Proficiency Gained You Have Reached Max Level In The Skill [Channel Mana]
Choose A Skill Level To Sacrifice For Evolution
Lightning Generator Lightning Bolt Charge Chain Lightning Grand Skewer
That’s… a lot more options than last time. Is Channel Mana just a more versatile Skill?
Now I was faced with quite a difficult choice. Someone with higher Wisdom might be able to figure out what each of these could do, but in case it wasn’t obvious I did not have higher Wisdom so that would be rather difficult.
So I couldn’t choose based on what the evolution would actually be, or what I wanted it to become or anything. That might actually be a blessing in disguise to be honest, if I knew what it could Evolve into then I’d have to actually weigh the pros and cons of each option. Without being able to do that, the only way for me to decide was to think about, not how Channel Mana could benefit, but the skill being sacrificed.
If Lightning Cloak was any indication, whatever Skill I choose here would get a lot more experience and level up much faster, especially since Channel Mana is so fundamental for casting spells that it would probably gain experience whenever I used any magic.
Knowing that, there was only one real option.
Evolving [Channel Mana] With Lightning Bolt You Have Created The General Skill [Channel Lightning]
Just like last time, no feeling of great change overcame me. The notification popped up, then disappeared as soon as I read it. A quick glance at my General Skills showed that, yes, it had certainly changed, although perhaps more than I expected.
General Skills MAX Lightning Steps 10 Breath Of Mana 7 Sense Danger 8 Channel Lightning
1 Meditation 7
Ok I’m not imagining things, am I? Channel Lightning is like, tilted or something. Why is that?
Putting that on the pile of ‘questions to ask Kaelan when I get back’, I dismissed the window and focussed on my Mana. The Skill had kept the same general name, like most variants of Mana Manipulation do on their first Evolution, so it stood to reason that it would be mostly the same. The main difference obviously being that it was better at Channelling Lightning now.
Hopefully it still works on ambient Mana, I would hate for Charge to lose so much effectiveness because of this,
I brought a Channel out in front of me and began to push my own personal Mana through. Since it was pretty much pure Lightning affinity at this point I imagined the Skill would work quite well on it, but if it didn’t then I’d probably only be able to use it to modify my Skills now.
At first the Mana refused to move through the Channel, instead building up as though it was being blocked by something, but after a few seconds it reached some kind of tipping point and blasted through the Channel at almost half the speed of one of my Bolts. The Mana was actually condensed enough that I could even physically see what looked like a stubby bolt of Lightning shooting through the air.
That’s suspiciously similar to Lightning Bolt, Kaelan told me that it should work basically the same but be more focussed on Lightning. Actually, didn’t he also say something about sometimes getting more unique effects? Hmm. Another question for the pile then.
Regardless of its odd behaviour, I was able to get a pretty good idea of how my new Skill worked. Basically, I could create Channels just like before, but now the Mana could only go through in short bursts. It would build up then flash towards the end every few seconds, and nothing I did was able to make it any faster, only slower.
I also tried Charging a Lightning Bolt, and noticed that even Skills that didn’t originally use Channel Mana were noticeably changed by the evolution. In this case, the Charge would do nothing for a few seconds then suddenly a burst of Mana would be pushed into the Bolt, simultaneously pulling in ambient Mana from the surroundings. It was hard to tell, but it seemed like it was actually Charging a little bit faster overall. Also, just something that I thought was kinda cool, you could actually see the orb get bigger whenever Charge activated, which I hadn’t ever actually had a chance to do before because of how slow it was.
Lightning Bolt itself was, somewhat unsurprisingly, completely unchanged by the Evolution. I mean, Channel Mana technically Evolved to become more similar to it, not the other way around, so it made sense to me at least.
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Lightning Cloak was functionally the same, for the most part. I wouldn’t say it was significantly different fundamentally, but it was certainly a lot easier to create bursts of Lightning around me with it.
After testing just a few Skills with it, Channel Lightning had actually already gained 2 levels, though there was no chance of that speed lasting particularly long, so I felt that it was time to test out what was probably the most important change.
Lightning Steps.
I felt the Lightning wreath itself around my legs and took off into a sprint back towards the direction of the farm. Immediately I noticed that it wasn’t helping me much outside of the physical support of the Lightning pushing on my legs, so I paused for a moment to think.
It wouldn’t have broken the Skill completely, that would just be ridiculous, so it must have just changed the activation conditions. What were they before? Something something, legs lifting and touching the ground. Would it be similar to that then?
After a few minutes of thinking in circles, I thought about how it had changed my other Skills. Each one had become better at activating in short bursts every few seconds, and there was no real reason that this one would be any different.
Maybe if I just… hmm. Jump? Or maybe some mixture of stepping and jumping?
It was worth a shot at least, so I activated the Skill and, after a moment to gather my wits, leaped through the air. Then I landed on the ground painfully and fell over, because that didn’t even make any sense. Channel Lightning was a Mana Manipulation variant, so there was no reason that it would really care about how I moved to use it, only Lightning Steps bothered with that.
Okay so that didn’t work then. I guess it might need more Mana?
On my next attempt I pushed more Mana into the Skill, using up at least a few seconds worth of it if I ran at my usual speed, and felt as if something had clicked into place. If I had to describe the feeling, I would say that it was like loading a crossbow and readying to fire, although I’d never actually used one before it still seemed like a pretty apt metaphor.
This time, instead of jumping blindly without thinking about my landing, I tried to jump up to a high branch in the trees. As I did so, Lightning seemed to burst out of the bottoms of my feet and made me completely overshoot where I was aiming for. I slammed into another branch that was a little further along and then fell backwards onto the dirt.
“Oof,” I’d thought that I was a little bit more careful, but apparently that needs a little more thinking that ‘just aim somewhere’. As I got up my legs buckled under me and I let out a loud yelp of both pain and surprise, then remembered that I had been mauled by Ants not even 20 minutes ago, and the potion had hardly had time to fix my injuries.
Okay, I guess I should take it easy for a while. Should I even start walking back?
My first thought was that I should probably wait for a few hours until I’m able to walk without so many problems, but then I saw that it must have been getting close to 6pm and realised that getting home whilst there was still light out might end up being kinda difficult.
“Ugh, Gods damn it. I should’ve brought my tent.” Usually I would bring my tent with me pretty much every time I go outside, or any time I went anywhere after getting the satchel, but this one time I left it behind so that I’d have space to carry at least a couple of the ants with me.
Speaking of which, I also had to find as many intact Ants as would fit into the satchel, which was a lot harder than it sounds after how completely overkill that Lightning Bolt was.
That’s another thing that’s gonna delay me, this might actually be the most annoying thing that’s ever happened to me. Apart from getting stuck in the sewers for a day, I suppose.
Despite my higher-than-usual levels of annoyance, I got to work on searching through the wreckage for a few usable corpses, eventually managing to fit 5 mostly intact Ants from the very edges of my range into the satchel.
And by eventually, I mean eventually. It took over an hour to find just that many, and it must have been getting pretty close to winter because it had gotten dark fast so I was worried about not seeing something on the road and tripping or something. On the bright side, after spending so long searching, that healing potion had had more than enough time to work its magic and so my legs had pretty much fully healed.
I crouched down in preparation for a jump and turned on Lightning Steps, feeling it gather Mana naturally for a few seconds before allowing me to jump, accurately this time, onto a branch. Not wanting to wait so long for the next jump, I roughly pushed a bunch of Mana into the spell and was able to do another jump after a momentary pause, and for the next one I managed to jump ever so slightly sooner.
With every jump I got just slightly faster, until soon enough I was able to jump nearly as often as I could Step previously, turning my movements into some kind of strange airy walk instead of constant jumps. Unfortunately, the Mana cost was significantly higher and I didn’t really see any way to reduce it, but at the very least it must have been much faster. I was jumping past 2 or 3 branches with every Step, which I knew wasn’t a standard unit of measurement but must have been a pretty good indicator of my speed regardless.
Robert Zeneki Lightning Adept 18 Level 22 Willpower 21 Wisdom 10 Strength 5 Agility 8
Path Skills Lightning Generator 15 Lightning Bolt 14 Lightning Cloak 7 Charge 12 Chain Lightning 2 Grand Skewer 2 Scorch Affinity
General Skills MAX Lightning Steps 10 Breath Of Mana 7 Sense Danger 8 Channel Lightning
3 Meditation 7
King Slayer
Scorch Affinity