The tome Ellie had given me contained more than just the technique to alter Status Plates, it was filled with all manner of methods to utilize @ Magic, from necromancy to enslavement there was all manner of fairly nefarious Skills. I didn't really plan on using any of the other Skills, but I was planning on studying and learning them on the journey to the Yin-Yang Clan, you never knew when something could come in handy after all.
Thankfully it didn't take long for me to learn Status Falsification Skill, though it merged into the Deception Skill as soon as I did. I was now able to change more of what my Status Plate displayed and was able to replace the names of Skills, Gifts, and Titles in addition to simply hiding them. On top of that I was able to do the same on other people's Status Plates, but the process was much longer and difficult as working with the strange black threads that weren't mine required greater precision and effort to achieve the same effects.
As Ellie suggested Marian and I made of a Skill to explain her sudden change, along with a description should anyone use an inspection type Skill to verify what it did.
'Blood Phoenix: A unique Skill that has awakened from the latent strength in the user's blood. Grants a boost to Attributes and blood related Skills depending on level.'
It was vague enough that Marian could use it to justify any oddities that people noticed and unless someone familiar with Status Falsification it wouldn't come to light that it had ever been changed, and even in that case I figured anyone who knew was either hiding something on their Status or practiced the Skill, and I doubted either of those kinds of people would question why a duchess might be hiding something on her Status.
Once that was taken care of I began to make the preparations for the journey to the Yin-Yang Clan. While it would be possible to travel with a caravan or hire a carriage, I wanted a quicker and more comfortable method. Arya was on borrowed time until I could make my way to the center of the Forest of Darkness, and I didn't want to take the chance that the contract she signed accounted for if she was unable to come.
Artifice had been stuck at level nine for quite some time, but between it and Seshat's Library, I was able to replicate all manner of things from Velen's world, though rather than the science that powered them I used magic, and often times the cost of fueling whatever I'd made wasn't worth it unless you had a stupid large mana pool like mine, or could quickly regenerate it like Arya when she was essentially naked in sunlight.
Despite the fact that I could make a vehicle to take us, I didn't particularly want to stand out, especially since you never knew just who or what you could encounter when going somewhere new. So in the end I actually settled on using necromancy, despite the fact that I said I wasn't going to use it. There were many kinds of undead that were able to be created but I wanted the simplest kind so it wasn't that difficult of a ritual to perform.
However I wasn't going to be satisfied with zombified horses, so I performed a rather grisly operation of enhancement on the two horses I bought before raising them. Apparently there was a Skill for modifying corpses as I gained the Corpse Enhancement Skill, though it was promptly merged into Artifice. The fact that such a Skill was considered a crafting Skill felt somewhat bizarre, but in the end I guessed that Artifice only cared about whether you were making or improving something, not what the something was.
I spent the final weeks of the school year retrofitting a carriage to be as comfortable as possible seeing as I planned to travel essentially non-stop since neither I nor the horses required sleep. Well I technically did, but I could get nearly the same benefits by having sex, something that wouldn't be a problem since I was going to be traveling alone with Arya for the journey.
It wasn't long until I found myself at the city gate saying my final farewells to those I cared about, which essentially was just Marian and Reine. Though much to my surprise both of my sisters had also come to say goodbye, and Gabriel had even given me a token to keep me safe, saying it was a shame she wouldn't be able to test herself against me until I returned.
I felt it was somewhat out of character for the woman who seemed to always keep a certain distance between herself and everyone but Kalista, but perhaps the four years at school had changed her for the better, I'd barely spent any time with either of them as I was busy with other things, so it wasn't impossible.
In addition, somehow, the fact that I was dropping out had circulated among the students and there were pockets of girls that I recognized from my reckless time in the first semester. It seemed that some of them couldn't get over me and I had somehow become like a celebrity to them. I'd already become used to having various fan groups, but for some reason I felt that the ones here were more obsessed than the others, almost as if they were a cult of fanatics. However I didn't let that bother me as I was leaving the city and I doubted I'd be seeing any of them again, hopefully they would just forget about me, or let me be just a memory, but one could never tell how another person would act unless they were very familiar.
There were only a few regrets I had as the seemingly plain carriage me and Arya rode made its way out of the city and towards the lands of the Yin-Yang Clan. My first was that I was unable to make another set of communication jewelry for Reine's use, but she could at least get updates about me through Marian. The other was that I wasn't able to transfer my school rank into an Adventurer's rank, since it seemed my father had taken precaution against that, and since I was still considered his child legally I was unable to fight against the decision. Even Marian wasn't able to reverse the decision as Alcrem's authority outranked hers.
In the end it was just another reason to be annoyed with my adopted father. If it weren't for the fact that I wanted to make sure Arya's dad would agree to our relationship, that Arya and I needed to get to the center of the Forest of Darkness, and I wasn't willing to abandon Marian or Reine, I probably would have just gone to see Alcrem and left the family. Unfortunately that came with its own set of problems, ones that I wasn't willing to deal with since it would likely be far more difficult than getting him to approve my marriage with Arya.
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