Skill Tree Goddess:Volume1 Prologue

I made a promise.

So I can’t back out now.

Prologue: Looking Into It Again, Golems are Crazy Powerful

“Hero of the Chosen Soul, welcome to the temple of the Otherworld Reincarnation Goddess!!”

“You don’t have to wake me up that way every time, you know?”

His head felt heavy. He was lying collapsed on his back below the blue sky. What looked like a cloud floating by was actually a Sky Territory that had been torn from the surface and taken flight. A boy of only 139.5 centemetora, who still had some youthful innocence in his face, got up and felt the world spinning around him. You can figure out for yourself what the iron-like scent deep in his nose was.

But the small black-haired boy, Gilbezos Overridge, was still alive.

And…

“Ugh, so I guessed right. I made it. I survived the hit.”

“As cute as it is when little boys try to act tough, how about you try not to get hit by the attack next time?”

Seated gracefully upon the green meadow and smiling in disappointment over failing to provide a lap pillow, the young goddess provided a piece of advice that Gilbezos promptly ignored. Because being right wasn’t the same as being useful.

“It’s called the Hyper Golem, right? Do you think you can defeat that super tough boss?”

“Hyper Golem.”

That was the name of a mass of stone. It stood five metora tall and he didn’t even want to think about how much it weighed. In all seriousness, a punch from that big boss could break right through a thick castle gate. With that much weight and speed, ordinary defenses were meaningless and attempting them would be suicide. Ordinarily, a punch from that hunk of rock would turn a human being into mincemeat, their flesh, bones, and light armor all jumbled together.

But to reiterate, that hadn’t happened here.

Impact Physical Attack Damage Halved

Impact Physical Attack Damage Halved

Impact Physical Attack Damage Halved

Impact Physical Attack Damage Halved

…Even so.

Goddess Seliphenia had a point. This combination of skills wouldn’t last long. Simply duplicating the same skill would get you killed the instant the enemy worked up a countermeasure. Even attaching a wire brush or cactus to the Hyper Golem’s massive stone fist would do the job since that would change the attack to the stabbing physical type.

But it was unstoppable for as long as it went undiscovered.

“H-how?”

Shirayuri Ferslona.

Hiding behind the Hyper Golem was a black-haired girl of 10. She was the true enemy boss here. She wore only a baggy pajama top plus several leather work belts carrying tons of tools and lab equipment. She was a terminal shut-in craftsman who focused entirely on utility and had zero interest in the outside world. How little did she care? So little her bangs were overgrown and her long, greenish-black hair was uncombed with curls sticking out here and there.

“How can you get back up after taking a punch from my Hyper Golem? It’s not fair!”

Gilbezos was under no obligation to explain.

He opened his hand, a bright orb of light appeared there, and he crushed it in his fist.

The lines of light that burst from between his fingers formed a brilliant sword.

Then he recited an incantation in the Magic Language followed by a Wisdom spell word. The two operated under entirely different rules, so you mustn’t get them confused.

“Fa Ru Dei Ba Ra Ma Ta Ru Su Ne To A Ju Sei Sai Mu Ra Ba (That which cleaves wickedness with light) – Maldoné”

The air hummed as it was roasted.

After whispering in the Magic Language and twirling the light sword with a twist of the wrist, a three metora stone next to him was melted and burnt in two.

…Yes, cutting stone was not impossible. If a magic skill was used.

“It is impossible if you ask me.”

The goddess, whose long straight blonde hair changed color like a soap bubble when viewed from different angles, gave some carefree commentary next to him. With a sigh heavy enough to make her large breasts jiggle. Her mood differed from the other two, as if she were cut off from all dangers of the world. She looked around 18, but with her looks could be deceiving. She was a goddess, after all.

“I really don’t think you can slice right through Shirayuri’s Hyper Golem that way.”

Goddess Seliphenia drew out a large circle with her fingertip and a golden light appeared in the air to trace the movement. The pale light drew out a complex geometric shape. That was the Skill Tree. And a few red lights were flashing among its many gold lines.

Seliphenia was the goddess who managed any and all skills.

And the red flashing indicated the skills that had been applied to the Hyper Golem.

HP Recovery Upon Type-Based Damage Reduction

Immunity to Physical Damage from Sharp Blades

Damage Halved When Protecting an Ally

Damage From Magic of a Non-Weakness Type Halved

“It doesn’t matter, but your chest is distracting when you open it there. Due to the whole cleavage situation.”

“It’s easiest to open it here. And you’re free to stare as much as you want, Gilbezos.”

The goddess remained composed with the large white wing decorations above either ear fluttering. If it bothered her, he supposed she wouldn’t wear clothing so loose in the chest. It looked at first glance like a shoulderless white dress, but it showed a lot of skin at the chest and elsewhere. The long skirt had deep slits on the sides, leaving her thighs bare. The entire skirt was made up of something like four flower petals, so it also had two bold slits when viewed from behind. She was wearing what looked like armor on her hips and shins, but she honestly looked less protected than Shirayuri did in her pajama top.

…Of course, this wasn’t the Skill Tree ordinary people could use. That was apparently an endlessly expansive diagram inside their own mind.

Now, it’s time to discuss skill interpretation.

To make a long story short, physical attacks were meaningless against the Hyper Golem.

And changing to magic would only get your attack halved and halved again, preventing any meaningful damage. On top of that, it would automatically recover HP even if you intentionally continued attacking it with the magic it naturally resisted. That would make for an endless marathon. Even if you could do some damage, it wouldn’t accumulate and would only be reset, making it all meaningless. You would eventually wear yourself out and receive a critical hit.

…It was very well thought out. If she wasn’t his enemy, he would have given her some head pats of praise.

This was different from Gilbezos’s simple repetition of the same skill. She used some brains to combine the skills effectively.

Skills were fairly meaningless on their own. Their true worth was found in their combination.

Understanding that was enough to make Shirayuri a more than formidable foe.

“What are you going to do, Gilbezos? At this rate, she’ll wear you out and kill you☆” whispered Goddess Seliphenia with a giggle. She had bent over to whisper in the boy’s ear. Whisper sweetly. “But there’s no need for you to suffer. Are you ready to give up? Are you going to cry? Just say the word and there’s a big goddess hug waiting for you. Ooh, I can’t wait. C’mon, this pain is needless. Just give up and, out of my divine kindness, I will teach you the perfect skill combination to use.”

“Not happening.”

There was generally no limit to what a goddess could provide. The problem was, if he started relying on her, Gilbezos was afraid he would wander into a dead-eyed route where he simply used her recommendations over and over forever.

Besides, he had already found the path to victory.

“Swap out my skills for me, Lady Seliphenia. I want to trade this light sword for a water one.”

“Are you sure? It’s too bad. While water is the Hyper Golem’s weakness type, that won’t do anywhere near enough damage.”

“That doesn’t really matter.”

Now.

Shirayuri didn’t seem to notice he had casually broken the rules.

The small girl may have been too furious over her supposedly perfect strategy failing.

The 5-metora giant tore through the air as it approached. It was a pure physical threat brought to the extreme. A stone fist capable of breaking through a castle gate in a single blow flew toward Gilbezos, but he just barely avoided it while swinging his water sword. Maybe his unnatural posture had worked against him, but he didn’t even graze the enormous Hyper Golem and only sliced deep into the green meadow.

The crumbling footing threw the Hyper Golem off balance, forcing it to place its hand on the ground for support, but it reached its other hand out toward Gilbezos.

A human caught in that grip would be crushed instantly.

“This ends now! Go, Hyper Golem!!”

Slice!!!

It did indeed end then. Because the makeshift water sword slashed diagonally through the Hyper Golem.

“What?”

Shirayuri sounded completely caught off guard.

Her surprise may have been so great she forgot to feel ordinary fear.

“Hey, wait, how did you destroy my invincible Hyper Golem, whaaat!!?”

“it makes perfect sense.”

Not that he was going to explain it to her.

Before the sliced Hyper Golem could crumble to the ground, Gilbezos ran past to the side. Nothing remained to protect Shirayuri. He darted toward her and held the sharp tip of his water sword to her skinny throat. With the same ultra-high-pressure water blade that could easily cut through a piece of metal thicker than his arm.

“That ends it.”

“Uh.”

“I win. …And the test is over. I know you want a bouncer to keep ruffians out of your shop, but you should probably rethink the skill combination.”

“Uhhhh!!”

The pajama girl tearfully bit the sleeve of her baggy pajama top.

The goddess by Gilbezos’s side sighed in exasperation.

“You agreed to help test her new golem’s capabilities, so shouldn’t you tell her why she lost? And be quick about it.”

“There was a gap in your skill combination, Shirayuri.”

He felt like she should have noticed when he switched his attack from a light sword to a water sword.

“Listen. Your Hyper Golem had four main skills: ‘HP Recovery Upon Type-Based Damage Reduction’, ‘Immunity to Physical Damage from Sharp Blades’, ‘Damage Halved When Protecting an Ally’, and ‘Damage From Magic of a Non-Weakness Type Halved’. You set that up yourself, so you’re with me so far, I hope?”

“…Yes.”

“Then let’s split them up and analyze them one at a time. First, I was using a magic attack, so ‘Immunity to Physical Damage from Sharp Blades’ didn’t do anything. The water type was its weakness, so ‘Damage From Magic of a Non-Weakness Type Halved’ and ‘HP Recovery Upon Type-Based Damage Reduction’ also did nothing. That only left ‘Damage Halved When Protecting an Ally’.”

“But, but. That doesn’t explain how you could defeat the Hyper Golem! It shouldn’t be possible!”

She was right.

That was why even the goddess had said switching to a water attack wouldn’t do enough damage. Using the weakness type had prevented the automatic HP recovery, but every attack would still be halved as long as the golem continued to protect Shirayuri.

However…

“Your Hyper Golem halves any damage it takes while protecting you. And that works together with the HP recovery when it receives an attack of most any type.”

“…Right.”

“But doesn’t that also mean it’s defenseless when not protecting you?”

She tilted her head in a “?” way.

Gilbezos struggled to avoid showing how cute he found that. It wasn’t easy!

“Simply put, I first attacked the ground to make the Hyper Golem place a hand down for support to create a situation where it’s last action was taken to protect itself, not you. With the damage reduction gone, it’s no different from an ordinary boulder and I could easily cut it down with water type cutting magic.

With a “bam!!” the giant mass of stone shattered from within.

It must have taken so much damage the magic structure forming it had collapsed.

Or so he thought, but then a 150 centemetora statue of a naked girl emerged from within. Inexplicably, the revealed statue was a girl of about 15 made of polished white marble.

The statue girl, who seemed to be showing off her body with her hands held up behind her head, had no readable expression, but she seemed unwilling to look him in the eye.

…If she was capable of feeling embarrassment, why would she be in that pose?

What had led to her posing like a certain goddess in the bath?

On closer inspection, she did have some square scraps of white paper covering her smooth torso, but not many. If anything, they seemed to draw the eye to those areas…and if you were only going to cover it up, why make her so anatomically correct in the first place!? Someone had their priorities all wrong!!

The Hyper Golem gave a muttered report.

“My stamina…has been…broken. Vwahh.”

“Wait, that’s the true form of your big, strong Hyper Golem? That’s its core? Wh-wh-wh-why would you create something so indecent, Shirayuri!? What even is this!?”

Gilbezos turned around to find Shirayuri had vanished.

Instead, a small square building with 10-metora sides had appeared in the middle of the verdant meadow. The black wooden pillars and white mortar walls gave the fashionable shop the coloration of an old piano. The excessive number of chimneys sticking up from the small roof were probably to accommodate the alchemy and synthesis done inside.

So she had summoned her shop.

Contained inside her Necessities Emporium, the shut-in owner’s voice came from the gap in the small closed window.

“Th-there’s nothing indecent about her. The Hyper Golem is the perfect big sister I created with own two hands.”

“Um. But you’re not an only child. If your real big sister heard you saying that, it would break her heart.”

“As if she has a heart to break. When she encounters something she doesn’t understand, that monster woman draws that huge sword on her back and starts smashing without a second thought!!”

Gilbezos was hit by a sudden coughing fit.

He couldn’t exactly argue against that assessment.

“Yeah, Saezuri is something of a meathead knight, so I can see that happening…”

“Of course you can. The elder of the Ferslona sisters is the one who forgoes a shield, uses her thick sword for both offense and defense, and, upon encountering a translucent ghost in a dungeon, will go out of her way to use a light enchantment before crushing it with brute force,” said Goddess Seliphenia while toying with the end of her long blonde hair. “Anyway, if it already does what you want, then the next step would be focusing more on the shape the skills take. Symbolism matters. While they both cut, a sword and a razor provide an entirely different image.”

“I don’t have time to worry about appearances.”

“It’s more important than you think. It can be especially powerful in battles against people like this.”

The goddess loved hinting at an answer over more straightforward phrasing.

“That aside, you really can be reckless, Gilbezos. I know it was a request from a friend, but you shouldn’t throw yourself into a test against a golem powerful enough to bring down a castle gate.”

“Yeah, but I made a promise.”

“Because you were so short on funds you needed a 10-year-old girl to cook for you?”

Bfgh!?

While that overpowered phrase stabbed into his chest, deeply wounding him, Gilbezos Overridge managed a curt reply.

“So I can’t back out now.”

Between the Lines 1

Archangel: “Archangel here!”

Lesser Demon: “Lesser Demon too.”

Archangel: “Today we’ll be covering the basics of skills! Skills refer to all of the abilities you can learn using the Skill Tree controlled by the goddess. So magic, martial arts, cooking, and sex techniques are all skills.”

Lesser Demon: “Skills are ranked from 1 to 9.”

Archangel: “The amount of Lactic Acid Wisdom…excuse me, of LAW needed to learn the Rank 1 skills at the very bottom of the Skill Tree is 2.”

Lesser Demon: “LAW won’t mean anything to normal people either.”

Archangel: “Oh, um, think of it as the gems or numbers needed to acquire skills (whisper).”

Lesser Demon: “What a pain. If there are simpler terms for it, why go out of your way to be strictly correct about-”

Archangel: “Do you want me to abandon this tutorial and go home?”

Lesser Demon: “Rank 1 requires 2 LAW, Rank 2 requires 4 LAW, and Rank 3 requires 8 LAW. As you can see, the cost grows more with each rank increase. Really, that goddess sure is greedy. As you continue to move from point to point on the tree like a board game, how much will you end up having to pay to reach Rank 9 at the very top?”

Archangel: “Ahh! Quite stealing my explanation! Ahh!!”

Lesser Demon: “Spoilers are like the strawberry on a shortcake: you snooze, you lose. But to make up for the cost, Rank 9 skills are all overpowered: Appraisal, Instant Hypnosis, Modern Weapon Summoning, and plenty more devilish options.”

Archangel: “That said, climbing to Rank 9 isn’t the only path for growth!”

Lesser Demon: “Yeah, since the true value of skills is in their combination.”

Archangel: “Exactly. And just because the goddess with complete control over the Skill Tree is madly in love with you is no reason to get lazy.”

Lesser Demon: “All the goddess can do is exchange the human’s LAW for skills. He still has to fight and earn the LAW in the first place.”

Archangel: “And maybe it comes from her control of the Skill Tree, but the goddess can generally see all of an enemy’s skills.”

Lesser Demon: “But even that’s wasted on you if you don’t have the skill to strike at the enemy’s weak point. If you want to win with overpowered ease, you need to put in the work first.”

Archangel: “Oh? But doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose???”

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