When I opened the door I could hear hurried footsteps and my mom talking on the phone, "Ohh, they just returned. Thanks for the help miss Heckler. bye"

After ending the call mom turned to me and then pulled me into one of her bear hugs. While hugging me she said, "we were so worried. Mortimer, why did you run away like that right after getting your crystal?"

before I could even say a word dad chimed in," it was a misunderstanding, he didn't know about clarity, so he thought I had given him a crappy crystal and was disappointed with me. But we sorted everything already right son"

mom removed me from her hug and looked me into the eyes and then asked, " Is that true Mortimer?" I just nodded at me before rubbing my head and saying, "Your still as cute as ever. Then if everything is cleared up, let's start eating."

After we had eaten the food mom had prepared for my birthday, dad took another small box from his pocket and pushed it over the table. While doing so he said, "Here this is from your uncle, he wasn't sure when to give it to you so he told me to do it. Just make sure to thank him, next time you see him."

I answered him with a quick, " yes, dad" before I excitedly opened the box, inside was a beautiful violet crystal, next to the crystal was a single piece of paper.

I first took the crystal wanting to activate it right away, but it didn't work. Confused I looked at dad but he already turned on the TV and was watching a soccer game and I knew that he didn#t like to be interrupted when he watched his games.

So I took the piece of paper and unfolded it. Written on it was.

Hey Mortimer

I know you wanted a magical skill but I find choices more imported so I gift you this crystal for your birthday.

your uncle Kim

PS, I know your father is getting you your first one. Just so you know it you have skill slots and to increase your number you need to train the skills you already possess.

I quickly opened the skill tab on my PAS, instead of my choices from before I now could see a skill list with my only skill and in the top right corner I could see that I had 1 of 1 skill. But that wasn't all right under the skill numbers I could see that I needed to increase the level of my skill by a total of 1. I selected my stepping skill and found out that it was level 0. I fidgeted a bit with my display options for skills and could now see the level of the skill next to the skill in the main tab.

I pondered about it for a bit till I thought to myself "screw this, I can just go and look it up on the internet." So I went upstairs into my room and started my computer.

I didn't take long for the pc to boot and I quickly opened my profile bookmark on the dungeon diver association website. I was surprised that my skills were already up to date. It showed that I had the stepping skill at level 0. feeling lucky that I wouldn't need to search for my skill I clicked on the like to the stepping skill.

On the top of the page was the explanation of what the skill did as far as the scientist of the association knew. I quickly skimmed through it and was surprised, that this skill didn't only improve the step itself but standing as a hole making it near impossible to drop me to the floor.

It was also interesting that the person with the highest level in this skill only got it to level 27. I knew that some people had skills closing in on the 40.

after skimming through the information I opened the subsection about training.

This section was user-submitted and therefore always to be taken with caution.

First I looked at the submitted training methods and found way too many, but luckily there were filters and one of those was the association proved filter. With this one, only methods that the association has found to work are shown.

Now only two training methods remained so I looked at the ratings the first on had allover only 4-star ratings when I looked at the other methods I saw that it had a high number of 5-star ratings but also an incredible number of low ratings. Looking through the ratings I discovered that people with a higher skill level gave a better rating and the ones with low levels mostly said that it was too hard to do and gave up training the skill altogether. But the rating that I found most surprising was from the person with the highest skill level in stepping.

Next, I looked at the instruction for the training and was surprised at the complexity of it. It explained multiple kinds of steps in great detail. The explanation alone was enough to let me understand that a single step was more than putting your foot on the ground. It was a movement that encompassed the whole body, it even explained supportive movements of the arms to improve the speed of a single step. Luckily for me, the training wasn't only explained and came with a piece of software that I could download and the best part was that it was free.

After I had downloaded it and wanted to start the program it asked me how much space I had to train and what level my skill was at. I entered the data and the program started, the first thing it did was call out a step that was explained slowly so I learned many different kinds of basic steps. At first, I had much more time to do the step right but slowly but surely the speed increased, but in between suddenly was once more a single step explained in great detail. But each time the focus was on something else. Soon I realized that with each mistake I made the program assumed that I had more space than I had and I started to bump into my desk or bed. I had only managed to train for half an hour and I already had bumped into my furniture so often that I felt it wouldn't last much longer so I stopped the program and sat back in front of my computer.

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I looked up the time for a skill to level and found out that rank 1 skills mostly needed 1 hour of training to reach the first level. Disheartened I looked at my profile and saw to my surprise that my skill already had reached level 1.

I went to the training page and started to look through the ratings and comments and found that others had found that the training was highly effective. Next, I looked up the time it would need for a rank one skill to reach level two and set an alarm for when my skill reached level two and then started the program once more, but this time I reduced the space I had and set the level to one for my skill. The program started the same as before but improved faster than before, soon almost all of the order for me to do were reduced to simple word combinations like half step, back cross, side, and other so short commands, but I knew what the program wanted and did as told.

When suddenly my PAS started to ring it surprised me. My skill had reached level 2 and it had taken only 40 minutes. I looked at my PAS with disbelieving normally the training to reach level 2 would take 90 minutes but with this training method, it took less than half. I knew the first couple of levels were easy to get but that was way to easy. Normally the training to rais from 0 to 2 took around two and a half hours and I just did it in a little less than half of that.

I opened the page for the training methods and gave it a five-star rating and wrote, training is highly effective, I just trained for 1 hour and 15 minutes and reached level 2 from a starting level of 0. can only recommend this training program.

Next, I Opened the profile of the author and looked at what else he had published, I was surprised that he had published a great number of skills training like the one for stepping, he had covered a diversity of skills but all of them related to battle or exploring the dungeon. Hoping that my next skill would be battle oriented I bookmarked his profile and then turned the pc off. It was late and I was exhausted. I undressed and entered my bed and I was asleep in an instance.

When I awoke the next morning I could feel the muscles in my lower body and back more than ever. Muscles I didn't even know I had hurt from all that training I did. I tried to move my body but soon discovered that it wasn't as easy as I thought it would. I somehow manage to sit upright but soon discovered that it wasn't possible to stand just yet. Looking around for something to help me get ready, I saw the small box with the crystal I had gotten from Uncle Kim. I had forgotten about it when I started to train yesterday.

I looked at my PAS and saw that I now had 2 skill slots and that I only needed to raise a total of to more levels to gain another one. With excitement and pure force of will, I manage to stand up the muscle pain trying its best to force me back down. I managed to move over to my desk and then sat down on the chair. After a minute to recover from the pain, I grabbed the box and took the violet crystal out. It took me a moment to activate the crystal but soon I felt the Information flow into my mind. This time it wasn't as much as before but I still used the PAS to look at my options

dancing mastery

improves all type of dance moves

attributes agility, endurance

shield mastery

Improves the usage of shields

attributes reaction, endurance

footwork mastery

improves you footwork in all situations

attributes agility, reaction

when I saw the options I was overjoyed, the shield was counted as a weapon so I could become a diver if I chose it. It wasn't even a decision for me. So, I remembered back what uncle had told me about skill activation and tried to think about what I know about shields.

I thought about what a shield is to me, I knew it was a weapon that was mainly used to deflect an attack. Surprisingly that was enough for me to gain the skill.

Now armed with two skills I wanted to get dressed and go down to eat, but the muscle pain made this simple task into one of the most difficult ones I had ever done.

When I finally managed to reach the dining table my father spotted me first and asked," Mortimer what happened?"

I slowly walked to my chair and sat down before I said, "I think it was the training of my skill I did yesterday, my whole body feels as if acid is running through it." Dad laughed at that and then said," Kim did the same you know, and do you know what my father did back then?" I shook my head before dad continued," He drove him to school, Kim cursed the whole day at him that time." while saying this dad smirked at me evilly. Unlike normal dad waited for me to finish eating and then drove me to school. In the car I asked dad," Why are you doing this, Is this some kind of petty revenge for yesterday." Dad shook his head and then asked," Would you have preferred to walk to school?" Suddenly I was pretty glade dad did drive me to school today.

Even though dad drove me to school I was still only on point for the first lesson, luckily the morning lessons were pretty uninteresting and I wasn't picked for any kind of work that needed me to walk to the front. At lunch break, Hank and some of my classmates came over.

"So dude, how was It what did you get?" of course it was hank that was the first to ask.

"I got a high choice rank 1 Crystal and another rank 2 Crystal. My skills are Stepping and Shield mastery." I answered him. Thomas was the next to talk," So you're on the Tank route, I heard that is the one with the most casualties, so did you already register in the Association as and diver?" I shook my head," not yet. And I don't know if.." but I was cut short by Hank "Dude, your father is working for the association. Why didn't he already register you?" "Because he can't something about family members can't register each other," I answered him. "Bullshit, Then when are you going for registration? Some of the dudes and I wanna go diving and we want you to join dude."

Hank told me excitedly. "I planned to go tomorrow morning, so we could go tomorrow evening." I told him, He smiled brightly at me and then said, "That's awesome, I will go and tell the others."

and just like that Hank was gone. "He is as lively as ever," Thomas said next to me.

"Are you satisfied with your skills?" Thomas asked me out of the blue. "Yes, I am. Why do you ask?" I answered him. "because I know of some who aren't and I am not sure if I like my skill." he told me. I looked at him, "You have a firebolt skill, what is there not to like about it." He smiled sadly at me and then said," It is harder to train than nonmagical skills and do you know about my second skill?" I shook my head, "It's another rank 3 that lets me control the temperature of things. The thing is I don't know how to train them, I think I will get some low ranks crystals next and then I don't know maybe go the magic fighter route. I'm still not sure how I will go about my diver carrier. What about you?" he told me about his plans.

I looked at him and then said," I'm not sure which path I will take but I think I have a solid basis right now and that it will work out somehow. Maybe you need some rank 1 to get a foundation but I don't know about that." He looked at me and then said, "I will think some more about it, maybe. No, Let me think about it a bit more. I think you should get going, you still need to talk to mister Zealand before the training starts if you want to use a shield."

It took me a bit to get to my feet the pain was still there but it wasn't as disabling as before, as I left the classroom to look for mister Zealand I looked back at Thomas. He stood there looking as if he was thinking about something important. He looked kinda cool.

It didn't take me long to find mister Zealand, as he was in the infirmary talking to the nurse. It didn't take long for him to spot me and then he said, "Ahh mister Regis, I was expecting you to come, I have already marked you for a shield, so just get yourself one from the equipment shed like the rest. " he then turned back and talked once more to the nurse about something

I just did what he told me to do and got myself a training shield. With the equipment, the school provided you couldn't even hurt a fly. It was some kind of foam weapons. I didn't think this kind of shield would protect me even from a skill like stans. It was a bit disappointing.

I was the first to reach the battleground, so I started some exercise to loosen up my muscles a bit. They still did hurt but I could already move them. It didn't take long for others to appear but they started to do a short warmup. One after the other my classmates reached then battleground. When Mister Zealand arrived the lesson started and he made us run ten laps. Then we did some stretches and then came another 20 laps. As we all were used to this we had all managed to finish this warmup without many problems. Even I managed it but my legs still felt pretty heavy after this, but luckily the pain was gone.

Next was an exercise that we had done before it was one that was also pretty fun us. The goal was to push and shove each other to the ground once you fell you were out. Normally this game was over pretty quick as mister Zealand played too. But today he needed multiple tries to push me down.

We did this for multiple rounds and with each round, it took just a bit longer till all but mister Zealand were on the ground. Between each round mister Zealand gave advice. He repeatedly told us that if we fought and got down to the ground it was almost certain that we would die. Normally I didn't think much about it but today I realized the importance of remaining standing and that my skill is a great boon in that regard.

Like always the last part of the training was a one on one sparring and my partner today was Emily since she had gotten her skill she was almost undefeated.