The next day was another long day of hiking, interrupted occasionally by attacks by monsters. Alyx dealt with all of them quickly and efficiently with her new sword before Cass or Salos could offer much assistance, the ability of the magic blade easily disabling the lower-leveled enemies.

Salos did get a level from the combat.

“Probably because this item,” he batted at the bell on his collar, “provides an area buff to teammates, I’m getting credit for helping despite doing nothing,” he explained. “It is amazing how little experience is needed for levels before the First Step.

“Hurry up and get stronger, Cass. This is a dangerous world to be so low a level as 7 or 13.”

“What are your stats, anyway?” Cass asked, “You know mine and my skills but I don’t actually know anything you can do, except I guess, Fairy Fire.”

It seemed odd that it hadn’t come up before this point, but then, he’d been stuck in her head unable to use skills freely up to this point.

“That’s a highly personal question,” Salos said. “But, yes, I suppose we’re at the point of being highly personal, bonded to one another and all. Let me see, I think I can show you like this…”

Name: Salos

[Race: Shadow Tabby (Nyxdrian Demon)

Lvl: 7

Str - 9 Dex - 21 End - 9

Wll - 14 Ala - 9 Res - 7

Frt - 8 Per - 25 Vit - 6

Free Points: 0

Concepts:

- Patience (Dex, Ala, Per)

- Precipice (Frt, Per, Vit)

- ERROR: BROKEN -

Skills:

* Stone Memory (lvl 7) (Racial)

* Dark Vision (lvl 7) (Racial)

* Shadow Step (lvl 7) (Racial)

* Abyssal Aura (lvl 7) (Racial)

* Blade Mastery (lvl 7) (Precipice)

* Bow Mastery (lvl 7) (Patience)

* Stealth (lvl 7) (Patience)

* Footwork (lvl 7) (Precipice)

* Assassin’s Yield (lvl 7) (Patience)

* Climbing (lvl 7)

* Transcribe (lvl 7)

* Runic Knowledge (lvl 7)

* Inscribe (lvl 7)

* Fairy Fire (lvl 7)

* Hidden Edge (lvl 7) (Precipice)

* Identify (lvl 7)

Traits:

Snake Eyes (Inborn)

The King of Serpents is a beast of godly power, matched by few in all the realms. Your eyes are the same gold as that King, not that any have met the King and lived to make such a comparison.

These eyes have given you the smallest fraction of a fraction of his power. Additionally, you may apply an additional 50% of your Perception to any Control-based skill.

Innate Shadows (Racial)

Nyxdra hold natural domain with the depths, be they the depths of the world, the great seas, or the deepest dark of night. You specifically find particular affinity with the last of these.

Broken Soul

You are a demon. Your soul is in pieces strewn across the realm.

Increased stat regeneration. Madness in the presence of compatible souls and soul fragments. Increased bonuses as soul is filled out.

The Deep’s Blessing - For completing the challenge of the Deep you have been blessed by He of Shadows and Stone.

- All Beginner Bonuses become Inherent Traits

- Increase Vitality by 25%]

Cass skimmed over it. It was a lot to take in at once, but she already had several questions.

“Why are all of your skills the same level?”

“Well, they didn’t used to be. They all used to be much higher. Now they seem to be gated by my level. They go up when my level does.”

“Are skills normally gated that way?” Cass asked.

“No.” It was a pointed period on that answer. One that discouraged further questions along that line. It was probably demon related then.

That was fine. There was plenty more to ask about unrelated to that.

“What are the other words beside most of your skills?” Cass asked. “Racial, Precipice, Patience?”

“My Concepts,” he said lazily. He sat up suddenly, looking at Cass, his eyes wide. “Wait. You don’t know what those are, do you?”

Cass shook her head.

He groaned. “How have you made it to level 13 without Concepts… How did I lose to someone who does not know even the basics?”

Cass shrugged.

“Okay, very simply, Concepts are how you relate to the wider world. They are ideas that you resonate with. Things that make sense to you. They are a lens your skills can be used through, that your stats can be re-contextualized around.”

Cass nodded very slowly. That had a kind of sense to it, but she didn’t understand how it worked.

“Take Stealth, we both have this skill, yes?”

Cass nodded again. “Mine has the Wind Concept?”

“Right. Okay. So your Stealth incorporates how the wind is invisible and intangible to your application of Stealth. You notice that there is always a wind effect around you when you’re sneaking around?”

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Cass nodded.

“Well, my Stealth shrouds me in shadows instead. My Stealth is more about slow, patient movement. It rewards methodical and careful rather than quick and discrete. Same skill, but different application and implementation.”

“I think I understand,” Cass said slowly. “So how do you do that? Apply a Concept to a skill? It happened naturally for some of my skills, but not all of them. I assume I would want to?”

“You want to add a complimentary Concept to your skill. What is your other Concept again?”

“I have Hearth and Liminal now,” Cass answered.

“Oh, you got your third already.” He sighed. “On one hand, you are level 13 and of course, you should have all of your Concepts by now, but on the other hand you’ve only been doing this for a little over two weeks so how in the realms could you possibly have all of them…” He shook his head. “Anyway, take Hearth, can you imagine how that would apply to Stealth?”

Cass frowned in thought. Hearth was warmth and home and healing. She didn’t see how that would help Stealth.

“No, right? Well, I can’t think of a way, but then, it isn’t my Concept either. The point is that it needs to make sense to you. You can’t apply a Concept to a skill if you don’t understand why or how they mesh. Skills that grab up Concepts are pairs that make sense to you intuitively.

“Applying a concept is about puzzling out why those two things make sense together and puzzling it out in a way that makes intuitive sense to you when you're done.

“As for, should you do so or not?” He shrugged. “Applying a concept isn’t necessarily a direct upgrade. Take your stealth again. Your version is about staying hidden while moving. It is worse at hiding you while stationary than the default version. Does this make it the best concept you can apply to stealth? I would argue no, but it isn’t my skill. Your use case isn’t the same as mine.”

“I think I understand,” Cass said. “Related to Concepts, why are there Stats listed next to each of yours?”

“Ah, of course,” he sounded like he was about to bemoan losing to her again but cut himself off. “That indicates what I applied my Concepts to. I mentioned Concepts are a lens you can re-contextualize your stats? Well, each Concept can do this for three stats.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Cass asked, no clearer than she’d been before.

“Let’s look at my Precipice. We can see it modifies the body row: Frt, Per, and Vit. I have applied my Concept of Precipice to these three stats.

“Let’s focus on Frt in particular. Fortitude is primarily about two things: resisting damage and increasing your tolerance for pain. This remains true, but it also takes on a quality of the Precipice. For me, this Concept has to do with waiting, being poised at the edge, ready for action. By applying this to Fortitude, part of how it reduces damage helps me turn what would have been direct blows into ones I am simply at the edge of. In other words, glancing ones. This compounds with my already high Dexterity, making hitting me directly incredibly difficult, reducing the overall damage I take.”

“How does that work?” Cass asked with a frown. Though, maybe that was a dumb question. How exactly did Fortitude reduce the severity of injuries in the first place? Making her skin harder? Her bones tougher? Wasn’t what Salos suggested similar to making himself more flexible? To give his bones more give instead? “Is it okay that it overlaps with Dexterity like that?”

“It does and it doesn’t,” Salos said. “It becomes another factor in dodging damage. Consider the shell of a turtle for the moment. The primary goal of its shell is defense, just like the primary goal of Fortitude is defense, yes? How does it provide defense? Most obviously, it is hard. Very hard. But all sorts of beasts are just as strong as its shell. So what else is the shell? It's angled, angled in ways to reinforce its strength, but also at angles to encourage weapons to deflect off rather than through.

“You would never say that was the turtle’s Dexterity that redirected a sword blade off its shell, would you?”

“No, I suppose not,” Cass said.

“And, so what if they overlap? Consider speed. You asked me about it once, didn’t you?” Salos continued. “Is it a factor of Strength or Dexterity? Or maybe Endurance? The answer is it is all three to one degree to another. Dexterity for a few steps, Strength for a sprint, Endurance for a marathon. This isn’t any different.”

“So what, your skull just deflects bullets or something?” Cass asked incredulously.

“Not now it doesn’t.” He chuckled. “It's not deflecting much of anything right now. But when I was level 74?” His Cheshire grin spread across his face.

“Okay, so how do you know what will change about the Stat by applying the Concept?” Cass asked.

Salos shrugged. “There are some guidelines, most schools encourage their students to follow certain paths so the variations are well studied and reinforced. As for a wild warrior like you though? There is no way to know ahead of time how exactly it will be different. And even if I had a guess, it's primarily about how you understand your Concepts.

“A Concept is personal before all else. Two people could have a Concept for ‘Fire’ but that doesn’t mean that the way it is applied to stats or skills would be the same. Maybe for one, Fire is violence, all-consuming and cruel, but for the other, it is about purity and renewal. The way this would affect their skills or stats would be different even if applied to the same stat and skill set.

“Add the complete cultural differences of an entirely separate world? I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to guess what your Concepts might do to your stats or skills.”

“Then, I’m on my own for this one?” Cass asked, crestfallen.

“Everyone is, in this regard,” he said. “Most just have the illusion of community. Still, those who go and forge their own path are the ones who truly make their mark. No matter how good the plan is, a plan laid by another will never match you as an individual.

“Oh, one point of guidance I can give you is that you should apply a Concept to the entire row or column. You could do the diagonals if you really must.”

“Why?” Cass asked.

“Because it promotes symmetry and harmony between related stats. Honestly, I don’t think the diagonals are a good idea either, but some people say it's better to apply all three Concepts to one Stat if you can. I don’t agree, but it's a theory.”

“You can apply more than one Concept to a stat?”

He nodded. “It is fairly common actually, to do two of one and one of the other, rows and columns I mean. Two columns and one row or two rows and one column. That leaves two stats with double Concepts. We call these the Convergence Stats.”

Cass looked over his status screen again. Hesitantly, she said, “I notice you only have one.”

His head dropped between his shoulders. “Yes. That’s right. That’s all you can have with only two Concepts.”

“Is this error message related to being a demon?” Cass asked quietly.

He nodded. Then paused. “Well, probably.”

“Probably?” Cass echoed.

He shrugged. “I’m not a demon expert. Or a Concept expert. But, it is possible to break a Concept without becoming a demon, it just doesn’t happen very often.”

“How does it happen?” Cass prompted.

He kneaded into her shoulder. “You lose your connection to that Concept. It suddenly and radically no longer makes sense to you or connects to the universe. Breaking a Concept indicates a complete paradigm shift.”

He didn’t say anything more. Cass got the feeling he’d rather not talk about it further, but she couldn’t help herself. “How does one usually fix a broken Concept?”

He snorted. “You don’t. That’s the point. It's still there, a part of you that you no longer resonate with. The easiest thing to do is to take the broken pieces and reforge them into whatever you consider the inverse. Or whatever truth you were shown that broke the Concept in the first place. This is easier said than done.” He shook his head. “Why don’t you let me worry about that, and you just think about where you want to put your Concepts.”

Cass let him move the conversation on. She helped it along with another question, “Setting aside the specifics of my Concepts and the 2 and 1 arrangement, are there any suggestions on which rows or columns I should pick?”

“Generally, one tries to make the two Convergence Stats your Primary Stats. We talked about those, right? The stats your entire build and growth revolves around? For you, I believe we suggested Will and Alacrity? Or one of the two and Perception?”

“But it would be impossible to make both Will and Perception the Convergence if doing rows, columns, and diagonals,” Cass pointed out.

“True. That isn’t a deal breaker, though. Honestly, the advantages of applying any Concept to your primary stats are just as much a give and take as applying it to a skill. This is doubly true of applying the Convergence to them.

“Concepts represent a change, not an advancement. Many forget that.

“And either way, how your Concept changes your stats is more important than ensuring your primary stats are affected.”

“And, how do I apply them again?” Cass asked. “You said I need to think about it to apply it to a skill? Is it the same for stats?”

“Pretty much,” Salos said with a nod.

“That feels…” Cass hesitated, looking for the word she wanted, “Inexact.”

He shrugged. “It is what it is. Some rare treasures can assign them for you, just like there are treasures that will grant you Concepts or Concept fragments, but that's cheating. And they are worse than doing it yourself the right way.”

“Concept fragments?” Cass echoed.

“It's like the fraction of an idea. You can add them to an existing Concept. Maybe you get a fragment of “softness” and that turns your “wind” into “zephyr”.”

“And you can get them from treasure?” Cass asked.

“Sure. Or you might create one yourself after surviving a life or death experience, or after an epiphany, or, well, I think you get the idea.”

Cass did not get the idea, but it sounded like it all involved just thinking about things. “And if I got a Concept from a treasure, would that be bad?”

“Oh, did you get the third one from the core of the Lord of the Deep?” Salos correctly guessed. “Eh, one out of three isn’t bad, and you’ll be iterating on them anyway, it’ll be good and yours before you get much further. Or you’ll get stuck and that's as far as you go.” He shrugged.

“And what is iterating?” Cass asked. It felt like for every answer she got there was another to fill its place.

“Concepts are how you relate to the universe. You are always changing, so your Concepts need to change with you. Change is life. Stagnation is death. There is no truer truth than that.

“You should always be thinking about your Concepts, how they interact with your skills, how they relate to your stats, how they encompass you or your outlook on the world or your ideals. Especially before you reach your Ascent—er, that’s level 54—you should be trying all sorts of things. Don’t get too attached to any of them but fall deeply into all of them. That’s the best way to do it.” He nodded to himself, like what he was saying made any sense.

What Cass gathered was her Concepts were important, but not permanent. They could, would, and should change over time.