As much as Jack wanted to go test out Oxygen Repository, he still had another skill to evolve.

The Compliant Golden-Hooped Rod has reached level 5 and is now able to be evolved. Level 5 is a free evolution and does not require a skill evolution token. Would you like to Evolve this skill? Yes No

**Alert** New Skill Evolution Available Choose one Leader Of Many Measure The Depths Bend Don't Break

Great, more obscure, vague, evolution names.

Leader Of Many, seems like a leadership ability of some kind, but he had no idea how that would work.

While skills seemed to be able to do many things, they all seemed to have the same limitation; they either directly affect you or how you directly interacted with a target.

Skills like Hair Manipulation and Hydraulic Leap affected his body, allowing him to do near impossible things. They were almost like magic, while still being rooted in a physical effect. Like Hair Manipulation, while he could technically see how it would be possible to move the hair on your body by intricately changing it from straight to curly and back to straight, it shouldn’t be possible for human hair to do that.

The Blood Drain and Mana Absorption skills affected how he interacted with a target. Blood Drain seemed to pull on his target’s blood, making it come out of whatever wound he was touching. How it worked, he had no idea, but he could physically feel something pulling. Not just pulling their blood, but also slightly pulling on whatever he was touching the wound with. The best comparison he could think of was it was like the force of a magnet, both sides pulled on each other.

**Skill Up** Researching Level 7

Well, hopefully, that meant he was right with that line of thinking. The issue though is that this skill was directly tied to his magic staff. It was a requirement for the skill to be bonded with it. So who knows what the limits on this skill would be.

That actually reminded him he needed to find out what exactly bonding the weapon to him did, besides make him aware of where it is at all times. While bonding was quite common, Kai knew little about it since he used his talons as weapons.

Taking all of that into account, maybe Leader Of Many made it so he could teach others how to use the staff? He still wasn’t sure that was right, but it didn’t matter too much, Jack didn’t plan on being in a large group anytime soon and certainly not as a leader.

Measure The Depths sounded familiar, almost like he had heard a story about it. While his ability to actively recall memories was great since he increased his intelligence, memories from before then were not as easily retrieved. Maybe the evolution increased how much he could extend his staff, turning it into a dipstick for a lake? That could be helpful in niche situations, but its maximum length of thirty feet was already pretty long. How long could it actually get, though?

Last, Bend Don’t Break. Either it makes the staff harder to break than it already was or it increased its flexibility. It was already hard to damage, let alone break. If he was a strength-focused build, he could see it maybe snapping in half, eventually. It seemed like a good evolution for when he had higher stats.

Since he could always reset it again, he chose Measure The Depths to feed his curiosity for what it did.

Lucy was still in the middle of a fight, so he might as well check out the new evolution.

Resting one end on the ground, he pointed the staff straight up. To extend the staff he would have to turn a little nob in the middle to an ‘on’ position then all he had to do was think about it growing. Usually, he always left it ‘on’ because he didn’t enjoy having to turn it on and off all the time.

This time when he thought about extending it he received some sort of reply. Not actual words and not quite emotions like he received from Lucy. It was the impression of a question. He didn’t know what the question was asking, only that it had two options.

Without knowing what the options did, he chose one at random. Selecting an option was as easy as blinking.

As soon as he picked, the staff began extending like it normally did. Extending it to its full length, he found that nothing had changed. So he shrunk it back down, and this time chose the other option.

The difference in the options was immediately apparent. As usual, the staff began to grow in length, but this time it also grew in width.

It took much more time than usual for it to expand. Normally it increased in length by six to eight inches a second. Now it was only expanding in length by an inch a second.

Jack watched in fascination as it grew to ten feet in length, then stopped. Once it was ten feet long, it still widened for a few more seconds before it stopped. In the end, it was a little over half a foot thick. It wasn’t easy to get a grip on it but Jack was able to lift it; he estimated its weight to be around two hundred and fifty pounds.

Kai made a few curious glances at the massive weapon, but didn’t comment.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

So bonding to a weapon makes it so skill evolutions can affect the actual item? Maybe it only could because it was a magical weapon. Who knows? The thing he did know was he was going to have fun thinking of all the ways he could use this new feature of his staff.

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Bursting out of the icy water, Jack gasped for breath. After taking a few minutes to recover, he checked his timer.

Thirty minutes. Underwater for a full thirty minutes and he was pretty sure he could go longer with practice.

Unfortunately, holding his breath for that long still made him feel like he was drowning. Just thinking of that feeling made a chill run up his spine.

Comforting feelings flowed out of the link he had with Lucy, almost like a warm hand on his back. She had felt his distress after the first few minutes underwater and had spent the rest of the time encouraging him to stay under as long as he could.

If not for her, he would have given up a while ago. Although he did feel guilty for distracting her from her training.

At least the slime on his body seemed to keep leeches away. Being underwater for so long while being attacked by leeches was a little too much for him.

Climbing out of the water, he laid on the muddy ground. It had taken a while, but he felt like he had a decent understanding of how Oxygen Repository worked.

Once he built up a layer of mucus on his body by sweating a ton, Oxygen Repository would activate. It would somehow store air for as long as the slime was on him. He could then stay underwater for a time equal to how long he was storing air. If he ran out of air, he could go back to land and start storing air again.

At least that was his current theory. So far the longest he’d stayed was a half-hour, and he had been on land for an hour before that. But in his first few tries, he’d been on land for ten minutes and been under for about ten, then fifteen and fifteen.

There was most likely a cap to how much oxygen he could store up, probably in some relation to his skill level. Speaking of which, he checked his notifications.

**Skill Up** Mucus Shield Level 6

As long as the mucus stayed moist on his skin, the ‘shield’ would stay up, which was easy with the eternal rain. That was unless he deliberately tried scraping it off, something he usually did after a day of fighting.

Double Checking the timer on his pistol, he made a goal of staying under for forty minutes next time.

To keep productive while waiting, he pulled out his toothpick sized staff and twirled it between his fingers, changing its size as he did.

The new evolution not only grew the staff to scale but also shrunk it. The smallest he could make it was two inches long.

Occasionally he would throw the small stick into the air and try to catch it with his eyes closed, using his bond to sense where it was. Doing this a few times sparked an idea that could help him with the boss.

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Kai was staring at Ava who was perched high in a tree preening her feathers.

“Come inside please, it will be safer for him if we are both there in case something goes wrong.” He thought to her through their bonded link.

“And how is that our problem? We have wasted enough time babysitting him, let the chick fall from the nest or else it will never fly.” Her sharp eyes shot daggers at him.

“I seem to remember someone who had trouble their first few tries. The fall from a low nest is of little danger to a chick, but it does not provide you wind in your wings. While the higher you fall from, the easier it is to soar. We will be there just in case his feathers have not grown in.”

“I was flying from the moment I hatched!” She defended, but he could tell she was close to giving in.

“Then how was I the one who caught you, little one.”

“I am not little, you tiny fool.” She let out a screech to emphasize her point.

“In my eyes, you always will be.” He felt the cracks form in her cold exterior.

She let out a click of annoyance. “Just what is the chick's masterful plan?”

Laughing a little he replied, “He plans on being eaten.”

Ava’s eyes went wide in surprise. “But why? Oh, never mind, I guess it might be enjoyable to watch this go horribly wrong.”

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After a few hours of searching, Jack and Lucy finally found one.

The alligator drone was missing the bottom half of its mouth and most of its tail. As with the other blooming drone near the end of its life, its eyes were shriveled in their sockets.

It was heading straight towards the boss but at the slow rate it was moving, it wouldn’t be there for another hour or so. Which was just fine for what Jack had in mind.

It didn’t take much to pin the drone down; while its strength was high, its body was extremely brittle.

He shrunk his staff down to its smallest size and pressed the tip of it against the drone’s vine. It took much more force than he thought it should, but the staff pierced the side of the plant, sinking all the way in with only a tiny bit sticking out.

He quickly got off the drone and backed up as it tried to attack him again.

“Go away, go to your mother.” Jack shooed the animal away as he walked out of its sight.

Feeling the location of his staff, he followed the alligator from a distance as it made its way to the boss.

“I definitely think we should have waited until it was closer to attack it. This is taking forever,” Jack whispered to Lucy. She responded by collapsing on his shoulder as if she was exhausted.

After an hour they were finally near the boss and Jack went straight to his usual spying location.

They watched as the withered drone made it to the drop off spot. The boss tore off the drone’s vine and threw it into its mouth.

With the vine out of sight, Jack focused on the bond with his weapon. It traveled down the stalk at a uniform pace, which was a relief. He was glad it didn’t just drop straight down, or else that could have been back for him. It finally came to a rest about ten feet below the surface of the ground.

After waiting a few minutes to make sure it didn’t travel anywhere else, he stood up to leave. With the knowledge of where the boss absorbed the vines, his preparations were all complete. All that was left was to drop Lucy off with Kai and Ava, then go pick a fight with a drone and lose.

Before walking away he took one last glance in the direction of his staff. He hated to just leave it there, but he knew it wouldn’t be for long.

He’d be joining it soon.