Kal didn’t have long before the grace period was over, likely preventing him from getting a chance like this for some time. But first, he needed to siphon to get a workable amount of wrath. He spent about half an hour concentrating on his siphoning, drawing as much of the abyssal mana into himself as he could. As always it was painful but since there was nothing to kill it was the only option for now. Kal concentrated on the process, and with his perception being so much higher than when he first discovered his ability to do this he immediately became aware of how the conversion actually worked.

When the abyssal mana entered his body and eventually his core, his birthright flared ever so slightly and he could detect a small conversion of power from his birthright to wrath. It was only a tiny amount but it seemed he was definitely right about his birthright being used in some fashion as part of his wrath. Most of the power that made up his wrath was still the abyssal mana but the addition of his birthright changed it significantly enough for it to be classified as something else. He wondered if he didn’t have a birthright would the resource he had replaced his mana with simply be an abyssal attuned mana type? The requirement of the abyssal mana in his wrath seemed to explain why simply getting angry or being in pain didn’t increase his wrath at all. It was yet another thing he would need to look into later, but right now it was time to put some of his accumulated wrath to use.

Time Until Next Wave: 1 hour, 32 minutes, 11 seconds

He hoped he had enough time but even if he didn’t every moment he could spend practicing for future Soul Forging would be beneficial. Kal dove deep within his core space and floated beside his core inspecting the power within it, constantly pulsing in rhythm with his now confined birthright. Before blindly attempting to forge the skill he had in mind he needed to get an idea of how an actual skill was made up of a combination of strands. But more importantly how that translated to an external effect. He had managed to duplicate a kind of cleansing spell without an actual skill for it. It had been effective but the process was just too slow for him to believe he had any chance of pulling it off in the middle of combat. Perhaps with more practice, he could create skill-like effects faster but that was something he didn’t expect to be done easily.

Kal chose to inspect his Wrath Incarnate skill first. He had played a major part in its upgrade process even though the system had assisted him near the end. Either way, he thought he had a better chance at understanding that skill than the others. Looking over it for a few minutes he could determine that when he formed the sphere out of his will and wove the thread of the old failing common rarity skill through it he had basically imprinted the old skill’s purpose upon a higher-quality construct. Despite it being a sphere the makeup of the skill seemed very similar to what he could remember. Now, however, his perception was much higher allowing him to more easily tease apart the individual strands that made up the skills thread itself. The strongest strand involved was of course a wrath strand but interestingly this strand seemed inert. It didn’t pulse along with the rhythm of his birthright like what was inside his core and sphere of the skill itself. He wasn’t sure how he could make it do that but he would look more closely into that after he figured out the rest of the strands. The next strongest strand was will, followed by a much smaller strand of stamina. After that, there was a tiny strand for each of his attributes, which he guessed made sense since the skill amplified all of his attributes while it was active.

“Ok, I can see all the parts but not at all how it works,” Kal muttered to himself. Seeing all the strands used in the skill was easy enough but how did the skill actually function? It couldn’t just be that having the right combination of strands produced a specific effect. That seemed too simple and well, limiting in a way. Could it be similar to how he willed his core to auto-complete once it reached a certain level of wrath? That felt closer to the mark, it wasn’t just balancing the required strands, but also implanting each of them with a portion of his will to produce the desired effect. He was sure there would be more to it than that, but for now, it was something he could work with. Next, he wanted to see what actually happened when he activated a skill, seeing it all inactive was fine but getting a glimpse of a skill actually working would hopefully help him a lot moving forward.

Since he understood the strands involved with Wrath Incarnate he decided he would activate the skill for just long enough to see the effects take hold. He prepared himself with a deep breath, hoping that he could get a good glimpse of the skill without losing focus. When he activated the skill the first thing he noticed was that at the very center of the skills sphere, a light flashed before the whole skill flared to life, channeling his wrath through the strands within it. Things went as expected at first, each strand began to glow in order of strength from strongest to weakest. He guessed it had something to do with the importance of those strands for the skills effect or perhaps the resource used. What caught his attention however was the moment the attribute strands began to glow. As the wrath moved from the center of the skill sphere it hit a kind of bottleneck, where the speed of the flow was drastically slowed. After that point, he could see the different strands of his attributes begin to glow. Looking closer Kal saw what he had missed earlier. There were eight tiny constructs of will and as his wrath passed through them it was somehow converted into a strand of one of his attributes. The complexity of it made his head ache but he kept watching all the way until he felt his thoughts begin to shift.

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Kal deactivated the skill before allowing much wrath to be wasted and went over what he had seen. It was pretty clear that Wrath Incarnate was his most complex skill next to probably Soul Forge but even though it wasn’t exactly what he needed for what he had planned it had definitely helped him understand a few things. Above everything, will was particularly important to skill forging from what he could tell. All the most complex parts of Wrath Incarnate used it heavily and that was without him really understanding how it was used elsewhere on the other strands. The light that flashed as the skill was activated appeared to be a similar construct to the strange converter used later in the skill. Since Kal was planning on using wrath as the resource for the skill he wanted to create he was pretty sure that he could just copy it and hopefully it would allow him to activate his forged skill. The next thing Kal noticed was that after the wrath was converted into his attribute strands, each of the strands exited the sphere and traveled beyond his core space, presumably to his body, where he suspected it would amplify his actual attributes.

Knowing that was all well and good but what he wanted to do was to affect the world outside of his body, and that's where the vivid flashes of memory from his birthright came in. Kal split his attention between his core and the outside world to make his first attempt at producing the effect he wanted. If he could figure out how to do it like this it didn’t need to be fast, he figured making it a skill would take care of that.

Kal began by staring at a large stone about a dozen feet in front of him and following the thoughts his birthright did as it burned its way through the garghound horde. He tried to focus his will on the stone as he began to draw the wrath encased by a veil of will from his core. He of course felt the rush of anger as he allowed his wrath and the tiny amount of his birthright‘s power to move through his body but he ignored it concentrating on keeping the wrath in the shape he felt within his memory. It was hard, no it was really bloody hard. Every inch it moved through his body was incredibly taxing. Restricting the wrath from just sinking into his body completely took nearly all his concentration. If he let it go he was pretty sure that he would lose the fight with his anger and likely burn a hole in his chest at the same time. When it finally reached the point when it was about to exit his chest and into the open air it was like he had just slammed his head into a steel wall. A crushing pain clouded his thoughts but before he lost control of the wrath he pulled it back towards his core, but not all the way while he regained his thoughts. Why was it so hard? The memories of his birthright’s actions had made it seem easy. It had basically just expelled wrath or whatever his birthright’s version of it was from his skin, killing whatever it touched. Of course, he shouldn’t have expected it to be easy but he was sure he had it right. He tried again this time knowing what was coming he braced himself for the pain. Kal slammed the enveloped wrath against the threshold of his body and the outside world, again his concentration faltered and his vision blacked out for a moment as it felt like a tremendous weight had suddenly bared down on his mind. He tried his best to resist the pressure and continue to push the wrath into the outside world.

An intense heat blasted Kal backward several feet as a ball of crimson flame manifested in front of his chest and exploded. The intense pressure he felt vanished the moment the wrath detonated, leaving Kal lying on his back laughing in relief, his chest was covered in minor burns but he had managed to do it. It had felt nearly impossible and there was absolutely no way Kal could do that in combat anytime soon, but now he knew he could do it. He just needed a way to control it better. What he had done was the most simplistic way possible he thought he could use his wrath. The next step was to get it to simply remain wherever he manifested it for a time. Kal went over the process of duplicating the explosion a few more times using much less wrath than the first. A bit of fiddling with the amount of will he confined it with eventually allowed him to maintain it in front of his chest for several moments before he was forced to relinquish it. It wasn’t the wrath that made it explode but that intense pressure. It was almost impossible to remain concentrating on the tiny ball of wrath while it constantly bore down on him. Kal hadn’t experienced that kind of feeling before, though he had never used a skill that had done anything outside of his body so maybe it happened to mages as well. But Kal was starting to suspect this was a downside to not have the effect anchored, or originating from a skill. He would have to wait and see but he had never heard of anyone suffering this kind of strain when using external skills. Melisia hadn’t nearly passed out when she had healed him for example.

Time Until Next Wave: 0 hours, 29 minutes, 17 seconds

Time was running short, but Kal was finally ready to begin the forging of his new skill. He had learned a lot in that short time. He just hoped it would be enough to get him through this trial.