Chris

We traveled for over a week at the pace we set and we were making... decent time? It was hard to track. The only landmarks we could go off of were rivers and hills and none of us were expert cartographers.

It was easy to confuse one bend of the river with another on the map or one hill with another. Not that there were a lot of hills we were traveling over in Eastern Indiana. Still, we knew the general area we were in and that was enough.

It wasn't like we had a deadline we had to get there by and had to keep to a strict timeline.

Most took this time to decompress after a long and trying tutorial. Our camp arrangement at night made our tents within earshot of one another and it wasn't hard to pick up on sniffling or silent sobbing.

Those with higher perception had it worse and could hear... other activities.

With everyone reuniting and families coming back together, couples found ways to spend their time.

Both were things that were heard but not talked about. Personally, I felt it was a good gauge of the atmosphere and symbolized what people were going through. While grief was like a heavy fog sticking around us as we traveled, some happier notes played from within.

The fog would clear eventually. Little candles of happiness and joy burning it away one smile at a time. Marching forward one step at a time.

Some in our caravan lost everyone. There was one woman who lost both parents, all her siblings, and her significant other. She was nearly catatonic when she came back to realize all of them were gone.

I couldn't imagine it.

I was working through my own issues during this time and it was... going. I didn't know how else to describe it other than going. Every time I felt like I was ahead, all it took was rubbing my finger on the ring I now wore to bring me back down.

Other than that, the journey was uneventful. It felt like a mixture of hiking and camping mostly. Only I had to pull a massive cart full of weights, but other than that it felt... oddly normal.

One thing that popped up while traveling was an unexpected problem, and I couldn't figure out if it was a good or bad problem to have.

I was getting antsy.

My body was ready for a fight and twitched at the smallest of sounds or perceived movements. This was the longest I had gone without a fight and it was wrecking my nerves. The tutorial conditioned me into the regular intervals of the waves and it was jarring to get used to going without the coming fights.

Plus, a part of me wanted a fight. That was another thing I wasn't sure was good or not.

A downside of not being hand-delivered a training regimen every 3 days was I had to find it elsewhere. We weren't in a high mana area which meant the beasts weren't high enough level to be a challenge.

It wasn't even training to go after those. Going from fighting endless waves of monsters to only fighting one felt like a joke. It was barely enough time to build up steam and feel like I was in battle before the thing was dead.

And that was me trying to prolong the fight.

Without any other options, personal training was my last resort. Which was something I hadn't done a lot of during the tutorial.

Gabriel helped me get into it, though, and made the whole thing a lot easier. He had been training this way throughout the tutorial and guided me through the process.

"I would train my skills throughout the day and then go into the dungeon to test things or to solidify my understanding, not what you were doing. It sounds like you leaped head first into the fire and prayed you came out alive." He said after hearing what I did to upgrade my skills or train.

Now, while I said I didn't train by myself a lot, that didn't mean I never did it. When I first got [Ice Manipulation(Un)] it was a main staple of my time to train the skill.

Temperature battles with Rachel were another way to train it. She was also big into the mana sense training and tried to beat it into me every chance she got. She was so much better at it than me which made it hard to get enthusiastic about it.

Still, having another person with an Ice Law led to some interesting training, for both Gabriel and me.

Rachel and I would fight over temperature using our respective affinities, and while that was similar to what I was doing now, it was still different. Temperature was a by-product of utilizing my affinity, it wasn't the main part. Cold was a huge part of it, but Ice would always be its heart.

She and I fought over the effects of what our affinity had on the environment, but Gabriel and I fought over the Ice itself. Both grasping and battling over control of our element.

It reminded me somewhat of when the Wind Chamber got so powerful that the Winds fought me for control over the Ice I was holding.

It was like having two drivers of the same car fighting to go different directions at different speeds and it worked wonders for my control.

One of the biggest things I gained out of training with my brother so far wasn't even my increasing control, but something different entirely.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I still remembered a few days ago when I came to him for help the first time.

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"You need help training?" He said incredulously, "But you're already stronger than me, what could I help you with?"

"Most of my training came in the form of combat and that isn't really an option anymore. We won't hit our first dungeon for another week and I don't want to sit around doing nothing during our breaks." I said.

Some of our members weren't as high level or didn't have as high endurance as the rest, making us stop more frequently for breaks and the like. Meals were another that we stopped for or when we hit an area that had things for us to harvest.

Food was the reason we had to stop most often and harvesting it took a while, but there were a few other things we picked up on the way. With the dominating Wood and Plant mana of the forests, Mitchell and Brayden both located a few trees that stood out from the rest for harvesting. They usually made those into the axles of the carriages because of their increased strength and mana content.

While I could help them with that, most everyone else spent time doing other things during our downtime. I dabbled in the travel forge that Vinny cobbled together but that wasn't really the best use of my time.

Vinny did the best he could with what he had, but it was a pain to do anything in. Even simple nails were frustrating to get through let alone higher grade equipment. He was making adjustments and working with Brayden when he had the time but it was a slow process. Brayden's time was mostly spent fixing the carts or spare parts to help him create a better travel forge.

Others, Gabriel and a vast majority of the combat-focused members, spent it training.

Everyone knew the brief respite we had been granted wouldn't last forever and we would eventually be called to battle again. The only question was how long until that happened.

Which was the main reason I found myself asking Gabriel for help. He trained in such a different way than me and I felt it would be beneficial to see what he had to say.

"Alright, I guess I can show you what I usually do," He said nodding with conviction, "Let's start by creating some Ice!"

I followed his direction and fed some mana into [Desolate Blizzard(R)]. While the skill had upgraded, it still held the functions it used to. Just like [Icy Bastion(R)] could still be used like [Ice Wall(C)], [Desolate Blizzard(R)] could create Ice like [Hail(C)].

The skill took my mana and began to drop shards of ice in the area I selected but it didn't even last a second before Gabriel was waving me off.

"No, no, no, not like that!" He said trying to get me to cancel the skill.

I looked at him puzzled, "What do you mean? You said create some Ice, I was creating Ice."

"Yes, I said to create Ice but not through a skill! That's cheating!" He said animatedly, waiving his hands at the conjured ice falling from the sky.

That made me thoroughly confused, "What do you mean cheating? That's how I've always done it, I can't just conjure it from thin air." I said sarcastically.

Now it was his turn to be confused and he cocked his head to the side, "What do you mean you can't? Wasn't that one of the first skills you learned?"

It took me a second to comprehend what he said and I frowned, "No, I assume you don't mean my literal first skill and you mean first Ice skill, but no, it was [Ice Wall]," I answered, remembering back to the first Ice-related skill I received. It wasn't even from my class or anything, it was one I bought from the store. It was kind of ironic.

"Not a literal [Skill], I mean personal skill," He said emphasizing one over the other but saying the same thing.

"I don't understand the difference,"

"One you just shove mana into for the effect to happen, the other you personally conjure without the crutch of a skill. There's a big difference. Creating Ice without the aid of a skill was one of the first things I learned how to do." He started to get worked up over it so I just nodded along.

I did manage to sneak in a question before his rant got too far and was one I thought was strongly relevant, "But what's the point? Why learn how to do it without the skill if the skill already does it?"

He looked physically attacked when I said this. "Anyone can get an Ice-creating skill and just magic up some ice, it takes true skill to make it from personal ability. I'm not sure and haven't tested it enough, but I think it's designed to be that way. There are a bunch of reasons to do it without the skill. With enough practice, you could be faster at it, creating it quicker than sending mana through the skills and having it make ice.

"What if you aren't able to use the skill? I haven't seen anyone with the ability to block skill usage but with how big the world is, that might be a thing. I know certain enchantments can block skill usage which makes me believe people could have that ability.

"The Ice is also stronger if you make it personally! Well, not at first but that doesn't count. Have you noticed that the strength of the ice used depends on the rarity of the skill when you let the skill make it," He asked and waited for me to answer expectantly.

That part was true and something I had noticed. Almost all the ice I used for battle came from [Hail(C)], which was a common skill at the time. It worked fine for my purposes and if I needed something stronger, I empowered it with my Law or Spirit.

But I did notice that [Icy Bastion(R)], or its less upgraded version [Ice Fortress(Un)], created stronger ice. Plus, [Frost Armor(R)] also created stronger ice than [Hail(C)].

I noticed it most when using [Shatter(Un)] on different pieces of ice. [Shatter(Un)] seemed to work better and explode more violently on stronger ice which made the skill more effective when used in conjunction with [Icy Bastion(R)] and [Frost Armor(R)].

Before Gabriel ran out of patience, I nodded to his implied question.

"If you create it yourself, you don't have to worry about that. Plus, if you train the ability enough you can even make better ice than your skills. I think this System has a lot of different things like that, where it does things for you but you can also do it without its help."

He had been kicking that idea around ever since our information exchange. He and my mother weren't as free with tutorial points as we had been and weren't able to buy as much information from the store. We knew, from an alien lecture, that you could 'level' manually. Increasing in level without the aid of the System and you could evolve without it as well.

Ever since, Gabriel championed his theory that doing things manually, or at least learning to do it manually, should be a priority. Not everything, and certainly not right now, but starting with smaller things would help people build up to the bigger, more important ones.

Some would have to learn the skill. If they didn't have the needed requirements they would have to either do it themselves or live out their remaining lifespan forever barred from the next rank.

Starting with creating ice using personal ability instead of a [Skill] seemed like a good first step.

I wasn't sure if I would ever level manually or anything like that, but he made good points about needing to create Ice on my own.

"Alright, how do I do it?" I asked.

Gabriel got excited before calming himself into a more lecturely tone, "First, let's go back to the basics."