Kahli was ready to spend her ability points! She had to have some ready to go, right?

[You have no ability points to spend at this time. Please try again later.]

Kahli felt infuriated. Didn't she get them every time she leveled up?

Regardless, time had unfrozen, and here she was floating in the air again with no new fighting [skill], instead only what seemed to be a lying [skill]. Why had she picked that, again? Kahli was starting to feel a bit foolish, and it was terribly embarassing. How could she have put herself in this situation?

Omar looked over at her and smiled. "You must've just leveled up! Level 20, huh? What are you going to do, kick that rock at me and fall down into the air? Or were you prudent in using a new [skill] slot to get some more offensive skills than kicking a rock?"

Kahli thought about this. She didn't really have much in the way of fighting [skills] other than of course her big rock that she was already kicking off of at a minor yet intermittent pace in order to use it to levitate in the air. But on second thought, as she was quite adept at lying and even had a [skill] for it now, Kahli wanted to take it for a spin, as they say.

"Okay, look, Omar, I want to tell you about my [skill], I really do," said Kahli. "But, like, can I just level with you for a second?"

"But Kahli, you just leveled, like, three fucking times!" said Omar incredulously. "You're not due to level up just now, you don't have enough [XP] and you probably won't for a while. I, on the other hand, haven't had a good level in over a month. Yea, chew on that one. How far do the numbers really go up? Only time tells, Kahli."

Kahli felt sick in her stomach as she looked at Omar in a pained new light. "I was speaking figuratively, Omar."

"Oh." He whispered fuck under his breath.

"Now that we've got that established... Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, Kahli."

"Have you ever been to the far side of Glongonskal?"

"Uh, no, why would I?"

"Oh, I was just saying that because I have been."

"Okay," said Omar, reasonably miffed. So did that mean that he believed her? Or was he just irked that Kahli had lied to him? If only she could read minds. Regardless, she needed to stress test this [skill] of hers, because if she played things just right, she might just get out of this without having to actually fight Omar. Which would've been preferable because she could just tell that he could destroy her with literal firepower. But, what she needed to find out was whether her tongue was mightier than his flaming right arm.

"So let's think about this for a second, Omar, okay?"

"Yea, sure, whatever, Kahli. I guess. But I'm keeping my flaming right arm ignited. I'm ready to fucking throw down."

"Yes, Omar, I'm sure you are, I'm sure you are. But, like, in order for us to really throw down well, we'll probably have to think about my new [skill]."

"Aha!" Omar smiled and wiggled his bushy eyerbrows in a way that made Kahli wonder what they'd looked like on the rest of his face, back when he was younger. "So you did get a new [skill]!"

Kahli had already won. Omar couldn't even tell whether she had a new [skill] or not! Was this some higher form of system obfuscation that she'd somehow tapped into with [Tale Teller]?

"Okay, Omar, you got me. You can obviously see far into my system and you already know what my new [skill] is, and you're just messing with me, right?"

"Oh, oh, of course I'm just fucking with you!" Omar said, but then as he tried and tried to speak over and over again about what her [skill] was, Kahli noticed he was just stammering and jabbering to and fro without really saying a word at all, almost as if what he was really doing was stalling until she gave away what the [skill] was. Kahli would have to just go ahead and throw him a bone, now wouldn't she?

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Okay, you got me, Omar. I did get a new [skill], and that [skill] is, obviously, called [Rock Implosion]."

Omar agreed that [Rock Implosion] was the [skill] he'd seen. And it was then that Kahli knew she was free, that she could lie the plaster off her face to Omar and he would be none the wiser, especially now that he himself had told a silly little fib.

"Well, I'd tell you what it does, but obviously you already know, so I don't want to bore you with it or anything. Instead, I want to ask you something, Omar."

Omar agreed, though it was obvious that he was dying to talk about her [skill] description.

"I do still want to ask you something about my [skill], because honestly sometimes my system kind of undersells what my [skills] can do I've found, but regardless I just want to ask you something else. It's related, but it's also not, if that makes any sense."

"Perfect sense," said Omar, senselessly.

"Okay, so, let me get into it. There's a bit of a backstory to the whole thing, so, if you don't mind, I'd like to set this up for you."

Omar was all ears.

Froufrou squelched.

"So it was back when I was just in pre-pre archobiology, back before I was really studying about artifacts and paleontology and knew anybody who had a flaming arm."

"Sounds about right," said Omar with a nod.

Unit 5a23 had stopped meditating to pay closer attention.

"I was going on a trip because, well, I'd written a paper about going on a trip and the values of doing so, and that paper got an approval for a financial reward which was taken out of money that I was already spending, if that makes any sense."

Everyone nodded that it didn't.

"And so I was on the trip. Well, I was in one of the hyperorbs on the trip, and then I wasn't because the orb ride ended and the back of my neck was really sore because I'd fallen asleep in an inoptimal position. But when I got up and I got out I was in this huge hub absolutely teeming with people. Like, people were everywhere. I was taken aback by the whole situation, as anyone would be. I'm talking shoulder to shoulder. I'm talking closer to my elbows than my left foot to my boulder, okay?"

"Yes, of course," said or squelched everyone in unison.

"Anyways, let me talk a little bit more about what exactly went down. See, after I got out of that drip coffee station and hopped in the vine-rolling trolley, heh, I was feeling slick sliding through the sky like some sort of an elevated being. So that was cool."

Everyone kind of grumbled and squelched. She was losing them.

"But eventually I got to my old friend's new apartment on the side of a cliff! Her name was... em... her name was Caubitha." Caubitha? What an obviously fake name. Nobody would buy that, right?

And yet, they did seem to buy it. Everyone waited in attention for her proceeding words. Kahli's new [skill] might not have been one that allowed her to ignite a limb and sever limbs, or to transform into some sort of beast of a wall-puncher, but one thing was for sure - this [skill] of Kahli's, this [Tale Teller], worked like an absolute charm.

"So there Caubitha is just chilling in the weirdest looking bag of a tank top you've ever seen, sitting in a nice wicker chair, staring out at the sea. And now, one thing about me and Caubitha that you all need to know is that we had a big history, the two of us... Of course that was all past us now, it was all in the past, but sometimes they say that the paths in your mind that are built, especially paths in the tauman mind built around people, never ever lose or rightly forget something. See, we'd known each other since a very young age, since we'd been in g... uh, since we'd been really into geography from a young age."

Nobody batted an eye.

"Caubitha was always the more athletic one. She was always climbing to get the rocks, whereas if anything active was done by me, it was usually ironically kicking rocks. Regardless, she stuck with geography, and she got really good at it, and she was eventually sent over to help map out uncharted terrain in and around Glongonskal. So now she lived there and got to stare at the ocean every day, apparently. It was appallingly beautiful. Appalling, I say."

Everyone nodded. Even Froufrou bobbed a tendril.

"And so it was that I asked her, I said to Caubitha, I said, wow. I mean, wow, this is just incredibly nice. And it was, it really was incredibly nice, and even she said yes, you're right, Kahli, it is incredibly nice. Now if only you had stuck with it yourself, what would you be doing right now? Would you be staring out over this rocky shore? Would you be drinking rose all day? Probably not, but damn it, would you be able to if you wanted to? And I said to her, I said to Caubitha, that she needed to listen to me, and she did listen. I told her I was happy with my life, which was mostly true. She almost kind of chuckled, then she squeezed my arm and punched me in shoulder. Caubthia always did that."

Nobody dared to speak.

"Anyways, we had some drinks and some spinach puffs and then it was time to roll on out of there to meet up with some of my old geography friends. And that's when everything changed in an a massive way."

[Lloyd has respawned.]

"Aha! I leveled up while in the spirit realm, in the liminal cracks between the living and the dead! BAH hah hah HAH!" Lloyd pulled up a huge claw made out of what looked to be strange, purple mucus. "I was able to reduce my respawn time, and I have also increased two of my skills! I am eager to fight, and I am ready to win, and destroy your world forever! BAH HAH hah hah HAAAH!"

Kahli looked at Omar with a smirk. "Looks like not everyone stops seeing the numbers go up with age."