For a few minutes, I simply held the facsimile of the sun between my hands and stared at it. I especially like the way that tongues of flame seemed to randomly find there way out of the orb, though with my grip on it maintained I could feel the eddies of the mana that led to them.
The width of the flares oscillated, widening as mana passed through them, and fading as it left. I played a little with the shape of them, making careful changes in an effort to avoid disrupting the equilibrium that I’d created. I found that I could make a few of the rings larger by making others smaller, though if they become small enough to be entirely in the orb then they get subsumed.
I decided to experiment with making the rings all small enough to just barely poke out of the sun, giving it an unnaturally textured look that I thought was rather boring.
Eventually I realised that as long as there was something connecting the rings to the centre I can put them anywhere I wanted, which led to me making three large rings surrounding the orb, with three lines running through the diameters of all of them. I set the rings all spinning in different directions, creating a mesmerising pattern of motion.
When I learn a few matrices, though I’m uncertain as to the compatibility of them, I want to try making a few of them surrounding this thing. Ordinarily the best use a mage can find form this cantrip is a way to store mana for later use, at the cost of a little bit of constant focus. A lot of mages don’t bother with this, but I’d imagine that more Guilders would than not.
Regardless, there’s obviously some additional capacity to this orb that isn’t present in the original variant, which I would like to experiment with. The issue is that using matrices could be risky, as so far this mana has been rather chaotic and it’s hard to imagine it staying easily in such delicate shapes. I’d have to work on that when I have some sort of insurance, at the very least Max could help carry me to a healer in the worst case.
For the entire duration of my practice I kept the orb safely ensconced between my hands, though I had to move them further apart when I switched up the rings. However, the most common place to keep an orb is above the shoulder, such that it’s close by and has limited risk of harming anything.
The issue inherent to that plan, for me anyway, is that I don’t know how to do that. I was planning on looking into after practicing with the orb itself for a bit, neither anticipating needing two hands, nor the difficulty of the task. I don’t want to have to reconstruct this from scratch, as inevitable as it may be.
After dithering on the decision for a short while I decided to just end my practice for the moment. I was starting to get hungry, and it was a little bit later than I would usually prefer for training. Although, I will probably be practicing things for longer now anyway. There’s just so much that I’m excited to do! I’m certainly not going to just drop swordsmanship completely, not with the potential I have for multitasking.
By this time, only two or three hours after I’d started, I’d made some surprising progress.
Proficiency Lv 18 --> Lv 21
Current bonus: Lv 5 --> Lv 6
Nathan Golding Lv 6
No Achievements
Skills
Skilled Lv MAX
Proficiency Lv 21
Skilled Lv MAX
Provide a percentage increase to the effects of all skills relative to level. Minimum value of [10%]
Current bonus: 15% (10%)
Proficiency Lv 21
Provide a passing proficiency with every discipline, equal to a quarter of the level of this skill. Minimum value of [Lv 1]
Current bonus: Lv 6
It’s much more than I would expect for such a period of time at this level. I theorise that it may be related to my use of the new mana, as well as it being my first time practicing magic in general. I mean, if Skills level up faster when doing new things with them, then what could be newer than that, right?
That, combined with the training boost, provides a neat explanation that I am, regardless, still uncertain of. I’m not a researcher though, and at the end of the day it’s not particularly important. It’d be nice to get a few more levels out of it but I doubt there actually is anything else to find.
I headed back to my room to eat, on the way pondering the implications of the new mana type.
It may not have been the most important part of it to be thinking about, but I couldn’t help but keep coming back to naming them. Because obviously they’d need names, after all.
I thought that it would be logical to start with the type that I have, given that I can name it based off of personal experience rather than a more academic knowledge.
My first instinct was to go for a basic name, the sort of thing you’d find in a video game. Obviously, that would mean just naming it fire. But then, what would the other be called if I want to stick to a theme? Plus, it’s far more complicated than that.
This mana… it’s more than just fire. It’s energy. That is, energy in motion. It’s always doing something, and that something just so happens to be generating heat, which pushes itself around. Then there’s the weird stuff about how it moves, seeming to use different directions than we can. It’s so much more than just fire.
My mind casted back to the description that I keep giving it. The sun. I mean, that works, doesn’t it?
Sun mana it is, then.
But what about the other? That one would be a little bit more difficult, but I think I can still figure something out. I started with the first aspect of it, that of force. Simply, it moves things, constantly generating force moving towards whatever could be considered the ‘outside’. Then there’s meta magic, the idea that it can directly interact with other spells. At first glance that doesn’t seem too impressive, mana interacting with mana, but of course that isn’t all.
When mana is used in a spell, it ceases to be ‘mana’, instead shifting completely into embodying the concept of the spell. For certain spells like barriers this means that mana has a reduced impact on them, unless the meta magic aspect is enhanced. With Magitech arrays it works slightly differently. They get this effect to a lesser extent, becoming greater the more complex the array, but are still tied to mana, because that’s the only way that it can be made to function permanently.
It can be used for more than just destroying spells however, it can also modify them. For a spell this just means half-forming your own spell and trying to sort of shove them together, and with arrays it means pushing the mana into a different alignment as it’s taking effect.
This form of mana is basically the essence of all Magitech, the foundation of all human invention. Imagine trying to make a phone without Magitech, it would be completely impossible right?
So I guess that’s the name I’ll go with, at least for now. Essence mana. Obviously neither of this will be the names that the majority of people use, they’re only intended to be placeholders for when I learn the actual names. That is, assuming that they get named at all I suppose. For all I know this whole phenomenon will fade and Sun mana will be relegated to little more than a reference in an obscure scientific document, without enough information to draw any conclusions.
-----------
The following day, me and Max go on our first quest as a party. I took some time whilst we were choosing the quest to explain the recent developments in regard to the Sun mana, although I won’t be using it unless there’s an emergency because I’m not yet practiced enough with it, and don’t know any actual spells. I promised to either go to the training room with him after the quest and show him, or find a safe place to show him at the quest if it takes too long.
Honestly, I imagine it would be fine to create the orb pretty much anywhere but Max was worried about it, and reasonably so. I’m not sure what I would do if I saw someone carrying a ball of fire around, but it probably wouldn’t be to just assume that everything’s fine and walk away.
But anyway, I digress. After some discussion we ended up choosing a nearby quest to take care of some Salamanders that showed up in a nearby Zoo. No-one’s sure how they got there, so we are also being paid for investigating. In fact, the investigation is the main part of the quest. Salamanders can’t really do too much damage.
Monster Salamanders very rarely awaken from regular salamanders, when exposed to mana rapidly. Out in the Wilds mana flows sort of like wind, moving every which way and causing rapid, yet strangely homogenous, transformations in monsters. A few species, the Sapients in particular, create their own mana and therefore have no need to take in, resulting in an almost complete immunity to these transformations. The only exception is when someone purposefully triggers them by removing a persons innate mana resistance, thereby allowing it to affect them like everything else. Though similar to a lot of history isn’t actually known for certain, it’s theorised that there is one race that was the original, and the rest were mutations created in this way.
The reason this doesn’t happen to animals in the cities however, is because of the turbines. These turbines serve a few uses. Firstly, they generate electricity from the wind, which is mostly stored in batteries as a redundancy. Secondly, using complex meta arrays they are able to create a dome around any size of area that repels large amounts of mana. It’s fortunate that mana isn’t actually necessary for anything to survive, or else we wouldn’t have been able to expand them as much as we have.
The main limiting factor on expanding this area physically speaking is simply the cost of making and maintaining turbines. They not only require massive amounts of materials, largely steel and copper, but they also get damaged frequently due to being right on the edge of the Tamed lands. The ecological factors also need to be considered however, monsters are as much a part of the food chain as anything else after all, so it’s only fair. I think that the actual reason that most people use isn’t that last one though, it’s probably more about the alchemical ingredients that monsters produce.
All that is to say, it’s hard to imagine why the Salamanders would be here. They certainly don’t have enough mana to awaken like that, meaning that someone must have brought them in on purpose. I suppose that it’s possible that they awakened from the Sun mana, but for that to be the case it would have to be an incredible amount, enough that someone would have mentioned it in my research.
I did double check whilst we were deciding on the quest to take, and whilst there are plenty of people that detected Sun mana as far as a mile away, no-one detected any where near the amount needed to awaken a Salamander. So I’m back to my theory about it being foul play for the moment, unless something else turns up.
We were set to go to the Zoo at 1 pm, so I opted to spend some time in the morning trying to squeeze out an extra level to Proficiency, with highly limited practicing of magic because there were far more people in the training hall than usual. I unfortunately slept in, and in the hour or two that I had to train failed to get a level.
It didn’t help that I was distracted the entire time, thinking about magic without being able to safely practice it. Maybe during the quest I can do some shaping exercises, but any arrays I make with Sun mana will be way too unpredictable.
I headed downstairs to the Guild hall and met up with Max by the door.
“You ready to go?” I asked as a courtesy. He nodded and, with a map on his phone to guide us, we set off.
“So Max, what have you been up to?” I tried to sound friendly by asking him about himself, but I feel like I just came off like more like a leader checking up with his team. That might be alright if I actually had a team, and any tactical reason to keep track of them
“I’ve not been doing much, just looking around all the nearby stores. Although I met this one person, her name was Stephanie I think…”
-----------
We talked for the rest of the fifteen or so minutes it took to make it there, although Max was doing most of the talking, not that he seemed to mind.
I expected the walk to be more difficult, what with the sword I was carrying, and the discomforting warmth of the Sun mana. Instead I found it to be rather easy, which I realised was from the three Stats I get every level. I don’t think the precise mechanics of a level up is known, not even the fact that there even are distinct characteristics that are improved. It makes Max’s Skill more interesting from a research standpoint at least, to the point where I wonder whether he should reveal the full capabilities of it. It’s not like someone would have much reason to take advantage of that knowledge, or even could.
We came to a stop in front of a large gate, with a sign which read ‘Reed Zoo’ hanging over it. The gate appeared to be locked, and there wasn’t a button to press or alternative entrance we were told to use, so we just stood in front of it and waited. A couple of people walked past and gave us odd looks, probably the swords and the loitering, but thankfully we weren’t waiting too long before an employee came and unlocked the gate.
March Stewart Lv. 51
Good Tamer
She appeared to be a fairly old woman based on her wrinkles and white hair, made more obvious by her relatively high level. Her achievement, Good Tamer, is one that I’ve seen on every Zoo trip I’ve ever been on. From what I’ve gathered it’s a fairly easy achievement for most zookeepers to get, although obviously not all of them can because of Inherent Skills. I have to hold back an instinctual judgement that someone of her level doesn’t have a better achievement, I don’t have one at all, after all.
“You must be the party from the Guild, yes?” she asked hurriedly, before steamrolling on without letting us answer, “Yes, yes of course you are. Come this way please, the Salamanders are about to melt through the glass so if you could please hurry. I don’t want to put any animals at risk.”
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And then before we could even get a word in she’d ushered us through the gate, locking it behind us and stalking off. I shook off my shock and started after her, Max following soon after, heading to the reptile house.
“She’s a little weird, right?” Max whispered to me, before we made it back into earshot of her.
“Don’t be rude. Although she could stand to be a little more polite herself,” I whispered back. I sped up so that we could catch up with her sooner.
“I’m sure you’re aware, but we find it very strange how this happened. Obviously we have the standard mana detectors, up to code, and they haven’t found particularly high levels of mana. We even checked them after the Salamanders Awoke, as many as we could safely anyway. They’re all working. It’s all very strange. Some of us thought that they might have been brought in from outside, but on the cameras we could clearly see them awakening.”
By the time she’d finished talking we were stood in front of the salamander exhibit, where I can clearly see the glass scorched and even melting in some places. Most of the Salamanders were lounging around, content to do nothing for now, but a few had spotted us and were rearing back their heads slowly. If they aren’t in a rush they’ll attack slower, which nets them a marginal increase in power.
The room itself appears to be a snake exhibit that’s been re-worked. There are a series of terrariums on the back wall that I assume the salamanders lived in before Awakening, and a door that used to be to let workers take care of the snake, but now appears to let visitors get a closer look at the salamanders. One Salamander was sitting on the ground, but the rest were at various heights on terrariums that were visibly straining to hold their newly-enhanced weight.
It’s strange though. The glass should be magically reinforced, specifically warded against fire. I can even see the arrays that have been painted on with a thin layer of Nox oil, from the same monster that was the first I fought. It’s almost transparent save for a slight reflection of light, but from what I can tell it should be functional.
“Hmm. I have a few questions about the Salamanders if you wouldn’t mind?”
“Yes the investigation, I know. Well it can wait, those things are going to break through the glass soon, now that they have a target. I’ve already come to term with the fact that you’ll have to kill them so don’t delay any further if you wouldn’t mind.”
As I’m realising is her standard, March completely dominated the conversation and pushed us both through the door without letting us get another word in. She closed it behind us, and thankfully left it unlocked. I sighed.
“Alright then, I guess we just have to deal with this ourselves then. It’s just… 6 Salamanders, how difficult could it be?”
“No need to jinx us dude,” Max snarked. I guess that one was on me though to be fair.
“Right. Let’s get this over with then? Try to take them out as quickly as possible, don’t want your clothes to catch fire right?”
“Wait, what do you mean fire?”
I roll my eyes. Did he seriously not do any research? Although I suppose it makes sense to hear that somethings known to be one of the weakest monsters and then just ignore it as a threat. Even I considered not getting any additional information, and actually only ended up doing so because of the investigation. I meant what I said earlier, I don’t imagine this will be difficult.
I draw my sword and survey the room. The ones that were about to attack the glass had wound down, now repositioning so that they can fire at us. Meanwhile, the ones that were lounging were now leisurely turning to face us. Salamanders weren’t usually this confident, and in fact are typically pretty skittish, preferring quick blasts of fire intended to deter predators more than to kill them.
The one on the floor appeared to be the closest to finishing it’s attack so I went for it first, bringing my sword down diagonally into it’s neck. Strangely, the immediate potential threat to life made it much easier for me to handle attacking it, even easier than the Panthera. Admittedly the fear of being in a room outnumbered 6 to 1 was terrifying, until I remembered that Max was here as well.
My sword easily cut into it’s neck, disrupting the attack before it could form and harmlessly dispersing the gathered mana. Or, at least that’s what should have happened.
Instead I was flung across the room by an explosion of fire. It didn’t launch me very far, not even to the opposite wall, but it was certainly a lot more than what should have been absolutely nothing. There were two gasps of surprise, one faintly from March and the other from Max. I try to push myself up but wince at the burns covering my front and fall back down. Out of the corner of my eye I see Max move to help me, but a shake of my head makes him reluctantly stop and focus back onto the enemies.
I take stock of the situation. The Salamander I attacked was thankfully dead, apparently being finished off by it’s own explosion. Half of the terrariums were knocked to the ground, and 3 Salamanders along with it. They were relatively unharmed, unfortunately, except for one that’s back half was stuck. It could still charge an attack though, so it wasn’t out of the fight yet. All of the Salamanders were facing Max rather than me, which makes sense I guess given the severity of my injuries.
I don’t bother checking myself. I know it’s bad. Not only am I injured, but my clothes have been burnt off, and I can’t feel the sheath for my sword any more. That… may just be nerve damage actually. I hope not.
Fortunately, just like that Salamander, I’m down but not out.
Casting back to my experiments with Sun mana I come up with a plan.
Neither of my hands were pinned under me thankfully, but they both were facing down. It’s not a requirement to start from my palm, but it is easier, and I need any benefit I can get. As you may have guessed, I’m going to form the orb of Sun again, and to start the process I flip over my right hand so that it’s facing up. This aggravates my wound and leaves my arm in an uncomfortable position, but what I can only assume to be an effect of Proficiency allows me to ignore it after a short period of adjustment. Noticing Max almost getting hit by a far-too-large blast of fire spurs me onwards.
I tune out Max’s fight. As much as I want to know how he’s doing I can’t afford any distractions. With an effort of will I push the pain out of my mind and let mana slowly seep out of my hand. I keep a mental grip on it and slowly but steadily form first a ball, then the rings. Soon enough, it fixes into place and I can start to push mana into it. I know the first step of my plan has worked when it bursts into flame, attracting the attention of everyone in the room.
Now for the next step. From what I can tell that only took a quarter of my mana pool. For a practiced mage losing that much of my pool for a simple cantrip would be absurd, but with only a day of experience I’m sure it’s reasonable, just not good enough. Then I took a risk.
I shoves as much mana as I could into the Sun. Immediately it flares, the brightness increasing and the rings becoming larger. This startles the Salamanders, and two of them start charging up to attack me. I was hoping to trigger their instinctual response, but something tells me that these Salamanders don’t have that, somehow. The rest, seeing their compatriots have me taken care of, go back to pelting fire at Max.
It doesn’t take long for twin balls of fire to be sent my way.
Just as I was waiting for. I unravelled the rings, directing them to expand upwards in a twisting pattern and creating a sort of wall. The attacks impacted it, fizzling out except for a few small gouts of fire that push through and fail to reach me. The orb flares up again, only this time, having a more important effect.
There’s something about Sun mana that had me confused, a subtle thing that I couldn’t put a name to. It wasn’t until I was under the immediate threat of death that I realised.
When it starts to act like fire, pointedly not creates fire, it starts to form tongues of flame arching away from it. But what I failed to realise sooner was that it always gets pulled back to the surface of the orb. I theorised that, with how closely I find this to be related to the sun, there may be something more to it.
I stretch out my twisting wall of flame in Max’s direction and watch with bated breath.
Another barrage of fire speeds towards him. He’s already covered in burns, and a few bruises from the rare explosive bolt of fire, and though it’s unlikely that this next barrage would end the fight, it would certainly come close. However, whilst the fire was on it’s path to hit him, it suddenly veered. Directly into my flames.
When my sun got brighter, I knew that I had already won.
Sun mana clearly has some strange effects. The first hint that there was more to it was honestly probably just the way it came about at all, but aside from that I should have thought more about the strange way that it moves, where it goes away and somehow ends up back in the centre. Admittedly, still didn’t have an explanation for that.
“Max! As long as you keep this thing,” I gestured at the mesh of lines sprouting out of my orb, “between you and the Salamanders, there shouldn’t be anyway for them to harm you, except for physically.”
He didn’t take his eyes off the Salamanders, though did nod so that I knew he heard me. I assume that he already figured out it’s function, but for the sake of proper communication I thought it prudent to tell him anyway.
After that, it was almost laughably easy for the next few minutes. He had to be careful about his timing, so long as he moves at the right time they would all be charging a spell and he can therefore avoid all damage. Even more importantly, he needs to only hit the Salamanders that aren’t close to full charge. After a few early screw ups that thankfully only resulted in grazing strikes he was able to manage with minimal injury and maximum ease, at least until there were only three Salamanders left.
I mention the number of Salamanders, but that’s not really the cause of the problem, it’s just when it happened.
One of the Salamanders fruitlessly fired another blast, which got sucked into the now blinding fire. Immediately I could tell something was wrong, as the light I had now become familiar with seeing in my peripheral vision vanished all at once. My orb hadn’t disappeared though, no, not at all.
When I looked at where it once was, I just saw a dark void. Immediately I could feel my mana straining to be pulled out of my body. Thankfully it seemed it couldn’t, whenever it reached my boundary it simply passed through to the centre of me, but it was very disorienting and made control difficult. Not to mention the likely impossibility of creating spells outside of my body.
I was worried about what this might be, what it might cause to happen. I tried to release from my control but found I couldn’t, like my mind was stuck to it somehow. I braced myself for whatever would come next. An explosion, an implosion, whatever it may be. What really happened though? Nothing.
Literally, nothing. Before my eyes the construct sucked into itself, before suddenly dispersing. I felt some of the mana I’d put into it return to me, and even with my limiting mana sensing capabilities I was able to feel the presence of it hanging in the air. For a moment I breathed I sigh of relief.
Only for a moment though.
I made a panicked realisation, without my sun what was stopping the Salamanders from attacking us? I tried to reconstruct it as quickly as possible until I realised there was only one left. Embarrassingly, whilst I was distracted by the magic Max was busy fighting off the Salamanders. Just the few seconds that the construct had dominion over their mana seemed to be enough to stop them from reacting to his assault, and in swift order the last of them was killed.
With no imminent threats left to worry about, I fully relaxed my body. It hurt my burns but I’m sure you could imagine how much the stress would have affected me, leaving me completely drained. Before long, I was asleep.
-----------
I woke up not in a hospital bed, but a cot in what appeared to be the Zoo manager’s office, based on the certificates on the wall and plaque on the desk. If they didn’t take me to the hospital then that surely must mean that…
I carefully moved my right arm, finding that other than a rather extreme amount of soreness it was completely fine. I tested the waters even further, lifting the arm completely to prod at my chest. Upon feeling no pain I decided to finally take the leap and sit up completely, taking a moment to look down at my completely healed chest and arms. Of course, my legs would likely be the same.
It should be obvious by now that one of the employees, most probably the manager, has given me a Complete Healing potion. That sort of thing is quite difficult to get a hold of. It’s not impossible, but the usage of them is restricted so as to not risk the monsters that are used to make them being hunted to extinction. The best chance of getting one for yourself, other than being a really high level Guilder, would be to take on a managerial or medical role in potentially dangerous establishments, establishments like Zoos.
Though, they aren’t typically quite this dangerous. From the adrenaline of the fight, and the cognitive dissonance of being completely healed, I can’t really bring myself to actively realise that I came really close to death. Even closer than with the Nox Panthera’s, which I honestly thought was pretty bad already.
But that’s fine. What matters is that I survived, and I think I’ve already figured out what caused this to happen to boot.
I moved to get up and go join up with Max but upon noticing how much colder than usual I felt I recalled that yes, I was indeed naked. Fortunately there was a pile of clothes at the end of the cot, so I slipped into them quickly. I ignored how uncomfortable it felt to wear someone else’s clothes whilst I left in search of everyone else.
I wasn’t searching long. Right outside of the office was a group of around 5 people, Max and March among them, sitting around a few desks and chairs that had been dragged around the room. From the looks of things the entrance to the office I woke up in was in some sort of a… is the term clerical department. It’s not important. Turning around I confirmed that the office did indeed belong to March.
When I left the room everyone stopped talking to look at me, and Max jumped to his feet.
“Nathan! You’re okay!” He shouted. He moved to rush towards me, but for some reason thought better of it and sat back down nervously. I guess he was going to hug me but thought it would be awkward? If that’s the case then I’m glad, I don’t typically enjoy hugging people. Not to say that I never do of course, at least in theory. I’ve not gotten too many hugs in recent memory.
“I am. It looks like you are as well, thankfully. Did anyone figure out what happened whilst I was out?” I felt a bit bad bulldozing past Max’s wellbeing just to do the investigation quicker, but to be fair I was the one that almost died that day, so I think that I probably get a bit of a free pass. Max was the one that started to speak, though from the way everyone looked at him I assume they already know what he was going to say.
“I think that I figured it out. Cause like, the Sun mana, that’s what you called it right? Well anyway, that stuff only appeared recently, and the Salamanders Awakened at basically the same time as one of the surges. I mean, when I say it like that it seems really obvious, but I guess I’m just trying to say that I think that they awakened with Sun mana instead of the regular stuff? It would explain why they were so much stronger than usual.”
“That’s what I was thinking as well. It makes me curious really, because the Salamanders seem like they were essentially built for Sun mana, with how much weaker they are with Essence. The reason for that isn’t a concern anyway. What I’m worried about is that this could mean terrible things for the monster population. It’s unlikely that everything awakens from Sun mana, but these Salamanders are certainly not going to be the only time it happens. As much as I want to stay and help, I believe that we need to get back to the Guild as quickly as possible.”
From the grim looks on everyone’s faces they had already thought of this. I imagine it’s made all the worse by how cavalier they treated the whole situation. It’s frankly a miracle that they called the Guild at all, it was likely only the investigation that they really wanted, but they just thought to strike to birds with one stone. If those things had gotten out…
Well, it’s not impossible for a few of the staff to survive, but… someone would have died.
“We’ve already called the Guild. I think that it would be best for you two to go tell them in person,” March said. She gestured at Max, “Also, whilst this one wasn’t hurt enough for a potion, he was still hurt and needs rest. The Guild already has enough information to give a warning, so take your time getting there unless you want your friend to get hurt anymore, I’ve already talked to him about it. You go tell them whatever fancy ‘Sun mana’ insights you have, alright? Go on, get.”
I nodded and, after waving goodbye, me and Max were out of the building and on our way out of the Zoo.
“Soo, what was up with that anyway? I thought you were just making your orb, but then you extended it all weird, and it starting pulling fire into it?” In an effort to distract the both of us, mostly me I would imagine, from the near death experience, Max started asking questions. I gratefully answered.
“It wasn’t actually fire it was pulling in, but rather the mana that was mak…”
-----------
We talked about magic the entire way back to the guild. It took quite a while to get there, with the slow pace we were moving at to avoid aggravating Max’s injuries. When I said I thought he was fine I did truly mean it, although at a second glance it seems that he was far more injured than I first thought, he was just wearing new clothes that hid them. That wasn’t the only reason that I wanted to get there slowly. I truthfully wasn’t especially excited about the prospect of having to do even more talking today, but I didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter. It would be far better to provide an explanation as soon as possible, in my eyes.
Before going in, I decided to check my notifications. Notifications which I didn’t put off until now just so that I could delay a little longer.
Proficiency Lv 21 --> Lv 24
Current bonus: Lv 6 --> Lv 7
Nathan Golding Lv 8
No Achievements
Skills
Skilled Lv MAX
Proficiency Lv 24
Skilled Lv MAX
Provide a percentage increase to the effects of all skills relative to level. Minimum value of [10%]
Current bonus: 20% (10%)
Proficiency Lv 24
Provide a passing proficiency with every discipline, equal to a quarter of the level of this skill. Minimum value of [Lv 1]
Current bonus: Lv 7
When I first opened my status, I thought for sure that I saw a familiar orange flash of something. Last time I saw something like that I put it out of my mind pretty quickly but, this time, I’m not going to be quick to dismiss it. I say that, but it isn't too important right now, so I'm going to move onto something else I think.
More on topic, I was happy to note that I have actually gotten some levels out of this. Not only to Proficiency, but two levels to myself as well. It’s nice to see Proficiency increasing by so much really, and the bonus is improving a lot faster. It’s already at Lv 7.
Whilst I was walking I realised that I can also check to see how Max was doing, level wise.
Max Silver Lv 16
No Achievements
Annoyingly, he actually levelled up more than me despite being a higher level already. It makes sense, he did more actual fighting and it’s possible that having no Skills that can be levelled makes it easier to gain experience, but still. Frustrating.
Regardless, there’s no use for further procrastination. It’s time to have yet another conversation.