It seemed like Flora was quite brittle while in her compressed form, and could potentially break quite easily, so to prevent that, I eventually decided to slot her into the storage for potion vials in my forearm. I had to apply a little pressure and fill the gaps with cloth to secure it properly, since it wasn't designed for this, but I managed to fit her quite snugly eventually.

Also, every thought I put the slightest bit of strength into would get sent to her, since telepathy was always activated upon physical contact, but it was still by far the best option.

Oh yeah, and on a completely unrelated note, I finally managed to reach level 25 after over almost two months from my last level-up.

It happened after killing a pack of level 20-ish Treants, that camouflaged as normal Madorian Trees and sprung up to ambush prey when they were caught between a cluster of them. Fortunately, as soon as they got within Flora's sphere of vision she detected something wrong with the trees, and my [Grand Appraisal] confirmed it.

They were relatively weak to fire, more than normal Mandelorian Trees funnily enough, so with a blast from my arm-cannon I crippled most of them, and ending it was fairly easy from there.

And the screens that subsequently appeared filled me with trepidation.

Level up!

You have reached level 25. You have unlocked a new Class Skill, Knowledge Crystalization.

Knowledge Crystalization: You can temporarily solidify System Screens that appear as a result of using Grand Appraisal or other information gathering Skills.

-The screens will this become visible and tangible for every entity.

-The screens can only be crystalized if nothing other than air or similar fluids will be displaced upon creation.

-The crystalized screens will be unbreakable, but will cause soul strain when hit.

-They will cause a certain amount of soul strain upon crystalization, depending on the size of the screen, the amount you wish for it to weigh and the sharpness you wish for the edges to have.

-It will also cause a corresponding amount of soul strain every second, more accurately, the amount it took to crystalize said screen, per minute.

-Currently, only a limited amount of variation can be made.

-Currently, you can only crystalize one screen at any given time.

I staggered a bit when I read that. It was a long and complicated description, but it boiled down to one thing.

'I can use screens as weapons or shields. And they only cost soul strain, of which I've got plenty.'

It was the attack skill I had been longing for, even if it was a bit unorthodox.

'It's very limited at the moment, but the Skill will clearly improve massively once it levels up. Multiple screens at the same time, making them extremely heavy or extremely sharp... who knows, maybe even changing their weight or sharpness after the crystalization?'

I excitedly tried the Skill out. I cast [Grand Appraisal] on the air, asking it to give me only basic information.

Air: Necessary for life. Carries mana.

A long, thin screen appeared, pretty much the size of a sword without the handle. Without a second thought, I conjured [Knowledge Crystalization] on it, not bothering to mess with the parameters, and the screen immediately changed from semi-translucent to matte, and fell down onto my outstretched hand.

The first thing that crossed through my head... was that it wasn't heavy at all. Then I remembered I had an absurd strength, and that this was probably about as heavy as iron. It wasn't sharp enough to cut into my hand either, but when I swung it into a tree, it lodged itself fairly deep into it, hiding all of its width inside it.

'So... as sharp as a normal sword?'

I kept swinging the thing around for quite a while, creating crisp sounds as the blade slashed through air, and checking how much soul strain it caused.

And, as it turned out... not much.

It was not low to the point of being unnoticeable, but if I didn't bash the blade into too many things, I could probably mantain it for a couple of hours.

It was pretty uncomfortable to grip, being wide and flat and all, but there was not much I could do about that, at least not for now.

I eventually found that it felt better to swing it around with the weight set to maximum, which of course also amped up the amount of destruction caused considerably.

I kept swinging it around for the rest of the day as I continued journeying north, showing off my cool, if inexperienced, moves to Flora.

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To her, it apparently looked as if I'd summoned a dark blue blade from nothingness, so I had to explain her how the skill worked. And, after I finished the explanation, she came up with an idea worth exploring.

'If it works like that, can't you, like, make really small screens and throw them towards the bad guys like arrows?'

'Arrows? Well, they would be more like small javelins, since I would throw them with my arm, but... it's definitely an interesting idea.'

I tried to make a screen as small as possible, but unfortunately, they just wouldn't turn thinner than 10 centimeters, which was apparently the norm for any screen with only a single line of text. I then tried making them as short as possible, but the best I got was three letters:

Air

Sure, it was small enough to be useable as a projectile, but there was no projectile with such a square shape...

'Wait... There are! This is basically a shuriken!'

'Hmm? What's a... schuricken?'

Happy with my discovery, I answered,

'It's a projectile you throw like this... haaap!'

I put the screen between my index and middle fingers, then aimed at a tree straight ahead and did my best to throw the 'shuriken' at it like I had seen in movies. The crystalized screen flew out of my hand at an inhumanly fast speed, and...

...missed the tree by a wide margin, deeply lodging itself into a completely different trunk 50 meters behind it.

'...I'll have to do some more practising to get used to it.'

'You can do it! Don't give up!'

'Thanks, I appreciate it.'

And so, as I continued throwing the projectiles at every tree I could, the day quickly turned into night. There was barely any difference for me, though. I crystalized another screen, noting that my soul strain still wasn't anywhere near critical levels, and threw it at a tree ahead of me.

But suddenly, the shadows on that tree shifted, revealing a small woman, fully decked in black, with heavy makeup and deep red lipstick, that caught the projectile in her hand.

'What!? Who the hell's that woman? How did she do that?'

'What's going on, Damuel?'

'No time to explain.'

I readied myself for battle and unseathed my arm-blade, then cast [Grand Appraisal] on her.

The woman, who had been studying the projectile I sent her way, turned to look at me at that moment, an amused look on her face.

"You must have quite good Perception, to have noticed me."

I hadn't noticed her, I had only hit the shadow she had been hiding it because I used it for target practice. It had been a fluke.

"And quite an interesting Skillset. I've never seen someone who threw around... System screens saying 'air'."

She kept on examing it, then threw it away when she lost interest.

But I heard none of what she said. As she was ranting, I was looking at her status screen, courtesy of [Grand Appraisal], and couldn't reign in the surprise and panic it made me feel.

Layla Hound - Human (41) - Shadow Menace - Level 113

Attributes: 318 STR, 477 AGI, 124 END, 43 VIT, 218 INT, 126 CPT, 26 SPW, 17 CHA, 342 PER, 16 WIL

Class Skills: Passive - Dagger Mastery (4), Shadowblend (10), Backstab (10), Stealth (10), Passive - Night Vision (10), Lunge (8), Ultimate - Surehit Throw (3)

Other Skills: Nimble Feet (7), Danger Sense (2), Mana Manipulation (4) Dark Magic Knowledge (3), Dagger Throwing (4), Expert Evasion (1)

Description: Her immense talent allowed her to become the youngest Section Leader of the Shadow Emporium in history. She oversees every operation that the organization carries out on the east of the continent.

Looking at her monstruous attributes, and her plethora of Skills, I only had one thought.

'This is not a fight I can win.'

I would've already turned into a corpse had she decided to ambush me, but even in an open fight I would have no way to harm her, while she would be able to pelt me with thrown daggers. She even had that scary ultimate skill. I had already started pumping my feet enchantments to max to fly away, when she addressed me.

I had ignored her comments earlier, and she looked at me with a faux-sad expression, clutching her chest in an exaggerated manner.

"What a cold man, you're ignoring me? You're making my heart ache!"

My gaze turned cold. If I were anyone else, her small frame and beautiful, enchanting appearance could very well have made me misunderstand her power. I could only thank my ridiculous Soul Power that allowed me to get past whatever high-end anti inspection artefacts she must carry. In order buy time, I replied to her as I got ready to fly,

"Why is someone as great as you in this forest in the middle of nowhere?"

"Oh, you know of my power?"

Her gaze narrowed.

"Keen eyes indeed, as expected of someone who was able to trick and kill a division of my organization before even getting a class."

I panicked. I had expected that to be the reason when I saw her affiliation, but I had not the slightest clue on how she knew what had transpired that night.

She looked at me, and smiled.

"But... you're too naive if you think you'll be able to get away so easily, with those flying artifacts on your legs."

'Fuck, she noticed. She even knows what the enchantments are for.'

Before I could even react, her right hand turned into a blur, and she was suddenly holding a dagger. A split second later, it was flying straight towards my leg. With that speed, it would no doubt go deep into the mythril, permanently crippling the flight enchantment, and most likely blowing up my whole leg due to the accumulated fire and air mana exploding inside of it. That was her goal, I realised.

I had no time to evade, but thankfully my mind worked considerably faster than my body.

'[Grand Appraisal], give me all the info you can on air.'

A screen the size of my body appeared in front of me. It was, as far as I knew, the biggest screen [Grand Appraisal] could give me.

'[Knowledge Crystalization]!'

It immediately turned solid, and the next moment the dagger collided against it. Those two things caused my soul strain to spike up by about a fifth of my maximum tolerance, reaching about two thirds due to already being quite strained from training with [Knowledge Crystalization] several hours. Also, since all my concentration had been put into defending, the Mana on my leg enchantments had started to disperse and flow back up.

Sighing in frustration, I directly added 80 points into Intelligence, effectively doubling it.

"Oh, impressive~ what a flexible Skillset! But how unfortunate, you were forced to cancel your flight..."

She put on a concerned face. It was glaringly false, and she knew that I knew.

"Well, that just means we'll get to play together for a while longer!"

She smiled, but her eyes, which stared at me like a fun to my, said otherwise.

I hated how she was taking this like a game, but I had to bear with the frustration and humiliation for now. Just in case, I had left the crystallized screen in front of me, so she was probably stalling until I ran out of juice to power it.

But I was wrong. Suddenly, she disappeared from where she was. I looked around in panic, only for her to reappear right behind me, as if she'd always been standing there. I didn't know if she had moved through the shadows, if she had been too fast for my eyes to catch up, or both, but that didn't matter now.

Because there was a dagger that rapidly flew out from her hand, aiming right at the center of my back, where my core was.