[Since the Fall: 7/15/809 - 2:45:31]

He woke early the next day, a result of having gone to bed just as early. He sighed, the dark room around him feeling lonelier than ever.

He closed his eyes and brought his soul into focus, looking at the various [Connection] strings holding it together, as well as the pink glow that continued to emanate from the cracks.

His soul had yet to heal, and it brought him back to all the progress his mom made when she was still here with him. Could he somehow heal his soul?

The Kindness affinity mana was a different shade of pink than Love mana that his mom used, but they were similar. Was there some way to heal himself using his own mana?

Other than that, he felt like there should be some sort of healing that his Soul affinity could do. Was there some way to use it in a way that could heal him?

He sat in bed for a long time thinking of his mom. She’d helped him in so many ways, and he still felt like she knew everything he needed to know. He had the memories of himself as an adult in his previous life, and knew his mom was probably just as unsure as he was, but he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about how she could fix the situation, if only she were here.

But she couldn’t. If it was possible for her to fix everything, she would have by now. She would have come back to get him, taken him home, and he could have lived the life of a normal kid in this world. Sure, it would have been a different version of normal than his last, but there wasn’t anything wrong with that.

He was thinking himself in circles, getting in his own head and feeling sorry for himself. He decided to stand up and get started early on the day, going through his routine to calm his mind.

He checked the outside of the cave, seeing the world asleep as though it were on the surface. Many creatures hid in their dens at night, and some nocturnal beasts he’d never seen out during the “day” became active.

He watched the main cavern, and looked towards the center of it. His mom said that the Wilderness Convergence was at the center of the red forest, so if there was a convergence in the bog, it would be the same, right?

He could see into the center using [Tremor Sense], but he didn’t actually know what to look for. There were some larger sleeping monsters around the center, but what would an Anchor look like for the convergence?

The cavern wasn’t an exact circle, but he searched around what he thought was the middle of it. There were some flat fish-like things cutting through the muck, some swarms of snake things skating across the top of the bog, and a thing gangly stick bug creature, the approximate size of a horse.

The different creatures moved in purposeful patterns, showing intent in their travels. After watching for a while, he began to see how they avoided certain areas. Unmoving obstacles that none of the creatures ever approached, such as some large boulders or fallen trees.

One section that drew his attention didn’t look to have anything at all. It was an open area of peat and water, nothing noteworthy in it, that no creature approached. It was here where he brought his attention, as the natural aversion of the different lives in the bog was weird.

[Tremor Sense] wasn’t perfect, as it couldn’t sense the mana in the area or anything that didn’t let out vibrations. Normally, the vibrations produced in the area were enough, but what if something had a cloaking effect on it that helped it hide from him? He wouldn’t know.

Speaking of sensing mana, he noticed that he was getting better at it. Initially, he was hopeless for sensing any mana outside of his body, but yesterday he realized that he was able to taste, smell, or something the Wrath mana that was thick in the air. He hadn’t been able to do that before, but maybe it was only an effect possible when there was an excess of affinity mana. The new sensation could be from his body developing though, and he would need to watch out for it. Was his sense of “mana” somehow stunted compared to his other senses, leading to him struggling to perceive it?

Perhaps his [Growing Pains] Skill knew how to build the mundane aspects of him faster, as it already had experience in doing so from his previous life, but the mana sense aspect had to grow naturally in his body since it couldn’t repeat such a thing.

After checking the center of the bog and not noticing anything interesting, he checked on the frog he watched so closely, but it was asleep as well. Satisfied with his search of the world, he stepped back into the Garden and decided to continue training. It felt like he should be doing something on his birthday, but ultimately nothing was special about today. Even if it felt special, it wasn’t really. The world didn’t care that he turned one today, and monsters would kill him all the same today if given the chance. It was a grim thought, but a realistic one.

Today, he would try to split his mind into different parts. He’d never done so before, but he felt ready enough. His [High Mind] Skill was moderately leveled, and his thinking had accelerated to unprecedented speeds. It felt like he had all the tools to start actually experimenting with the more intensive parts of the Skill. The description mentioned simulated worlds and perfect memory, along with splitting his mind into pieces, but he didn’t need the other two right now. Currently, he needed better padding to use his Skills more frequently and to avoid further damaging his soul. It could be achieved from more Presence training, but he was still limited to only meditating on a single link to the world.

Closing his eyes again, he pictured his mind like some sort of dough to be shaped to his desires. Slowly but surely, he began to separate it into two lumps, just barely connected in the middle. He didn’t want both minds acting completely on their own, just the ability to perfectly multitask without losing efficiency in either.

He felt the familiar aching of pressure on his soul build, his Presence quickly overstraining itself in its attempts to handle the skill all on its own. When the pain built to the point he started to fear further damaging his soul, he stopped. The process hadn’t been completed, but he was happy to see that it didn’t need to be done all at once.

Waiting until the ache abated, he tried again, making more progress. He repeated this sequence multiple times, each time becoming closer to splitting his mind. He began to notice that his thinking slowed down as his ability to focus his attention on different details increased.

[Skill Leveled Up: High Mind (39) -> (40)]

By the time he succeeded, and his mind had been split in two, he was back to thinking at the speed of a regular human. Trying to move his hand slightly, he found himself drastically overshooting, throwing himself to the side as he jerked all the muscles in his body to the right.

He took time to become more acclimated to the new way of thinking, before he slowly reasoned out what the [High Mind] Skill accomplished.

Each time the Skill leveled up, it increased his thinking speed. Analogously, it gave him more ‘processing speed,’ like the RAM to a computer he first imagined it as. Once he split his mind into two pieces, the processing speed became split between these two pieces. Now, it was like running two computers, each with half the resources of the first.

There will be times when faster thinking is going to be more beneficial, but right now was not one of those times. He began meditating, and noticed that he could now meditate on two links at once, effectively doubling the speed he could meditate at.

While he couldn’t think as quickly any more, faster thinking had never helped to draw Presence into himself. Without anything else to do, he continued meditating and training for the rest of the day.

* * *

Over the course of the day, he came to appreciate the new ability to split attention. He could work out, train [Fine-Tooth Comb], and practice [Camouflage], all while meditating! He wasn’t as dexterous at each task as he was before, but he didn’t need to be. Overall, he was pretty sure the total efficiency of the training each day had gone up, but only time would tell.

He was beginning to make some serious progress on [Camouflage]. It wasn’t as intuitive as any of his other Racial abilities, but it was capable of far more. His skin was a canvas for him to detail in as many ways as he desired, and it didn’t all have to be the same material. He could make some of his skin a fibrous grassy material and another part of his skin resemble dirt. Both options took away the durability of it, but it was possible. The trouble came when it was more than the material he wanted to change.

Once the material was in place, he could alter the texture of his skin to an absurd degree, lengthening the grassy fibers into actual grass. This came at the cost of him needing to manually put each vein and ridge of the grass into all the blades.

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It would’ve been impossible with a normal human mind in any reasonable time frame. He could potentially put one of his minds to work continuously examining his skin and detailing it slowly over time, becoming more and more accurate. It would take months at the current pace, but he would have a perfect camouflage… as long as he didn’t move a muscle, and therein was the issue.

The [Camouflage] ability could become the perfect defense and stealth. It could copy any material given enough time, creating it from what he assumed was nothing. His skin genuinely did take on all the properties of each material, but that came with issues.

Turning his skin to dirt could be painful, as it would easily rub off of him. While it wasn’t as soft as dirt, it was clear to him that was only because his multiplier from the Physical stat increased its durability. He made himself as vulnerable as any material he picked, but that came with positives too. He could turn his skin to stone, which was multiplied in strength from his Physical, but he also couldn’t move if he did so.

He found that each material did not mesh well with others, the blood flow changing in pressure as it crossed the boundaries between them. This wasn’t an issue if the material all along his body was the same, but that took away much of the versatility. He could, however, fix the issue with his blood by manually rewriting blood vessels. Simple. And impossible. He was granted a supernatural awareness of his skin once he began working on it as his canvas, but an awareness only brought so much. The dexterity he could exhibit was highly limited, at least until his Mental stat and [High Mind] Skill increased.

The [Camouflage] ability was not one to be used as a cheap trick. It wasn’t some one way ticket to power, but the theoretical use of it was close to limitless. It was an ability he would master slowly, and once he did, it would be an invaluable part of his repertoire.

He had no doubt though, that this ability was not made for people with his stats. None of his Racial Abilities were. His [Tremor Sense] overwhelmed him easily, his [Darkvision] was more powerful than someone his level should have with how easily it could banish Darkness magic, his [Camouflage] breached far into the realm of requiring superhuman processing power, and his [Digging] while simple, would make him the perfect predator against any earth-based enemies.

Okay, [Digging] wasn’t as ground breaking- ahem, as overpowered, as the others, but its utility was incredible, especially underground.

These all seemed like high level abilities, like they were made for stronger people. Was it possible to change racial abilities over the course of ones life? Could there be Achievements out there that granted Racial ability upgrades?

He had to wait to know more, but for now his uses of [Camouflage] would be limited. He could use it to change the material his skin was composed of, to only a single material, without changing the texture in any reasonable time frame.

He would continue to practice with it though. Both because it was amazing for [High Mind] training to have such a complex task to work with, and because he needed to master its usage. The practicality of using it during combat would come later, with better upgrades to his mind, but he still needed practice with it to get the fine details down.

The new usage of [High Mind] helped reignite the fire under him to push harder, to push for more training. It re-impressed him with a wonder for everything he was able to do in this new world, and he wanted to do more.

When it was time to go to sleep, he was almost disappointed he had to do so. Then he had a thought… what if he could put one mind to sleep, but not the other?

* * *

[Since the Fall: 7/16/809 - 9:44:27]

[Skill Leveled Up: High Mind (40) -> (41)]

[Skill Leveled Up: Meditation (14) -> (15)]

He experimented with it all night, and made some strides in sort-of sleeping. He found that if he moved at all or opened his eyes, it would wake up the sleeping half of his mind. Not only this, but the waking half of his mind did still need rest, so it ended up collapsing halfway through the night. Half his mind was awake right now, and he was still sitting with his eyes closed to let the other half finish its rest.

[Meditate] was the only Skill he could train with while sleeping, but that was okay. He would need to train his body to sleep while both moving and with his eyes open, which he would probably take the military route in doing so: The waking mind would just not stop moving, while the sleeping mind would eventually collapse and rest anyway. It wasn’t going to be healthy, but he had Skills to help heal him back up. He remembered stories of Levens dad, about how military folks learned how to sleep in creative conditions because of the exhaustion they were subject to.

He continued to meditate until around [11:07:25], when the other half of his mind woke up. He began his daily routine a bit late that day, but nothing ultimately changed, and he was about to get back into training, but remembered that [Growing Pains] had hit level 100 the day before.

It was supposedly able to evolve now, so he pulled up his Interface and found mental instructions informing him how to open the evolution menu, simply by selecting the Skill.

A screen with multiple options appeared before him.

[Diverging paths for evolution open:

Regenerating

Enduring

Training]

He prompted [Regenerating] to expand, getting a better description

[Regenerating:

The training you undergo has risks, damaging or potentially crippling you. Upgrades the regenerative aspects of Growing Pains, allowing it to heal at a rate of 2 HP per Skill Level]

Simple and effective. This would also be a very combat-oriented upgrade, making it more realistic to use in a one to one fight. WIth the Lorpee’s, his Skill helped him get the edge on the damage he was dealt, but it was just barely not enough to overcome the damage as he was slowly whittled away. This would have been enough to keep him in top condition, with more upgrades in the future to potentially make him some unkillable regenerating machine.

He looked at [Enduring] next.

[Enduring:

Rather than healing damage to you after the fact, assists in maintaining functions during intensive workouts or physical activities. Allows the Skill to rejuvenate SP at a rate of 1SP per Skill Level]

Simple and effective, another potential game changer in a drawn out fight to the death. More than that too, he wouldn’t be at risk of running out of Stamina during long workouts. As it was, that had never happened to him, as he took breaks frequently to practice other tasks, but what about when he had a higher level [High Mind]? He would work out constantly while training his other Skills, but would need to stop every time he needed to regenerate his Stamina. More than that, his Stamina and Mana were taking longer and longer to rejuvenate, which would be horribly inefficient in the long run if he had to rest for days on end to wait for his SP to max out again before he was able to fight again.

That was a long way away, but he had to prepare for it.

[Training] was next, but he had to admit that he was leaning towards [Enduring].

[Training:

As your muscles enter new heights, you must find heavier weights to use them with. Your muscle gains never stop, but the availability of such heavy objects does. Gain a new mode to the Skill: Training Mode, where the body becomes weakened, allowing for the Physical stat to increase further and Growing Pains Skill to level up, despite a limited selection of tools to work them with]

Aaaaaand he knew which he was picking. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he wouldn’t be able to train himself with his body for much longer. While he hadn’t hit the wall yet, it was very easy to imagine the Skill stagnating because he had almost no training weights to work with at all. He would be able to manage using his rations as weights for a time, as those things were heavy, but for how long? Eventually, he would hit a wall and need to either give up on training his Physical stat, or look for other options. He couldn’t even risk picking one of the other options in the hopes of getting [Training] at the next evolution, because he might not actually reach the next evolution if he ran out of ways to work out.

While he felt a bit silly he hadn’t considered the issue before, he was glad it had been pointed out to him by the System.

Speaking of, there was one more thing to consider before making his decision: did he want any of these? While it might seem simple to say “yes of course, choosing one can only be a good thing,” it wasn’t so. The System had already shown itself to not be some omnipotent force, merely a guide. These weren’t all the options [Growing Pains] could evolve into, only the ones the System knew it could evolve into, and help guide him down such paths.

Before he came to the System, he was naturally able to pick his evolutions, so it was clear the System wasn’t necessary for such evolutions. What other options would there be for the Skill though?

One such option he could imagine would be one for MP. There was already an evolution for HP and SP, MP was the natural third option for that. The reason the System didn’t consider that an option it could help with, was most likely because the Skill hadn’t been used to regenerate MP in the previous world, and he hadn’t used it long enough in this one to give it such a utility.

So, any other options? Realistically, no. It was a very simple Skill, just made for training, and the four options represented everything he could imagine helping him with.

The thinking aspect out of the way, he went with his heart in picking [Training], and felt something in him shift. Nothing was railroaded for him, and he knew he could re-pick the option if he wanted to for now, but the moment he took that first step down the path of [Training] and leveled up, he would be locked in. The System had merely removed a blockage in his way, making it easier to advance in a certain direction.

He didn’t regret his choice though, and began his daily workout with his shiny new Skill upgrade.