38

“Not sure what that was about, but… get going with the rest of this.”

The useful search bar started to show its usefulness as he searched for some of the skills he had that would synergize with things he already had, namely his True Lightning Proficiency. No matter what class he received, he couldn’t do without that. It was a core part of his very being and couldn’t simply be replaced by something else. Ever.

He’d reclaim his title as Storm King in this life. Lightning was a power that just spoke to him, felt intuitive to use, and couldn’t be replaced by anything else. It didn’t connect with his mind in a way that made sense.

The results of his search were quite interesting, and he used them to ground himself in what he was doing before he spiraled into some angsty reminiscence about the past life he’d let go. The phantom pains of his past life still lingered, but they didn’t weigh on his chest as heavily as they had before the class assessment.

Which allowed him to make his choices with his own ambitions and freedoms in mind. The list of skills all had intriguing, evocative names. Many seemed powerful, but upon reading through their descriptions, they seemed lackluster. Grandiose naming sense to cover up something that didn’t operate in any way, shape, or form he found desirable.

“Man, it’s like whoever broke down this magic system made everything boring.” He thought of all the abilities he saw that related to thunder and storms, things he was notorious for back in his time as a delver, and each one had a relevant skill name. Some were similar and nuanced with minor differences and received vastly different names entirely. “It makes no sense.”

But then he remembered what his reincarnation was like. His True Lightning Proficiency—that was the key to his class. It was the remnant of his time as a Storm King, one of the things that connected him through time and space to what he used to be. He’d wield it with a pride and tear this stupid system apart for trying to shackle him to its will and stop him from enjoying the second life he’d been given.

All those that would dare stand in his way and obstruct his path, his freedom, his life—they would feel the wrath of his storm, leading him to the two skills before him. Thunderlord and Legacy of the Storm King. Those two were the beauty in a world of static, a light in the dark, something to specialize his abilities, add in power while maintaining freedom.

Those two went on his Need-To-Buy list and, from what he’d seen, wouldn’t be shaken off easily. After that, the next three to draw his attention: Stormblood, Conduit, and Skypath. They all resonated with him, sounded to synergize in a way he didn’t know he’d been missing. Being able to generate, perfectly channel, and throw lightning all moved him closer to the intuitive Storm King reputation he’d once enjoyed, even if the methodology here was entirely different.

After the intensive mana training, he thought he’d have at least come close to figuring out all the workings of magic and this world’s mana. Yeah, no. That was moronic, to say the least. But aside from them, everything else felt like white noise, similar to the white void surrounding him. Empty, hollow, and pointless.

Rather than increase the power of any specific action, like with Thunderstrike or Stormstrike, he was far more interested in bringing together the freedom of use of his power. Hell, maybe his new Initiator path would even reward him with those skills if he were to use them proficiently.

That was one thing that he really couldn’t process about the new world of magic. When it came to True Lightning Proficiency, he had far too much training. Everything he’d done with his mana and magic had been limited to an extent he’d not even been born with in his last life. Wanda was made for walking nukes like him, and he’d taken it for granted. This current regimented leveling scheme seemed so counterintuitive and restricted compared to what he knew, and he couldn’t wait to walk his own path, establish a new reign of magical mastery, and have his reputation of the Storm King soar until it was heard all across Gaia. He would be revered as something unstoppable, a true natural disaster.

But first, he needed to learn how to crawl, walk, then run again. He needed to give himself some of that old power, some juice he wasn’t quite used to in this life, and enable the growth of his proficiency to levels that were more in tune with what he wanted and loved.

Switching things up and focusing again, he searched for multiple abilities: Thunderlord-related things, hunter-related things that could bring together some type of cohesion with his other, kind of niche Artemis-related abilities, and… all the basics of mana. The most important thing he could do with the points he’d gained would be to solidify his capabilities and tie his skills together in a way that didn’t leave him floundering.

There were many, many to choose from that fit his criteria. Looking at his Coins, he sighed. He went and clicked on the plus next to his currency. He’d… need more Coins. Several options showed up to sell information, equipment, items, and skills. In the case of skills, clicking on Trap Making blared a red warning that flashed in his face stating in no unclear terms that going through with the transaction meant he would lose access to the skill.

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Underneath in fine print, the hidden refund policy and terms of use agreements. He skimmed through them and pursed his lips. Curious, he accepted the terms without actually reading them and looked at how much his Trap Making skill would get at its level, 250. Seemed… fair, he supposed. Not a lot, but fair.

On the flip side, “What the hell?”

His Weapon Manifestation, even though it was at level one, went for 12,500. And that paled in comparison to Armed and Dangerous. That went for an insane amount of 180,000, multiplying his current amount by over seven times.

“Woah.” It sank into him just how much his training had done for him. The heat in the pit of his stomach faded a bit at the thought of seeing the ancient disguised as Tobias. “He… isn’t the worst, it appears.”

Curiosity consumed him for some time as he went through his list of skills. Interesting enough, Defy Death wasn’t something he could put on the market. None of his titles or attributes were tradeable either.

“Oh wait… Do I even have attributes or titles anymore?” He didn’t know. The shapeless form of himself was still a strange sensation he was getting used to. “Eh, whatever. Time to make soup.”

He’d just found a nifty button: Augment and Upgrade. Each of the categories had the same options, and if that were the case, all the skills, equipment, items, and miscellaneous other things that existed in the coin shop could be made less-bad.

If he went with the theme of this upgrading session, he didn’t want to follow the pre-paved paths of others. He broke away from the system, and he’d continue to do so. All of his current skills felt defined but limited. They all existed as parts of him but not. Influenced and forged by the guiding hand of the system, they did as they were supposed to with little to no flexibility.

And that was gross. He would break them all, starting with the Braxton Sword Arts and Braxton Breathing Technique. They were perfect to compile together with his Armed and Dangerous skill, since it was about as versatile as a weapon-handling ability got—the coin shop even agreed!

So he grabbed the big piles of those things that were part of him, selected the button, and threw them all into a mish-mash of energy.

One ability acted as the anchor to be augmented and upgraded, and the rest were just materials for aspects and energy to be fed into the anchor ability—in this case, Armed and Dangerous.

Dumping in Braxton Sword Arts would do exactly what he’d hoped, adding the magic aspects of what had before been limited to swords and applying it to the same breadth as Armed and Dangerous itself.

The breathing technique default merge would retain its existing powers while gaining a new bonus whenever he held a weapon, shifting its passive combat form upward a solid amount. Any other time, he’d probably have agreed to that merge without hesitating, but today…

He focused past the button to the mechanisms beyond, the way the ability was stripped down and segmented out, pieces augmented, pieces discarded, pieces altered.

Discarded? Nah. None of that. He pulled it all back together, canceling out of the upgrade menu, and his skills relaxed back into their normal shapes.

Even if they were only seemingly insignificant fragments, he wasn’t inclined to waste any scrap of potential he could squeeze out of his existing abilities.

If he’d learned one thing so far in this shop thingy, it was that doing what he was supposed to was optional. After all, if the system could fragment his abilities and reshape them… no reason to think he couldn’t do the same thing on his own.

It was harder without the guiding framework of the menus and buttons. Much harder. And when he finally had his abilities in hand to start reshaping them, this time they didn’t click together so nicely as the essence-of-space-kitty.

The breathing technique was easy enough, it was malleable and didn’t mind combining in any way he pushed it. In fact, he could even shift the meditation form to be triggered by combat focus instead, leaving the passive ongoing untouched.

Braxton Sword Arts objected vehemently to being combined with anything that included not-swords. The easiest solution would be what the system had done—cut out the part that focused on swords and discard it, retaining the rest of the ability’s behavior. But he didn’t want to delete anything. The way the breathing technique had allowed even dramatic shifting of its base nature proved that the limitations imposed artificially by the strictures of the system were just that—artificially imposed. Not necessary.

Sword arts could be applied to non-swords, and they could do it happily and just as powerfully as if they were used on the family sword itself.

With that determination firmly in mind, he set about forcing the merger again. Yet nothing worked. Without tearing out the ‘sword’ part of the Sword Arts, he couldn’t add it onto the proficiency any better than the system would.

“Nope. Doing this wrong.” Why was he trying to emulate the system’s augmentation methods if they were proven not to work?

The system had left Armed and Dangerous exactly as it was, slicing up the other abilities to add on top of it like armor fitted to a king.

But Armed and Dangerous wasn’t a king. It was the core component of his intended merger, yes, but ultimately just another ingredient.

Vander split it into parts, opening gaps in the ability, then spliced in the Sword Arts and Meditation forms. Armed and Dangerous resisted being combined with anything non-physical, trying to reject the magic now that it was being forced in as an integral part rather than an augment on top, but Vander knew what he wanted and wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

Much as he’d struggled with the spirit of Zara and gradually come to understand how best to restrain her through that fight, he came to a deeper and more pure understanding of his abilities as he twisted and strained to draw their disparate pieces together into a cohesive whole.

He won.

Skill created: Vander’s Storm Arts