After managing to learn Unstructured magic, I began to get into a comfortable routine. Every morning I’d get up, have breakfast, then go to the Training Fields to learn and practice magic. At first I did that every day, but after the first week Kaelan started taking the weekends off. He said that it was difficult but I didn’t notice anything like that from my perspective, which might have been an effect of my high Willpower.

So on the weekends I didn’t have any kind of instruction, so I took some time to work on my skills and look around the various shops throughout the city. There were actually not that many places that sold potions to just anyone, apparently they were supposed to be very exclusive and I wasn’t well known enough for them to be willing to trade with me, so I ended up buying some from Pill.

I notably didn’t see any High-Grade Healing Potions anywhere, which was strange. Maybe they’re only available if you specifically ask for them or something.

My skill in unstructured magic grew enough that I could do some pretty powerful attacks without even using Lightning Bolt, although even if I Charged them they weren’t anywhere near as powerful so I couldn’t imagine them being all that useful. The most useful thing I could do with Unstructured magic was definitely my Telekinesis Equivalent (which is what Kaelan told me is the generally accepted term).

Since I learnt it, I’ve been able to reduce the charring on the practice weapons to almost nothing, although after I tested it on Kaelan he felt a strange tingling sensation throughout his entire body, so it probably wasn’t all that safe to use on people yet. I also ended up forgetting about using a hand and instead had something like a manacle that wrapped around things and sealed at the other end.

Unfortunately, I had far less success with Structured magic. If I understood it at all I’d describe the processes and such here, but unfortunately the best I can say is that you can use Mana to make runes from the air and somehow those runes cause the Mana to behave strangely, which can produce any number of unique effects.

It’s usually how mages do things like divinations and buffs without a Path Skill for it.

At the very least, Channel Mana made it relatively easy to create the runes for it and my Willpower made it relatively easy to memorise them with brute force, so I knew how to cast a few basic Spells. I probably wouldn’t be learning any more any time soon though, and I certainly wouldn’t be making any.

Beyond that, everything else I learnt was stuff I went out of my way to figure out on my own. Actually, one of the first things I did was head to the library (which I found in only half an hour) and see if there was any info on Sense Danger.

Thankfully, whilst it was somewhat difficult to obtain, it was common enough among adventurers that it showed up in a few General Skill encyclopaedias. There were a lot of different theories on how it works, and how it might be possible to recreate it without the Skill, but the main thing that interested me was the practical applications of it.

Generally, once it reaches a high enough level, it could be possible for me to pinpoint the exact location of the danger relative to me, and even get an idea of how many levels someone has above me. The most relevant piece of information to me was that it was ordinarily supposed to have no effect unless I was in immediate danger, but if someone nearby wished me harm I would feel its effect constantly as long as they were nearby.

Basically, someone in the city wanted to hurt me, and I didn’t know why they were still waiting.

After I’d managed to find all the info I could on Sense Danger, I moved onto my other General Skills. I was working on Condense and Channel Mana throughout most of the week, so the only things left to train were Walking and Breathing. I wasn’t entirely certain how to go about purposefully training them, but the library was actually helpful here too.

Supposedly, most skills had a few things that needed to be achieved for them to level up. For Walking that was walking speed, walking efficiency, and (the main stopper on my progress) walking time. What that meant was that I just needed to keep walking for as long as possible and I’d be able to level it up. Unfortunately, that was going to take a while. For someone who’s just walking a few hours a day to get from place to place it could take years to reach level 10 (which was for some reason the main number that most books mentioned reaching)

For me, it would probably be much quicker because of all the walking I’d been doing since my Awakening, but it would still take months.

Breathing was much more manageable. The things it needed to level up were actually quite simple, lung capacity, air intake, and a strange one, focus. Breathing without aggravating injuries wasn’t something you had to do to level up, but it was still improved with levels, as I had already seen.

The method of training I’d decided on was the same thing I ended up doing whilst learning Channel Mana- Meditation. For an hour or so before I slept, I started to lay down and focused entirely on my breathing. It was actually surprisingly relaxing, and I was thinking that I’d continue to do it even if it ended up being useless for training Breathing.

Thankfully, it was actually incredibly useful.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

On that note, I think it’s time to show you how much progress I’d made in 3 months of practice.

Robert Zeneki Lightning Adept 18 Level 14 Willpower

13 Wisdom

6 Strength

5 Agility

7 Path Skills

Lightning Generator

14

Lightning Bolt

12

Lightning Cloak 2

Charge

8

General Skills

MAX

Walking

9

Condense Mana

9

Breathing

MAX

Sense Danger

4

Channel Mana

6

King Slayer

Yeah, after making so much progress in just a few days this was almost disappointing, but the main thing that interested me was Breathing.

So they only mentioned getting to level 10 because that’s the max level. Or I guess that’s the max for General Skills.

Honestly, there was a lot to be disappointed about here. I’d heard that it got much harder to level up as you levelled up, but to think it would slow so much. I supposed being in a situation where I would level much faster so close to my awakening skewed my opinions somewhat, but this felt really slow.

And I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do with Breathing now. I would’ve thought that there’d at least be some kind of jump in power at least, but the difference was just as small as the rest of the levels.

I sighed. Well, at least that’s one less thing to worry about training for now.

----------------------------------------

After that incident I got to thinking, and I couldn’t get rid of the idea that maybe I should get condense mana to max as well. I hadn’t really been focusing on it too much, but now that I knew it was so close to being as strong as it could get, I felt compelled to put in that little bit of effort and get it over and done with.

So, with that in mind, on my next lesson I asked if it would be possible to change plans a little.

“I don’t see why not, but why? Did something happen?”

“Kinda, I just found out that 10 is the max level for General Skills and decided that I may as well get Condense Mana up there since it’s already level 9,” At my pronouncement, Kaelan looked at me like I was an idiot. He did that often, but usually I could figure out why, this time it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, “What? Did I say something weird?”

“How long have you had it at level 9?” He asked, completely ignoring my question.

“Umm, I think since I did that extermination job, why?” Kaelan dropped his face into his hand and sighed, then just held it there for a few seconds.

“Dude, we could have got it to max weeks ago and evolved it. Did no one tell you about that?”

what

“What?” I echoed my own thoughts. Evolved it? Was that a thing?

“If you have a compatible Path Skill, then you can use one of its levels to reset a maxed general skill and turn it into something stronger. Like, something a lot of affinities Mages do is evolve their Mana Manipulation variant to specialise in their affinity. I can’t believe your parents never told you about this, that’s downright neglectful.” Sounds about right

“Do you think I should do that right now, then?” I ignored what he said about my parents, there’s no reason to push that bag of worms on him.

“Yes! We should get started immediately. The sooner you evolve that the sooner you can start levelling the evolution. Let’s go!” He dragged me over to the training dummies and made me stand a few metres in front of one, “Alright, since you’ve delayed this for so long I bet it’s already super close to getting maxed. I actually happen to know the things you need to do to level it so we’ll just cycle through practising each of those until we get it done. First let’s try speed. Just push as much Mana into one place as you can, as quickly as you can.”

Seems a little too easy to me.

I held my hands close to each other and began to let out some Mana, pulling anything that came out into a central point.

“Come on, you can do it faster than that!”

Faster? Really?

My Mana Pool was already depleted by half in just a few seconds, but now I really let loose. Lightning arced across my hands, often going too fast for me to catch it before it came back across, jumping across the gap like an over excited grasshopper. In just another few seconds I’d depleted my entire Mana Pool into a single ball and a splitting headache had begun to form.

“Alright, that was good. Now try to Condense that even further. Make it less than half the size for now.”

I nodded and focused on the ball, slowly compressing it until the previously cyan light became a darker blue. When I’d managed to halve the size it looked more like the colour of a sapphire, and I could hear a gentle thrum in the air, as though it was constantly vibrating.

“Good, good. See if you can make it even smaller.”

I was hesitant, my headache was beginning to worsen and this much Mana was hard for me to control, even with my high Willpower, but I decided to give it a go anyway.

Progress was much slower, and sometimes a bit of Lightning would break free and zap my hand, but it was definitely working. Unfortunately, before I’d even managed to get it more than a few centimetres smaller, my control slipped and I was forced to launch the ball at the training dummy in front of me before it detonated in my face.

It rammed into the dummy and immediately lost cohesion, detonating into a burst of lightning that shattered one of its arms and sent its head flying.

“And that’s why we use the Training fields. Did you get the level?” Kaelan was speaking to me, but I ignored him. Something much more important had gained my attention.

Compatible Skills Detected Would You Like To Merge [Condense Mana] And [Breathing]?