You may sacrifice a skill you have slotted or which is in your Archive in order to form a Bead, which is a permanent copy of the skill in question, still at 1/108th strength, a reduction which applies to secondary characteristics like growth speed as well. You may undo Beads and return them to a slot or the Archive at will.
Additionally, you may add more skills of a related type to the Bead (fire skills for pyromancy, for instance), changing its expression and increasing its power. A Bead composed of 9 skills would be expressed at 1/12th power. As long as a Bead exists the person its components are copied from cannot have the connected skills copied again.
When a Bead is used in conjunction with a skill in the 108, or another Bead, its power increases as though all used skills and Bead components formed a single, larger Bead. For instance, using a 9-component pyromancy Bead with 9 slotted skills and an 18-component barrier Bead together to form a fire shield would be treated as a 36-component Bead, or a skill at 1/3 strength. With enough components a Bead is able to go beyond 108/108 strength. For the purpose of effects, a Bead counts as a skill within your 108 slots.