Huh, this isn't as impressive as I thought... ah there's a zoom slider, let's pull back all the way out, oh those show up too, wow it is actually massive.
So the skill tree was built sort of like a sphere grid, and limited view meant I basically had fog of war on it with all the skills I already had granting vision. The biggest difference is it was 3d, my 'control dirt' was connected to 'control earth' which had a bunch of connections to other skills while I could only see a few of them. Also connected to 'control dirt' was 'move dirt' which had a black ring around it, when I tapped on it it told me that it was skipped due to class. The last one connected to it was 'manipulate dirt' which had a golden ring and tapping on that told me it was a mastery skill, when queried it told me that meant the connected skills would still be counted for unlock purposes but I would lose access to them for actual use in exchange for starting at level one in a higher tier skill.
I couldn't activate it though, it required level a hundred in the previous skills, yes, skills. It wanted level one hundred in 'move dirt' as well, which I skipped because my class was better than normal. I tried tapping on 'move dirt' a few different ways to see if it would do anything, eventually it told me a way to back-unlock it after sticking my finger into the icon for five seconds. I had to dig ten metric tons of dirt out of a single hole with my bare hands and infuse every scoop with mana. The infusion thing makes it so like a farmer getting it by accident from digging a big hole wont happen, only people that have access to mana can do it. Infusion sounds harder than it really is, I just had to release a puff of raw mana out of my hand, which was stupidly easy but I never needed to do it.
Other skills under the revealing light of 'control dirt' were control versions of each of the mixture elements of dirt, mud, dust, and ash. My five second poke on them told me to reach level fifty in the 'move' version to unlock them and nothing else. I doubted the way to unlock move version of ash is dig up ten tons of ash, because why the hell would you gather that much? Actually, no that would make it a perfect unlock requirement because it's pure bullshit that no one would ever do by accident. I can't see any kind of stone moving magic, but I absolutely have ten tons of rock laying around and can try moving it to see if it works. I could also try using that on the other elements, the fact it specified a single hole for move dirt may mean that you need to infuse a large enough chunk of an element all in one go.
The fog dispel area seemed based on mastery, all my random skills that were novice didn't have anything else near them, I could see lines connected to them but not what is on the other end. My intermediate skills showed other skills that were directly connected, which at this juncture showed that 'magical feedback resistance' was attached to 'heavy magical feedback resistance'. It also showed me that 'enchanting' was connected to 'complex enchanting'. Skills also seemed to be clustered by type, near 'enchanting' was that 'stabilization' skill and near 'blacksmithing' was 'casting'. The last skill I got into was 'power coat', under it was both 'power hit' and something called 'power block', which could be guessed at easy enough. But what was interesting was that 'power hit' was also connected to 'power strike', and 'power block' could upgrade to 'power shield'.
'Power shield' had a really odd shimmer to it though, and angling it correctly I could see it was superimposed on another skill, the soldier's defensive skill, 'harden shell'. I am guessing it was weird because they used the same technique but a soldier's shell was better suited for it and so it was it's own skill that they accessed instead of the base version. Connected above was again a mastery sort of skill for 'power coat' and to the side was an omni skill that needed 'power coat', 'power strike', and 'power shield' at the same time, 'power zone'. To unlock hit and block I had to make and block one thousand blows and focus energy into the hitting and blocking areas, essentially I had to use raw physical energy until the skill just manifested.
After I learned them I wanted Christina to learn those as well, even if she couldn't unlock 'power coat' it would let her gain mastery of both her offense and defense. While on the topic of teaching the kids skills, what if they learned a skill before they unlocked it from leveling? Even further, what if they mastered a skill before they unlocked it? It's hard for me to unlock my skills before I level because of things like I had no idea how to even attempt to unlock the ability to use light energy. A new worker, on the other hand, could learn from an older worker, thus they could learn something like 'compress earth' then gain a level and then tell me if anything happens.
With that plan I finally tore myself away from the skill tree and suffered some mild vertigo as reality snapped back into focus. Looking up I estimated I was in there for nearly an hour, I didn't want to start on something that may need to be done in one long session so I went to my rock punching wall and started hitting it in the way it was described for unlocking 'power hit'. A normal soldier passed by after a bit and I asked them to try doing what I was doing, but gathering physical energy without activating the skill was, sadly, too high concept for them. Finally a worker with a new celestial came out, when asked why it took so long it was because everyone was so excited to see their little sister walking they got too distracted pestering her with questions, so it took a while to carry out the order.
Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
Haha, yeah I can only imagine, I told the worker I wasn't upset and to head back to work, she was glad she didn't disappoint me. I threaded my magic into the new celestial while trying out my new feedback absorption ability, it was interesting, like I was siphoning white noise off of her. It took a bit to explain the goings on to her but she didn't have any questions, she was just excited to be awake and helping daddy. I shrugged it off and went back to punching, with even more gusto since now I didn't have to worry about hurting myself from hitting too hard. I ended up taking the rest of the day punching and I still didn't unlock the thing, I knew for sure I did over a thousand punches but I think a lot weren't energized properly, as in I had to focus each punch instead of just punching fast.
After I headed inside Victoria was really excited to talk about how I managed to get a celestial to be independent. She wanted to wake all of them up right away but I explained it was only possible if they were at least level four because it seemed they need ten Int to generate enough mana. Level four gave them eight Int which could then be boosted to ten via enchanted gear because there was a twenty five percent boost limit. This is why regular workers and soldiers couldn't use the Int ring, twenty five percent of three is less than one meaning that when added together it rounds down to still three. Once you got high enough level material and enchantment quality became the limiting factor, a tin loop the size of a ring gave a boost of one per loop but it seemed only five loops could fit in a ring without doing something weird.
Victoria was disappointed with that news but understood that it couldn't be helped right now. Course once they got high enough level the celestials could start helping each other, one of them would be capable of powering not just her own light but assist with a second one, meaning everyone I woke up could go on to wake up another sister. I then told her about the skill tree and the weird hidden skills and stuff and my plan for the newest worker, the regular one and if it worked out I could try it with the silver one as well to make her extra special, maybe learning 'move dirt' on top of the normal worker earth magics would help as well. She had a laugh at how absurd that was, but believed it would totally work since I was the one that thought of it, after that I put the celestial to sleep before me and Victoria snuggled together and went to bed as well.
----------------------------------------
After breakfast today the silver worker finally had her first molt, even that took quite a bit longer than her sister's. After she hardened, her plates were mostly black, like normal, but she had silver stripes. A silver V starting where a human's sternum would be went up and over her shoulders and went around her neck like a necklace, there were loops around her wrists and ankles as well as a line that started above one eyebrow, went around her head, and ended above the other with a gap between the brows. Aesthetics weren't the only difference between her and the other workers, when asked she said she had an extra one in every stat, she was stronger, smarter, and faster than her sisters as well as, amazingly, having a third tier class already, she was a Foreman instead if just a worker.
After the quick question and answer session Victoria said to her, "like your older sister you are to be given a name, if you have a preference say so now." With a head shake to the negative Victoria continued, " very well, in that case I declare you to be named Valerie! ... Okay, now that the formalities are out of the way you should stick with your father, he has a training plan for you to hopefully maximize your abilities."
Valerie was confused for a moment by the sudden shift down in seriousness, but she recovered quickly before asking me, "father not worker, how train me?"
I responded to her question psychically, "I know just as much as a worker does, maybe even more, the only difference is how sharp our nails are."
She blinked at the response before nodding and attaching herself to behind me, I guided her out and found the other young worker before leading them both outside. First thing I wanted them to try was see if they could learn 'compress earth' before they gained a level and their class gave it to them. With intense practice I could now say the spell one direction while casting it in another, so I was capable of communicating the spell to them without shooting them with magic. Signs were good right from the start, they heard the spell clearly and could remember it without any difficulty, their classes say they are supposed to know that spell, so they are allowed to learn it regardless of source. Course it was the first spell they could get and was only one level away, maybe trying to learn a spell a level twenty worker earned while level one would be harder.
Even with them being allowed to learn it they still took a while to actually learn how to cast it since the method wasn't embedded into their minds by the system. Valerie took about twenty tries before she finally got it to go off and turned a clump of dirt into a rock, the normal worker by comparison took almost fifty tries before she finally did it. They both got a trait called "early bird", it was an extremely low power trait but useful, it granted them one point one times exp rate for any class skills learned before their class granted it to them, but only after they became the appropriate level. So in effect they could train compress earth at normal speed right now, but would bump up in speed once they became level two. But that isn't the only idea I had for training, I got them started learning how to release a mana burst so we can all get 'move dirt' and see if that gave them a bonus.