Chapter 1168 – Invocation Experimentation

It almost felt like cheating. In some ways, perhaps it was.

Jake sat in his alchemy lab, staring at the bottle of poison in front of him, his evaluation of it clear and unambiguous. It’s nearly twenty percent more potent than without the empowerment…

Over the last day or so, Jake had used his new Invocation skill a number of times to empower different Legacy skills just to see what happened. He’d naturally first started with Sagacity and quickly noticed a few things.

Due to Sagacity being nearly entirely passive, empowering it didn’t drain a lot of energy, but he certainly felt the strain it put on his soul, nevertheless. As for what empowering Sagacity did… well, as it said on the can, it made all its effects better, with some minor limitations.

Sagacity provided Jake with a wealth of knowledge simply by having the skill, but sadly, empowering it didn’t result in Jake suddenly feeling an influx of new knowledge. He also quickly had it clarified that empowering a skill didn’t give him more stats, either. With that, Jake concluded that some of the bonuses from skills simply couldn’t be increased. In fact, it seemed like only the “active” or at least “triggered” effects would be improved from his initial testing.

A part of what Sagacity allowed him to do was extract knowledge from the drop of blood in his Soulspace, and that part was empowered. It wasn’t very useful, though, as the extraction of knowledge tended to take a long time, and by the time Invocation would provide any value, he would have to deactivate it to avoid the skill becoming too unstable.

At the end, Jake concluded that Invocation worked essentially only with the middle section of the skill:

“Allows the Alchemist to make creations he does not have the associated crafting skill for (if no associated skill is found, a small bonus to stat effectiveness shall still be provided). You can freely modify and change the displayed information of anything you create, fooling most Identify skills. Knowledge further increases Records infused when crafting.”

Empowering Sagacity using Invocation increased all these effects, with especially the last two having proven themselves to be very useful. Jake hadn’t experimented a lot with editing displayed information of crafted items, but it was clear that Invocation made this aspect of the skill a lot easier and harder to see through. The part about infusing Records was also great, as it was just a straight-up increase to the effect of anything he crafted.

Another tidbit of very useful information Jake learned was that he didn’t have to activate Invocation throughout the crafting process. As long as he used it right before he got done with a craft, it would apply its full effect, meaning he only had to use Invocation for a few seconds.

Now, when it came to the downsides of the skill, it rapidly became evident that those were very much overstated. The reason Jake could conduct a good deal of experimentation in a short time was that Sagacity only ended up being penalized for around twenty minutes after his first attempt, and if he used Invocation for only a couple of seconds, the penalty would barely last a few minutes.

Jake also noticed something else after empowering Sagacity a few times. It was very subtle and he could barely detect it, but after every use and recovery period, everything didn’t return to being exactly the same.

During Invocation, Jake absorbed Records from the Malefic Viper, most of which were dispersed through his actions. However, a bit of these Records stayed with Jake afterwards, meaning that with every use, he felt that his understanding of his Legacy skill grew by a minuscule amount. It was so small that it was nearly undetectable, but that it was even a thing was incredible.

Jake had discovered this while recovering after empowering Sagacity. He had just been studying a bit in a book when suddenly he read something and got an odd sense that he already knew it. He also seemed to know more about a particular herb he’d never seen before than what was on the page, and after flipping to the next section, he confirmed this knowledge was correct. Due to that, Jake believed that while Invocation didn’t directly give Jake instinctual knowledge, the Records lingering in the skill did give him more knowledge… he just had to figure out how to trigger this “remembering.”

He also theorized that his Identify should be better if used in conjunction with Invocation-empowered Sagacity, but he hadn’t tested that yet.

When it came to the Records echoing back to the Malefic Viper, he’d yet to notice it happening. It was likely entirely passive and undetectable, and if it did have a negative effect on experience gain or anything similar, he would only know after a long time of gathering data. His initial guess was that the increase in Records Jake got from Villy roughly cancelled out the ones he gave away, as that seemed to track with the whole theme of them being best-buddy equals.

Also, even if there was a disparity in the exchange of Records, that didn’t mean either side would lose out. Records weren’t just Records but varied widely in quality and quantity; however, these two distinctions were also oversimplifications.

What would be considered high-quality Records to one person could be trash to another. In Jake’s case, the Records obtained from killing a peak C-grade would likely be shit, while to someone else his level who was worse at combat would get extremely high-quality Records from such a feat.

Perhaps an easier example would be if the Sword Saint successfully transmuted a legendary rarity sword. Such a feat would be absolutely insane to him, in the same vein that Jake painting a legendary rarity painting would give him a huge amount of quality Records. However, switch it around, and it was back to Jake and the old man just going about what they regularly did, which was the key to why they would be considered high quality in the first place.

Diversity was the spice of life and a massive source of Records. Accomplishing and trying new things was incredibly important as it helped one diversify Records. Sure, some Records weren’t actually that useful if they didn’t benefit one’s Path, but that didn’t mean one wouldn’t get them.

The point was that the same Records affected Jake and Villy differently, which was why an exchange taking place could potentially prove massive. The Records Jake got from Villy were certainly entirely useless to the Primordial, and even if what Jake got could be considered high quality for both himself and the Viper, when it came to quantity, it was akin to Jake drinking with a straw from the ocean.

Meanwhile, the Records Jake gave back to the Viper could also prove surprisingly beneficial for the Primordial. Sure, Records from crafting some rare poison didn’t mean shit to Villy, but what about if Jake sent back Records related to the First Sage? The ones from his ritual? Or just ones flavored with Jake’s unique signature of Jake-ness that ultimately stemmed from his certifiably overpowered Bloodline?

In that case, perhaps even a being standing at the apex of the multiverse could find some quality.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Anyhow, back on topic. After testing Sagacity a bunch, Jake moved on to his other Legacy skills, but a lot of them weren’t that interesting. Sure, it would work with skills such as Wings, Fangs, Presence, and Scales of the Malefic Viper, but honestly, in what realistic scenario would he use Invocation?

These skills were primarily made for combat, so he nearly only used them when also using Arcane Awakening. The sixty percent increase in all stats made these skills even stronger than Invocation could in most cases, and in the scenarios where Invocation would be better, it wasn’t really an option. Sure, he could use Invocation to make his Wings of the Malefic Viper escape or defense features stronger if he found himself in a pickle during a fight, but doing that meant deactivating Arcane Awakening first, resulting in an instant period of weakness. In other words, trying to use Invocation was primarily great for committing suicide if used mid-battle.

With a skill like Sense of the Malefic Viper, Jake also found it had few uses. Primarily, he could use it to far better detect alchemical ingredients and energies in his surroundings, despite this being a primarily passive feature. The other aspects of the skill were either combat-focused or didn’t provide any obvious benefits. All in all, not very useful with his current version of Sense.

To quickly gloss it over, Jake didn’t – and couldn’t – use Invocation on Palate of the Malefic Viper. When it got fixed, Jake had some neat ideas, though.

Blood was an interesting one, too. Ignoring the combat-related parts of the skill, Jake discovered that he could use Invocation, cut himself, pour some blood to craft, and then deactivate the skill again, resulting in the blood he used just being better. It was a bit silly, but hey, as he didn’t have to activate Invocation for long, he could repeat this every time he needed more blood, turning it into a straight buff.

Now, Touch was probably the most obvious of the nine Legacy skills to use Invocation with. It was a purely active skill that Jake used as his transmutation skill, and he quickly confirmed that Invocation just made him better at transmuting when using it. There was one slight downside, though.