Drawing the Jump skill’s internal structure proved to be impossible. Not only was it three dimensional and extremely complex, the lines and intersections had other qualities that needed to be considered, like width, flexibility, and mana affinity. Most had a pure or force affinity, but there were some that felt a lot like stamina, though Dyani wasn’t sure what to call it.
Neither she nor Pikawon had ever heard of a stamina or endurance affinity.
With her friend’s admittedly sarcastic support, Dyani didn’t give in to despair. This was assisted by her interface making impressive progress on analyzing her new talent. It seemed that using the talent gave it more information to work with, and by the time the pair called it a day, it was nearly 60% complete.
Dyani was tempted to stay up until the process completed, but managed to convince herself a good night’s sleep would be worth more, at least once she discovered how to create an alert that would wake her when the analysis was complete.
As she lay in her bed, trying and failing to sleep, Dyani poked and prodded at both the structure of the jump skill, and her own skill slots, trying for the thousandth time to make them interact.
On a whim, she twisted the power within her first skill slot into a crude facsimile of the jump skill. It was nothing new, the power within a skill slot was akin to water. It could be splashed around, even pushed into a new shape, but it always returned to its default state when you let go.
Except it didn’t. Dyani sat up so quickly her head spun. She focused on that skill slot more intensely than she had on anything before, but it remained in the shape she had left it, a simple, two dimensional representation of the rune of bodily force that the jump skill resembled.
Twin flames of fear and excitement roared in her heart as she ever so gently, ran mana through the skill slot.
When nothing happened, her heart sank, but a stray thought prompted her to pull up the description of her jump skill shard.
* Skill Shard: Jump (Common)
* Type: Mobility
* Affinity: Force
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Stamina
* Effect: Increases the power of an ordinary jump.
Reinvigorated, if a bit sheepish, she instead used the smallest bit of stamina. The effect was immediate, the tiny motions of her body, her breaths, her moving eyes, all sped up, causing her to spasm for half a second before the pseudo-skill she had created broke apart.
The energy within the skill slot that she’d used to shape the rune was lost, but Dyani could feel mana from her untouched mana pool flowing in to refill it.
And with that, her interface had all the information it needed to finish its task. With a ding that only Dyani could hear, her status unfolded in front of her, finally revealing her level two talent.
* Name: Dyani Farlight
* Level: 2.1
* Experience: 0%
* Attributes:
* Mana Capacity: 0
* Mana Regeneration: 0
* Magic Power: 0
* Strength: 0
* Speed: 0
* Endurance: 0
* Vitality: 1
* Mind: 1
* Toughness: 0
* Perception: 0
* Talents:
1. You gain two skill slots per level, instead of one. You cannot absorb skills.
2. You have increased sensitivity to and intuitive understanding of skill structures. You may alter and reshape your internal spiritual structure more easily and with reduced risk.
* Talent Skills:
* None
* Skill Slots:
* Empty (Depleted)
* Empty
* Empty
* Empty
Dyani grinned like a maniac. In that moment she looked exactly like her father did before battle. She changed her mind. There was no way she was going to be sleeping tonight.
***
Dyani couldn’t sit still during Henock’s announcements. This drew a few suspicious looks from Pikawon, but he waited until they were below ground and far enough from the other inspectors to interrogate her.
“So, nothing good then?” he asked with a smirk.
Dyani scoffed and messed with her interface until she discovered how to share her current status with her friend. While he read it, she checked on the pseudo-skill structure she’d prepared.
She still hadn’t discovered how to make the skill permanent, but her hours of excited experimentation hadn’t been wasted.
“I have no idea what reshaping your spirit means in this context, but from your expression, I’m guessing you do.”
Instead of explaining, Dyani took a step forward while activating her pseudo-skill. She hadn’t yet managed to isolate the increased physical movement to a specific part of her body, but she had discovered how to exclude any involuntary actions, like her heart beats and breathing.
She dashed forward unsteadily, the force of every movement increased, before an approaching wall forced her to deactivate the ability. As it always did, once she wasn’t actively using it, the pseudo-skill dissolved and the skill slot it had been housed in began pulling from her mana pool to regenerate its energy.
“What was that?” Pikawon said, jogging up to her with a rare smile instead of his more common smirk, “Did you get a haste skill somehow?”
“Sort of. Remember the line about shaping my spirit? It turns out that includes my skill slots.”
“So what?” he said incredulously, “You made a haste skill? Is that why you were running so weird? You didn’t know how to make it right?”
That was uncomfortably close to the truth.
Dyani figured that most skills that increased your speed would require training to use properly, though the only example she knew of was her friend Nodin, who was a bad example. He had a unique skill from his talent that increased not only his physical speed, but his mental speed as well.
But, even if other haste skills required practice, she knew her pseudo haste skill wasn’t great. It required far more stamina than seemed reasonable, and it added a flat percentage of force to every external movement, instead of focusing the force on where it would be most effective. But she wasn’t going to admit that to Pikawon.
“I was running fine. It just takes some getting used to.”
“But you made a new skill? How is that even possible?”
“It wasn’t exactly a skill,” Dyani admitted, “I based it on the jump skill, but even when I got it to work, it only works once before breaking apart, and then I need mana to refill the skill slot before I can use it again.”
Pikawon considered her answer, kicking a stone to scare away a half sized Fungal Rat.
“That’s…less useful than it could be. But it still has some potential. Does the skill break down after a certain amount of time, or just once you stop using it?”
“When I stop using it.”
“Huh…”
Dyani was incredibly patient. She waited for three whole seconds before interrupting his thought process.
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“What does ‘huh’ mean? Do you have an idea?”
“Maybe. You’ll just have to wait and see.”
Despite near constant begging, threats, and attempted manipulations, Pikawon kept his plan to himself during their entire route, only revealing that they would need to head somewhere after work to test his theory.
Dyani took out her impatience on every monster she could find, refusing to let Pikawon kill a single one, which didn’t bother him much, since he wouldn’t gain experience anyway unless he ate them, something he was still unwilling to do with anything that survived on sewage.
She also took the opportunity to form and use as many of her pseudo haste skills as she could manage. She got a rush every time she activated one as the cloud of depression that had settled over her ever since she awakened was lifted.
It was still frustrating to see her carefully crafted work dissolved into nothing. Even if she made the skill smaller and less powerful, only taking up half of the available space and energy, all of it was still lost when the pseudo-skill broke down.
But even this limited functionality gave her hope. And, even if he insisted on playing coy, whatever her friend was planning gave her hope as well.
After enjoying a pair of blessedly warm showers with strong soap provided, Pikawon finally revealed his plan.
“There’s all sorts of markets for skills, but you don’t have the kind of money. But you’ve already proven you can make a skill based on another skill, without being the exact same. So what you really need is a bunch of garbage skills that you can learn from, ideally skills that have a really long duration, or passive skills that work all the time.”
Dyani had already thought of emulating long term skills, but she hadn’t considered entirely passive skills. But even if they could find something useful for her to copy, there was still one major issue.
“Even if we find something useful, I don’t have the money to buy any skills. They go for hundreds of notes at the lowest.”
“Not the ones I’m thinking of. You have no idea how garbage skills can be.”
***
Dyani hadn’t dared to hope she could afford anything, but now that they were here, she didn’t know whether to be grateful or disappointed.
Pikawon had been unwilling to travel above ground, but his last few months living below meant he had a much better knowledge of the sewer’s various entrances. They were able to exit within a half block of the desired location, a ramshackled collection of tents, booths, and tables called the mite market.
While most of the time, citizens of Root Perch were able to forget they lived in the shadow of an enormous, magical tree, there were a few places where it was obvious. The mite market was one of those places.
Due to a confluence of wind, distance, and poor urban planning, this area was constantly being filled with massive leaves. That made it an unpopular choice for construction but perfect for down on their luck merchants and the illegal goods trade, if you could tolerate the pests. Those were bright red, fist-sized mites that congregated to feed on the feast of leaves.
While they certainly weren’t popular, it was apparently bad form to kill them, since their appetite was the only thing that kept the market from being buried.
Pikawon navigated the market with confidence, while she followed behind with wide eyes and open mouth. She kept a casual eye out for pickpockets, but wasn’t overly concerned, since Pikawon had insisted on carrying her modest savings.
After a few questions to the locals and a bit of searching, they finally found the kind of skills they were looking for.
Pikawon was right. They were garbage.
* Skill Shard: Glowing Eyes (Unknown Rarity)
* Type: Perception
* Affinity: Light
* Range: Self
* Cost: Very Low Mana
* Effect: Causes the user’s eyes to glow. This is a skill shard of an unknown skill.
* Warning: Skill does not increase the user’s ability to endure this effect. May cause blindness.
* Skill Shard: Continuous Blood Magic (Unknown Rarity)
* Type: Drain
* Affinity: Life
* Range: Self
* Cost: Variable Health
* Effect: Gradually converts health into mana. This is a skill shard of Blood Magic.
* Warning: Skill cannot be deactivated and the speed of conversion increases with time.
* Skill Shard: Untamed Flame (Unknown Rarity)
* Type: Attack
* Affinity: Fire
* Range: Very Short
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Conjures a mass of fire, originating at the user’s hand. This is a skill shard of Flamethrower.
* Warning: Skill lacks any containment, personal protection, or focusing effects.
And those were only a few of the rejects.
The stall they’d found looked more permanent than most of those they’d passed, with walls and a ceiling, even if they were made of fabric. The woman running the shop had the feel of an old tree, like she’d seen everything and wasn’t impressed, but she still kept an eye on the pair as they examined the skills in their glass cases.
“Why bother even selling some of these?” Dyani said, gesturing in particular to the skill that endlessly converted your health into mana.
“Some people have weird talents,” Pikawon said, giving her a meaningful look as he adjusted a glove. The gloves, hat, and dark glasses were the best way he’d come up with to disguise the modifications to his body, but they looked ridiculous on a warm afternoon.
Still, she couldn’t complain. Considering the number of people looking for her friend, Dyani was lucky he was willing to come above ground at all.
“I get that, but still…” Dyani said. She could definitely see some of these skills being useful. Someone who was immune to fire could use the Untamed Flame skill if they had another skill to control the conjured fire, like Fire Manipulation. Others were just stupid.
* Skill Core: Mana Burn (Very Rare):
* Type: Utility
* Affinity: None
* Range: Self
* Cost: Variable Mana
* Effect: Burns away mana with minimal spiritual strain.
“Why would anyone want to just use up mana for no reason? It’s not even a skill shard, the skill started out like this.” She could understand how skill shards, which were broken pieces of a skill core, could end up with unusual or downright useless effects, but skill cores came directly from monsters that used those skills.
“What about your mom?”
“What about her? She’s constantly low on mana. She needs more, not less.”
Pikawon tilted his head in confusion at that.
“Didn’t you say she has a mana drain skill, one that works on anything, people, objects, even ambient mana? How could she be low on mana?”
“Believe it or not, people don’t exactly line up to have their mana drained, even if it doesn’t cause any permanent damage.” Dyani had even offered to let her mother drain her on multiple occasions, but she’d outright refused every time.
“I mean, you don’t exactly have to ask,” he said, “Especially when you can walk though walls.”
“My mom isn’t a thief. But even if she was, why would she want to burn mana?”
“Well, if she was fighting a monster and was draining its mana, but she was already full, she might need to purge her mana pool to drain more. I mean, it would probably be better to use it on a powerful attack skill. I’m just saying this skill could be potentially useful, even if it's not the best.”
“Alright, I can admit that. But my mom’s more likely to become city lord than fight a monster.”
Dyani eventually settled on a pair of complementary skill shards.
* Skill Shard: Lukewarm Chill Flesh (Unknown Rarity)
* Type: Manipulation
* Affinity: Heat
* Range: Touch
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Chills targeted meat to the ambient temperature. This is a skill shard of an unknown skill.
* Warning: Has no effect on targets below room temperature.
* Skill Shard: Feverish (Unknown Rarity)
* Type: Defense
* Affinity: Heat
* Range: Self
* Cost: Variable Mana
* Effect: Increases the user’s temperature. Mana efficiency is very high. This is a skill shard of Cold Resistance.
* Warning: Skill provides no protections against overheating. In addition, due to the high mana efficiency, any temperature increases are very rapid and potentially fatal.
Dyani was hoping she could cobble together some kind of passive, heat or cold resistance skill from the first shard’s ability to detect temperature and cool, and the second shard’s ability to target the user and heat. Hopefully, if the skill was constantly monitoring her body’s temperature, it wouldn’t destabilize, even if the mana input would normally be almost nothing.
She would’ve liked to discuss her plan with Pikawon, but she didn’t feel comfortable talking about her talent outloud, and he refused to accept interface messages above ground in case they were intercepted, which Dyani hadn’t even realized was possible until he’d mentioned it.