Seeing as you have gotten this far in the notifications, I feel like the first thing I should do is apologize. A lot of the notifications you just saw were most likely rather disconcerting. You were never really in any danger, other than when Chance gave you the Galaxy. I’m not going to apologize for the skills you will lose when the next section rolls forward, we’ve already discussed that.

The main reason I am writing you this message is about the last skill that was implanted. As planned, I boosted the power when the Goddesses implanted their skills for you, but it only took effect during Adaptation. That’s why it upgraded to a Trait. It ought to make things more interesting for you, so enjoy it.

Due to Lust fucking you unconcious with little to no warning, you never got your message to Roanoak about the guns. You have a few options on how to do that. You can pray to one of your new patrons and have them carry the message, pray to Roanoak himself and hope he bothers to listen, or pray to me. I promise I’ll send it over faithfully, but I would suggest you do something else. Pray to your patrons to speak to Roanoak about what you have for him, and then ask him to pull you into a dream where you can explain it to him. He will have a lot of questions for you, and doing the dream will keep the annoyance down to a minimum for everyone else.

Last thing. Be very careful what you reveal to people. You have more than a few things about you that are either vilified, or outright illegal. The priests of your patrons are bound to keep your secrets so you can speak to them without fear, but others are only as trustworthy as any other person.

Good Luck,

Crossroads

The cranky old bastard actually cared enough to leave me a message, how sweet. Most likely, he was the only one who could actually do it, and the women brow beat him into it. Despite his not so unfair thoughts about his patrons and Crossroads, Dix was smiling. While he was quite excited to finally be on Mantra, and able to go through his status, he hated leaving things undone, and he wanted to help out Roanoak. Knowing he had a way to get in touch with the centaur took a bit of a load off his chest.

The only really worrying part was the upgrade to his Adaptation. Dix had no idea what the difference was between a Trait and a Skill, but Crossroads mentioning it would make things more interesting made him nervous. It felt similar to that old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” Somehow, he knew the Skill turned Trait would cause him problems at least the equal of the benefit of having it. Still, even then he was pleased about having Adaptation, and looked forward to figuring out what its new upgrade would do for it.

The message about trust was nice, but unnecessary for the most part. Dix never trusted people, even before he had secrets that could get him killed. As for finding out there were people he could trust wholeheartedly, well, that was new. Other than Elise, Dix hadn’t exactly bared his soul to someone since he was a child. He wasn’t planning on doing that now either, but if he could track down one of these priests they should be able to get him the information that he really wanted about the system, instead of the oddities of gods. If nothing else, he figured just hearing he was Runeborn would get a reaction out of the priests. He could get entertainment for days with that alone if their reactions were at all similar to those of their goddesses’.

Turning back to his notifications, Dix saw he might finally get to see his stats soon.

Updating Status…

Status of operator: Tutorial, Recap

Error: Current Status Screen unavailable until User has dealt with Tutorial notifications. Continuing display of missed Tutorial notifications.

Scanning…

Age Designated: 18

Race Designated: Runeborn

Visible Race: Folk

Error: Many skills cannot be supported by Runeborn Mana. These skills will be removed to prevent injury, loss of sanity, loss of mana, death.

Skills Lost:

Exploding Shot

Flaming Shot

Endless Quiver

Ice Shot

Freezing Shot

Air Lance Shot…

The list of skills that he lost went on and on. Every elemental shot, throw, and strike he had made were gone. Even Chained Lightning Shot. Dix would have been pissed, but he had expected to lose a number of the active skills he had made. More important to him were the skills that he should have lost, but got to keep instead.

Error: Several skills were necessary to be removed, but due to changes in their sub skill status cannot be. Skills were modified to use stamina instead of mana for activation. See list below.

Skills Modified:

Multi Shot

Split Shot

Hail of Arrows

Multi Throw

Split Throw

Bladestorm

Shifting Stream

Most of the skills that he got to keep had been rolled into the enhanced shot, strike or throw. He had hoped that by rolling all of those skills into a single skill that they wouldn’t be taken from him due to some sort of limit to the number of skills he could have, but he never anticipated this. He was actually quite happy that they had been modified to run on stamina, something that he should have done in the first place.

As for the skills that he hadn’t rolled into the enhanced versions, yet still got to keep, he was confused. What about Hail of Arrows, Bladestorm, and Shifting Stream made them still available? As far as he knew they were just skills that he had. Incredibly powerful and costly, but still singular skills. According to the error message, they were each currently sub skills for an active, but he had never made any of them part of another skill. Quite frankly they were too powerful for him to even fathom adding more to. He would certainly try to add another skill activation with them, but never turned them into a combination skill.

During the second test he had combined Hail of Arrows with Exploding Shot. While it resulted in massive destruction, beyond even his own expectations, he would never actually try to turn the two into a single skill for two reasons. One, they were already cost intensive by themselves, so adding the two into a single skill where the cost would be exponentially higher all the time made no sense. If he wanted to use the skill repeatedly, he wouldn’t have the resources. Or if he wanted to throw out just enough power to complete a particular objective he wouldn’t be able to limit it correctly. Two, what would he use if he needed a wide area skill that wasn’t fire based. Adding a specific element to such a skill would limit its applications. He could already combine them if necessary, as he had always had a number of elements he could have added to Hail of Arrows. Now, with the changes to his mana he would be limited, but he knew he would find a way to get his elements back. Mentally, he added that task to his to do list.

Runeborn Racial Skills:

Error: Runeborn extinct. Limited information available.

Skills Gained:

Akashic Record

Error: No living Runeborn available for skill upkeep. Skill Akashic Record lost. Replaced with Runic Memory.

Runic Memory

Mana Seeds

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Mana Flow

????

????

Dix was stunned at the skill he had lost before he even got a chance to possess it. The Akashic Record had been a myth on Earth. The supposed repository of all knowledge. To have, however briefly, seen any evidence that it actually existed was astounding. Even more so was the knowledge that it was a skill that an entire race had access to, which had been destroyed through ignorance and hate. Kind of like the library of Alexandria back on Earth, but in this case the library was a group of people. His sense of loss at the destruction of so much knowledge was so great he couldn’t even process the other skills that he had gained for a time.

Eventually he shoved his grief aside, and looked to the other skills he had gained. That was when he noticed that two of them were just a series of question marks. Seeing them caused him no end of confusion. The Tablet of Racial Profiling had said that the Racial Skills wouldn’t even be available if there was no information on them, and even then they would be much reduced in power. Dix’s confusion was a mix of a few things. There were two skills made of question marks, and three with names. At this point he couldn’t tell if there was more information for any of them, but even having a name on the first three skills seemed to be more than he had actually expected.

He was settling in to ponder on that particular problem when his notifications pulsed at him, something they hadn’t yet done. It was a sort of pushing at his brain and consciousness that demanded attention. It also carried with it the knowledge that it was an emergency notification, and would continue to pulse until he acknowledged it. He really hoped there was a way to keep it from doing this repeatedly in the future, particularly during fights, as it was quite distracting. Grumbling a little at losing his train of thought as a second pulse hit his brain, he turned his attention back to the notifications.

Seed of Mana manifesting!

Please choose location you wish to plant the Seed of Mana:

Heart

Brain

Dantian

Dix was a little nervous about his choices. He didn’t want a plant growing inside of himself, yet alone in his heart or head. That would normally push him to immediately choose the Dantian, but he had read enough to have picked up on it being something very important to his continued existence in a fantasy realm. Instead he took a deep breath, trying to calm his instinctual reaction to something being forcibly planted inside him.

OK, a Seed of Mana. Other than it being called a seed, there is nothing that suggests it will grow into a plant that tears me apart from the inside. Considering the name, it must be related to the racial skill I just got, which means it's a Runeborn thing. That means that this is a normal thing for their race to go through. My race. It’s probably not a tree that grows out of me, maybe it’s a source of mana.

OK, heart, brain, dantian. Really don’t like things messing with my brain, but could there be some sort of benefit to doing so? I can only assume that the purpose of having the seed in your brain would be to modify it in some way, but I think I’ve done enough of that already, so let’s move on.

Heart, well, during the incident with the Galaxy there were those two cracks there that seemed important. One was my soul, and the other my mana storage. The problem is that neither of those is there anymore, so adding more mana there might just tie my mana network to my blood, or enhance mana flow, or some other thing I can’t think of right now. Ugh.

Dantian. What the hell is that again, some sort of spiritual source thing? I think it has to do with chakras, and cultivation novels. None of which helps me right now. Wait, maybe that’s what the mana heart thing is really called? That’s already the main source of mana in my body, seeing as it’s now the access to both my mana network and storage. Adding the seed to that might actually make the most sense. Or be completely stupid.

Dix’s thoughts argued back and forth for a while, but there was never really any doubt which of the three options would win. He really didn’t like things messing with his mind, his heart no longer had anything important in it other than the heart itself, and everything else important to mana was already at his mana heart. The only actual argument was about whether or not what he called a mana heart was actually called a dantian. And periodic random thoughts insisting that he should choose one of the other two. Eventually his subconscious put forth a thought that it was obvious that the mana heart and the dantian were the same thing, and a decision was made.

It turned out that the Seed of Mana was intangible, as he had hoped. Other than warmth, there was no way to notice it as it appeared inside of him. Closing his eyes, Dix released a small mist of mana that immediately sunk back inside of him as he activated his Mana Sense. He quickly found his mana heart in the middle of his chest, watching as the small concentrated force of mana settled inside of it. Holding his breath, he waited, but nothing happened. After a moment he smacked a hand into his forehead. Of course nothing is happening, it’s a seed, it needs time to grow.

Seed of Mana planted in your Dantian. Rate of growth depends on nourishment.

The rather vague message in his notifications didn’t really help things much. Dix was less than surprised at how uninspiring the message had been, but was trying to hold out hope that he would get more information from the skill description. Not that he had much faith in that working out either. Resolving to keep an eye on the growth of the seed, and any way to test what exactly it needs for nourishment, Dix moved on. There was little he could do about it at the moment, so he went back to his notifications.

Analyzing Skills…

Skills towards Class:

Enhanced Strike

Enhanced Throw

Enhanced Shot

Devouring Stride

Channelling

Overload

Return

Raise Dead

Touch of Death

Empower

General Skills:

Mana Sight

Mana Sense

Mana Manipulation

Mana Separation

Dual Cast

Advanced Martial Weapons: Humanoid

Advanced Magical Weapons and Tools

Appraisal: Basic

Sex Skills

Resistances:

Fire

Mana

Ice

Lightning

Earth

Water

Air

Force

Pain

Current Archetype: Hybrid Damage Dealer: Physical and Magical

Dix was rather interested that the system recognized archetypes, even assigning him one that mostly fit what he was currently skilled for. Sadly, Dix thought the system was wrong. He couldn’t currently classify as a Hybrid DPS, his skills were all over the place. In his own opinion, all he would admit to for an archetype so far was Messy. He was lucky that he still had his-

The pulse through his brain of an emergency notification was even less welcome than last time. With a groan he rubbed his face, sinking his fingers into his hair for a moment. A final sigh escaped his lips, before he once more scanned his notification. There was a moment of silence, followed by a pained groan. The cursing that followed that may have been cathartic, but it definitely didn’t solve the most recent problem.

Warning! Tutorial is coming to a close. All spells gained through artificial means will be removed.

Warning! Spell removal is not as pleasant as implantation.

Warning! Removal begins in:

5

4

3

2

1

Removal of spells complete!

Dix had no intention of stopping his stream of curses for some time. There were a number of spells in the group he had that he didn’t care for, but some he felt were an absolute necessity. Furthermore, without those spells his entire combat style would fall apart. Particularly at times like now, when he didn’t have a weapon, armor, or anything other than the clothes on his back. Without Conjure Weapon, Shield, and his other spells he felt naked, and less than half as dangerous as he did before.

Despite his original intention to continue cursing for at least twenty minutes, he came to an abrupt halt. His mind had latched onto a number of anomalies amongst the information contained within the notifications he had received recently. The first was with his skills, while the second had to do with spells.

The anomaly within his skills was the addition of two extra skills. Based on their names, one in particular, he had a very good guess how he got them, but he was still startled to see them. Touch of Death and Raise Dead most likely both came from the Title he had received right at the beginning of his notifications, Touched by Death. Without the ability to see the information on the title, he assumed that it was given to him because he died and came back. Receiving a couple of skills for something like that seemed reasonable to Dix, even if the skills themselves sounded fairly ominous. Honestly, Dix didn’t care how dark he had to get to stay alive, so Raise Dead sounded perfect to him. A horde of zombies, skeletons, and ghosts to run around and keep him protected and alive sounded very effective. He would likely have to lean heavily on skeletons and ghosts, zombies probably smelled awful. Touch of Death sounded interesting, but he had no idea at all what it might do. Time would tell.

As for the anomaly with the spells, it had more to do with his memory. Specifically, that while the system had scrubbed the information that was given to him, it did nothing to his own memories of using that information. So he could still remember making and using the runes he had used himself, even if he couldn’t remember the initial information on them. He would be more upset about the loss, but it reminded him of using the randomizer for the spells while he was in the third test, just more permanent. He would need to work with them a fair bit, but he expected that he would keep most of the spells he had originally been gifted. Smiling once more he looked at his notifications again.

Error: Due to the massive adjustments undergone during racial change, all statistics have been reset to default average value.

Status of operator: Recap finished.

Displaying Initial Status: