CHAPTER 179
The box containing the last of the precious evolution potions that Mus had gifted him appeared in his hands.
Tom didn’t need to look up to know that his actions had caused all of them to watch him. Internally he remembered the specific’s of this evolution potion. It worked primarily on the difference between technical skill and the level of the dodge. Both of Tom’s dodge skills were still at rank one and his technical proficiency from the years in the tutorial was significant. He was also thankful that Lucky Dodge had not ranked up when he had been fighting the FleshEarths.
Those things… Tom frowned as he remembered how the flesh had looked raw and diseased at the same time. The pustules that had burst when his weapon had cut into the red flesh. They were a disgusting monster.
He forced himself to stop thinking about pointless details and to focus. Primarily, he wanted to get the maximum out of the evolution. Hopefully, Lucky Dodge would get updated, but… the words of caution from the others still rang in his head. If it wasn’t eligible, or if he lacked the technical abilities to boost his chance with Lucky Dodge, then he desired the potion to evolve Black Dodge.
Both options were more than fine with him. One would ensure that a ridiculous amount of fate was released to keep him alive and the other would enhance his physical dodge manoeuvres to super hero level. Either would work for him.
He wanted the evolution potion to apply to the skill that would benefit the most. Only if the potions impact on both skills was close to even was there a decision on which one to go with and if that was the case, then the answer was Lucky Dodge. A twenty percent degradation of efficiency… that was all that he would accept… any more than that. Then Black Dodge would be preferable.
Tom ensured that his intent was perfectly clear, and he released all of his fate instantly.
His eyes snapped opened and with quick but unhurried movements he pulled out the potion, uncorked it and then drank it down. It tasted of fizzy blue berry juice.
The impact of the powerful enchantment struck immediately, and his mind fractured in a hundred weird ways as a strange energy rushed through him. Somehow, it was different from all the others that he had used. This potion focused on his mind, unravelling his expertise. Dodge, duck, spin, twist the body, release fate to force a blow to miss him, measure the weapons trajectory and bend his knees, fate blasting out because he knew he was in trouble and having the first limb knock him out of the deadly strike of the second.
Fragments of his memories flashed through him.
It was absorbing everything dodge related from him. Fate, practise, fights, muscle memory. It was insatiable as it searched for and then consumed each memory. He relived moments of the past. Him throwing himself away from a mass of withering snakes that had dagger sharp teeth. Another, this time, his spear getting up just in time to deflect a strike. Then in the tutorial, where he was running across the top of a herd of stampeding deer while weaving through flashing flying batons that were trying to knock him down. The focus as he directed a burst of fate with every breath to fortify each step and let him dance along the backs instead of slipping. Every time he had used a dodge, ability or trick was being examined.
Then it went further, uncovering things he couldn’t even remember. They were remnants of the visions he had when upgrading True Dreaming. Could that technical proficiency count? He recalled fighting a god that seemed so immensely powerful that it could crush him and he was holding his own. Swaying, shifting, throwing himself sideways to avoid the movements of a GOD whose strikes landed almost before they started.
Tom blanched, the memories themselves distorted reality. He knew he was bleeding from his nose, ears and eyes just as a consequence of experiencing them once more. During the True Dreaming upgrade, it had been like it was separate from him.
This time, it was real.
He bit his tongue in reaction. The sharp pain did nothing.
The creature more powerful than anything you can imagine swung its fist. Tom, the future him, saw impending doom and leapt desperately to the side. The GOD reacted and changed its approach. The new trajectory was going to strike Tom while he was in mid-air. In defiance of the rules of space, he kicked off air and rolled back the way he had come from. The blow that would have annihilated him missed him.
The vision shattered, the result unknown.
Everything the potion needed to know had been captured. Tom understood that, and the potion did too.
Stuff was happening inside him, but he was a stick caught up in frothing rapids. There was nothing he could do to direct the momentum that thrust him forward. Dimly, he could sense fate spinning around him and trying to influence what was occurring, but it was so flimsy against the powers unleashed inside of him that it might not have existed.
Choice required.
The system voice grounded him instantly. The panic disappeared.
Do you wish to include precognition in your dodge?
“What?” he muttered, but the system did not appear to hear him.
Accepting precognition will cause True Dreaming to be cannibalised and will result in you receiving the tier eight dodge ability Lucky Oracle Dodge.
Tom froze as he read that. The system was offering him a tier eight combat ability. Sure, it came at a cost of a tier nine support ability, but… It was a combat skill!
“What other options are there?”
Option of Lucky Oracle Dodge declined.
“No,” he screamed before he could help himself. “I didn’t say that.”
Because of your decision, True Dreaming will not be cannibalised…
Dodge skill formed cannot have precognition aspects and still function…
Stripping them from potential outcomes…
High tier dodge skills without precognition are non-standard…
Calculating impact…
To compensate for this loss, additional evolutions points have been made available…
Calculating alternative options…
Tier six evolution unavailable…
Calculating, non tier related solutions…
Do you wish to combine Lucky Dodge with Black Dodge?
All aspects of both skills will be maintained and enhanced except for precognition enabled sixth sense.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Tom this time did not respond or vocalise any questions. Instead, he considered what that would mean. Precognition was causing the issue and not Lucky Dodge like he had feared. It was almost enough for him to burst out laughing. After all of his concerns, specifically the evolution potion not applying to his fate ability it was True Dreaming having exclusive access to oracle abilities which had tripped him up in the end.
Dodging at a high level was as much as knowing where the enemy blows and attacks were going to land as it was about body control and movement. When someone could throw fifty deadly sword sweeps at you simultaneously, sometimes you didn’t have an option to get out of the way… sometimes you needed to have made an escape half a second earlier, and that was the benefit that higher dodge skills delivered.
That being locked was not a consideration. It was done. He instead had a question to address.
Was it better to have a single all-encompassing dodge ability or multiple ones. The answer was it depended. Generally two skills would have more affects than the combined skill, making consolidation often risky. Though in this case that was promised not to be the case. Lower tiers would get levels quicker than a higher level one, but each level in the higher tier skill would be worth more and in the long run the power of the higher tier version would grow faster than the two lower-level ones. Then there were evolutions, lower-level evolutions were more likely to happen especially if you had a higher technical skill than the abilities level but in this case he was just getting them straight away.
As far as he could see, there was no downside.
Under every lens it was better to evolve them and he suspected a question would as likely backfire as illuminate and help him make a better decision. Plus, he didn’t think the system would make an offer to him that was so clearly not in his favour.
“Combine them,” he whispered.
The magic surged, and pain filled his mind, and he collapsed into unconsciousness.
He awoke with a gasp, with unexpected healing magic being cast upon him.
“Easy there,” Michael ordered. “You slumped, had a seizure, and blood started coming out of your eyes and ears.”
Tom forced himself to relax. The blood, that, had come from those future memories. He looked around. Keikain was still cooking. Frying up stuff on the ridiculous small fry pan that he had gifted him.
Apparently, not much time had passed.
“Did it work?” Michael asked.
“I don’t know. There were major complications.”
“With you, there often is.”
“True dreaming got in the way.”
“Really?” Everlyn asked in surprise from the other side of him.
“Yes. It blocked the standard higher tier evolutions.”
“Of course it would,” Everlyn exclaimed. “We should have prepared for that.”
“I got the option to combine True Dreaming in the evolution.” Tom admitted. “It was a tier eight dodge skill.”
The healing stopped abruptly and Keikain turned to him, pulling the pan away from the fire.
“I hesitated and before I could accept it was taken off the table.”
“Shit.”
“Tier eight combat.”
“What the hell, Tom?” Keikain yelled out from the fireplace. “How can you not accept that?”
“Easy,” Michael said, raising his hand. “With what we’re facing. This dragon monster, I don’t think this is that bad an outcome. I assume you would have lost True Dreaming if you accepted that.”
“Of course.”
“A tier nine oracle skill for a tier eight dodge skill is not that great a trade.”
“You’re kidding yourself Michael.” Keikain spluttered.
“It depends what he got out of the evolution doesn’t it? Is tier eight better than say, a tier six?”
Keikain looked like he wanted to explode. “Yes, yes, it is!”
Michael looked more than a little annoyed. “Stop. Let me finish. What is better? A tier eight combat dodge or… a tier six equivalent combined with a detailed dossier of an incoming threats strengths and weaknesses.”
Keikain hesitated and then shrugged. “You might be right. It’s just… A tier eight combat skill…”
The healer snorted. “Would do nothing against a native like Mus.”
“True.” Keikain turned to face Tom. “What did you end up getting?”
“Let me see.”
Once more, he stepped into his system room and was surprised to see that two walls were covered in text. The first was his upgraded skill. The second was.
Title: Unique Skill Creator: Provides a boost to the chance of evolution and when a skill evolves, it has a higher chance of gaining an additional sideways evolution.
* Awarded for: Creating a wholly unique skill.
* Legendary Title. Competition Rank: 1st, 500 Ranking points, 10,000 experience.
Tom smiled at the rating.
After being effectively forced to spend a chunk of his banked experience to get skills to deal with True Dreaming, it was nice to immediately get some of it back.
As for the title itself. Tom was both surprised and not at the same time. On one hand, the size of Existentia made a unique creation unlikely. There were probably trillions of sapients here which were lots of chances for people to have earned this first but his circumstances were rather unique. A ridiculously high levelled skill that did not play well with other oracle skills which had then interfered with his evolution of a dodge skill to a higher level. Then, to further muddy the waters a significant amount of fate was in play. Usually combining those abilities would have created failure but his fate investment meant that the unlikely result of success had occurred anyway.
Therefore, something new was created.
A high tier dodge skill without precognition would have already been close to unique, but that he had a sideways evolved fate skill with multiple branches plus what had to be an unpopular Black Dodge variety apparently had resulted in something unique despite the odds of that occurring.
The title, apart from the experience, gave him no immediate benefits and the number of titles he was receiving was its own source of worry. If he was getting this many, then out in the wider world, there must be natives with hundreds of titles. He knew a lot of his success was based on coming from the tutorial with immense technical skills and ridiculous high levelled tier zero spells which natives would never have an incentive to develop, but despite that it was a concern.
He was getting too much power too quickly, and the weight of numbers was a thing. If he had twenty, then there would be powerhouses out there with the same luck as him, but hundreds of years of experience with potentially hundreds of them.
His attention turned to the second wall, and he read the detailed skill description.
Skill: Fate Weaponised Black Dodge - Tier 5
When attempting a dodge, speed and agility is increased by two times. If the strike will hit you despite the dodge attempt, these factors can increase up to six times. The skill provides partial protection against damage taken. In addition, the act of dodging will create fate equal to 0.9% (+0.6%) of the user’s fate pool will activate to improve the effectiveness of the attempt. The fate released can accumulate to be up to 6% (+4%) of the user’s pool to aid future dodge attempts.
The following additional benefits are conveyed.
Benefit 1. An additional 0.4% (+0.3%) of a 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 decay slowly after the battle has finished.
Benefit 2. An additional 0.4% (+0.3%) 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 tripled.
Benefit 4. An additional 0.9% (+0.6%) 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 3% (+2.4%) of the user’s fate pool.
All fate release is free fate and does not deplete the user’s reserves.
Starting level 3.
Threshold Bonus 2: If you suffer damage while dodging the damage is reduced by an additional 50%
Tom assessed the outcome and then compared it against a more standard tier 5.
Skill: Legendary Dodge - Tier 5
This skill provides a sixth sense in dodge that plans movements required to keep safe for up to five seconds ahead when not using offensive attacks. When dodging the individual has effective speed increased by four times and flexibility by five. In addition, the user will be able to instinctively create solid surfaces out of air at a rate of two every one second to allow them to change trajectory midair.
He had expected the standard skill to be much better at actual dodging, but he was surprised by the difference. That being able to predict enemy movements for up to five seconds ahead was an incredibly long time in battle and was why he had not been able to create that type of skill. He had known of the drawbacks of True Dreaming, but he had not thought about its impact on high-level dodge skills… and, the realisation struck Tom. It wasn’t just dodge that was affected. A lot of the more powerful attack abilities also had a precognition aspect.
He sighed internally. Things were never perfect and True Dreaming was causing a lot of problems he hadn’t imagined. But as Michael had pointed out the ability to prepare for dangerous enemies was also an incredible boon.
Tom opened his eyes and the attention of everyone in the room refocused on him.