While Martin was slaughtering his way through slavers, Adam was back in his mindscape dealing with his ungrateful and unwanted tenant.
“What do you mean ‘figure it out’?”
“You didn’t want to be civil the last time you passed through, so why should I be?”
“Because you’re living rent free in my skull? Or how about doing your job? What kind of guide doesn’t help at all?”
“The kind that’s not getting paid, that’s who. And if I’m not getting paid, how do you expect me to pay rent? Think it through, kid. Sheesh.”
“You pay by actually helping. You haven’t done anything useful yet. I’ve had to figure everything out on my own! What kind of guiding do you actually do around here?”
Szellem smirked. He’d been waiting for the kid to ask that exact question. He pointed. “That kind.”
Adam turned, searching. “I have no ide-.” Silence for five whole seconds. “Holy shit.” More silence. “When did that happen?”
Class Affinity: 5%
“The second bump happened when you picked and activated Mother’s Love.”
“What caused that to… Second bump?”
“Yes. As I was saying, activating Mother’s Love gave you a 1.3% increase in your affinity. Quite remarkable really.”
Adam was still at a loss. He hadn’t expected his affinity to move for years, and yet, roughly a month after getting his class, it was already growing. A smile started to grow on his face. Quietly, he whispered, “I can do it. I can actually do it.”
Szellem smiled down at him. “Good work, kid. Never thought you had it in you. Glad to see I was wrong.” He refrained from pointing out how happy he was that Adam was making progress. Considering the nature of his current mission, there was no telling how long he would be stuck in the boy’s head if he never made any progress.
“Thanks.” Adam sat in contemplation for a bit, completely forgetting that Szellem could read every thought in his head. It wasn’t anything of great interest to the old hippy, but he still listened in. Every little thing he could use to keep the kid on track, was a good thing in his mind. He had wanted to get out of his little prison, but not like this.
Eventually the boy looked up. “OK, seriously though. What was the first time it went up?”
“Hmmm.” Szellem pretended to think about it. It had been an important milestone, even though he thought at the time that it might have been a fluke. The second incidence clenched it for him though. “When you used Instant Family on the other boy. It wasn’t immediate though, but a moment later. As if something needed to settle in your mind before it would increase the affinity. Whatever it was got you half of a percent.”
Adam tried to think back to the moment, but it was unclear to him. He realized that it had been a bit of a hectic time, having just killed the troll pup and they had been about to run from the rest of the herd. He shook his head. “I can’t remember. Do you know?”
Szellem did, in fact, know. However, he was a guide not an answer book. He needed to push the kid to figure it out on his own. He was there to show him the path forward, not show him the answers. “When you are in here your thoughts are clear to me, but when you are not in the mindscape they are fuzzier, harder to grasp.” He snapped his fingers. “Like clouds. You can see them, and you can discern a shape, but the more you look at it, the more it changes. Until the dog you thought the cloud was has become a pine tree, or a goblin.”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
The boy blinked. He remembered times spent with the orphans looking at clouds from the roof of the orphanage. They really did change as you watched them, and no two people ever saw the same thing as the other person. TomTom and he had nearly come to blows over one one day. TomTom thought it was a daisy, his mom’s favorite flower, but Adam was positive it was a dragon. How they had seen such different things he’d never understand, but he got the explanation. “Huh. I guess that makes sense. So you know when, but not exactly why?”
“Pretty much. You’re going to have to figure this one out on your own.”
“Yeah, ok. Back up then. You said I got a 1.3% boost from activating Mother’s Love? Can certain skills increase my affinity then?”
“Ah. Apologies. I miss spoke a bit there. It wasn’t that Mother’s Love gave you that increase. It was just during the time while the skill activated that the numbers climbed.”
After a bit of grumbling Adam tried to figure it out again. “So if it’s not the skills that are causing the increase it has to be something else. But they do seem to be helping somehow.” There was a bit of a pause in the conversation while he tried to figure it out.
Szellem smiled to himself watching the boy try to puzzle it out. It wasn’t a hard thing to understand from the outside, but Adam had several disadvantages to solving the riddle of affinity. He wondered how long it would take for the truth to slap him in the face.
Eventually Adam gave up on figuring it out, and just basked in the joy of making actual progress. It didn’t take long before he tired of it though, and went back to his original question. “Seriously though, how did I finish that fight?”
Szellem snorted. “The other boy finished it. You were unconscious by the time the slaver died.”
He groaned. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do.” He laughed. “I guess I can tell you about it.” He paused to gather his thoughts while Adam got resituated for maximum comfort. “You managed to do a few things that generally people can only do when they are going through extreme emotions. Eventually, you can train to manipulate your skills in the way that you did, but for now it will mostly be instinctual.”
Thinking back over the fight, Adam could see that. Obviously what he did to Mama Bear was abnormal, and like Szellem said, he didn’t think he could do it while calm. It was the forcefulness of his emotions that made it a possibility. He nodded.
“As you thought, the way you cut Mama Bear short was part of it, but that is easy to do with just force of will. Most likely you can do that pretty reliably after a little practice now that you know you can. The tricky parts were taking control while retaining the benefits of Berserk, and yanking the rest of the skill’s power out and forcing it into a different skill.”
“Um...I did what now?”
Another snort of laughter from the bearded man. “That’s right. You took all of the power remaining from Mama Bear and shoved it into Cut to the Heart. If you’d been using anything other than a paring knife, you’d have cut his head clean off.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. Wow indeed.”
Time passed as he thought over the ramifications. “So, if I work at it, that’s something that I can do regularly?”
“Yes and no. There are costs associated with doing something like that. If you could see your skill impressions you’d understand better. You forced the skill to do something it wasn’t designed to do, and that drains it of energy. It’s similar to what happens to you when you pump too much power into Mama Bear. You need a bit of time to recuperate, and, right now, so does Mama Bear.”
“Huh. That makes sense. How hard is it to learn to do it on demand?”
“If someone can learn it, they must be, at minimum, an evolved classer. It is by no means an ability that everyone can harness. The easiest way to learn it is to cheat a little bit. Some skills, by design, affect other skills, or feed into their power. If you acquire one of those skills and spend a fair chunk of time studying the interaction it has with other skills you may begin to understand how it works.”
“Guess I’ll keep my eyes open then.”
“That’s a good plan, but there is more to it than that. The ability to drag the power from one skill to another is not the only trick out there. Quite honestly, there are several, and they all work a little different for everyone. Pay attention when anything weird like that happens, and you might get lucky enough to figure something out. I can help you spot them, but I can’t teach you how to do them.”