CHAPTER 172

Michael’s challenge made everyone in the room turn to face Tom. With dramatic flair, he produced the lacquered box from his soul storage and held it up for them all to see. The container that contained the potion was beautiful. Elaborate wooden whorls went down each side, giving the impression of cascading vines. It thrummed with power, the type of object that even those not attuned to magic could see was powerful. Briefly Tom admired the workmanship. The runes that covered it were hidden by the artistic flourishes, but at heart it was a simple piece designed to contain the potion. A magical trap that would stop the efficacy of the contents from decreasing. Tom snapped it open for a moment and used identification before slamming it shut once more.

Potion of Sideways Fate Skill Evolution - Tier 5.

The primary purpose of this potion is to facilitate a sideways evolution of a fate skill.

If used on an ability below tier 3, it may cause upward evolution along with sideway ones.

This potion can only be used on an earned ‘fate’ related skill

* Effectiveness is driven by the user’s fate relative to class level.

* Efficiency is boosted if relevant technical skills exceed formal levels of target skill.

* Chances of successful evolution are directly improved by the levels gained in the target skill.

After reading the information, Tom took a moment to study his companions. Everyone had successfully used their identification and knew the details of the gift.

“You get all the luck.” Michael declared. “That’s one mighty fine potion and suspiciously tailored to your crazy build.”

“Not suspiciously,” Tom answered absently. “Mus probably had thousands of potions to choose from and he gave me this because of the fit. Mus could see enough of my skill set to know I could use it.”

“What’s an Earned skill?” Clare asked curiously. “I don’t know if I’ve ever…”

“I can’t talk about it.” Tom interrupted her. “But I meet the requirement.”

“Why? Why can’t you talk? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s better for you not to know.” Tom answered patiently. “Everything I tell you will be detrimental.”

“That’s.”

“Don’t push it Clare,” Keikain snapped abruptly. “You’ve seen how Tom talks about Fate. He’s not the type to hoard knowledge. If he’s not telling you, there is a reason for it. There is no point pushing and prodding till you get him so frustrated he tells you out of spite.

“Thank you Keikain. That explains the situation perfectly.” Tom smiled at the killer. “Not that harassing me would have worked. I’m tougher than that.”

Keikain laughed. “Maybe. On Earth at work, I saw secrets slip out because of such juvenile tactics. Those stuff ups felt the end of the world back then, but they weren’t because you didn’t have GODs enforcing them.”

“What did you do for a living?” Tom asked before kicking himself for engaging with the killer.

“Corporate law. It was boring.”

Harry coughed. “Back on subject it’s a pity about that last line. What level is your earned fate skill at. Given how short we’ve been here, it can’t be high.”

Tom shook his head ruefully. “Yeah. It’s still at level one, so I won’t be getting any of that bonus. But I think the benefit of upgrading it now exceeds any future advantage from waiting to earn a few levels.”

He shut his eyes and imagined exactly what he hoped the potion would do.

At a basic level, it would update his existing falling skill.

Skill: Safer Falling (Tier 1)

Safer falling is not a physical skill but utilises fate to help the user when falling or being thrown.

Effectiveness scales with level, and the amount of fate available adjusted by class level. Cannot be purchased from the competitor store.

But Tom wanted more than an improvement to his falling benefit. What the potion offered him was an evolution, which meant the purpose of the skill could shift. It was like what happened with Touch Heal. The evolution he obtained while related to the original function had been personal regeneration as opposed to healing. Affiliated, but not the same.

He needed to harness this opportunity to create a similar outcome. To transform falling into something bigger. Instead of an ability only applying to a niche moment he wanted more. How often would he fall? The existing niche was tiny, but if he evolved it to be more general he could have it triggering all the time.

Different ideas occurred to him. What was falling like? What was it similar to, even if tangentially? Balance? Tom could see that relationship. Successful falling was basically Balance by an alternative name. Or at least Safer Falling was a subset of the more general ability.

Could he push things further? If he extended that line of thinking, did it mean he could transmute it into acrobatics? Or evasion because when he used his skill that would be what he was doing or if he really stretched the bounds of probability, potentially the skill could be converted into a spear ability. Something like Lucky Lunge.

A thought occurred to him.

Tom had another potion from Mus.

He licked his lips. That item now seemed to burn in his awareness from within his spatial storage. If he could combine the two…

The concept was ridiculous… but… the extra power he could add.

Mus had granted him a dodge evolution potion. Had Mus considered a possibility like this? Tom doubted it. The dodge potion had been chosen to exploit his competitor status and higher technical skill versus a skill level of one.

They had been intended to be used separately, but now he had thought of the possibility. He couldn’t tear his mind away from the opportunity.

It was definitely worth the attempt.

If an evolution potion was used on a Skill that had already been expanded sideway’s the value extracted from it would increase and that’s what he wanted to do.

What he aspired to do with this first evolution potion consolidated within his head. At most, he desired only a single upward evolution and that would be to turn falling into dodge. Ideally, the power of the tier five potion needed to go sideways. The second potion could then lift the enhanced tier two skill to three or four, or if he got lucky to five.

However, one upward shift was required to move away from falling. If it morphed into something like acrobatics that would be acceptable, but if he had a choice, he wanted a more precise combat application. Dodge to synergize with his second potion was the ultimate aim. Especially as this was a fate ability. There was nothing as iconic as a stroke of blind luck that helped you to avoid being torn in two by snapping jaws. The required change was not a huge stretch. The singular action, in fact, the actions that had earned him the skill had been as much a dodge as a fall. Each of those tumbles had come about to avoid an attack from a monster. The skill he had earned could just have easily had a dodge flavour, and that’s what he wanted to bring out now.

An all-purpose skill.

Something that would help him avoid a magic attack or a sweep of sharp claws or the relentless assault of flashing blades. He wanted that instead of a falling skill. Both the dodge ability that he was imagining and the existing skill involved a repositioning of his body from one spot to another. The only genuine change he was attempting to introduce was to the trigger. Even that was not much of a shift because, at his current rank, if he fell, it was usually because he was dodging a more deadly attack.

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What he wanted was clear in his mind. Tom crystallised the concept and then repeatedly chanted his needs dodge, then sideways over and over again. He bent his will toward achieving those outcomes and decided he was ready to proceed.

Physically, Tom went through the steps to prepare himself, but all of his focus was on the image that he was creating.

He half lay down because he remembered Michael passing out and he didn’t want to force someone to save him.

Fate flooded out of his body.

Tom opened the container and drank the potion and then almost threw himself into the same coma position he had put Michael in.

The power crashed into him like before, but it was also different. This energy was more diffuse and seemed to have a different flavour between one moment and the next. Tom could imagine it as a million probability waveforms that could collapse in an instant to create a single outcome, but for now the possibilities… while not infinite were too many for him to estimate. The energy swept through him and for a moment; it oscillated between two skills.

One of which was his True Dreaming skill and the other one was his more recently earned ability.

Tom’s heart jumped… If he got a sideways evolution of True Dreaming… That would be…

It would be impressive.

Flame sword, after getting a sideways evolution was considered to be a tier four spell instead of its official labelling of two. If it got that sort of upgrade, what would happen to a tier nine skill in a similar position. Would it become the equivalent of a tier ten, eleven, or possibly even higher?

Then the waveform rejected the Oracle spell. Tom found himself disappointed despite the fact that it had never been an earned ability and so the potion wouldn’t have worked on it.

Logic was one thing, but Tom still felt the sting of the loss. It was childish for sure, but he couldn’t help it. His mind had leapt to the glory of the extra power, even though it had never had a chance of occurring. True Dreaming was neither a proper fate skill nor an earned skill. If it had been chosen by the potion, Tom knew the evolution potential would have been one hundred percent wasted.

Forcefully, he made himself forget about past what ifs and focused on future ones. Those strange waveforms hovered around his falling skill and he concentrated on changing it into a dodge equivalent.

Like it had with Michael, Fate swirled over and in him. It played three, four, fifty-dimensional chess with the potion’s energy as it actively pushed to create the result Tom had specified. Probability waves were ruthlessly crushed by fate and vanished, and others that were fading to nothing were invigorated to become larger.

Tom saw a wave form start to dominate and he could feel that it was creating a more generalised falling skill. He studied it and saw glimpses of what it would deliver.

It would trigger him to fall when it was beneficial to him. If there was a magic item hidden in the ground, he would trip, probably graze his knees, but find the artefact. If an arrow was going to hit his head, the same magic would help him fall to avoid it. There was nothing there to physically protect him. In fact, it was likely that he would be hurt by the extra falls, but that elevated clumsiness would help him.

No! Tom roared inside himself. Not that, he screamed internally.

It was an oracle skill and True dreaming did not play well with other precognition abilities. If his skill evolved into that, then it would be lost because he could never use it.

Tom was outside, staring at the strengthening wave form. If it continued to grow, it would crystalise into reality.

His heart rate spiked, and he tried to tear through the increasingly likely output. If that evolution went through, it would be a disaster. His near ineffectual efforts were doing nothing, but then fate filled his hand and when he flashed it through the waveform, a string of data got pulled out with it. Tom started pulling on the thread and it kept unravelling.

The potentially disastrous waveform collapsed.

Another version grew in prominence. In this one, when he fell his flailing limbs would become a weapon. He could slip in a fight, hit someone’s weapon and break it even through the glancing blow and his miniscule strength should not have allowed it to be physically possible. Even higher tiered weapons would shatter under those strikes. It was the same if he stumbled into a tree. The whole thing might fall over.

The power the evolution would grant would be impressive. But it wasn’t quite what he wanted. It was an offensive ability, but what he would prefer was a defensive one.

He was not sure whether to oppose this outcome becoming reality.

He was torn with indecision and did nothing. Not that it probably mattered. His conscious mind could do little to influence the direction the potion was taking. Unlike the first waveform he had opposed with all his being, this option was at least useable.

For this result, he would allow fate to decide whether it would become the reality.

To distract himself, he focused on what he wanted. Something to help him dodge that wasn’t an oracle type ability because if it was, then he would be prevented from using it.

He would be happiest with a directable ability. For example, the skill can make him faster or dodge more effective or defences more impenetrable. A solution like, for example, if an axe hit him it would bounce off instead of cutting into him because the angles luckily benefited him.

Slowly, the number of different offshoots that could occur reduced. His fate rather than frantically jumping from spot to spot transformed and was abruptly lethargic. It was as if it was suddenly happy with the direction the evolution process was taking.

The waveforms had been slowly building and then collapsing. At any point, there had been dozens of potentials, though none ever grew strong enough to become reality. Then, with fate not being active something shifted.

A twitch in the fabric. A waveform that had almost no chance of occurring seemed to suck up the energy of ten surrounding mature options. It went from non-existent to real in a moment.

The evolution power exploded within him. Tom wasn’t sure how much time had passed as the waveforms had oscillated between possibilities. It was probably only seconds and now the potion was physically expressing itself. His muscles were locking up, and he felt himself lose all bodily control.

He was no longer observing potential outcomes. Everything was now real. Tom couldn’t see what specific upgrade was occurring, but it was too late to prevent it. The time for fighting the process was past. Now all he could do was to embrace the change and see if welcoming it could produce an additional sideways evolution.

The first evolution completed, and Tom could at least monitor what had happened.

Relief flooded through him.

It had worked.

The evolution had created a tier two dodge skill. In the context of him using a tier five potion, an evolution was not surprising. Importantly, it was in the direction he wanted, which was critical, and he could feel more evolutions coming.

The next waveform once more seemed to emerge from nowhere, and it created a sideways shift. An additional aspect was added to his skill. There was only a taste of what had changed, but it was related to a parry concept.

Excitement grew in him.

This was a fate skill. With his build, it would be more powerful for him than others. He had successfully added a sideways evolution to his fate based dodged skill. It was officially a tier two skill, but if the fire sword experience indicated the value of sideways evolutions, then Tom probably already had a tier three or four skill in his hands. That was if nothing more happened.

But further gains were on the way, he could tell. Energy still bubbled within him which promised further benefits and then after that, he could force additional upwards evolutions courtesy of the potion in his spatial storage.

The energy kept colliding within him, and while he couldn’t move, there was no pain. It was like he was in a bathtub filled with soft drink. It was ticklish with bubbles popping all over him.

A waveform was almost created. It would let him significantly slow time… Tom smiled at that and then frowned when it collapsed unrealised.

Another rose to take its place. This time, it punched through and became reality. Something about spatial, displacement theories and teleportation. Tom was intrigued by the possibilities that gave but he couldn’t tell how strong the addition was.

His fate kept playing, and the potion energy continued frothing within him. It was tier five, so it was no surprise that it still had energy to spare. After all, his skill was only tier two and had only evolved sideways twice.

A third sideways evolution occurred. It was something to do with offence.

There was still energy. Three sideways evolutions: it was far more than he had hoped. If he got a fourth… Another potential appeared, a release of fate after a dodge to empower a magical attack.

Yes, he thought to himself, and then the potential burst and the remaining energy was sucked out of him.

He snapped up right gasping for breath. Everyone was looking at him.

The evolution process was finished. The energy gifted by the potion had been fully expended. “I…” he started before he stopped talking, as he wasn’t certain what to say. What had happened? He didn’t actually know. Tom stepped into his system room and read the details of his new skill.

Skill: Lucky Dodge - Tier 2

This ability does not convey any technical skill, but when a deliberate dodge is engaged, then free fate equal to 0.3% of the user’s fate pool will activate to improve the effectiveness of the attempt. The fate released can accumulate to be up to 2% of the user’s pool to aid future dodge attempts.

This previously earned skill has experienced three additional sideways evolutions to add extra benefits.

Benefit 1. An additional 0.1% of user’s fate pool is released to facilitate the parrying of enemy attacks. This fate is persistent and if not used will accumulate indefinitely to be used at the next parry attempt and will only start to decay slowly after the battle has finished.

Benefit 2. An additional 0.1% of the user’s fate pool is released to facilitate additional engagements or non-standard uses of existing teleportation abilities. This fate is persistent and, if not used will accumulate indefinitely.

Benefit 3. The number of uses of life saving teleportation skills with cooldowns is doubled.

Benefit 4. An additional 0.2% of the user’s fate pool is released with each dodge attempt. This fate is dedicated to increasing the likelihood of the dodge, resulting in the user emerging in a position to do additional damage to the enemy. Fate generated can accumulate up 0.6% of the user’s fate pool.

All fate release is free fate and does not deplete the user’s reserves.

Tom smiled. That was an amazing upgrade, and he still had the dedicated dodge potion to go.