Janet’s fingers tore a furrow into the ground as the momentum from the kick bled off. The gash across her chest regenerated at a speed visible to the naked eye. She winced at the sting and blinked the tears out of her eyes, her attention on her opponent never wavering.
All her attacks were either evaded or tanked, and the chattering hangers-on didn't help one bit with her concentration.
“We might have to slow down her regeneration,” Darius observed.
“I agree that it’s a bit too eye-catching, but how do you plan on doing that? Her magic’s natural imperative is to restore her as quickly as possible. You’d have to fundamentally alter the Mysteries that constitute her [Talent],” Sylvia countered.
“You’re thinking too hard about this. The healing will not go away, and it might harm a True [Talent] to deny its magic. I suggest that we scribble a few nonsensical runes on a gem, then arm it with a false Appraisal, something like [Stone of Regeneration],” Sylthis chimed in.
“Combined with Shadow’s affinity for illusions, we could even make it look like her healing is a trick!” Brian finished the thought.
"So, pretend the injuries she receive are feints?" Pireus thought out loud. "That might actually work. I know a martial art that forces an opponent to commit to an attack. Successful or not, the art forces them to take on as much damage as they might have caused."
"Sounds too much like a sacrificial art," Brian argued.
"All combat is sacrifice. When was the last time a fight ended without you losing a resource?" Sylthis defended Pireus' stand. "Whether its Mana, Health, or Stamins, something has to be spent if a positive outcome is to be reached."
As the adults deliberated on her future, Janet shook off the dirt from her fingers. Her attention returned to the gigantic locust in front of her. Its wings were a dull blood-red, and its carapace was an eye-searing yellow. Its body was enclosed in armor, the kind that rendered her [Shadow Bolts] as useful as a raft made out of salt.
That was why the fight was taking so long.
The Locust righted itself so its spring-loaded hind legs were facing Janet’s way. She chanced another lunge forwards, targeting a weak point she’d identified, right at the hinge. Her dagger found the tender joint, and she felt it sink a few centimeters in.
Her triumph at landing a blow was short-lived. Before she could pry her dagger free, she felt a breeze in the hairs at the back of her neck. The locust had released another blow. The other leg was fast on a trajectory to pulverize her head.
She’d learned – through a broken arm and torn rib – that those blows were not to be underestimated. As soon as she identified the danger, she ducked downwards, her body meeting the ground with a dull thud.
A Shadow Construct pulled the dagger free. For some reason, the Skill now produced steadier, more malleable constructs than it did before.
If three days ago her ropes had been feeble threads of twisted spiderweb, now they were like woven reeds. Not as strong as some substances out there, but with far greater structural integrity, and thus more utility.
The locust beat its wings. Its head was now facing her way. Before Janet could stand back up, she felt a torrent of mana being drawn from the insect’s insides and concentrated into its mouth.
“Watch out! You don’t wanna get hit by that attack!” Sylthis cautioned.
Like Janet didn’t know that. Whenever the locust managed to keep her immobilized for more than a second, it tried spitting venomous saliva at her. One drop of the sticky substance had taken a full 100 HP off of her.
A measly drop had destroyed a third of her Vitality. If she was hit by a full attack… she really didn’t want to find out what happened when the carnivorous locust managed to rob her completely of the ability to move.
With a grunt, Janet shifted the weight onto her prone shoulders. Pushing against the ground with one hand, she threw her lifted legs forwards, utilizing them as a counterweight to pull the rest of her body upright.
The acrobatic stunt was finished so fast, the locust still had the ball of spit gathering between its mandibles.
Exactly according to plan.
Without preamble, Janet lined her shot and let loose. Her dagger cut through the air and within a blink, embedded itself into the beast’s mouth.
The locust sputtered as the ball of spit exploded. Acidic spit met exposed flesh, and Janet smiled wide as the sound and noxious scent of sizzling flesh reached her.
Distracted by the pain, the locust did not notice it as a bolt of mana, almost invisible to the eye, crossed the distance between them and found its mouth.
Armor protected against her bolts, the structure of mana within scattering any attacks that were not concentrated enough. For the acid-pitted carapace around the locust’s mouth, however, the protective weave of mana was destroyed. The bolt soundlessly impacted the locust's structural magic, a ruinous ripple running through its flesh causing massive damage.
Ten more bolts released in quick succession found purchase, exacerbating the chaos within the locust's organs. Eventually, Janet felt its core crack from all the accumulated damage.
Ding! You have slain Locust Drone, LV 7
Boost in Experience gain due to Level difference
Ding! You have reached Level 6. All Stats +2
Janet retrieved her dagger from the insect's crumpled form. She coated her arm in a film of shadow as she rifled around the locust’s mouth, to keep herself from receiving acid damage.
It was a technique she’d seen Brian use whenever he ate. He hated the grease that stuck to his fingers, so he employed a thin, glove-like layer of mana which prevented direct contact with the oil. The film was so effective, every single member of his party replicated is feat.
Janet still couldn’t manipulate her mana to that level of detail, so she copied it by repurposing a [Mana Construct - Shadow]. While the Skill had evolved to [Construct Field- Shadow], it appeared that she could still utilize its previous version.
The acid ate at the mana, like caustic liquid against a rod of metal, but the contact was brief enough that she was not overly affected. Still she saw a red blemish or two disappear into pristine skin once she was done.
Were the Slayers right about her healing? She'd grown too accustomed to her injuries disappearing instantly, but wouldn't literally anybody else find it odd and conspicuously attention-drawing?
Dagger retrieved, and her skills in a fight demonstrated to her trainers, Janet turned to leave, thoughts rife inside her mind.
“Not gonna collect the carcass?” Sylthis asked.
“Locusts are pretty much useless," Janet answered. "They taste horrible, and the materials they yield are so commonplace, it’s useless as a commodity unless I kill a whole swarm of them.”
The subject was dropped. It was Janet’s prerogative whether or not she harvested a beast or left its remains for the jungle to recycle.
“I was wondering, Janet,” Pireus began, “Why didn’t you clad your blade?”
“What?”
“Your [Mana Manipulation] is clearly advanced enough to create a protective glove, so why not use the same technique to create a layer of mana to help your blade slice through flesh?”
Janet's thoughts stalled, her dilemma on her rapid healing forgotten. What was the old Warrior talking about?
“Mana to slice through flesh? Is that even possible?”
Mana was just inert energy, wasn't it? To generate a cutting effect, wouldn't one need a specialized effect for that?
Rather than answer with a straight yes or no, Pireus handed over one of his swords to Janet. He always carried a pair, one sheathed on either side of his waist. He had demonstrated that he could use both hands with equal dexterity, and to deadly effect.
“Here, try cutting through that branch over there.”
Although the blade had seemed as a feather in Pireus’ hand, Janet struggled dragging it to the tree indicated.
The mental image of her holding a weapon about to brutalize a tree caused her to recall her own antics where she went batshit on a wayward root. The memory brought a smile to her face.
Janet lifted the blade over her shoulders, strained to line up her cut, then let it drop. The sword was heavy enough that gravity accelerated it to a remarkable velocity.
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The branch deformed, then straightened itself again, in the process sending a jarring vibration up the sword and into Janet’s hands.
“What kind of tree is this!?” she asked, frustrated at being bested by a piece of wood.
"Mana-rich wood is harder to cut," someone helpfully schooled.
“Watch this,” Pireus instructed as he took back his sword. “And make sure [Mana Sight] is active.”
Rather than lift the sword as high as she had done, the Warrior lifted his sword to about one arm-length above the branch. He then allowed it to drop.
'Way to flaunt your higher Strength, old man. How exactly is that supposed to help me?' Janet thought.
His cut was so straight, the technique so sublime, Janet felt that it should have sheared straight through the wood. But technique still paled to the wood’s impertinence. There was a line through the bark, but the wood was unharmed.
“That is what you do every time you cut with that dagger. Not only does it force you to use excess energy for every motion, it also forces you to regain your balance every time, wasting precious seconds. Every moment in a fight counts. Every action could be exploited by the foe, so you need to ensure each move is deliberate, and has as much chance of success as possible.”
The next cut began from even lower, about half as high as the first. Janet almost chuckled at the joke she couldn’t yet comprehend, but her breath caught when she saw mana – a thin stream of it less than a millimeter thick, suddenly flow from Pireus’ arm and layer itself atop the blade's surface like a film of soap.
When the sword landed upon the branch this second time, there was zero resistance. Like a hot wire through a block of fat, mana parted the wood, and the sword's weight propagated the cut.
There was no need for Strength. The mana atop the blade simply shred away all resistance, resulting in a clean, straight, absurdly perfect cut.
“But… how…” it was unbelievable!
Janet could almost envision her [Void], morphed into a sword, slicing evenly through skin, flesh and bone without resistance. The image of a one-sweep decapitation was so clear, so perfectly framed in her mind, she just had to try it.
“Hey, watch your step!”
Janet bodily pushed the old man out of the way, forcing him to stumble backwards.
The image was so clear in her head, it just cried to be made real. The grain in the wood would be the different layers of anatomy.
Janet’s dagger was out of her sheath before Pireus could steady his step. Closing her eyes, Janet released mana from the pores in her hands, forcing it to slide along the cutting edge, then the curved, blunter side.
Ding! You have...
She ignored the notification. Her mind, her body, her mana was all directed towards the single cut.
When the two streams met, they joined into a film, just as Pireus’ had done. The upper stream connected with the lower, and [Void] was now clad in a film of mana. It revolved, ebbed and cycled upon the flat of the blade in weird ways, but Janet’s focus was only for the blade’s edge. There, the flows converged into a singular, unbroken flow.
The edge was like a hot, thin wire broadcasting a singular, keening intent as it was aligned with a block of oil.
Slowly and tentatively, like an unsure child taking their first step, Janet placed her dagger onto what remained of the branch. There was a little resistance. Janet felt all her will focus on cutting through the resistance. Her back bent forwards so she’d be as close as possible to the blade, as though closer proximity would make the cut that much more perfect.
In that moment, she was one with her blade, one with the mana that coated it, and one with the advancing edge that sought to slice cleanly through all that stood in its way.
The dagger sliced through wood. The separated piece dropped onto Janet’s foot. Her concentration dissipated like evaporating dew.
The adults were silent. Pireus was staring at her with what could only have been naked greed, his fingers brushing idly at the pommel of his swords.
“Spit it out. What did you gain from that stunt?”
“Hmm?”
“Your Status, Janet.”
Oh, there had been a notification, hadn’t there? Janet called up the notifications. Right at the bottom of the list,
You have learned the Skill, [Mana Manipulation] (Common)
You have learned the Skill, [Weapon Cladding - Mana] (Uncommon)
You have learned the Skill, [Cutting Edge] (Uncommon)
Experience gained.
“Oh, the wonders of untapped talent!” Sylthis dramatically gasped after Janet relayed her gains. “Three skills in one go?”
Janet smiled at the praise, but something bothered her.
“When Pireus showed me his technique…”
“I think that should be Teacher Pireus, now.”
Janet looked at the man, confused.
“He means he’s going to take you on as a student,” Brian helpfully provided. "You are one lucky girl."
Pireus was thumbing the edge that Janet had created. Compared to his own, hers was a crooked abomination. Yet, there was a hint of reverence in his motions.
“Guys, she learned three Skills from a single demonstration,” he explained as he picked up the cylindrical block Janet’s cut had separated. He turned the block to compare the two cuts on either end for a moment, then stored the piece in his storage. Everyone’s eyes, including Janet’s followed his every movement like a hawk.
“What? Can’t an old man take a souvenir?” After another pause, he stored the larger branch that he’d cut too. “I want a reminder of my student’s first cut. You know, like a teacher’s record of his students’ scores at the beginning of a course.”
Sylthis shook her head, used to her teacher’s antics. “You were saying something…”
“Yeah, when Teacher Pireus…” the old man smiled oafishly as he returned to inspecting the cut on the tree, “when he showed me his clad sword, all this information came flooding into my brain, like memories of me replicating his effect. It was like I knew exactly what to do, when to do it, the exact steps…”
“Like you’d spent an entire lifetime perfecting that single Skill,” Brian completed.
“Exactly!”
“Well, Janet… that was Insight.”
Brian went on to explain that after Initialization into an Almanac, a System that essentially was a database of all its user's refined Skills, Spells, Techniques, and myriad other aspects of cultivation, stored over an eternity, she was essentially tapped into a depthless repository.
Whenever a threshold of stimuli was reached, like hours of training, enough research into a Skill, or just visually witnessing a Skill in action, the mind automatically tapped into that record, drawing from it inspiration for the practitioner to use in creating their own version of a stored Skill. Or they could gain inspiration when creating a brand new Skill, something that the Guilds sought after with unchecked greed.
“Simple words, please?” she requested.
“Let’s just say your mind now has a trillion-trillion records to learn from, now that you are irrevocably connected to a System. Magic and Martial techniques are easier to learn, simply because you have a silent teacher by your side guiding your every movement, every shift in posture, every whorl and eddy of your mana currents.”
“How does that have to do with what happened? I saw mana moving strangely, and suddenly I understand what is going on?”
“You already explained it when told us about your creation of [Shadow Bolt]. Like attracts like. The Shadow mana on your palm helps draw mana of that kind from your core, just as a [Talent] helps attract mana of its Affinity into your core. Experiencing a Skill, either by closely observing it or training towards acquiring it, will attract from the System information and tidbits of knowledge pertinent to learning or in most cases, improving that Skill,” the Cyclopean revealed.
“We call this System assistance Insight,” Brian concluded.
Janet did not much understand most of what was said, but didn’t it essentially mean that all she had to do to learn a Skill was see it in action?
Asking that very question, she received a deflating answer. Most Skills were activated internally, through very specific movements of mana, and other barely-understood forms of esoteric energy. Not even [Mana Sight] could accurately track movements that intricate.
What Pireus – Teacher Pireus – had done, was reveal to Janet exactly how the Skill worked, step by step, giving her a faint idea. Her existing knowledge had been roused, helping her build upon the idea into a theory. That more concrete image of the end goal had allowed the System to fill in the blanks, bridging the gap between the insight into manipulation of mana that she already possessed, and the Skill itself.
“Still, if learning magic is as easy as having someone show you the activation sequences of a Skill, why don’t people just set up booths in town and for a silver bit teach kids like a million Skills in one sitting?”
“Good question, but here’s one for you. If Pireus had just explained his Skill without showing you how it worked, how long would it have taken you before you attained the Skill of your own?”
Janet thought about the new Skills. [Mana Manipulation]… she was on her way to earning that already. It looked useful, so she’d been thinking about it quite a lot. [Weapon Cladding] was easy – mana wanted to stick to itself, especially when it was of similar affinity. So, perhaps an hour after she acquired [Mana Manipulation]?
[Cutting Edge] would have been harder. There were patterns to the flow that Janet was unfamiliar with, an oscillation and coming together that reminded her of waves in a liquid lapping at the container’s edge. The waves’ crests all gathered together in one thunderous peak to rip apart all resistance, paving the way for the blade and its film of mana, whose movements produced even more oscillations and waves to be converged at the edge for more cutting.
“About a night?” Janet guessed as she stepped back towards the branch.
That image of waves slowly grinding down the rocks on a shore, all gathered up into a tsunami and condensed into a single edge…
She executed another cut. This time, her edge was straighter, the path through the wood less jagged. But still, there were flaws.
“Do you see that?” Pireus retrieved the first piece and set it beside the second. “That is what we call talent. Not the elemental kind mind you, but real, tangible potential ready and poised to be molded into power.
“You studied a lot during your formative years, so in your mind are a million unformed ideas and conjecture on how mana should behave, how a blade should cut, how a spell is shaped by a rune, how an elemental effect is altered by a defining Mystery. All you need is a little direction, and this cut will be as straight as mine.” He looked right into Janet's eye. Do you think any child off the streets would possess all that foundational knowledge?"
"Magic and its derivatives are all about shaping mana through Will and Intent. But to shape Intent itself is the reason why people go to school, and why apprenticeships remain a thing," Brian reminded Janet of one of magic's fundamental rules. A cater needed to know their stuff, or their core exploded and them with it.
The Party’s walk towards the Fire-Ant canyons resumed. Their goal was to get Janet a [Talent] rooted in the Fire Affinity. Darius had suggested the place, stating simply that amongst millions of ants all sharing the same Affinity, even a brainless potato would find something that suited them there.
The journey would take weeks. In the meantime, Janet practiced with her Skills, getting better with each movement. Her image of a sword cleaving through a neck in a single sweep was still a dream, and now with a clear path of progression, all she needed was practice and a little instruction.
“Your shoulder is too stiff,” the teacher lectured, shaking Janet violently as though that would loosen up her muscles.
She repeated the cut as demonstrated.
“Better, but now let’s see you do the same with your legs apart. You might be running, or lunging forwards the next time you have to lob a beast’s leg clean off.”
The practice paid off. The next day when yet another locust accosted them, Janet dispatched it in less than five minutes. She began by cutting off all its legs. after that, all that remained was to perforate its brain.
Ding! You have slain Locust Drone, LV 11
Boost in Experience gain due to Level difference
Ding! You have reached Level 7. All Stats +2
“Guys, what’s with the +2 to all Stats?” she asked. “And wasn’t First Circle supposed to be 10 levels?”
“Oh, dear, nobody explained that to you?” Darius asked as he retrieved a book and added to his notes.
Janet cleaned her dagger by flinging away the locust’s viscera. The carcass sizzled silently against the ground as its acidic blood pooled beneath its bulky form.
As the adults deliberated on who was going to educate the youngling, Janet found herself wondering why all over a sudden the jungle was overrun with locust drones. Was a Beast Horde forming, or was it just a coincidence?