Chapter 299 - Skillful Insights (Patreon)

The very first thing Reivyn did was report back to his Party Members what he had learned from the head guard. It wasn’t in his nature to hoard knowledge, and there was no downside to the others learning the information even if they weren’t ready to actually Transcend any of their Skills of Affinities.

The fact that unlocking additional Abilities in the Same Skill was the way to improve the quality of one’s soul was incredibly important. Everyone could strengthen their souls Transcending a bunch of Skills, and Reivyn suspected there was a sort of quality to quantity situation with Transcending a bunch of Skills and Affinities, but it might just be too rare for people to unlock enough Skill Abilities to discover it.

This would create a feedback loop where one’s underlying talent would improve. Their Skills would advance faster, and they would have more Skills eligible for Transcendence, leading to further strengthening of the soul, and on and on.

Reivyn’s Achievement Reward that improved his breakthroughs to Transcendence also meant he would be able to potentially Transcend all of his Skills one day. He looked forward to a Skill Status Screen where every Skill Level was three digits.

However, Reivyn was in no condition to continue practicing his Spells or even work on his Mana Channeling after his short meeting with the lead guard, so he returned to the inn after imparting the knowledge. He had recovered from his earlier soul strain, but he could tell that it was only the symptoms he had overcome. The underlying issue, his soul being overtaxed, was still there. Instead of continuing to train in any way, Reivyn spent the remainder of the day casually resting.

The next day, after a day of doing nothing and a full night’s sleep, Reivyn felt fine again. He knew that just because he recovered so quickly didn’t mean he hadn’t done something very dangerous. If he had tried to Cast even a 3-Ability Spell before recovering, he could have done some serious harm, even permanent damage like his body was dealing with.

It was the first time he had encountered a situation where it was his soul, what constituted his underlying talent, was insufficiently strong. At least to do what I wanted to do, Reivyn consoled himself. It’s still definitely strong relative to everyone else. Someone would have to have reached Level 201 in a Skill to be able to do what I can do right now.

There was one final test Reivyn wanted to conduct before getting to work on his other Skills again. He wanted to participate fully with the others in their training and sparring after the calisthenics, though, so he convinced everyone to let him run his final experiment before they got started in the morning.

He once again had Kefira build a Mana barrier, but he had her dump a couple thousand points into the barrier. She nodded that she was ready for whatever Reivyn planned to throw at her.

“First test,” Reivyn said. “I’m just going to see what happens when I combine Plasma and Ice threads into a weave. Normally it would just reproduce Mist Mana. I know, I know,” Reivyn held up a hand at Kefira opening her mouth to interject. “I know it’s technically steam and not Mist, but I haven’t attempted to create Steam Mana, yet, so without any intention on my part, the System seems to just translate it to the closest representation.

“It’s literally steam, but the System designates it as super-heated Mist Mana.” Reivyn shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sure it would be a simple matter to imbue my intent and unlock Steam Mana, but then that would be at Level 1 and I’d have to build it up, so I’ll work on that some other time.

“Anyway, here goes.”

Reivyn combined the two Affinities together in a weave of a Bolt Spell. The Bolt Spell formed just like his Mist Bolt had, but instead of being a dull gray, it was a bright white, and the “Mist” was agitated instead of being docile. He probed it further with his Sense, checking to see what properties the Spell held.

“Huh, it just has the Mist Ability,” Reivyn said, slightly disappointed. “I was hoping it would retain the Abiltiies of the underlying Mana making up the weave, but even that Mana shifts as they’re woven together into the Spell. They don’t retain their distinct characteristics on the fundamental level like I’d hoped.”

“So that’s a bust?” Kefira asked. “Were you trying to see if you could further empower the absorption ability of the Plasma Mana?”

“Exactly,” Reivyn nodded. “I didn’t think this would work, just hoped. It was the simplest possible solution of the ideas I had come up with, and it would have been foolish to just dismiss it out of hand without trying it. I mean, what if it had worked? Then my other methods would have added a needless complication.

“Okay, next test.”

Reivyn gathered a thread of Light Mana. He used that as the center and wove Plasma and Ice into the central Affinity. The two opposing Affinities weren’t technically woven together with each other. There was some overlap, of course, but they were fundamentally both woven into the Light Mana.

The Light Mana Transcendent Ability said it was a beacon. Whenever Reivyn considered himself a “beacon,” it was as a rallying point. He had a suspicion that the clue was in the wording like with many other System messages.

He created the Bolt Spell out of the three Affinities, and just like he had suspected, the two Affinities didn’t combine into Mist Mana this time. They remained distinct. What Kefira had told him about his Spell yesterday before he collapsed had given him the inspiration to try this combination.

The Spell hovered over his hand. It was half red, half blue, and had a hint of golden light shining from inside. It was a strange looking Bolt Spell to say the least.

He launched the Spell at Kefira’s shield. It struck, simultaneously shattering and splashing against the Mana barrier. He and Kefira observed the aftereffects with great attention to detail. They waited for the Mana to burn itself out and finish eating away at the Mana making up the barrier.

“Hmm… Lackluster,” Reivyn commented. “Instead of working together, they worked against each other. If the Ice Mana burned away a portion of Mana the Plasma Mana was about to absorb, it didn’t suddenly go to the Plasma Mana, and it removed the target of the Plasma. That didn’t even translate into the Plasma Mana having more energy to eat away in the other direction.

“It’s the same vice versa, too. The Plasma Mana snatching away from the Ice Mana had the same effect. Overall, it barely added any additional Mana drain to the barrier, and it hindered the empowering of the Plasma Mana.”

“That’s disappointing,” Kefira remarked, sighing. “That would have been amazing, otherwise.”

Reivyn smiled.

“I’m not done, yet. One more Spell to go.”

Reivyn once more created a weave out of Plasma and Ice Mana, but he didn’t funnel them into a Spell construct. This way the two Affinities remained distinct without being fully combined, then he added Light Mana to the mix, tightening the weave in a way the threads couldn’t disperse into a different Affinity.

The problem with the way he had Cast the other Spell was that the Ice and Plasma Mana weren’t woven together. They were both just present in the same weave. This time it was fundamentally different. It was, at its base, a weave of Ice and Plasma with Light acting as the glue holding them together.

The Bolt Spell formed over Reivyn’s hand. He and Kefira inspected it. This time the Bolt Spell was a deep red, but it gave off a blue shimmer. There were both heat waves and cold shimmers escaping from the floating Bolt. It was a paradox, but it existed.

Reivyn flung the Spell at the barrier a final time. The Bolt slammed into the Mana, but instead of shattering or splashing, it looked like it tried to bore further into the barrier. It picked up additional Mana as the barrier melted around it and it moved further into the opposing Mana.

As a consequence, though, the Spell actually created a hollow where it was no longer in contact with any of the Mana in the barrier, despite the thousands of points of Mana dumped into the shield.

The contact with the first barrier only slowed it for a second, and once it popped free, it regained almost its original speed as it rocketed into the second Mana Barrier. This time it did shatter. Even this effect was strange. Instead of shattering in crystalline form like Ice would, it shattered in semi-rigid ripples like Plasma would.

Reivyn’s mind could barely grasp what he was seeing. How could there be rigid ripples? He wouldn’t have even really perceived the anomaly if he couldn’t also See it with his Divine Sense.

The Mana in the second Barrier was stripped away and empowered the effect of the draining. The second shield, not having nearly as much Mana as the first, quickly disintegrated entirely.

Reivyn’s main focus had followed the Bolt Spell itself, but he still Saw what happened to the first shield after the Bolt passed through it. The effects of the two Abilities remained and continued to further eat away at the barrier even after the Spell had pierced through it.

“I used my standard 50 Mana, by the way,” Reivyn commented to Kefira.

Kefira stood in stunned silence for a moment before she jerked away from her internal thoughts and looked to Reivyn.

“Oh! Right,” she said, turning to the first barrier. “The second shield had 100 Mana. I believe the Bolt would have been able to drain a little bit more than that if given the chance. The first barrier suffered 60 points of Mana damage from the Bolt passing through, and then another 20 after.

“So that’s 180 Mana for sure. I’d say it was an even 200 Mana, or four times as much as the Spell cost.”

“Yeah, from what I could tell, only the draining Abilities combined,” Reivyn said, stroking his chin in thought. “So I imagine what happened was the Plasma Ability suffered a bit on its drain effect in order to increase the empowering effect, otherwise it wouldn’t have been able to take the additional Mana. Without its own additional boost, the energy to accept more, well, energy, had to come from somewhere.”

“That makes sense,” Kefira nodded. “It doesn’t completely break the world that way. Not like the Transcendent Abilities don’t do that all on their own already.”

“Heh, yeah, just wait until you Transcend Space and Time Mana,” Reivyn turned to Kefira, his eyes twinkling. “I’m sure we’ll see some truly amazing things, then.”

“I’m working on it,” Kefira said with a small sigh. “I’m just not anywhere as close as you. I still have another 20 Levels to go with Space, and Time has 40, considering I’ve only rarely been able to work on that Affinity. Having my body enhanced will finally increase that pace, though.”

“Alright, well, that was exactly what I’d hoped it would be,” Reivyn said. “Let’s go join the others and let them know we’re ready to move on.”

“Let’s,” Kefira smiled, holding out her hand for Reivyn to grasp as they turned to where the others were waiting in the training yard.

—

Another week and a half flew by quickly. Reivyn still practiced his Mana Channeling with Kefira and worked on his Affinities, but it was put on a more even footing relative to his other Skill training. It was a more well-rounded focus of his Skills and Affinities. Just because he wasn’t barreling through his Affinities that had been sitting at Level 100 didn’t mean he wasn’t giving his Affinities the attention they deserved at all.

Their training was routine, but because they didn’t have any other duties or anything else to distract them like was present in the Imperial Capital of Willowan, everyone was able to devote more time and effort to their training than they normally could. Reivyn didn’t have to go oversee mounds of paperwork and inspect troops, for one. He could continue training all day, and other than taking breaks, that’s what he did.

Reivyn threw himself into his Martial Training, feeling as if he had an itch to scratch after mostly ignoring it for the past couple of weeks. Even though he had been participating in the calisthenics with everyone, that was a pale substitute for actual Skill training and sparring.

Reivyn loved the rush of sparring at high speeds with competent opponents. He didn’t relegate himself to just his Party members, and neither did they. They interchanged their sparring partners with the other Adventuring Parties moving through the outpost. It wasn’t a static arrangement, and everyone ended up sparring with dozens of new people over the time they were “resting” at the Outpost.

To reciprocate, Reivyn often used different weapons and tactics to face off against his opponents. Most people used the same types of weapons, and they only ever really learned how to fight against those weapons. With Reivyn’s ability to pick up basically anything and use it as an effective weapon, he was able to introduce different styles to the other Adventurers in the area.

The older Adventurers repaid his willingness to show them new things with new things of their own. Just because Reivyn received the System’s help with any and all weapons, including things that weren’t weapons, and he had a high Tactics Skill, didn’t mean there weren’t tips and tricks that others had discovered for themselves that he wasn’t aware of.

Reivyn soaked up the tutelage, applying it to his Skills as best as he could. He took to heart the instruction from the lead guard that improving his Transcendent Ability was the way to advancing his Skill Level.

The way True Strike worked wasn’t that he automatically bypassed all obstacles in his way. The Ability took into account his and his opponents’ Skill Levels. He fought against one Adventurer that was so superior to him that his Ability didn’t activate at all. That one sparring session improved his Skill Level by two all by itself, though, so it was worth the struggle.

The man had been happy, too, as Reivyn had been able to switch to a bunch of different weapons and show the man where he could focus his efforts to further improve himself. He had apparently been stagnant for quite some time.

For anyone with a Skill Level of less than 90, the Ability practically did all the work itself. It was instinctual for Reivyn’s strikes to seek out the chinks and weaknesses in their defense, easily slipping past them consistently.

Individuals that had Skill Levels around his own, the Ability created pathways he could perceive with a sort of extra sight. It manifested as lines of attack he could pursue to either put pressure on the opponent to create an opening, or it directly sought out an opening that was incredibly difficult to see otherwise.

Weapons Master wasn’t the only Skill that benefited, either. His Protection Prodigy saw significant growth, as well. Because the Skill incorporated Evasion, which itself was made up of Dodge and Parry, among other underlying Skills, it synergized extremely well with his Weapons Master Skill. Improving his Weapons Master Skill improved his fundamental ability to Dodge and Parry, increasing his Evasion, increasing his Protection Prodigy.

He also fiddled around with using the different types of Armor: Light, Medium, and Heavy, and the Skill showed him not just how to move and hold himself properly in the armor, but where and how to absorb a blow properly. If he couldn’t get out of the way of a strike, or doing so would open him up to a bigger weakness, he could still mitigate the attack by taking it in the right spot. Again, his Weapons Master Skill synergized by allowing him to guide his opponents’ strikes to those locations.

After the week and a half of intense training, Reivyn was happy with his gains. He perused his Notifications and Skill Screen one final time before going to sleep the night before they were to begin their journey back to Wispan.

[Skills Leveled Up!]

[Tier 1:]
[Aim (49 ->51)]
[Athleticism (76 ->78)]
[Balance (61 ->64)]
[Dancing (36 ->40)]
[Hiding (35 ->36)]
[Observation (64 ->67)]
[Running (63 ->64)]
[Rhythm (32 ->35)]
[Tutor (27 ->38)]

[Tier 2:]
[Acrobatics (33 ->35)]
[Ambidexterity (27 ->30)]
[Gab (24 ->25)]
[Meditation (53 ->60)]
[Pain Resistance (73 ->74)]
[Tactics (49 ->50)]
[Teach (26 ->34)]

[Tier 3:]
[Battlefield Awareness (52 ->54)]
[Blind Fighting (40 ->47)]
[Breath Control (25 ->26)]
[Eagle Eye (16 ->19)]
[Mental Fortitude (60 ->67)]
[Night Vision (50 ->57)]
[Sense Threat (30 ->40)]
[Silver Tongue (16 ->19)]

[Tier 4:]
[Charm (4 ->5)]
[Iron Will (36 ->40)]
[Spatial Awareness (74 ->75)]

[Tier 5:]
[Aura (21 ->22)]
[Clandestine Prodigy (38 ->40)]
[Heroic Bearing (41 ->48)]
[Magic Prodigy (91 ->96)]
[Protection Prodigy (68 ->74)]

[Tier 6:]
[Weapons Master (104 ->114)]

[Tier 6.5:]
[Perfect Domain (14 ->17)]

[Skills:]

[Tier 1:]
[Aim (51), Athleticism (78), Balance (61), Dancing (40), Drawing (23), Drill (24), Drive (7), Haman (20 MAX), Hiding (36), Horsemanship (24), Map Making (30), Map Reading (26), Mathematics (18), Marching (41), Memorization {Social} (22), Mining (24), Observation (67), Penmanship (37), Piano (16), Ride (25), Running (64), Rhythm (35), Shading (7), Swimming (30), Tracing (7), Tutor (27), Woodworking (17)]

[Tier 2:]
[Acrobatics (35), Alcohol Tolerance (11), Ambidexterity (30), Color Correction (1), Forced March (25), Gab (25), Linguistics (11), Meditation (53), Numbers Concepts (10), Pain Resistance (73), Strategy (40), Tactics (50), Teach (34)]

[Tier 3:]
[Battlefield Awareness (54), Blind Fighting (47), Breath Control (26), Command (58), Commanding Shout (43), Decipher (1), Eagle Eye (19), Identify {All} (25), Inspire (65), Mental Fortitude (67), Night Vision (57), Sense Threat (30), Silver Tongue (19)]

[Tier 4:]
[Charm (5), Dreams of the Past (24), Iron Will (40), Psionic (16) Runes (1), Spatial Awareness (75)]

[Tier 5:]
[Aura {Bloodlust, Heroism} (22), Clandestine Prodigy (40), Heroic Bearing (48), Magic Prodigy (96), Protection Prodigy (74)]

[Tier 6:]
[Akashic Record (1), Weapons Master (114), Regeneration (24)]

[Tier 6.5]
[Divine Sense (24), Perfect Domain (17)]

[Transcendent Ability]

[True Strike: Weapons Master]
[Cannot be Blocked, Dodged, or Parried]

[Affinities:]

[Tier 1:]
[Air (110), Earth (110), Fire (110), Water (110)]

[Tier 2:]
[Ice (104), Lightning (104), Magma (104), Metal (104), Mist (104), Mud (104), Plasma (104), Wood (104)]

[Tier 3:]
[Bludgeon (73), Darkness (111), Durability (77), Friction (64), Gravity (60), Kinetic (83), Light (111), Mass (64), Piercing (83), Sharpness (83), Weight (70)]

[Tier 4:]
[Ancient (7), Eternal (28), Heavenly (13), Traveler (28)]

[Tier 5:]
[Abyss (2), Veridical (3)]

[Transcendent Ability]

[Obedience: Air, Earth, Fire, Water]
[Command the ambient Elements within your range of control]

[Energy Drain: Ice]
[Ice Mana saps energy from anything it makes contact with]

[Energy Steal: Plasma]
[Plasma Mana absorbs energy around it to empower itself]

[Facsimile: Wood]
[Wood Mana allows its weaves to grow and evolve]

[Opacity: Mist]
[Mist Mana obscures the Mana weave]

[Conduit: Lightning]
[Lightning Mana Weaves conduct Mana lightning-quick]

[Fury: Magma]
[Magma Mana weaves erupt with fury when Cast]

[Ductility: Metal]
[Visualized Tapestries hold their shapes when woven with Metal Mana]

[Mental Exhaustion: Mud]
[Mud Mana puts an opponent's mind into a mental slog]

[Insidious: Darkness]
[Darkness Mana lingers, hidden from easy exposure]

[Beacon: Light]
[Light Mana guides the weaves, binding the threads together]