Thump! Thump!
He was dropping like a rock. Feet first. Arms raised. The winds were tearing past him violently. As he plummeted towards the ground, he felt something he had not experienced before — the inexorable pull of gravity during a dead drop. The faster he fell, the harder the ground seemed to pull, sucking him down. It wasn’t a fifty feet drop into the pool. This one was thousands of feet into a town of endless expanse of pavement and stone.
Thump! Thump!
As the reality of his dire situation became apparent, Lukas was briefly distracted by how calm he felt. It took him another second to realize he had instinctively employed tachypsychia to temporarily enhance his perception, and the surging lifeforce within him was temporarily shutting down his fear response. But even at maximum perceptual dilation, he guessed he had less than a minute of subjective time to figure something out before he hit the ground, so panic was the last thing he needed.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
His first and most obvious thought was quickly assessed and discarded. He tried to shoot lifeforce downward, hoping to balance against the downward pull. That had as much impact as scolding ‘gravity’ for its actions. His next thought was to manipulate motion using kinetomancy, but that had a better chance of tearing him to shreds than halt his descent, and retrying Hreidmar’s skills was the last thing he wanted to try. Decreasing friction would only accelerate his free fall, and increasing friction was likely to burn him to ashes. Terramancy would be useless in the air. He knew nothing of aquamancy. Fire would only aid in immolating himself faster.
Thump! Thump!
Lukas frowned mentally at the sensation of his heart beating slowly but not near slowly enough under the circumstances, a constant reminder of how little time he had to pull off a miracle. Frustrated that his ‘brainstorming’ session under tachypsychia had come to an end without any useful ideas, he was further dismayed by how slow his thoughts had become after Tachypsychia had run its course. Morbidly, he wondered if in some part of him would be stuck in the afterlife thinking about possibilities after he was dead. In desperation, he shut his eyes and used tachypsychia again, throwing everything he could to increase its dilation, his mind flashing through everything he had learnt, every skill he had gained, every technique he had studied, every nugget of wisdom he had gained from his experience in the anomaly. For a brief instant he nearly lost the dilation as his mind reeled under the onslaught of memories.
Momentum.
Raw Force.
Friction.
Pressure.
Kinetomancy.
And as he plummeted down to the ground, Inanna’s voice echoed in the winds.
—Do not liken Kinetomancy to a mortal technique. It’s the culmination of what allowed me to butcher gods and demons alike. You have no more chance of bearing it than an ant can bear the weight of a mountain—
Even now, she was taunting him. Even now, she was telling him he had miles to go. But there had to be something. More out of stubbornness than hope, he forced his mind to continue.
Fire.
Temperature.
Seismic Sensing.
Conjuration.
It was Creation from nothing. Creation. He was falling downward. If only he had a way to slow himself down. Slow himself down. Slow himself—
— Imagine what you wish to create. Push the ether into it. Give your imagination form—
—Down.
Lukas opened his eyes, and focussed on his palms, releasing ether from either. It didn’t work. The ether disintegrated faster than he could conjure it, the conjuration disintegrating to shreds by his own downward momentum. He had been trying to conjure a flap, nothing great, maybe a five or six feet of monster hide to grab on either side using his hands, the crudest approximation of a parachute imaginable.
Thump!
He had to think of something. Something involving Creation. Something—
Thump!
—something that works. Something that was tangible yet intangible at the same time. Something that wouldn’t shatter from his downward fall. That or he had to conjure something faster. But how could he do it, when he was plummeting down faster than he could think?
Disintegration.
Shatterpoint Intuition.
Perception.
Wait. Perception?
—The mortal mind is body-bound. That in itself limits what you can think, feel and act. But the moment you delve into psionics, you irrevocably shatter those limitations—
As the ground grew nearer, a mad and desperate idea began to form. Nothing among his skills could directly help him survive this mess. He could theoretically conjure, but unless he managed to perform it at speeds double the magnitude of his downward descent, it would be useless. And the only way to do that would be to operate at a level that he had never done before. In Inanna’s words, shatter his limitations.
And if he was going to shatter his limitations, he wasn’t going to end up hoping on a crappy parachute to save his ass. He was going to use something real.
Something powerful.
—If you maintain this altered mental state for more than what your heart can keep up with, you risk a complete breakdown of your brain functions —
Shut Up Inanna! Stop playing both sides. I need to focus—
Never before had he been as motivated to push past the boundaries of the psionic arts as he was right now. His heart was already beating faster and faster, while his mind was growing slower and slower. Just three more beats and it’d trigger a full-scale brain aneurysm. He knew it. He knew it. He just totally knew. It.
Thummmmmp!
“AAARRRGGGHHH!”
His mind was frying itself. Breathing was agony. Thinking was agony. His mind was not built to digest this in the slightest, forget running at that level in a single go.
It was ridiculous.
Absurd.
Insane.
He did it anyway.
Thummmmmp!
His mind was racing. Ether as an element was in itself, incapable of materializing by its own power. And yet, in a twist of irony, its domains were along the lines of composition, dissolution, modification separation, unification and alteration of shapeless bodies materialized in physical form. He had always thought of physical things to be those in the solid state. But he wasn’t seeing the full picture. Everything was made of matter. Solid. Liquid. Gas. Each of them had molecules. Each of them held forces of attraction. Each of them exerted motion.
And he had inherited a skill that could bend that motion to his will.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t negated motion before. He had done so with monsters, against Quonnan and several times against Ryu. He fared considerably better at motion deflection than negation, but even then, it had been against other creatures— people and monsters alike. But to negate his own motion, especially during his free fall, was something he had never done. Never tried. There was no saying if he even could do that. Even the slightest mistake would squash him like a bug in mid-air..
—This skill is power beyond what you are built for—
His brain had caught fire inside his skull. A shudder passed through his entire body, and Lukas suspected that if he hadn’t been dilating, he’d have suffered from a violent full-body spasm or possibly some kind of fit. Pushing both arms outward, Lukas called his power out.
—My own belief is that it will destroy you—
It was deafening. The impact of an unstoppable force against an immovable object. His entire body should have been squashed from the power of gravity pulling him down to absolute rest in a fraction of a second. But kinetomancy was all about breaking the rules— to steal energy from places it wasn’t supposed to. To break inertia. To take the laws of physics and throw them into the trash can.
His bones cracked. His vision went red. Every single nerve ending burned. All of his tendons were snapping. But his fear was gone. As was his doubt and hesitation.
Then everything stopped. Just stopped. The pain was gone. The tension was gone. The descent, and even his own body was gone. Rather, inside his mind, his perception remained, multiplied exponentially. The entire universe shrank until it was just within his mind. And in that instant, Lukas Aguilar knew he had done it.
The Screen blinked.
Skill Upgrade Successful
SKILL
LEVEL
SOUL CAPACITY CONSUMED
Psychomancy
2
500
He. Could. Do it.
The pain vanished. Completely. His mind was expanding, his perception growing, sensing, dilating his inner time. Objectively, he knew he’d be a splatter on the ground in a couple of seconds, but in his mind, that felt like half an hour. Like he had all the time in the world to think, to plan and execute.
He was done planning, and he was done waiting.
It was time to finish the execution.
Negate motion. Don’t stop the wind. Stop yourself. Don’t grab. Focus on not falling. There is no force on you. All motion is—
—It is a deadly legacy. If you crave it, you must accept what comes with it—
He was willing. And more.
Negate it. You are in control of your motion. All motion is yours, your body included. Remember how Inanna stopped the khorkhoi. Reach out and grab the energy within you. Entwine your power with it. Become one with it.
Give it a yank.
Skill Upgrade Successful
SKILL
LEVEL
SOUL CAPACITY CONSUMED
Kinetomancy (Fragmented)
BROKEN
+4679
He paused.
In mid-air.
Just like that.
Calibrating Host Body to upgraded Skills requires Level Up
Lukas looked below. He was still hanging in mid-air, but he was not flying. No, instead it was like he had hit an invisible platform where his motion equaled zero. The potential energy he had developed during the free fall had been dissipated away, shattering the laws of motion in its wake.
That, or he had somehow, unconsciously channeled all that energy into the environment without knowing it.
He looked below again.
Yep. Still not falling. Instead he hovered, parallel to the ground.
Just like Hreidmar.
“That was a most unusual style of flight,”,” came Tanya’s voice from behind him.
Lukas whirled around, and found her floating in the air, right behind him. Unlike himself, she wasn’t standing still. Tiny currents of wind spinning all around her body, acting both as a buffer against external forces as well as maintaining her weight against gravity. Aeromancy at work, honed through painstaking diligence.
“How do you do it?” She asked.
“Do what?”
Tanya gave him a ‘don’t-be-stupid’ look. “You used the sludge’s technique from the anomaly. First against me in those caverns, then against the metal monster doppelganger and recently, against Hreidmar. And now you’re floating above the ground, just like he does.”
Lukas did his best not to gape at her. How— at the anomaly? Did that mean they already suspected he could steal skills?
But that didn’t mean he had to fess up. First rule in such cases— Always deny.
“I mess up and fall from a thousand feet, and that’s the first thing you ask? Talk about priorities.”
She shrugged. “I thought you were doing fine.”
Lukas doubled his glare.
“Fine!” she scoffed. “I had a wind funnel ready down there. I’d have caught you in time.”
“Just wanted to hear me scream like a bitch?”
‘Maybe, now quit stalling. How do you do it?”
“The usual way,” he replied with a half-shrug. “My super-secret Outsider powers.”
Tanya glided in the air around him, as if the air was a snowy plain and she, a skater. “You shot yourself into the air. I didn’t sense any mana there.”
“If you say so.”
“So it had to be lifeforce propulsion. But to that level? No, there had to be something else.” She cupped her chin and observed him. “Your clothes… they aren’t burnt. That much lifeforce should’ve charred them to bits.”
She paused, palming her mouth. “Unbelievable. Friction Manipulation. Easily Level-2 given the altitude. Added with tremendous lifeforce reserves. Are you sure you’re not part-vanir?”
“No clue,” he said, feeling the first stirrings of annoyance. “Not from around here, remember?”
“But that wouldn’t explain this…” she gestured at his legs, floating in mid-air. As if to test, she put one foot next to his, feeling for any barrier. Finding none, she floated away and looked at him again.
“How are you doing this?”
“It’s not important,” he said airily.
“It is,” Tanya retorted.
“We’re going to a borderland together. It’s common sense to know what my partner is strong or weak at.”
“Oh?” Lukas drawled. “Then perhaps we can start with you? How does your Frost work? You are an Aeromancer. Are you sure you’re fully bremetan, up in your ancestry?”
“Enough!” Tanya snapped. “We are not talking about that.”
“Wow, so it’s only right when you ask questions. You have complicated rules, Tanya.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Tanya looked like she wanted to argue, but then she looked down abruptly. “I see. I suppose only Zuken Banksi can pay for the Outsider’s secrets.”
As she was saying this, Lukas studied her carefully and even dilated his perception slightly, so that he could review everything he knew about Tanya and her connections with Zuken Banksi. He suspected that the man had told Tanya some of his secrets. He doubted Zuken was a man with loose lips, so it had to be a planned event and not an impulsive action. Plus, he had him in the lab during the entire time he was ‘dead’. He had plenty of opportunities to inform her about his powers before she and Olfric began to teach him.
But he hadn’t.
Which meant that this was a well-planned setup. Zuken hadn’t informed Tanya to help her teach Lukas better. He had done so with the intention of sowing seeds of mistrust, selling the idea that Lukas was keeping secrets from her but not from Zuken, making her question her own association with him in the first place.
He wasn’t actually mad at Zuken for doing that, the same way as he wouldn’t be mad at a dog for barking at the mailman. It was what they did.
Banksi had made a move. And that was fine. He could amp the ante as well.
“Oh?” He asked. “What did he tell you?”
“What makes you think he told me anything?”
He shrugged. “I thought he did. He wanted some background information beyond whatever he could gather from my body. But I thought… I thought he told you.”
“And why would he?”
“Because he’s your employer. That’s why. It’s obvious you’re basically being my handler on his behalf. Why would he hide things from you?” He snorted contemptuously. “Doesn’t make sense to me.”
For a second, a look of terrible, frightening rage passed over Tanya’s eyes, but then, it faded, and her affability returned.
“Well…” she growled, “he didn’t. At least, not everything I think.” She looked up at him speculatively. “Is it really true that people in your world don't have any soul capacity?”
He nodded somberly. “Soul Capacity. Lifeforce. Mana. None of it.”
“It feels… unreal.”
Lukas barked out a mirthless laugh. “Honestly, I’m surprised he even believed me.” Her annoyance doubled. “He’s confused. Hanging between belief and skepticism. As am I. It certainly explains your obvious lack of knowledge about the things we take for granted. About leveling up. About skills, and so on. That said, I’m also inclined to agree with Zuken that your skill growth is too fast, too impossible for someone that’s only started learning while being in this anomaly.”
Lukas shrugged. “I know. Overachieving is in my blood. Sometimes I just can’t help it.”
She rolled her eyes. “What makes me skeptical is you learnt and evolved so much so quickly, and yet your education feels… superficial at best. Even if you can really copy the skills of the creatures you’ve killed.”
“My teacher was the sort of parent who thinks you need to find things out for yourself.”
Tanya blinked. “Those are real?”
He grunted. “But yeah, there’s a ton of things I need to know. I’m hoping my deal with Banksi will help on that front. So far, I’m not impressed. Here we are, on our mission, and he’s told me nothing about the borderlands. Makes me wonder if all this is a convenient excuse to get me killed.”
Tanya grimaced. “Ah, about that. He kinda told me to make this mission educational for you. There’s only like a hundred and thirty seven things you need to know if you’re gonna survive it.”
“I’m all ears,” Lukas grinned back.
----------------------------------------
SOULSCAPE
NAME
Lukas Aguilar
Type
Prime Host
Level
8
Experience
261
Current Threshold
2560
Utilized Soul Capacity
22408 / ∞
ESSENCE
Maximum Lifeforce Output
5075
Replenishment Rate
700 / hour
LEY LINE NETWORK
Maximum Mana Output
6325
Synthesis Rate
810 / hour
“The nature of Schema is quite simple, really,” said Tanya, “it reflects the total spiritual constitution in a format best fit for the person. Different people describe it differently. For most people, it appears in a tabular format, which sucks,” she pouted, “literally takes all the artistry and replaces it with cold, hard numbers.”
They were sitting at the precipice of the Cantonment’s roof, one of the only buildings in Haviskali that could be called a skyscraper, if only barely. After his stunt and subsequent upgrades on kinetomancy, it had become way easier for him to shoot through the air and keep up with the blonde. Tanya could use the wind to propel itself, while he modified his own motions and accelerated himself, while maintaining an anti-friction bubble around him. His performance was far from perfect, but he was slowly getting a hang of it.
“At least it’s efficient.”
Tanya tilted her head. “Are you sure you don’t have svartalfar up your ancestry?”
Lukas chortled. “Human all the way.”
“Yeah, whatever,” She grumbled, “I once met a ljósálfar who’s Schema was crafted out of shades of color. He said that the colors were words, and words were colors. Too philosophical to get through my skull, but it sounded pretty.”
Both of them laughed at that.
“What about Experience?”
Tanya giggled. “I’ll tell you what my father told me. He said that the world we live in is fond of murder. It awards those that mimic it, and considers them worthy, and feeds upon the rest. When we kill something, a person, creature or monster, its soul returns to the World, and in return, it grants us a blessing that we call Experience. The bigger and nastier the kill, the more experience we gain from it, all of which can be accumulated and then exchanged for soul capacity when we hit the threshold.”
Lukas knew all that, but didn’t bother to stop her. It was good to compare his theory with hers.
“Now Leveling up increases both the production rate and output of both lifeforce and mana, depending on what sort of creature you are I guess, but most importantly, it synchronizes your body with your soul.”
“The soul reflects on the body,” Lukas repeated Inanna’s words.
“Poetic, but the same, basically. Your skills don’t change or get better, but your body is now attuned to using those skills. That alone gives you an edge. The negatives— you’re probably going to have a tougher time adjusting to skills opposite to the ones you currently have.”
Which explained why Kinetomancy and Shatterpoint Intuition came easier to him now than ever. He was hoping that this mission would land him his next Body Level Up. It’d be interesting to see how Hreidmar’s skills and the elevated Kinetomancy affected his body.
As for the negatives, he was still to see any of them yet, but that was probably because his body was an Anomaly.
“Different people choose to go with this differently. Most will actually delay leveling themselves, choosing to upgrade their skills first. That way, when they finally level up, their bodies are attuned to the upgraded skills instead of their lower variants. The trade-off is that they intentionally stay weaker for a longer time until they Level Up. Some people actually go the reverse route, choosing to level up faster to acquire more soul capacity to gain skills. It has the obvious disadvantage of having a lot of skills at low levels—”
Lukas actually flushed at that.
“—but it gives them a greater number of skills to use. And then there are people who choose a middle ground where they level up quickly, but pour all the new soul capacity into a single skill or skill set. That’s where the majority of us spiritists fall. We gain as much soul cap as possible, and use it to elevate our kami’s skill levels, and is something wrong with my face?”
“Huh—no, nothing,” Lukas mumbled, realizing he had been gazing at her face for longer than was acceptable. “Just wondering about my skills.”
Unlike everyone else, he was no longer subjected to the perils of limited soul capacity. It was why he had no problems grabbing whatever useful skill he collected and adding it to his Schema without care.
SKILL ATTRIBUTES
SKILL
LEVEL
CONSUMED SOUL CAP
Raw Lifeforce Manipulation
3
5000
Kinetomancy (FRAGMENTED)
APEX
5908
Momentum Manipulation
3
5000
Friction Modulation
2
500
Pressure Modulation
2
500
Innate Gravity Control
2
500
Fire Creation
2
500
Fire Manipulation
2
500
Temperature Modulation
2
500
Earth Manipulation
2
500
Terraportation
2
500
Seismic Sensing
2
500
Conjuration
2
500
Disintegration
2
500
Shatterpoint Intuition
2
500
Psychomancy
2
500
Lukas arched his brow. His Schema had come a long way from what it used to be. The Skills section was neatly arranged in proper stacks, with all related skills tied up together in a singular stack. Funnily enough, the Seismic Sensing skill he had gotten from the thoggua was placed next to Earth Manipulation and Terraportation, while Innate Gravity Control was placed in the Kinetomancy cluster alongside Momentum, Pressure and Friction Manipulation. Kinetomancy had gotten the newest boost as had Psychomancy.. Inanna had described Kinetomancy as a cluster that encompassed every motion-related skill in existence. Momentum, Pressure, Friction and most recently, Gravity— all of them were tied to force.
“Are you done preening over your stats?”
Lukas flushed and dismissed his Schema when he realized Tanya was staring at him. He glanced at her and was confronted by an arched brow.
“Uh, yes.”
The brow rose higher.
Embarrassed, he looked away.
“Given the kind of stunts you pull off with just lifeforce, I assume you’ve got a Level 3 skill there?”
Lukas stiffened at that for a moment before nodding.
“See?” Tanya reacted, pointing fingers at him accusingly, “Right there! It’s impossible to gain skills that fast. I’ve been honing my skills for years, and I only have two Level-3 skills. For the Goddess’s sake, I’ve seen people take decades before they gain a Level-3 skill and you— you know you’re pretty messed up, right?”
“Don’t I know it?” He took a deep breath, relishing in the feel of the cold, wet wind touching his face. “Ask yourself, how did someone with no skills and no information become the guy you know in so little time?”
“Before I got to know you, I’d say it was likely a combination of working hard, an Arcane skill from this Goddess of yours, plus a lot of luck.” She took in the fog-covered landscape before her. “Now? I’m gonna add a very high ECR and a superior Schema to that list.”
“ECR?”
“Exchange-Conversion-Ratio.” She began, but the Screen was quicker.
Rate of Conversion of Experience into Soul Capacity
“....into your soul capacity.”
Huh. You learn something new everyday.
“Every time you hit the Threshold, you Level Up and gain a specific amount of soul capacity, based on how high or low your ECR is.”
What’s my ECR?
NIL
Whatever had happened in the Anomaly that had unlocked the Prime Host feature had also unlocked its infinite soul capacity for his use. It also seemed to have deleted his own ECR.
What was my ECR before the Warmonger Protocol?
68%
Which meant… nothing. Not without a relative reference point. “Say, Tanya, what’s the average bremetan ECR?”
“The lower ones drag all the way down to twenty and below. The higher ups are probably in the fifties and maybe in the lower sixties… what?” She demanded, looking at the surprise that flickered through his features. “I’m sure you’ve a high ECR. What’s it?”
“Sixty-eight percent.”
Tanya looked at him, impressed. “That’s among the top percentile among bremetans.”
“You’re surprised?”
“Not at the value. After everything you can do, this is just trivial. No, I’m just… surprised you told me the true value, knowing what it means.”
Lukas shrugged. “Gotta start with trusting someone, right?”
“I thought that was Zuken.”
Lukas rolled his eyes. Maybe she was a bit sour about finding things about him from Zuken. Had she grown to think of herself as someone Lukas trusted over the others? It was true she knew him longer than the others and had been vocal in his favor, despite what happened over the Dranzithl. Having Zuken tell her his secrets must have felt bitter.
Which was exactly why Banksi had done it.
“He and I… we have a deal. He helps me out with whatever I want, and in return, I work for him, whatever that entails.”
“From what I heard, you chose to tell him things yourself.”
Lukas sighed at the petulance in her tone. “Sometimes, a choice isn’t a choice at all, Tanya. He already had a ton of information by testing my body when I was in my month-long beauty-sleep. In his defense, my own demands were pretty outrageous too, so I had to give away some secrets to even the odds, and is it just me, or are you being jealous about it?”
Tanya flushed. “...Jealous? You’re crazy.”
She looked away.
Yep. Definitely jealous.
“But while we are at that, I don’t see you talking about your ECR.”
The challenge was clear in his words.
Tanya looked hesitant for a few seconds. She was probably considering the pros and cons of giving in to his demand. Finally, she made up her mind and looked him in the eye.
“Eighty-seven percent.”
“...and what level are you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“...I thought the upper percentile lay in the sixties.”
Tanya looked away. “You asked. I answered. Leave it there.”
Lukas’s eyes brightened as he made a mental note of what she did and did not say. If the upper percentile lay in the sixties and she held an eighty-seven ECR, and if she had indeed leveled-up twenty-two times then…
“Tell me something,” he said. “Does Zuken know exactly what you’re capable of?”
Tanya paused, and then after several seconds of consideration, shook her head.
“Then why tell me?”
She knitted her brows and bit her lips. “You told me something about you. Trust has to go both ways, doesn’t it?”
Inwardly, he was starting to put things together. Back then when he had woken up, one of the first things Tanya had inquired was if he was there to kill her. Something in that tone told him that her fears weren’t exactly limited to her issues with the Cobalt Army. She was strong and swift, and could literally blitz through an entire force and yet, here she was, working for a shady man under a shady deal. Hell, part of why she was trying to establish a solid equation with him wasn’t because of growing feelings or camaraderie, but because he knew part of her secret— her Frost, and was instrumental in subduing it. That and he was an outlier, much like herself, only solidified his worth in her eyes. It was why she had seen him be so carefree towards others, including Banksi himself, but was still trying to establish a stronger bond with him. No, it was more apt to say that she was doing this because he was so carefree about others.
This wasn’t a person trying to gnaw into his secrets. This was a girl seeking shelter in a storm.
“So…” Her voice broke his reverie. “Was I right?”
Lukas blinked. “In what?”
“Your secret. A High ECR, a superior Schema, and copying skills of your kills?”
“All of that, and one more thing.”
“Which is?”
“Compromise.”
Tanya cocked her head. “Compromise?”
Lukas laughed. “Yeah, doesn’t feel like it, doesn’t it? But it is. People say there are no compromises on the path to power, but that’s not true. In every step forward, you have to compromise. Choose between what you have, what you can achieve, and what you need to leave behind in return. As long as the compromise is worth more than you give up, it’s worth it.”
He exhaled loudly. “My teacher once told me that Might makes Right, that I need to grab power, no matter the cost. Had I accepted things back then, maybe I’d have a complete education. But I was naive, idealistic, I suppose. In the end, it came full circle, and despite me agreeing to everything, it was a little too late. And now, I’m trying to make amends in my own stupid way.”
Tanya bit her lip. “Your teacher… Was she this Goddess you mentioned?”
Lukas stared at her, wondering how much to tell. She had just shared a bit about herself. Something that could land her in danger. Together with the Frost, Lukas was now privy to two of her most dangerous secrets.
Trust goes both ways, she had said.
So be it.
“Yes.”
“You were trained by an actual Goddess?”
He thought back to Inanna's brutal training regimen, her quips and philosophy.
“It wasn’t exactly tutelage. It was a bargain. Everything I received, I paid a price for.”
Inanna would not put it any other way. The least he could do was acknowledge that.
Tanya stared at him with unblinking eyes. “Tutored by a Goddess. Has at least one arcane and a Level-3 skill Doesn’t know the fundamentals. Yeah, you’re pretty messed up. Still, you’ve got high lifeforce and mana output, so that has to count for something. Zuken told me to try teaching you different styles of combat and related skills, maybe even some spells along the way. He assured me you could digest all of it.” She paused, “You do have a large soul capacity, don’t you?”
Lukas cast his mind to the infinity value in his Schema, the ever-growing number of monster prototypes in his Array. He thought about the hundreds and thousands of skills mashed up together inside the Blob and how each and every one of them could be potentially added, used and upgraded while making zero difference to his overall soul capacity.
Then he opened his mouth.
“Yes.”
Tanya grunted, oblivious to his thoughts. “Well, that’s nice I suppose. We can make this first job a training session for you.”
“Right,” Lukas drawled, “is that why you kept your mouth shut during those times I asked you to explain this stuff to me earlier?”
Tanya winked. “Zuken thought you’d learn better on the way. Also, it’s fun. The borderlands are usually vast and filled with obstacles. It’ll be nice seeing where you really stand after it's done with you.”