Edgar closed his eyes and summoned the wind to his hands, nodding in appreciation of the buffs that the armor granted him. The extra stat points might have seemed small, but they were equivalent to a few levels. Edgar pulled out his wand and cast a few spells, sending off bolts of wind into the air, reminding Jonathan of something that he had been wondering about for a while. Now that he was recovering, he had time to ask.

“Edgar, what exactly is the difference between a skill and a spell? Are they the same thing?”

“Hah! If you asked that question to my old mentor, you would have been run out of his school. They are very different things. Skills are System based, but spells are more organic. On a basic level, a spell is a mana construct that is not empowered by the System, but more complicated ones are constructed from glyphs, which can channel ambient mana. They can last after being cast, while as a skill ends once the user stops channeling it.”

Jonathan nodded along with the description. It was a small, but very significant, difference. Those glyphs that he had seen in the catacombs below the ruined city must have been part of spell construct. He had been using the concepts interchangeably, but now he knew the difference. With that in mind, the things that he accomplished with his runes would be classified as spells, seeing as they sustained themselves on something other than mana. If he ended up being able to chain the effects of the runes together, he would be able to achieve the same effects as the glyphs that weaker beings used, but with far more power.

“We got away from our pursuers, but there are sure to be more. I think we need a concrete plan of attack for our near future,” Jonathan suggested a few minutes later, after ruminating on the past few days. “We need to get to at least Tier 2 before we can easily rebuff the assaults of the armies roaming this land, and far stronger than that if we are to defeat Granath. The only problem is that the dungeon will be off limits for now.”

“I agree. Strength will make all of our goals much easier to accomplish. However, are you forgetting about the way that this world is constructed? The edge has just as many powerful beings as the center, right? And fewer soldiers roam there as well. Is that not perfect for our needs?”

“Right. The Rim,” Jonathan said, snapping his fingers. It was a term that he had heard a few people use in idle chatter. “That’s where those mountains are, the biggest monsters in the world. Surely they would provide a lot of essence?”

“Calm down there, Jonathan. We are nowhere near ready to fight those beasts. You’re counting your drakes before they hatch.”

Jonathan nodded, and wondered internally about why there were so many similarities between the diction of Earth, and the words that people used here. It could all have been to do with the translation function of the System, but it still seemed strange that it was so complete, and that there was a perfect translation for every word that was spoken. It certainly lent credence to the whole Multiverse idea that some scientists had posited on Earth, and now that Jonathan was literally in another universe, he could see that they had been right.

“I suppose you’re right. It's training montage time!” Jonathan replied, smiling at the last bit.

Unlike in a movie however, this did not entail him completing a few push ups or swinging a sword a few times. He actually had to do everything that this entailed by himself. However, the rewards would be worth it in the end. Edgar gave him a strange look, but he got the gist of the saying well enough. Jonathan had been lagging behind in the realms of his pathway skills. It was time to change that.

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Over the course of the next week, as the two men made their way towards the edge of the circle, they trained their skills night and day, on each other, on the world around them, and even in their minds. All of Jonathan’s main skills slowly crept up the ranks of Apprentice, and he ranked up his fighting style to Apprentice as well.

You have reached Apprentice Rank 1 with Flowing Hurricane!

In embodying the ideal of your fighting style, you have begun to tap into its true meaning. Before, you were simply parroting the motions that you felt to suit this skill. Now, you feel a deep connection to it on a fundamental level. Of course, this is nothing like true mastery, but you are still progressing impressively fast.

+5 to Dexterity, +5 to Strength

That had been accomplished by fighting against Edgar, and taking the skill to its limits by using it to deal with a mage rather than its normal melee fighter targets. It had been far harder to fight like that against someone who could just barrage you from afar, but Jonathan had eventually made it work, with the key part being his own Dexterity. It didn’t matter how many mana bolts were shot at him if he could dodge them all.

In doing this, he had rounded out the foundation of his fighting style, and it no longer lagged behind his greater martial arts skills. However, the other skills were a different matter, and out of them, only mana manipulation was nearing a rank up. It sat at stage 9, and he was trying to find the key to unlocking the next rank. He knew that it had something to do with channeling large quantities of mana, given the explosive growth that he had seen after using the Rune of Consumption in the city, but doing so again would be risky.

However, as the days went on, without any break through, he eventually decided to risk it. He stopped in the shadow of a ruined bell tower, and Edgar wandered off, training his own skills. Jonathan paid him no heed, instead meditating upon the nature of his mana. Right now he possessed an immense store of mana, at least for a warrior, and he could barely do anything with it. It was a rare battle that he would entirely run out of mana, which meant that it was just sitting there, not doing anything. He needed some sort of heavy hitting spell that he could use to enhance his powers. Preferably a projectile spell.

Over the last week he had been practicing with using mana outside of his body, mainly by extending the reach of his Mana Saber skill. He was able to stretch it out to almost six feet, but that was the maximum before he hit an unseen barrier that did not let him stretch it out further. As long as the mana was connected to his body, he was unable to manipulate it outside of an invisible zone that surrounded his body, likely because of the capillary action of his mana channels. They could only support so much outwards movement. To create what he wanted, he would need to find a way to break off the mana from his body, which he was already able to do in some form through his Hungering Decay skill. Because of the nature of Void mana, it wanted to consume anything that it touched, and as a result, it possessed its own motive power, one that would let it leave the boundaries of his own body. However, he needed more spells and abilities if he was to survive in this world and he was not content with being a one trick pony. Being a tremendously powerful melee fighter was nice, but he had been in many scenarios where more options would have been welcome. Besides, diversity of skill was always useful, no matter how much it was actually used.

Jonathan was on the cusp of ranking up his skill, and he knew that to do so, he would need to have some sort of insight into his mana, one that would likely have to be facilitated through the use of his new rune. He had limited time in which to progress, as opposed to others, who he assumed, like Edgar, had years to hone their craft as they progressed along the lines of their pathway skill. Edgar was only at around the same level as Jonathan, despite having lived in this universe for far longer, which was proof of this statement.