Bitter 123

The status screen had new sections, new spells, something called passives, coloured numbers that hadn’t been there before and a countdown. She also had an asterisk next to her race.

Britta quickly peeked into the dark chasm the dwarf had disappeared into to make sure he wasn’t somehow crawling back up. There was no sign of him or his glowing eyes.

She went back to her screen and noticed the Shadow Guardian spell had an error message next to it. That would explain why the shade had been acting so weird recently.

She tried pressing the screen in case there was more about what the error meant, but nothing happened. Not even the normal information screen came up explaining how the spell worked.

She was fine with that for the moment. Other than the shade’s tendency to run away when asked questions it didn’t want to answer, there was no real problem. In fact, there was a distinct advantage to having the shade bugged out and not behaving normally.

“Hey,” she called over to the shade. “Can you come over here?”

The shade drifted over the divide towards her.

She tried pressing on the asterisk next to where is said Gnome on the screen and a small tab popped up:

[Enhanced]

So now she was an enhanced gnome? What did that even mean? She tried pressing the tab in case further explanations were available. They weren’t.

Near the bottom of the screen, she had a new skill: Great Blessing. That was one of the buffs the kobold priest had put on her. She pressed on it and another tab appeared.

[Protected from all Curses]

Under it was a timer showing she had three minutes left. Three minutes until she was no longer protected from all curses, presumably.

The other new skill was called Waiting and was bright red for some reason. She tried pressing it but nothing happened. Also bugged, it seemed.

The shade appeared by her side and hovered there. She should really dismiss it before she used up any more mana but she decided to risk one question first.

“Do you know what this Waiting skill does?”

The shade didn’t respond. Britta got the feeling she shouldn’t have said anything and was about to take the question back, but the shade suddenly whispered, “Switching to conservation mode,” and faded away.

It was slightly annoying it kept doing that, but no harm done; she’d been about to desummon it anyway.

Her other skills Silpling’s Might and Skin of Oak. Both had dollar signs next to them, which made it look like she had to pay to activate them, but she was sure she had gained a strength boost when she tried to move the vase earlier, and her strength stat had a +5 next to it, but not added.

The kobold had said the oak skin would appear when she was attacked, so the dollar sign seemed to mean the skill would only activate when certain conditions were met.

She also had a bunch of passives protecting her from toxins, mushrooms and dirty water. If she was attacked by a poisonous toadstool that squirted brackish water, she’d be invincible.

There was also the new spell which was called Eternal Healing. It was also a buff from Derik, but why was it showing up as a spell? She was about to press it to see what the effect was when the counter under Great Blessing hit zero. There was a ping and Waiting flashed and disappeared. In its place appeared Charmer’s Fandango.

There was a loud fanfare of trumpets. Britta’s feet began moving of their own accord, up and down and side to side in intricate steps, like from a dance, faster and faster.

Charmer’s Fandango is now active, said a soft, feminine voice. Twenty three hours and fifty four seconds remaining.