He closed the interface, and began to work on his mana manipulation abilities, something that he could do while walking. Rather than simply playing around with his core however, he consciously manipulated as he went, relying on his heightened intelligence from his threshold to allow him to do so.

He tested multiple different configurations within the span of seconds, using small amounts of his mana to do so. He could feel his expertise slowly increasing as he poked and prodded at his core, so he left it running in the background.

Half an hour later, a pack of Ash Prowlers appeared from behind a ruin, growling low in their throats at him. They were led by an Alpha, probably the only reason why they had not fled before his strength. Jonathan kept most of his mind on the mana manipulation task, while sparing a bit to fight.

The lower leveled monsters moved like they were in slow motion, and he tore through them in a matter of seconds, spraying blood over the ground. The Alpha growled in sudden apprehension, but before it could retreat, Jonathan grabbed it by the throat, and snapped its neck with his other hand, killing it. All of that time, he had been barely paying attention to the fight. Such a display of mastery prompted the arrival of a new skill.

You have gained a new skill!

Battle Focus:Rare

You can concentrate on multiple things during a battle, a great boon to your combat abilities.

It was a simple skill, but quite a useful one. It would allow for him to both train his mental and physical abilities at the same time, if he had taken stock of its abilities correctly. System granted skills landed somewhere in between ingrained prowess and artificial mastery, both heightening and building on the abilities that one already possessed. More importantly, it lent extra power to the conceptual strength of one's abilities, empowering them beyond their non enhanced norms.

For example, Jonathan’s redirection skill used the same principals to any normal judo throw, but added additional power to the skill, as long as it aligned with its original intent. That power came purely from alignment, rather than anything else, as it did not take anything from his mana or stamina pool.

As Jonathan left the monster corpse behind, he smiled as he realized that he had not neglected his mana manipulation progress for a single second.

Over the next half day, he learned that his new intelligence was quite the boon in the realm of training his mana manipulation, as he leveled up the skill, not once, but twice. All that he had achieved was a greater level of skill with his abilities, rather than discovering anything new, but that would come later. For now, he was satisfied with his abilities.

He had broken past his thresholds, and was now an entirely different creature altogether than when he had entered the city. His irrational fear of going through the pain of his thresholds had actually paid off in the end, rather than simply wasting a few stat points as he had expected. It wasn't like he needed the extra ones that much anyway. He was already gaining far more than most.

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It almost made up for the sting that he felt whenever he thought about the ruins that he had left behind. Whether his fault or not, he had still led to the destruction of the city, and the death of most of its inhabitants. In any case, that was past now, and he could hope to find absolution through the completion of his quest. That was the only real route forward. The fact that it meshed completely with his ultimate goals was only the icing on the cake.

Jonathan stopped a few hours after this, wanting to train his martial arts abilities a bit. He wasn't sure how much he could eke out of the dim memories that had been ingrained in him from Earth, but he could certainly try to get some value. He had prompted the creation of a Student Rank Pathway skill simply by remembering his abilities, which had given him a decent approximation of its equivalence to earthly standards. As far as he could tell, the first few ranks seemed to correspond pretty much exactly, as he had been adept enough at martial arts, but nothing special.

The highest level that seemed possible on Earth was that of the Master Rank, if there was any sort of linear progression of the mastery ranks. Past that was likely the domain of the supernatural. Of course, none of this accounted for the System, where one could take out a building with a single punch, no matter how sloppy their technique was. Even a true master of martial arts from Earth would not last long here without any stats or levels. Well, the actual skill would have given them a substantial amount of power, but without accounting for that, it would be nothing more than a massacre.

Jonathan began to warm up with a basic kata, moving his arms and legs slowly so as to remember the moves correctly. He could have done them far faster, but he wanted to limit himself to the abilities of a normal human, which was quite a bit harder than he had expected. Trying to move at a normal human speed was like trying to move at the speed of a snail, at least relative to his abilities. He was about 20 times faster than a normal person, and even accounting for the limitations of basic physics, he would have been able to move at a speed that was almost invisible to the naked eye.

However, he eventually achieved it, and began to work through his moves, slowly recalling the correct forms. It took him a few minutes to work through the kata, and in that time, some of his prior knowledge began to percolate within his brain, aided by his superhuman intelligence. As he finished, he ranked up his martial arts skill by one tier. It was a small gain, but a welcome one.

The next time through, he began to work in his insights from his pugilistic fighting style, trying to weave it into the matrix of his knowledge. As he moved, he began to add in punches and picks to his martial repertoire, blending it in with his other abilities. He began to move in a different way from what he had been taught on Earth, eschewing the slow and steady motions of a grappler for the quick movements of a fighter. He ducked and weaved against imaginary enemies coming in from all sides, and rather than simply sticking to the original kata, he would deal with those enemies in a variety of ways, some with his fists, and some with his normal martial arts moves. As he did this, he used his enhanced intelligence to keep track of where the enemies were coming from, and whether he had successfully hit them or not.

Most of the time, he was successful, even with the new and unexplored techniques that he was using. He began to drop into a trance, trying to find the balance between his two martial paths. As he did so, his movements became smoother, and there was no longer any delay between punches and grapples. Over a few hours, he perfected the art, until finally, he was met with a message.

You have formed a Martial Path!

Flowing Hurricane:Novice 1

You have formed the basics of a new martial path, one that relies on your many abilities in the field of war to use. Your path revolves around the quick and easy application of force, with the option to add in more complicated maneuvers if the situation demands.