Chapter 453 - One of us (Patreon)

Passive Skill: Mana Pulse Circulation (Low Arcane)
The user's mana pathways are not only enhanced but supercharged with pulsating mana, passively optimizing all their physiological functions. This results in vastly increased stamina, increased energy reserves, and near instantaneous healing of minor to moderate injuries. The effects scale exponentially with mana, and the constant high-speed circulation of mana through the brain grants heightened cognitive clarity.

Passive Skill: Mana Veil (Low Arcane)
The user becomes nearly imperceptible to all forms of magical and physical detection, making them almost impossible to locate by normal or supernatural means. The veil not only blurs their outline but also distorts light and sound to the point of making the user appear invisible to the naked eye. Incoming attacks are not only distorted but are also partially redirected or nullified, and disrupting their mana flow becomes an almost futile effort.

Passive Skill: Mana-Fortified Mind (Low Arcane)
The user's mind becomes an impenetrable fortress, fortified by impossibly complex mana weaves. This passive grants immense resistance to all forms of mental attacks, including illusions, mind control, and psychic attacks. Additionally, the passive allows the user's mind to endure the immense strain of using powerful skills and traits.

Passive Skill: Thermal Rebirth Matrix (Low Arcane)
The Thermal Rebirth Matrix allows absorbing and converting ambient and internal heat at an exceptional rate. The user can regenerate from grievous injuries, including regrowing entire limbs and organs, almost within moments. This process also detoxifies the body from any poison or harmful substance. The user now possesses high resistance to all but the most extreme flame and heat-based attacks, making them virtually impervious to most forms of thermal damage.

Passive Skill: Mana Sculptor (Low Arcane)
The user becomes a Mana Sculptor and can shape mana into intricate and versatile constructs. These constructs maintain exceptional durability and adaptability while gaining enhanced precision and refinement. The user can now create more complex forms that serve a wider variety of purposes. These constructs possess special properties like self-repair and operate with improved efficiency and stability, allowing for longer-lasting creations without additional mana expenditure.

These are the passives I’m seriously considering.

Some mana-based healing, body strengthening and some overall improvement.

Mana-based mind protection and improvement to cognitive abilities.

Healing passive based on thermal energy, and the Mana Sculptor thingy I also liked a lot.

The dark horse is mana veil, where the part about distortion of incoming attacks interests me, as well as hiding my mana, which I think will be more and more important until I’m strong enough.

Overall, any of these passives could give me a huge boost. As always, the descriptions are mostly simple.

With a few changes, they might even seem like epic passives, but the term 'arcane' in their name speaks volumes. You could easily have a passive with 'rare' in the name and almost the exact same description, yet the difference between the two would be immense.

Even so, I, as always, think of them as a tool offered I could learn from. Sure, it’s a goddamn arcane passive and I’m quite sure not that many people have it.

Getting it before level 300 could also improve the Primary classes I get offered when I get there. And over the months or years, I could learn to do what the passive does on my own. Maybe even some active healing skill, right? Right?

They are all low arcane, so there is also the option to wait and get mid arcane, but I bet if I did that and got to mid arcane, I would think about waiting for upper arcane.

Tough times indeed. First world problems: too many good passives to pick from.

“Biscuit, I’m annoyed and indecisive,” I groan and lay with my back against the rocky ground.

The cute corgi leaves his pile of items that he was selling. It’s an interesting fact as it’s the first time I see him interact with the system this way. Well, he could use the Community, so it’s not too big of a surprise, but some functions still seem to be locked for him, I think.

His cold nose boops into my ear, and I can hear him breathing and sniffing before he moves to the side and licks my temple.

He then lays down as well, his chin against my neck where I lift my hand and start absent-mindedly petting his back. I can feel his warm breath against the bottom of my chin, and it tickles, but I let it be.

For a while I rest like that.

“So, how is the group?” I ask out loud.

“Not that well after the Mana Desert.” The tone Dennis says this with is solemn, and his brother is quiet. I can imagine him silently nodding.

“Sophie took Izzy and left the group after a fight with Tess,” Aaron confirms.

“I see.”

“You don’t seem surprised at all,” Dennis says, though he looks surprised himself.

This time, I decide to ignore it and just shrug, but gently, to not interrupt Biscuit’s rest.

“I think about some things a lot, you know, you twerp. And if you’re worried about it, don’t be. You may not have noticed, but Tess can be a bit naive at times and sometimes pushes things too far. Still, she's a good person, and Sophie knows that.”

“They could solve it with a bikini mud fight,” Aaron sighs as well.

Right now, I'd love to see the expression Lily is surely giving him, but I can't interrupt the future Absolute's rest to look.

“How is Min-Jae?” I poke, and as expected, it gets quiet.

“They tried to apologize, but he told them to—how was it?—to ‘eat shit,’” Lily answers instead of the twins.

"Kim can be really stubborn when he wants to," Aaron grumbles.

"Those orbs he shot at us really hurt," Dennis adds.

As it starts turning darker, I pop up a bigger thermal orb and reduce the light it generates.

For fun, I turn it into a cube as big as my fists put together. I play with it a bit longer until the thermal energy inside of it changes. The light shifts and fluctuates in a similar way to how a campfire would.

A bit more work later, even the heat it radiates slightly changes, just as the flames would. Sometimes the heat hits one place stronger than the other. I tried to come up with a way to add some sound effects with kinetic energy, but so far, I have failed.

Standing up with Biscuit in my arms, I create manabloc chairs for each of us, our spot close to the huge boulder.

As they sit in the chairs, I concentrate a bit more and make them a bit more moldable so they react to the weight and slightly change shape. Then I fixate them, each chair perfectly fitting the position they’re sitting in.

“Manabloc chair, you said, right?” Aaron giggles quietly, but there isn’t that much eagerness in it.

As Biscuit drifts off to sleep, I form a mana arm that stretches out to grab a blanket and gently drape it over him, leaving only his head peeking out. Then, I begin petting him softly.

Biscuit occasionally twitches and lets out soft woofs in his sleep, but gradually relaxes as I keep running my hand over him.

An hour passes in silence, and it's strangely comfortable to just sit there after two weeks of crafting and training.

The steady rise and fall of his breathing becomes the only sound, and for the first time in a while, I let myself relax, enjoying the quiet break from it all.

I carefully break that silence while looking at the corgi in my arms, “When Biscuit was just a small pup, the granddaughter of his owner often liked to leave him out in the snow, rain, or without food for a long time. Then she recorded as she ‘saved’ him. Probably videos like: Saving a cute corgi pup from rain and bathing him in warm water. Saving a cute corgi pup from snow and making him warm. Finding a hungry cute corgi pup outside and feeding him. The last is something she did the most. I think she always made a new account and posted the videos in hopes it went viral, and for her to then kickstart her ‘career’ and get some eyes on her.” I nearly spit the words out.

After gently booping Biscuit’s nose I look at Lily and the twins, who seem to be unable to say anything.

“She likely never had a viral break, so she kept trying until she got bored after a year or two, giving Biscuit to grandparents whose place she lived—and who must have known.”

I pause for a moment to calm myself down, and only when my hand doesn’t feel like I want to punch someone do I put it back on Biscuit’s head.

“Being a pup and normal dog, Biscuit never understood. He shared with me some images and feelings he had back then, so I know a bit.” My eyes meet Lily’s. “He was always happy when she took him from the rain or snow, when she fed him food after starving him. He loved that person. How silly is that.”

No one says anything for a while, and I increase the output of my thermal cube, the light flickering in the night.

“Aaron and I come from a very wealthy family,” Dennis is the first to break the silence. He and his brother exchange messages through their link before he continues, “And by wealthy, I mean tens of millions rich. Well, we were, you could say.”

There’s a smile on his face as he shyly continues, “Our parents died when we were even younger than Isabella, and since then, our family passed us around. Grandpa wasn’t that bad, and we spent a few nice years with him. Then he died, and we got sent to our uncle and then aunt.”

Aaron joins in, “She always hated our parents but didn’t mind taking us in. You know, it meant she could take a bite of all that money we got left.”

“She and everyone else who could. Father’s old friend, distant family, state, city, accountants—they all made sure plenty of it got lost.”

“We never saw a cent of it. There’s some in locked accounts, but most of it is gone.”

“Aunt took care of it.” Dennis smiles even wider. “She also liked to show us how she despised the two brats of her ‘whore’ sister,” he reaches his hand over his shoulder and taps his back, “We have plenty of scars to prove it. Of course, nothing too visible, we wouldn’t want people to start asking and take us from her.”

“Us and the money.”

“And the money,” Dennis confirms.

Aaron leans back, eyes distant, as if recalling memories he’d rather keep buried.

There’s a shared understanding between the twins, the kind that comes from years of unspoken pain, but they don't linger on it for long.

The casual way they speak about their past almost makes it sound normal, like they've long since accepted the unfairness of it all.

It’s clear they’ve grown used to brushing off the hurt with forced smiles, but the quiet tension tells a different story.

Hearing soft sobs, we turn to see Lily wiping her eyes with her sleeves. "I didn’t know," she mumbles. "I didn’t know any of that."

“It’s not like we go around telling people,” Dennis smirks, his blue eyes catching the light from my cube.

“We mostly kept it to ourselves,” Aaron adds. “It’s not exactly easy to talk about.”

Dennis looks at his brother. “But we always had each other, no matter what happened. I hate that creep sometimes, but hey, we’re in this together.”

“Dennis is a dick, but hey, at least I can do some evil things and blame it on him.” Aaron nods seriously and turns to Lily. “So what about you? Everyone here seems to be kind of messed up. Tess with what she did, Kim mentioned something, poor Biscuit—and I bet Nat also has a thing or two, looking at how he and his sister behave.”

With curiosity, I watch as Lily hesitates, but the twins wait together with me.

She starts softly, “It wasn’t until much later that I realized my father and I were poor. He was hardly ever home, there was always so little food, and our apartment was either freezing or unbearably hot. I couldn’t leave because it wasn’t safe outside. For years, my only friend was Grumpy, my cat.”

I increase the warmth from my cube, and we all sit quietly, soaking it in for a moment.

“They eventually took me away from my father and placed me with a new family, along with Grumpy and I haven’t seen my dad in years. The people I’m with now are kind, there’s always food, and I’m not cold anymore. But over time, the way they treated me changed. I wasn’t behaving how they wanted. ‘Why don’t you smile more, Lily?’ ‘Why are you so quiet, Lily?’ ‘Why doesn’t your father ever visit you, Lily?’ ‘Why, why, why, why, why.’”

She swallows hard, her voice catching, but then she smiles as she looks at the twins, and then at me.

“When I get back to Earth, I hope Grumpy is still alive. He’ll be old, but cats like him can live up to 20 years. I know it! I’ll make him immortal, I’ll make him young again, and then we’ll be together just like before.”

For the last time, she wipes her eyes, “I know it’s childish, but this is something I hope for. So, am I messed up as well, Aaron?”

“Totally messed up, Lily. A fitting member of group 4,” Aaron confirms with a nod.

Slowly, the conversation shifts to other topics, and I notice they deliberately avoid asking about my past.

It’s more comfortable that way, and I feel a quiet sense of relief, so I let it slide.

Then something cold pokes my left hand, the pale one.

I look down and my eyes meet Biscuit’s.

He doesn’t say anything, but pokes me again and again.

Firmly. Gently.

My conversation with Tess that we had in the caves under the Mana Desert comes to mind.

The silence stretches on, but no one pushes me to speak.

“My father was a drunkard who kept beating my mom and my sister, who always protected me even if she got beaten more.”

All conversation stops, but I don’t look up, continuing to stare at Biscuit. He returns my gaze.

A gentle little soul with a terrible past, just like all of us.

“I tried to kill him one day, but I couldn’t do it. I still remembered how he was when I was much younger. Our visit to the zoo, where he bought us the tastiest ice cream I ever had. The time he carried me on his shoulders when my legs hurt from walking. The perfect sunny day in the park. The time he and Mom danced in the kitchen after we moved to a new place—they were both so beautiful then. The times he put me and Vic to bed and gently kissed our foreheads.”

Another cold-feeling poke against my hand.

“My sister killed him in the end. Because I couldn’t and because he would’ve killed our mom one day otherwise. Since then, she’s been in prison, and I was called the brother of a murderer.”

Biscuit licks my arm, and I ruffle his head, lifting my head up. “Am I messed up as well?”

“Very messed up indeed,” Dennis nods.

“Terribly messed up,” Lily whispers quietly, her big eyes on me.

“The same as the rest of us,” Aaron says. “A fitting member of group 4.”

(Food!)

I look down at him and feel myself smile, "You as well, Biscuit. One of us."

***

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