It had only taken a couple days to recover the experience she’d spent on improving her interface’s ability to store information, which she’d allocated to Mana Regeneration, bringing her level to 2.2. The experience had been as unpleasant as ever, though the pain had been more spiritual than physical, like advancing Vitality, or mental, like advancing Mind. The increased mana allowed her to use Mana Jump more often in training and combat, and she finally considered herself halfway decent at using the skill.
At least she was smashing herself into walls less often.
The mana also let her spend more time creating, testing, and altering skills, which had allowed her to create a version of Crystallize Mana she was satisfied with.
* Crystallize Distilled Mana (Unique)
* Type: Conjuration
* Affinity: None
* Range: Short
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Distills and condenses the user’s mana into single affinity mana crystals, based on its predominant affinity. Available mana affinities include: Pure, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Light, Shadow, Life, Death, Force, Metal, and Mind.
Time and Oath mana were still beyond her, as were variants and combinations of the primary mana types, like heat or storm, but she still considered the skill a complete success.
As for how she could use it to create skill cores, that was still beyond her.
She’d successfully transferred a copy of Mana Jump into the input for Crystallize Distilled Mana, and created a force mana crystal with the energy, but when she peered inside with her talent, she only saw mana channels that sort of resembled the overall rune. And while she was curious what kind of effect absorbing the incomplete and damaged skill would have, Pikawon had refused on the grounds that he wanted to live.
She’d only been joking…mostly.
While unwilling to risk his life, it was still Pikawon who provided the insight Dyani needed to push forward her stagnant progress towards a skill core creation skill. She wasn’t sure how, but he was advancing even faster than she was, even while only eating one in four of the monsters they defeated. Advancing his Toughness attribute had pushed him to level 3, and given him a new skill slot, a slot he was planning to fill with a skill core provided by a defeated Turret Shroom.
* Acid Spray (Common)
* Type: Attack, Ranged
* Affinity: Poison (Acid)
* Range: Short
* Cost: Moderate Mana
* Effect: Conjures a spray of weak acid. Acid is most effective against biological material.
Pikawon allowed her to examine the core to further her knowledge, but Dyani wasn’t comfortable experimenting with a skill that created acid. Even the skills she managed to create stable versions of were preceded with hundreds of failed attempts, and like Pikawon, she wanted to live.
She returned the skill core to him after sketching out its rune and various components.
“Are you sure about this? Acid doesn’t sound very beast-like. Who knows what your talent will turn it into.”
Pikawon shrugged.
“We need a ranged skill. I agreed that it’s a bad idea for you to copy it, but hopefully I’ll get something useful out of it. And if not, I can always purge it and try something else. I’ll pay you half its value, so if that happens, I’ll be the only one out of any money.”
Dyani refused, obviously.
What he didn’t mention were the changes to his body that came along with each absorbed skill. His talent specifically said they came from absorbed skills. If he purged this skill and absorbed another, he would most likely keep the physiological changes from it, and get even more from the next one.
Pikawon focused on the skill core, but Dyani held out her hand.
“Wait, can I touch the core while you absorb it? I want to see what it looks like.”
He shrugged.
“Knock yourself out.”
She touched the core, the familiar lines of a skill structure appearing in her mind. Normally, when Dyani looked into skill, she saw the internal structure unfolded like it would be in someone’s soul, but that wasn’t actually how the skill was stored. Skill cores and shards held a compressed form of the skill, which she was only able to see past due to her level 2 talent.
As he absorbed the core, her perspective shifted, actually showing the compressed form, which only featured the overall rune. The core dissolved into light and energy, which sank into his hand. She didn’t let go, following the process with her perception as far as she could.
Her spiritual sense couldn’t penetrate all the way into Pikawon’s spirit, but she was just barely able to see the first few skill components unspool from around the lines of the rune to assume their proper place. Before she could see anything else, a force from deep inside his core pulsed out, pushing out the strands of her influence as his talent took hold of the skill and transformed it.
That was another thing she wouldn’t have minded observing, but her mind was already whirling with what she’d learned.
The few times she’d fed a Mana Jump skill into her Crystallize Mana skill, the resulting mana crystal held a warped version of the skill’s rune, with only remnants of any additional components.
Now she realized that the solution to those two problems, keeping the rune’s shape, and transfering over the more fragile components, were rooted in each other. The components of the Acid Spray skill had uncoiled from the lines of the overall rune, where they both received and provided the reinforcement necessary to survive being transferred.
While Dyani was having an epiphany, Pikawon was curled up on the ground, arms wrapped around his stomach. She heard a groan, along with a few harder to place sounds, like someone strangling waterskins.
Whatever physical change he was experiencing, it wasn’t pleasant. Dyani knelt by her friend and put her hands on his shoulder, doing what she could to support him. It only took a couple minutes before it ended, but she guessed it had felt like more to him.
“Eighth saint take me.”
“Who’s the eighth saint?” Pikawon just shook his head before spitting out a mix of saliva and blood.
“The bad one. Explain later.”
Dyani was confused as to why any religion would have a saint they considered bad, but she surrendered her curiosity for another time.
“Come on, let's get you up.” With some struggling, she managed to get Pikawon into his cot. She resolved to advance her Strength attribute next, but was at least grateful that this wasn’t like an advancement so she didn’t have to deal with any filth.
At one point his shirt got pulled up, and Dyani took a peek. If the location of the pain was any indication, Pikawon’s talent-produced change was there, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“Do you know what happened?”
“Here.”
She received a message with his new status.
* Name: Pikawon Billbrook
* Level: 3.1
* Experience: 8%
* Attributes:
* Mana Capacity: 0
* Mana Regeneration: 0
* Magic Power: 0
* Strength: 1
* Speed: 1
* Endurance: 0
* Vitality: 0
* Mind: 1
* Toughness: 1
* Perception: 0
* Talents:
1. Any skills you absorb are altered to make you the perfect predator. Your body is altered based on absorbed skills.
2. You can absorb experience by consuming the flesh of defeated creatures. Experience gained is dramatically reduced if you did not participate in the creature’s defeat. You cannot absorb experience from any other source.
* Talent Skills:
* None
* Skill Slots:
* Bestial Instincts (Unique)
* (Transformed from Enhancing Hearing)
* Type: Passive, Perception
* Affinity: Beast, Mental
* Range: Self
* Cost: None
* Effect: Provides a small, passive boost to all senses. Increases the strength and clarity of predatory instincts. The effects of this skill scale with Perception.
* Sundering Claw (Unique)
* (Transformed from Slash)
* Type: Attack, Melee
* Affinity: Beast, Blade
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Concentrates cutting energy around any part of the user’s body that is naturally sharp.
* Twin Fang Cauldron (Unique)
* (Transformed from Acid Spray)
* Type: Crafting, Affliction, Poison
* Affinity: Beast, Poison
* Range: Self
* Cost: Variable Stamina
* Effect: Allows the cultivation of alchemical substances within your body. You are immune to any toxins you produce.
Dyani noticed that the new skill, Twin Fang Cauldron, wasn’t ranged like Acid Spray had been. Pikawon might be disappointed by that, but she wasn’t. It seemed like a much more versatile skill, just one that would require more preparation and effort to use effectively.
“It doesn’t give you any poison resistance. We’re going to need to buy a lot more cleansing tonic if you’re going to be getting poisoned all the time.”
“I don’t know what happened to my stomach, but I’m guessing it was something along those lines. Felt like my intestines were getting unraveled and rearranged.”
“What?”
“Guts change, make poison less bad. Got it?”
“Unless your guts let you resist a punch, I’d watch that mouth.”
Pikawon chuckled. He leaned up for a second, looked queasy, and laid right back down.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Do you need anything? Food? Water?”
Pikawon shook his head vehemently.
“If anything hits my stomach, I’m going to barf. I’m fine. You can just go home. I’ll be fine by tomorrow. But if I’m not at the inspector morning meeting, tell Henock I’m taking a day off and take one yourself. You can go get the rest of those books you wanted from the library.”
“You’re cracked in the head if you think I’m leaving,” Dyani said, “Even if you don’t need anything. I’m staying right here.”
“What about your mom? Won’t she worry if you don’t come home?”
“She’s been working double shifts. I’ve got plenty of time to get back.”
For some reason, he winced at that, but it was probably unrelated.
“Well, if you’re staying, then go do something that doesn’t involve looming over me and staring. It’s putting me off.”
Dyani stuck out her tongue, but didn’t argue the point. She was fairly sure Pikawon would be fine. It was an accepted rule that someone’s own talent would never directly harm them. Sometimes a talent made you vulnerable in a specific way, or gave you additional needs, like her mother’s need to absorb external mana, but whatever changes had occurred inside Pikawon, however unpleasant, weren’t going to hurt him.
The pain he was feeling was probably normal for anyone whose organs were redesigned from the ground up, not that Dyani knew of anyone who’d experienced something similar.
Dyani sat down on her chair, which she’d purchased and brought down here to join Pikawon’s single chair.
She thought about what she’d sensed while Pikawon had absorbed Acid Spray. Having skill components reinforce a skill’s runes while the rune did the same to the components had a sort of satisfying symmetry to it, but there was still the question of how to stretch the components into threads in such a way that they could resume their original shape once the skill was absorbed.
She decided to ignore all the complexities and try to force it. It took less than a minute to create a new Mana Jump skill. It took considerably longer to stretch out every component and wind it around the Bodily Movement Rune. The result was a little rough looking, with parts of the rune ending up thicker than others, but Dyani didn’t worry too much about it. She already knew this attempt was going to fail. As long as she learned something from it, it would be enough.
Dyani had found that the best results of putting skills into her Crystallize Distilled Mana skill came from inserting the skill structure without converting its mana, and including an equivalent amount of raw mana of the correct affinity. She pushed Mana Jump into the skill halfway through, manually set the skill to force mana, and pumped in some raw mana.
It was an awkward, time consuming process, but she could redesign Crystallize Distilled Mana to perform it more easily if it worked.
Much like every other time she used the skill, the first thing to form was a tiny seed crystal, but this time a less organized mass congealed on top of it, followed by layer after layer of more ordinary force crystal.
The end result was a solid mana crystal with internal flaws and cracks.
* Skill Core: Unknown (Unknown Rarity)
* Type: Unknown
* Affinity: Force
* Range: Unknown
* Cost: Unknown
* Effect: Unknown
Dyani cheered silently, mindful of her friend trying to sleep. This was the first time any of her mana crystals had registered as a skill, which was a big step forward, even if it didn’t appear to be functional.
When she extended her senses into it, she was met with partial success. For the first time, the rune was still exactly as she’d created it, all its lines and angles geometrically perfect. The components were a different story.
They were a jumbled useless mess, floating about like seagrass. Dyani sighed. It was too much to expect to figure all this out in a single attempt.
She wanted to try again, but had no free skill slots, since the slot she’d just used was currently refilling its energy from her mana pool. So, this time she used her primary Mana Jump skill, the one she kept and actually used. She was a little nervous about not having the skill available, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t make a new one when the skill slot had recovered.
Dyani took more care while binding the components to the rune, and this time the result looked much more even. She still didn’t have high hopes for getting a workable skill core when she finished.
She was wrong.
* Mana Jump (Exceptionally Rare)
* Type: Mobility
* Affinity: Force
* Range: Self
* Cost: Low Mana
* Effect: Propels the user in a desired direction.
The skill core skill had what looked to be internal flaws, though less than the previous, but her interface’s identification ability gave her a description identical to the one in her status, except for the rarity, which was only fair. Given how many times she’d created it, it could hardly be called unique anymore.
Dyani couldn’t breathe. She wanted to run over to Pikawon and have him identify it as well, but she was worried it was just some fluke.
She was left with one, terrible option, meditation. The dreadfully boring activity had the advantage of accelerating mana regeneration, which she needed if she was going to try again anytime soon. Her skill slots took about twice the mana in her pool to recover after a skill was broken, purged, or transferred out of them.
Dyani crossed her legs on her chair, brow furrowing and face scrunching as she poured every bit of her furious attention into relaxation.
“If you’re going to poop, please do it outside.”
“Shut up, I’m trying to meditate.”
“My guts feel like wrestling eels, but I can still feel how uncomfortable you are from here. If that’s how you meditate, you’re going to have an aneurysm.”
“What’s an aneurysm?”
“Not fun,” Pikawon said, “But probably still better than what I’m feeling.” He grunted as he pushed himself into a sitting position. His face did get a little queasy, but he didn’t fall back down.
“Who taught you to meditate?”
“Some teacher from school. But you should lay back down. You still look awful.”
“Thanks, oh so much. I’ll manage. Besides, watching you meditate hurts worse than my stomach.”
Dyani huffed.
“I passed the meditation unit along with everybody else.”
“You went to public school. That’s not the accomplishment you think it is,” Pikawon countered, “It takes more effort to fail than pass. First, uncross your legs and sit like a normal person.”
“Why? This is a meditation pose.”
“Because meditation is all about relaxing the body and spirit, not any specific position, and you look about as relaxed as I am.”
That was fair enough, so Dyani obeyed.
“Now, what do you do to relax? You know, when you aren’t hunting monsters.”
Dyani considered. She hadn’t had a lot of time for relaxation lately, as focused as she was on advancement.
“I like to read, or spend time with my friends, but they’re all in Slayer training except you.”
“Fine, reading, what do you like about it?”
Dyani’s love of reading had originated from her father telling her stories of his adventures while she drifted off to sleep. Her heart pinched as a deep part of her screamed that it wanted that feeling of love, warmth, and safety again, but she had long since learned to endure these moments.
“I like the feeling of adventure, of doing something amazing, but also being safe at home. It’s the best of both worlds. I used to go through a stack of books a week, when I was younger and I had more time.”
“And yet, you still haven’t finished a chapter of the books on runecrafting.”
“There’s a big difference between a novel and a textbook, Pikawon. One is fun, and the other is a mind numbing slog.”
“Fine, fine. Since we don’t have any books down here, at least any you want to read, why don’t you just sit there and think about your favorite books.”
“That’s it?” Dyani asked, skeptical, “That’s your grand meditation training?”
Pikawon shrugged as he found a water bottle and took a tentative sip. He shook his head and spat the water back out, his insides not yet ready to have anything in them.
“It’ll be better than what you’re doing. Meditation just means reaching a state of relaxation and harmony between your body and spirit. For most people, sitting around and clearing their mind works. But for you, that’s apparently worse than pulling teeth. Doing anything else would be better.”
“Alright, we’ll see.” A part of Dyani was privately hoping this wouldn’t work. If it did, and she’d been taught a way of meditating that was worse than useless for her, she would have some serious words to give to her old teacher, assuming she could remember which one had taught her meditation.
She closed her eyes, mind running through some of her favorite novels before settling on one featuring pirates seeking freedom against a corrupt navy force. Her mouth quirked up at the corners as she imagined dancing around a ship’s deck on a stormy sea, slashing a cutlass at her enemies.
Before long, she felt one of her skill slots fill and stabilize, ready to be filled with another skill.
“It worked.”
“Of course it worked. I’m a genius.”
“Yes you are.” Her agreement caught Pikawon off guard and he looked away in discomfort. Dyani smiled as she sank back into her daydream. After half an hour, when both her skills slots had recovered and her mana pool was full, she reluctantly left her daydream and went back to work.
She created Two more copies of Mana Jump and immediately crystallized the first.
It failed, exactly like the first. The rune was correct, but the components weren’t. Dyani was starting to really regret crystallizing her main Mana Jump skill, even if it had been her first success. She wanted to examine its structure more closely, to see how it was different from the copies she’d just made.
Dyani realized she was an idiot and pulled the skill core from her pocket. She could sense the structure of physical skills nearly as well as skills within her spirit, even if she couldn’t change them.
Comparing the core to the Mana Jump in her spirit, Dyani couldn’t find any differences.
“What have you got there?”
Dyani looked up at her friend with a calculating eye.
“Pikawon, let me ask you a question.”
“Do I get to answer it, or are we just responding to questions with questions now?”
“Please answer it. I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine first. What’s the difference between a Mana Jump skill I’ve been using for weeks and one I just made?”
“One’s older?”
Could that be it? Maybe it took time for a skill to fully stabilize before it could be transferred out of the spirit. Dyani hadn’t felt anything like that. She still couldn’t, but she couldn’t feel any difference between the old and new skills, and there was obviously something.
“What else?”
“You’ve used one more. I don’t know. What’s this about?”
That was true. She’d used the older skill hundreds of times, while she hadn’t even used the newer skills once. Could it be that simple?
She stood, focused on her new mana jump skill, and launched herself up until her hands touched the ceiling and she fell back to her feet.
“Am I going to get an explanation anytime soon?”
“Look at this, and shut up….please.” She tossed him the successful skill core and repeated the process of crystallizing the copy of mana jump she’d just used. When she finished, she had another successful copy.
“It can’t be that simple.” A frustrated Pikawon stepped forward and took the new skill core from her hand, incredulous.
“I can’t identify much about these, except the fact that they’re skills. Did you really just make a skill, just like that? Who are you?”
Dyani took perverse pleasure in being the one with all the answers for a change and sent him a message with the skill’s information.
“Just a little something I’ve been working on. I might not be able to absorb skills, but it looks like I can do the opposite.” She enjoyed the look of complete disbelief and wonder on his face.
“How long does it take you to make one of these?” he said, holding up the pair of Mana Jump cores.
“Let’s see.” Dyani’s 2 empty skill slots hadn’t recovered, and one was holding Crystallize Distilled Mana, which she needed to make the core, but the other one still held her Crystallize Force Mana skill that had served as an important milestone in getting a more complete version of Crystallize Mana.
If having used the skill was really the deciding factor in keeping its components stable, this skill should work fine. She’d used it dozens of times to get a better idea of how all its parts worked.
She crystallized it, and produced another usable skill core. She sent another message with the description of Pikawon.
“It’s not Mana Jump, but I didn’t want to wait for my skill slots to recover. Besides, I don’t need this one anymore. If I have to wait for a slot to recover, and I meditate like you taught me, I could probably make a skill every 30 minutes.”
Pikawon’s mouth was so wide, he could’ve fit all three skill cores inside. His expression slowly transitioned to sparkling greed.
“We are going to make so much money.”
***
Despite his obvious excitement, Pikawon ushered her out a few minutes after her demonstration. Dyani guessed it was to cook and eat the couple of edible monsters they’d killed today, and while she understood his reluctance to do so in front of her, she wished he’d get over that particular insecurity.
She wanted to celebrate her newfound achievement. On the way home, Dyani shaped another two copies of Mana Jump as soon as those skill slots recovered. As she’d suspected, her mother had left another note about working late.
Dyani didn’t know what was going on with her mother, and she made a mental note to ask her if she came back before Dyani fell asleep, or in the morning at the latest.
Dyani dragged her father’s Death Chest into her room. She needed somewhere to store all the skills she’d be creating, and putting them in there felt right. Dyani wasn’t sure of the widespread implications of her skill creation process, but it seemed impressive enough to her. She was proud of her accomplishments, and storing them in this chest was a way to honor her father’s contributions to who she’d become.
She took the letter from her father out of the chest so it wouldn’t get buried or forgotten, and placed it on her nightstand.
By the time she went to bed, Dyani had a low mana headache, a brilliant smile, and a chest containing eight skill cores, six of Mana Jump and two of Crystallize Force Mana.