Chapter 5
After parting with his dad, Keith returned to the property he bought a few months ago. Wanting to empty his mind, he took out an inner tube and jumped into the lake next to his house. For several hours, he lay motionless, his arms and legs dangling as he watched the few clouds that passed his gaze. For a time, Keith simply found comfort in the rhythmic bobbing of the water.
He didn’t think, didn’t feel.
He simply was.
Eventually, Keith entered a peculiar state of mind. He observed his thoughts as they came and went, letting them flow freely. Whether it was the uncomfortableness of killing another or the regret of failing to save that woman dying, his emotions faded, leaving only tranquility.
At that moment, the mana in Keith’s surroundings grew exceptionally clear, their existence reflected in his mind. Similarly, he could practically feel each particle of mana inside him, like it was an extension of his body.
Raising a hand, Keith summoned one ball of mana after another. They flew in circles, jumped around, merged, and split. Keith was both delighted and confused. Why were the exercises he created to raise his Mana Manipulation skill now so easy to practice?
Thinking of something, Keith turned his attention inward and focused on the numerous colored dots hovering in his chest. For these oddities, Keith had made two discoveries.
First, the quantity of dots was equal to the number of skills he possessed, and second, whenever he cast a skill, his mana would funnel toward a particular dot. To Keith, it was clear that the System used the dots to transform mana into something else. In other words, they were the tool that made skills function.
Alas, that knowledge wasn’t too helpful. He had tried numerous times to mentally zoom in on the mysterious dots to learn their secrets, only to come up short. They were simply too small.
Keith knew the key lay with his mind. He theorized that a person’s mental ability was either a hidden stat or one not yet unlocked, though he leaned toward the former. After all, Keith had personally felt his mental power increase when he practiced the mana manipulation exercises he came up with. Still, it grew much slower than strength or agility, where plenty of methods existed to gain points.
The last time Keith probed the dots in his body, he felt he only needed a little more mental power to discover their secrets, yet he didn’t expect that final step to stump him for weeks. No matter how hard he practiced, the skill level for Mana Manipulation remained stuck at 499, and his mental power stopped growing.
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However, Keith’s current state gave him a sudden epiphany. What he lacked was connection, not mental power. Keith’s eyes glowed like torches from this new understanding.
While overwhelmed with excitement, Keith didn’t put the cart before the horse. Instead of attempting to view one of the dots in his chest, he wanted to familiarize himself with his unique state and learn what was happening.
And so, over the following minutes, Keith continuously reached out with his mind, grasping and sensing, trying to find answers. To boost his comprehension, he enhanced and divided his mind, and with fourteen minds, he analyzed his situation from multiple angles.
Like this, it didn’t take long for Keith to discover that emotions actually impeded his ability to use mental power, and it wasn’t just negative emotions. Even anticipation or joy made his control slip.
Congratulations! Your Mana Manipulation skill leveled up to 500!
The sudden status message left Keith with mixed feelings. Though he couldn’t understand why emotions would have such a significant effect on mental power, he was glad to pass this hurdle.
Universal skills like Mana Manipulation relied primarily on knowledge and application, and it wasn’t like there was anyone he could ask for pointers. As far as he knew, he had the highest Mana Manipulation skill level among those from the Innate Dimension. Keith could’ve been stuck here for months, or even years, if not for his sudden epiphany.
With Keith’s confusion cleared up, he calmed his emotions and focused on the brown dot in his chest that signified the Entangling Roots skill. Taking a deep breath, Keith mentally zoomed in as the dot rapidly expanded into a stunning three-dimensional array.
BOOM!
It was like a bomb exploded in Keith’s mind.
Never did Keith expect that the dots in his body, the things that powered skills, were arrays. Hadn’t he spent the last six months (not counting time acceleration) studying arrays and how they worked? The coincidence was so absurd Keith felt like fate was at play.
When Keith looked back at the Entangling Roots skill array, he quickly grew mesmerized by its marvelous design. The spiral pattern that Frisk taught Keith was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the array formed a three-dimensional hexagon with a complicated inner structure reminiscent of a grid. The more Keith observed, the more amazed he grew. Just from his initial inspection, he could tell that the skill array’s design was far superior to the spiral pattern.
When Keith fully looked over the skill array, he happily discovered that he recognized over 70% of the runes in the array and could even deduce a few unknown ones. From how the System organized the runes, he immediately concluded that this array was far beyond the current standards of the Innate Nation’s array industry. Just the fact that the System formed this skill array was sure to cause any array artisan to go mad, much less that it used such a profound design.
Keith promptly made a decision. If he, a novice array artisan, could see so much, who knew what Frisk, one of the most intelligent people in the Grandsky Realm, would see? Pushing off the inner tube, Keith activated Flight and flew toward his porch door. He rushed inside, dressed, and sent Frisk a message. HUGE DISCOVERY! ON MY WAY OVER!