Chapter 25_Chronicler’s Tale

New World Day 9

I believed that the System had a wide range of skills available to me now, and I wasn’t sure of the best way to sort through them. I thought that I might as well see exactly what I was working with. I commanded the System to display all available footwork skills. I felt foolish to have been worried about my choices once the window popped up. There were just two skills available to me.

Available Footwork Skills:

Basic Close Combat Footwork (Active) (B) * Cost: 4 points

Basic Ranged Combat Footwork (Active) (B) * Cost: 4 points

I expected quite a few options, but I must not have met the requirements for anything but the most basic of footwork skills. I stared at the the two skills for awhile, but I couldn’t make up my mind about which to pick. I leaned towards only purchasing the close combat footwork. Guns were my bread and butter at the moment, but I couldn’t see them being effective against any of the more dangerous creatures I had encountered. If I found a way to enhance the gun or bullets with magic then they might continue being useful, but even then they still suffered from the need for ammo which would keep dwindling over time. I didn’t want to rely on them only to have to stop using them in the not too distant future due to a depleted ammo supply.

I almost purchased the close combat footwork skill when I realized that while guns might not be useful in the future I still planned to learn magic in the near future, and ranged magic attacks should benefit from the ranged combat footwork skill. I had enough points to purchase both, but would the points be better spent on a magic or resistance skill? I sat on the loveseat and pondered the question for over an hour in my mind before I decided that I would buy both skills. The only skill that might change the decision would be a scanning skill, but the System still reported that none were available. The resistance skills were something I would definitely purchase in the future, but I wanted build up my mana regen first before I purchased any more. On the other hand, magic skills were very tempting. However after my success in creating the mana veins, I felt that I had a good chance of learning the skills without spending any points on them. I decided that my best bet for the moment was to buy both footwork skills.

After I purchased both skills, I felt an all too familiar power erupt around me. Only this time, my mind felt like it was smashed with a sledgehammer as all kinds of information pertinent to the use of the two skills was crammed into my head without any warning. The one good thing about the process was that the pain distracted me from the uncomfortable process of the System altering my body so that I could use the skills. I found myself gasping for breath as I tried to get the pounding ache in my skull under control. I guess this was what the explanation for the Pain Control skill meant. As long as I concentrated hard enough, I could control physical and spiritual pain but not mental pain. If I learnt to control mental pain then I suspected that the rarity of the skill would increase once more. That thought left me wondering what the fourth type of pain could be. The fourth type eluded me for the moment. Maybe after this ridiculous headache passed I could come up with a few guesses.

I leaned forward and held my head in my hands as I worked to get my breathing under control. The pulsating pain that emanated from my left shoulder served as a nice but all too fleeting distraction. I spent fifteen minutes sitting on the loveseat holding my head rhymically breathing in and out before the headache reached a manageable level. It was a terrible experience, but I did received a glimpse at a path to upgrading one of my skills. Besides the small epiphany about the pain control skill, I thought there might be a way to use the process of purchasing a skill in a fight. The massive amount of mana that appeared might scare a creature off or at least cause it to hesitate. Something to experiment with in the future.

It was four in the morning right now, and I flexed my muscles and fingers again and again. After resting for so long, my body was overflowing with energy. I needed an outlet for it all. The footwork skills gave me a perfect way to push my body without moving my arms much. The System had stuck knowledge of how to use them in my mind. However, it was one thing to know intellectually how to do something and quite another to perform it physically. I needed to build up some practical experience and some muscle memory. The fear from my sighting of the creature was fresh in my mind so I decided to use the hallways of the workshop for my training.

I found myself dancing up and down the short hallways. The two skills had a lot in common. They both emphasized balance and making as few and as small of movements as possible. How they used those movements was very different though. The close combat footwork was all about closing with the enemy while dodging their ranged attacks followed by a much more complex set of steps for fighting in close combat. The ranged combat footwork was the opposite. It worked to maintain the distance between you and your enemy while using your environment to aid you in staying out of arm's reach. I worked hard on those skills until my shoulder was an aching mess and the wound threatened to break back open. When I stopped, I found that my clothes were soaked with both sweat and blood now. I had even left streaks of sweat all along the hallway. After I entered the bedroom, I saw that I had trained for four hours. It was a decent amount of time, but I sweated much more doing that training than any other time so far. I understood that a systematic and knowledge based training regimen was better than my guess work, but the effectiveness still surprised me. The mental pain was more than worth it for this level of an increase.

My shoulder ached quite a lot after the footwork training. Even so, I needed to get out of these clothes and wash my body down. I hadn’t changed my clothes for over two days now. They were caked with blood and soaked with sweat. The burst of pain from my shoulder when I tried to raise my left arm above my head made it clear that I wasn’t taking off my shirt in a normal manner. I cut it off with a knife from the workshop since it was ruined anyways. I took everything else off without any issues and wiped myself down with a damp towel combined with a bit of my modest supply of soap. Once I was freshened up, I put on a new set of clothes. I didn’t intend on going outside until my shoulder and hand had healed. That meant I needed to whittle away the time training as much as possible.

I decided to experiment a bit with my mana now that my physical body was exhausted. I entered my spiritual world and noticed that my spirit regen skill was hard at work. A dozen cracks remained around my mana lake, but that was nothing compared to before. I smiled and chuckled at how effective the skill had proven to be. With that worry out of the way, I decided to see if I could enhance my body with mana now. I had felt the connection between my mana veins and my physical body each time a vein was completed. I hoped to use that feeling to learn to enhance my body with my mana. I wondered about where I should start when a great idea came to mind. If I used my mana to enhance my eyes, would I be able to physically see the mana in the world? Wouldn’t that be an incredible advantage to have when fighting magical beasts and creatures? If I could see what they were doing with their mana then it would be that much easier to fight them.

Excited at the prospect of such a skill, I took control of a large amount of mana from my mana lake and shot it up the central mana vein to the spiritual equivalent of my head. After it reached that point, I forced it to stop there and not continue down the loop back to the mana lake. I didn’t know what I was doing of course, but I had some ideas of how to proceed. I tried to push some of the mana into and then out through the other side of the wall of the mana vein. The first few attempts failed and proved quite painful. The thought crossed my mind that I might be pushing to hard at the wall of the mana vein. I tried to push the mana through the wall with less force this time. I rolled it up against the wall and made the mana bump into the wall like the waves of the ocean rolling into a cliff along the shoreline. It took a bit of time and experimentation, but the gentler method proved successful. A bit of mana merged with the wall and then left the wall with each little wave. The speed left something to be desired, but it was a start.

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Now I could get to the main course! I envisioned the spiritual location of my eyes and moved two tendrils of mana to that spot. Then I conjured up the image of my physical body and overlapped that with my spiritual world. I made sure to place a special emphasis on my eyes. The first sixty-three attempts ended in failure. Sometimes the physical image wasn’t strong enough. Other times the placement of the mana was off. Bits of odd knowledge about how my eyes worked distracted me a few times as well. That last issue was a big deal breaker. I found that the broader the image I held for my eyes the better. If I understood the science behind my eyes more then it might be useful, but the gaps in my knowledge made it impossible to hold too detailed of an image.

Hour after hour passed by as I continued to experiment, and my mana lake began to dry up. I started to worry that I might need to resort to making some new cups of mana water when one attempt succeeded. For a split second my vision changed. One moment I saw a basement full of shadows, and the next countless swirls of energy appeared all around me. They were a kaleidoscope of impossible colors, and they formed all kinds of strange and bizarre patterns as they flowed through the air all around me. Almost as soon as it came, the sight began to leave me. I poured more mana into my eyes in a desperate attempt to maintain the vision. A crippling pain pierced my eyes and everything went dark. Only this time it wasn’t the darkness I had come to associate with unconsciousness. No, this darkness was physical blindness. Something wet ran down my cheeks. I reached up with my right hand, touched one of the lines of liquid with a finger, and then licked it. The tang of blood was unmistakable.

Basic Close Combat Footwork (Active) (B) * LVL 1 0% : This skill is one of the most basic footwork skills that concentrates on close combat. The rank of the skill will increase with every ten levels. Higher rarity versions of the skill combine various energies and elements to create a myriad of variations for the skill.

Basic Ranged Combat Footwork (Active) (B) * LVL 1 0% :This skill is one of the most basic footwork skills that concentrates on ranged combat. The rank of the skill will increase with every ten levels. Higher rarity versions of the skill combine various energies and elements to create a myriad of variations for the skill.

Endurance increased by 1!

Speed increased by 2!

Spirit increased by 1!

Repeated Risk Taker © * leveled up!

Curious Fool © * leveled up!

Basic Spirit Regeneration (Passive) (B) * leveled up!

Common Mana Control © * leveled up!

Name: Jason Silver

Job Name: N/A

LVL: 4 3%

Job LVL: N/A 0%

Job Points:

N/A

Titles:

Survivor (B) LVL 4 95%

Fool (B) LVL 7 90%

Pack Killer (B) LVL 3 81%

Beast Killer (B) LVL 3 76%

Risk Taker (B) LVL 5 97%

Repeated Risk Taker © LVL 6 14%

Compassionate Fool © LVL 1 78%

Curious Fool © LVL 3 71%

Stupid Fool © LVL 3 37%

Extremely Stubborn Fool © LVL 2 97%

Minor Mana Wielder © LVL N/A

Title Points:

*****

Stats:

HP:

MP:

Mana Regen:

Endurance:

Strength:

Speed:

Spirit

Bonus Points:

81/125

5/40

5.25 per min (-2)

Status Effects:

Regen, Spirit Regen, Disease Resist, Parasite Resist, Poison Resist, Spiritual Cracks x12, Blindness

Skills:

Basic Axe Mastery (B) LVL 7 56%

Basic Gun Mastery (B) LVL 4 78%

Basic Spirit Regen (Passive) (B) LVL 4 76%

Basic Disease Resist (Passive) (B) LVL 6 72%

Basic Parasite Resist (Passive) (B) LVL 6 85%

Basic Poison Resist (Passive) (B) LVL 5 17%

Flexible Mana Lake (Passive) (B) LVL 1 0%

Pain Control (B) LVL 1 0%

Basic Close Combat Footwork (Active) (B) LVL 1 83%

Basic Ranged Combat Footwork (Active) (B) LVL 1 92%

*****

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Chapter 25

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