"For now, I need to know if Dipper has already gotten his hands on journal number 3."
Wirt remembered that his protagonist had absolutely done nothing during his first days in Gravity Falls, for several reasons.
'Thanks to Stan for overloading him with chores... And his inability to find journal 3 in the area didn't help either.'
Despite his mocking reflections, Wirt didn't underestimate the Dipper in his fanfic.
So he immediately spent his meager mana reserves to ask a few simple questions to his Truth Book skill.
"I see... He hasn't found it yet and he's wandering in the forest looking for it."
Of course, he obtained the approximate location of journal number 3.
All these simple questions had cost a lot of mana, but that mattered little to Wirt.
Deliberately ignoring his nearly empty mana bar, he activated his passive Co-author skill.
"I need a practical skill for combat... not too expensive, and especially versatile in the long run."
As he thought about it, Wirt mentally scrolled through all the fictional stories he knew.
He had plenty of ideas, but most were either too costly in system points or far too weak and not versatile enough.
Finally, he managed to create a skill that was both useful and sufficiently versatile, inspired by a certain character from Sakamoto Days, alias Shin Asakura.
[Name: Telepathy (Rank C+)]
[Category: Active Skill (evolving)]
[Description: A skill inspired by a telepathic assassin from another world, who gained a certain notoriety despite his talent.]
[Effect: In exchange for a moderate amount of mana or endurance, it is possible to translate and interfere with electromagnetic waves emitted by the brain.]
[Warning: The range of this power is small at first, but it can evolve with increased statistics or better mastery.]
"There, I just need to observe Dipper from a distance and train with this thing."
Thanks to this skill, Wirt no longer needed the Memory Gun to neutralize the intruder in Dipper's body.
He just needed some training time before confronting him.
"I'll just stay around Journal number 3."
He had spent a significant amount to create this skill, but he didn't regret it.
450 system points had been invested that day.
...
'Master, the individual with the brown cap is approaching.'
Wirt was sitting in the hollow of a tree to shelter from the infernal summer sun, but he wasn't staying passive.
He was in a meditation position to train his telepathic abilities.
For now, his detection range was 20 meters.
This might seem decent, but it was still far from the 400 meters achieved by Shin Asakura, who wasn't even a particularly powerful telepath.
Despite this, Wirt had quickly understood how his telepathic abilities worked.
He perceived people's or creatures' thoughts as waves or radio signals, and he could connect to or interfere with them.
For example, he could send a mental message, suggest an idea to deceive or manipulate, push a creature to follow a specific direction, read their thoughts, or even search through their memory and alter it.
This last ability was undoubtedly the most difficult to use, as it required a large amount of energy.
'Keep watching him, but stay undercover.'
During his stay in the forest, not far from the Mystery Shack, he had not only survived thanks to the food brought by the gnomes.
He had also befriended animals living at the edge of the forest, whether through telepathic discussion, his natural affinity with them... or by doing them favors.
Result: his subordinates had multiplied.
Beatrice is one of them.
She's a small sparrow that he helped get out of a dangerous situation with a snake.
This was a simple act for him, but it was amplified thanks to his affinity with nature, and the sparrow easily became his friend.
She was tasked with watching the Mystery Shack.
And yes, the name Beatrice was chosen by him.
Animals don't really have a sense of naming, and Wirt found it a bit complicated to call her simply by her color, as she had suggested.
He ended up naming her Beatrice, because she reminded him of the cunning bird from the story "Over the Garden Wall."
He had thought about using his co-author authority to modify her, but he had rejected the idea.
He needed to save his points.
Especially because of the skill he had created after telepathy.
[Name: Nature's Sacrificer (Rank B-)]
[Category: Passive Skill]
[Level: —]
[Description: You are the representative of nature, but also its contractor and guardian.]
[Effect: Allows you to gain a statistic equivalent to 10% or less of that of the sacrificed creature, randomly
Other effect: The more sacrifices you offer, the deeper your bond with nature will become]
At first, he had wanted to create a predation skill like Rimuru's, but he didn't have enough points.
He would have needed at least 2500.
So he decided to weaken the skill and use various tricks to create it at a lower cost.
That's when he remembered the Beast from the story of Over the Garden Wall.
A creature that fed on souls, thanks to the forest.
So he thought: "Why couldn't I do the same?"
That's how this skill was born.
Initially, it cost 800 system points, but after several weakenings, it was worth only 500.
Now, Wirt had only 50 system points left to help him.
"Dipper's coming... it's earlier than expected, originally."
He was already prepared, but it could have gone badly if he hadn't hurried and if he hadn't created his second skill.
It should be noted that the tree where he currently stays is Beatrice's former enemy.
To quickly increase his statistics, he relied on hunting all predators at the edge of Gravity Falls forest.
He was able to obtain a weak but constant improvement of a statistic, thanks to the 10% (or less) of a random statistic from each sacrificed victim.
Unfortunately, there was a side effect... slightly unpleasant from his point of view.
"I've created too many trees recently, anyway."
Every time he kills a target with the intention of sacrificing it, it slowly turns into a tree.
Not only that, but he is forced to digest the gains by staying close to the area for a certain time.
The digestion time depends on the strength of the victim, and so does the size of the tree created.
Thus, Wirt concluded that the passive Co-author skill completed by itself the gaps or insufficient information regarding created skills.
A discovery that had left him somewhat mixed.
A crack sounded.
As he stood up, the tree roots covering his body began to break slowly.
Wirt stretched slightly, then opened his status.
Name: Wirt (formerly ###)
Title: the false god, leader of the gnomes, co-author, guardian of Gravity Falls forest
Age: 19 years old
Species: Gnome
Strength: I (3)
Speed: I (4)
Mana: I (2)
Robustness: I (5)
Intelligence: I (1)
Important note: all of Jeff's global values are present, but the status does not count them. They will evolve in parallel with the current statistics.
Other note: the statistics of a normal adult human are on average I (5).
Passive Skills:
• Born Leader (rank B+)
• Forest Affinities (rank C+)
• Nature's Sacrificer (rank B-)
• Co-author (unknown rank)
Note: Passive skills evolve in an unconventional way.
Active Skills:
• Book of Truth (unknown rank) – Level 1
• Observation (unknown rank) – Level 1
• Reading from an omniscient point of view (unknown rank) – Level 1
• Telepathy (rank C+) – Level 2