracle], choose [Cunning Spell]... it goes like this. Formulas of this sort."
Isabel was very frustrated, "There are just too many possibilities! Last week, the teacher listed out hundreds upon thousands of scenarios for me, the majority were what you can choose based on what you already hold, what you should choose, what you shouldn’t... and told me to memorize them in three days. Plus, many of the words are the same, it’s really hard to remember!"
"...A brute-force method indeed."
Aiwass sighed, "But it does seem pretty useful."
The professional inheritance that Isabel had received was clearly different from Sir Knight’s—according to Little Barton, his parents had given him a list, and then he got to choose from that list.
Choose only the traits with good cost-performance, not considering the synergy between traits. Take only what you can use yourself, even if it’s weaker, rather than adjusting your own path according to the effects of the traits.
Yanis clearly understood this better. But after all, she could not always be by Isabel’s side to help her make decisions, and she did not know what traits Isabel would randomly encounter. So, she simply listed out all the possibilities, and when the time came, Isabel could choose based on the formulas.
That way, her chances of choosing the optimal combination were the greatest.
It’s like playing auto chess; actually, new players don’t have much understanding of the meta... but as long as a veteran with sufficient game understanding provides formulas that are comprehensive enough to cover all scenarios, then it’s not really a problem.
This was also the most simple and violent way of professional inheritance. Truly, "knowledge changes destiny."
"So, what were your first two traits?"
Aiwass asked curiously.
Although Path traits are everyone’s biggest secret and closely related to one’s safety... since Isabel had already told him about her third trait, there didn’t seem much point in hiding the low-level traits anymore.
Sure enough, Isabel did not hide them but instead disclosed everything: "After I decided to become a ’Prodigy,’ my first trait was ’Light Affinity,’ and the second was ’Agile Singing Voice.’
"Both are not bad."
Aiwass’s eyes lit up, praising, "At least there are no negative or useless ones."
Although the first one was somewhat puzzling, it was actually not bad—in commonly seen art abilities, painting and calligraphy are water attributes, sculpture and architecture are earth attributes, the song and dance with ritual attributes are light attributes, instrumental performances belong to the wind attribute, and creative writing and novels with falsehood and illusion attributes are of the Darkness attribute.
Of course, there are inheritances that use fire attribute or wind attribute mana for dance, or light attribute mana for painting and writing, but those are ultimately not mainstream.
With Light Affinity, at least her song and dance abilities would be further enhanced.
And ’Agile Singing Voice’ is like ’Sacrifice of Flesh,’ a type of trait that provides a percentage increase to effects... it’s considered a very high-value blue trait.
Its effect is to simultaneously increase the casting difficulty and effect of all abilities that use songs as a medium.
The reason it’s not a purple trait is that it’s a passive trait, not a toggle-able one like ’Body of Light.’
Holding this trait could indeed make a low-difficulty Enchanted Tune more powerful, but it’s likely to lead to failure when casting high-difficulty, advanced Enchanted Tunes—of course, if successful, the increased base effect would be much more pronounced after the percentage increase.
