The benefits of Chain Lightning were, unfortunately, not readily apparent. Every skill I’d gotten so far was something that I could immediately test, but this one seemed to be different somehow. It hadn’t taken too long for me to find another Crab, this one looking much less intimidating and just being called Giant Crab in the Clear notification, and so I tested a Lightning Bolt on it with no additional effect.

This brought me to an interesting situation, since I didn’t actually have any idea what my new skill would do when I picked it, I just knew that I didn’t want Absorb Lightning. My first idea was that it was a new spell, like Lightning Bolt, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t seem to figure out how to cast it. So it was obviously something else, probably something that modified my Lightning somehow.

Of course, knowing that didn’t really help all that much when I still needed to figure out how it modified it.

Well, getting a Skill gives you some knowledge, so all I need to do is find it.

With that thought in mind, I immediately sat cross legged on the ground and closed my eyes, trusting Sense Danger to warn me if anything tried to attack me. The utter lack of sensation was easy to find ever since I picked up Meditation, so within seconds I’d blocked out all sensations, even that of my Mana.

Trying to focus on the knowledge given to me by Skills was difficult, but not impossible. At first my mind seemed to be completely blank, but slowly, bit by bit, different thoughts and memories seemed to appear around me. They weren’t quite there in the sense that I could visually see them, but I could strongly feel their presence as though I could.

I brushed past the memories, ignoring them in favour of the two groups of lines that seemed to be pushing something insubstantial into my mind, where it gathered as a cloud before quickly diffusing. They were all pushing different amounts with different intensities but one of them, the one furthest to the right out of both groups, was practically glowing with effort. As I watched, it seemed to stall before returning with even more force.

Wading into the substance- that I was hesitantly beginning to think of as knowledge- I was struck by a constant stream of images of me Meditating. After spending a few seconds trying to process them, I waded out before I became overwhelmed by the sheer amount of thoughts.

What is this? Are these my Skills?

Experimentally I waved my hand through another cloud, this one directly to the left of what must be Meditation, and saw my greatest feats of Channelling Mana. Not to say there was anything particularly great, I’d only had it a few months, but this made it obvious what was happening here.

So this is how the system improves our skill? By… recycling moments where we did a good job?

Briefly, I considered trying to figure out how that works exactly, but decided against it. Not only were even the basics on how this worked beyond me, but I really didn’t care. As long as it worked I didn’t need to bother with the details.

The real benefit of finding this was Chain Lightning. For the most part I couldn’t tell what each line applied to at a glance, but with Chain Lightning it was obvious. One of the lines was much duller than the others and was recycling only a single memory. A quick pass through the substance revealed that the memory was the single Lightning Bolt I’d done since reaching Level 15, which proved it affected Lightning Bolt at least.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t imagine getting anything more out of this one memory, so I moved onto Plan B. Admittedly, the word plan implies any amount of planning or forethought of which I did none, but that wasn’t what was important here. Instead of dwelling on the present, I reached out and touched the wire with my hand.

Chain Lightning

Multiple Opponents

Excess Power

Alwa--

The thoughts were much more intense than the memories of Meditation, and I found myself instantly recoiling. The sudden movement caused me to fall over and a small burst of pain caused the darkness around me to lose its cohesiveness. Within the blink of an eye I was-

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

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

-awake. If you could call the state of meditation I was in asleep, at any rate.

When I began meditating the sun was high in the sky, but now it was receding behind the mountains, washing the salt pan in orangeish hues. Suddenly Sense Danger flared and I spun around to see that a crab, likely startled by my equally sudden movement, had finally decided to attack after spending who knows how long just watching me.

It was already nearly right next to me, so it was able to grab my side with a sharp pincer, drawing blood and sending pain lancing up from the wound. In retaliation, I shot a lightly Charged Bolt combined with a Breath right at its vulnerable face, and it collapsed with the scent of cooked meat.

Combat Cleared 1 Giant Crab [Level 6] Defeated

Its claw still had my side in a vice grip, but I opted to deal with that later as I thought about what I saw whilst Meditating.

So those were the things that let me level up my Skills? And when I touched Chain Lightning it kind of told me what it did.

In that one fleeting moment, I got the sensation of a few ways that the System- I don’t know- thought of the Skill, or categorised it maybe. It didn’t quite make sense to me, and the last one was barely understandable at all, but I thought that it might be possible to get something useful out of it.

So the first one was the name of the skill, I think. I already knew that, so not very helpful. The second one was something about multiple enemies, so maybe it’s helpful for fighting a bunch of things at once?

I glanced up at the sun to see that, yes, it was still nearly night time and would soon be too dark to see.

Hmm, I could probably find a couple of Crabs and bring them close together to see what happens, but that could take a while.

For good or for bad, I eventually came to the conclusion that I could manage it and get back to Saltrock before it got too dark, and moved on to find another Crab. Ordinarily, I would have been concerned about finding my way back, but there were lines of scorched rock from my Bolts that I knew would point right at the village, so I wasn’t worried.

First I should probably do something about this.

I gingerly applied what little first aid I knew to the jagged cut in my side, before getting started on my search.

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

It took much longer than expected, nearly half an hour in fact, but I was soon able to lure a Crab close enough to another one that any effects might activate. The main road block wasn’t actually finding the damned things, but getting them to follow me for long enough that another would also come after me.

For some reason after following for a minute or so they’d just give up and walk back to where I found them.

Soon the constant back and forth running aggravated my injury somehow and I began to limp, which I think the monster took as a sign of weakness, making it much more willing to actually chase after me.

Finally, I managed to get them to be roughly a few metres apart and began to charge a decently powerful Lightning Bolt. The third insight I’d gotten about Chain Lightning was Excess Power, which I could only assume meant that I needed power in excess. For me, that just meant charging for a few seconds longer than usual.

The Bolt struck the closest Crab, just as it usually would, but in a turn of events that was distinctly unusual, it didn’t stop there. Combined with Breath Of Mana, the Lightning rolled over the Crab’s carapace for a fraction of a second before the main bolt jumped out of it and stuck the second one, dragging the dwindling extra sparks with it.

The Bolt was significantly weaker, but it looked to be just enough to finish off the second Crab as well.

Combat Cleared 2 Giant Crabs [Levels 5-7] Defeated

So any power that isn’t needed to kill something jumps to another enemy? I guess if it does that multiple times it would be kinda chain-like, wouldn’t it?

It was as I was looking down at the two barely charred corpses that I realised something. I still needed to carry all of these back to Saltrock. And I was still injured. And I wasn’t sure I’d have enough Mana to carry them all without taking breaks.

Dang it.

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

In the middle of the night, Matthias was woken up by one of his min- ahem- Followers knocking on his door. He opened it to see them standing there, eerily silent and faceless as usual. Not that he expected any different, without exchanging any words he barged past them and made his way to the house he’d given to that Adventurer.

I thought that he’d died, but I guess not. That’s gonna save me a little time, at least. I only need one more, just one more.

He arrived at the threshold of the house and saw through the window that the adventurer (what was his name again?) had already gone to sleep. Somehow, he even managed to pass out with a clearly bleeding wound in his side.

I’ll have to get one of the Healers to fix that, it would be inconvenient for him to die already.

He looked around to see if he’d left the Crabs he’d brought anywhere nearby and, after a minute of looking, found them around the side of the house neatly stacked atop of one another. He looked at them disbelievingly before checking the other side and the back of the house to see if he’s for some reason spread them around.

He only got five, after all that time? And he was wounded so badly too, how the fuck did he manage to do so terribly?

Shit, he’s probably barely level 5, I’m going to have to wait for another adventurer to make up for it.

“Shit!” He kicked the pile of Crabs in anger, belatedly realising that that might not have been a great idea. Thankfully a quick check through the window showed that he’d barely stirred from the noise, “Whatever, it’s fine. We’ll work around it, and maybe he’ll get a couple of levels. It’s fine.”

With a wave of his hands a pair of mini- Followers, Followers, appeared to take the Crabs into the Crypt, wordlessly obeying his mental commands.

I didn’t even need to be woken up for this shit, but these fucking useless Followers can’t do shit on their own. But that doesn’t matter, or rather, it won’t matter soon. I’m outgrowing this tiny little village, I wonder where I’ll go next? Ironhold the nearest city, but it’s far too large.

Well, there’s plenty more villages that are near enough to water, so I’ll find somewhere suitable.