Edge had the next day all to himself, and he intended to make the most of it. He went to bed early and got up before sunrise. He washed his face, strapped on his gear, and walked down the stairs. After helping Rita move a few tables around in the bar, he left through the back before the common area opened for business.

He stopped by Trapper’s to borrow a cart and said good morning to Blue. Then he stepped through the south gate shrouded in the misty morning light, slipping out while most of the town was still waking up. Edge was eager to steal some skills, cycle-up his core, and make some Credits along the way.

He walked back through the gate six hours later, pulling a cart so heavy that he could barely move it. Today had been one of his most successful hunts yet. At least in the sense that he had taken down his prey without being seriously wounded in exchange.

First, Edge had battled a native beast that looked like an emu with jet black feathers and bright purple talons. Calling the encounter a hunt was a bit of a stretch if he was being honest with himself. A spontaneous brawl would be more accurate.

They had seen each other coming from quite a distance away, and neither had been willing to back down. It gave him plenty of time to draw his naginata and move to favorable ground. But then things had taken a turn for the worse. When it drew near, the avian predator attacked with blinding speed. It caught Edge off guard, forcing him to use shadow step right from the start.

The beast’s assault put him on the defensive for several hectic minutes. But once he acclimated to the creature’s dexterity, he was able to hold it back with his polearm, using the long weapon to keep the bird from closing the distance and attacking with its natural weaponry.

There was a vicious back and forth before Edge found an opportunity to shadow step behind it and land a solid slash, slicing deep into the creature’s torso. The blow had been enough to end the fight, but the bird was so badly wounded that he had only been able to steal one skill before it died.

Worse, it had been a choice between peck and something that involved fluffing up your feathers to attract a mate. Edge wasn’t sure that the second skill would do anything for someone with a human body, and he had no desire to find out.

He socketed peck, which took the comical form of a giant nose in his garden. Then he went ahead and gave it a try, just to satisfy his curiosity. After his core ignited, mana gathered in his neck and nose, forcing him to drive his face straight ahead with considerable speed.

He got a quick laugh, and a nasty case of whiplash out of the experience. As regeneration healed him up, he decided that the skill was worthless. Since Edge had a nose instead of a beak, it seemed more like a way to serve himself up to a hungry beast than a viable form of attack.

It made him realize that many beasts had highly specialized skills that would be useless to him, other than Absorbing them to fuel his existing skillset. Which was what he had planned for peck, and likely the second skill he’d obtained today too, savage bite.

While bite would theoretically be usable, once again, getting his face that close to a wild beast seemed like short road to a quick death. Besides, too much of his life already involved eating a wide variety of very strange substances, and he had no desire to make things worse than they already were.

He'd picked up the skill from a weasel that looked a lot like the first beast Edge had ever fought. It was an early stage-one male, just strong enough to claim a territory for its own.

This time around, Trapper would have been proud of him. He had managed to kill his quarry by sneaking up and entangling it while it slept. The same plan he’d tried on the mana-sensitive jobo he’d stolen leap from.

But this beast hadn’t been able to sense the spell coming. It didn’t know that it was under attack until the vines burst out from under it, binding it tight within a handful of heartbeats. At that point, Edge had simply walked up and used his iceblade to restrict the flow of blood to its brain.

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It was an effective killing move that didn’t damage the hide, and had the added benefit of being relatively humane. He was willing to fight and kill to grow stronger, but he wasn’t a sadist who enjoyed bathing in his enemy’s blood while savoring their dying screams.

The cold knocked the creature out fast, rendering it helpless to resist his [Extraction]. While he had plenty of time to peruse its core, he’d only stolen one skill because it was all that the weasel had.

On a brighter note, this beast had been guarding a mana-seed too. Some manner of golden berry that was now sitting in the preservation unit he’d gotten from Lilly.

When Edge put his nose up to the seal, he could catch a faint whiff of something that smelled absolutely divine. He was sure that some beasts would be able to detect it from quite a bit further off. But in exchange for that small risk, he now had a way to refill his reservoir on demand.

After the second fight was over, a message from his Guide appeared.

You have accumulated sufficient experience to cycle-up your core. Your new cycle is [4].

You have three attribute points awaiting allocation.

Edge had been tempted to put all three points into Power, just to make it easier to push the heavy load down the road. But he resisted the urge and stuck to the plan he’d formed over the last few days.

First, he put one point into Endurance. He was planning to take it high enough to be able to run or fight for hours at a time, which would require an investment beyond maxing his conditioning. He felt his lungs and muscles shifting, taking on a more efficient configuration. Then he tossed one point into Amplification, to keep powering up his growing collection of skills.

He had decided to put the third point into Disruption, after recalling how effective it had been in his battle with the nymphs. As Edge progressed to fighting stronger opponents, he would start encountering more spells that could kill or disable him in a single hit. Not to mention countless other skills that would be extremely unpleasant to receive at full strength.

Since Disruption was effectively skill armor, he needed enough to be able to withstand dangerous skills. To give him time to shadow step away and regenerate after taking a big hit, and to take less damage in general.

The sensation that came with increasing Disruption was… strange to say the least. It called to mind several metaphors, none of which quite fit. It felt like the silence had become louder. Like the space between noises had acquired more depth. A murmur in the background had died down to a whisper.

He thought the effect might be a result of shielding himself from the waves made by countless skills across the planet causing ripples in the flow of magicytes. Or maybe small particles of refined mana that were mixed into the environment were being filtered out by his disruptive field. Either way it was soothing—one of his favorite new experiences so far.

After spending his points, Edge went by Izzio’s to drop off his haul. He took the cart back to Trapper’s, then returned to his room in the Pioneer.

While he was sitting in bed, he Absorbed peck and savage bite, putting the skill experience he gained in exchange into slash. As he’d been hoping, Absorbing two rank-one commons was enough to rank-up the basic skill, which had become a core part of his fighting style.

It also gave him a better sense of the rate of exchange. If Edge wanted to improve elemental blade and regeneration, he needed to [Extract] some uncommons, or the process was going to take forever.

His choices for taking slash to rank-two had been a tough call. He was given the option to increase its speed, its penetration, or to generate a field that extended the length of a blade by a foot while the skill was active.

After his experience slicing the posts at the Forge, Edge decided to go with penetration. He was planning to take on more stage-two beasts soon, and it was vital that his polearm was able to hurt tougher opponents. Besides, he had other ways to increase the speed of his attacks and his naginata already offered considerable reach compared to most weapons.

Being extremely careful not to damage his room and evoke Sam’s wrath, he went ahead and gave it a try. The way it worked was that a thin coating of mana flowed out over the cutting surface of the blade, honing the weapon on a molecular level to make the edge sharper for the duration of the skill.

When Edge entered his core to peruse his skill garden, the statue representing slash was bigger, buffer, and more detailed. It also had his new naginata in its hands, instead of his original sword. He was sure that there was an important reason for the change, but he had no idea what it was.

Slash was still an inanimate object, but it had managed to leave its pedestal and was sitting on top of his reservoir when he dropped by to check things out. “Looking good, little dude.”

Edge spent a few minutes watching the skills play in his garden before returning to his body and catching some well-deserved Z’s.