“Need help with your wounds or anything?” Michael offered. It looked like the reanimated corpse hounds had savaged both her left forearm and right shoulder. Although thanks to her biker jacket, the wounds only looked to be superficial in nature.

“I’ll be fine,” Kyrie said, giving him a sarcastic smile. “Just open your green drop already. Once our SP recharges I want to get out of here. I’m sure you don’t want to bed down here for the night.” Kyrie’s nose wrinkled in distaste.

Michael nodded. There were likely still plenty of white bulbs around. Who could say whether they died with the creature or could recover on their own. Regardless, they did not have the time to clear them all before nightfall, and even if they could clear all the ones they could find, Michael was not sure that he would ever feel comfortable here. For all he knew, the creeping ivy could have bulbs hidden in the walls, the floors, or underground. Like a weed or its name source, perhaps the creature would be nearly impossible to fully get rid of. Last thing either of them wanted in the place they planned to spend the night were vines that could come out of anywhere and smoother them in their sleep.

Not wanting to delay checking out his spoils anymore, Michael retreated to one of the desks. It would provide a good seat for him to recover his SP that had depleted down to the mid teens. Seconds later he had his interface open and had opened his gift.

Michael could not help but frown at first look. The green drop would not unlock another secondary attribute. It was a skill.

[Quickened Step: this skill enables the contender to burn SP for a major boost to agility and a minor boost to dexterity. SP cost will vary based on duration and potency of boost. This skill is compatible with the Secondary attribute: ki.]

Michael studied the interface notice for a moment. The benefits the skill would give seemed promising, but there were also the costs. He was already depleting through his SP pool in battles that required him to face around 15 to 20 opponents. Then there was the fact he did not currently possess the secondary attribute the skill was compatible with. Overall the skill was not suited to how he was right now. Perhaps it would be prudent to try to see if he could trade the skill for something else.

But Michael did not consider it actually doing so. What were the chances that someone else would even do the same. Not to mention if someone did, who could say whether the next skill would be any better. Perhaps there would be a time, when such considerations would come into play, but it was still early. If the thing really ate through SP, then it would probably offer benefits that matched the expenditure. He could always boost his stamina pool in the future. As far as him not having the secondary attribute. It did not matter since he was determined to get them all eventually anyways.

Michael used the skill on himself. It felt like he had been hit with a jolt of electricity to his consciousness as the requisite knowledge was added to his brain. Michael instantly shifted his interface to the Special abilities page, since it was the only way for him to check out his new skill with his depleted SP. Fortunately, the page gave an exact detail of what exactly the skill did for the user.

[Quickened Step: Skill that allows the user to drastically increase their speed and reaction. At level 1, the starting duration is 1 step. During that step the user will get a 20% boost to agility and a 10% boost to dexterity. The cost is 5 SP per use.]

Michael would be lying if he said he did not feel extremely scammed by the skill. His bottom jaw hung agape as he stared dumbly. What a real let down. Michael shook his head, deciding to do the math to see if he was mistaken about something. Nope it would just give him an extra 4 pts in agility and 2.5 pts in dexterity. All for only 1 step, and it would cost a whopping 5 SP per a use.

Sure it could make up a critical difference in a difficult moment, but it was not something that would help him strike down titans with a single strike. Then considering its high SP cost, Michael was sure that almost anything else would have been better.

But after dwelling on it for another minute and studying the skill status. Michael noticed the one thing he had glossed over for the past minute. The skill was level 1, and terms like starting. When he had gotten the shaping skill, he had looked up skills in the encyclopedia. They could be improved through practice or level up rewards. Michael found the appropriate encyclopedia entry on his first try.

[Skill upgrades: various aspects of skills can be upgraded through skill upgrades or practice. Each subsequent level is more difficult to reach. (Warning: once a skill level has been confirmed the changes cannot be undone.]

Aspects…? Were those the duration, potency, and cost? A lot of questions came to Michaels mind the more he thought about it. It was all unknown, but there were a few things he was fairly sure of.

For starters, the aspects of a skill could be a lot of different things, but almost definitely included duration, potency, and cost. Each level up would make changes to one or more of those aspects. Finally, the progression path was not set. Two contenders with the same skill could go entirely new ways with the skill.

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Michael thought through the various possibilities. It was likely, just like the shaping ability. If he pushed the skill in certain directions those aspects would be the ones that would change upon level up. Could he add other aspects, such as a strength increase on top of the agility and dexterity? The possibilities were endless. He dwelt on them a bit.

Obviously, he would want to improve all the aspects of the skill. If he could lower the cost by half, the skill could be used twice as often. If he could improve the duration, he would be able to cover a lot of ground extremely quickly. If he increased the potency then the boost would be more beneficial.

It did not take Michael more than a few minutes to think about where he would want to take the skill. The concept of trying to add other aspects to the skill such as a strength increase was interesting to think about, but it would probably be like trying to swim upstream. It would be better to make the skill a better version of what it was, instead of a weaker all purpose skill. The cost was prohibitive right now, but he could always add more SP. He needed more potency and a longer duration first. He would have to actually try out the skill first before deciding which would be more beneficial.

Michael threw his stat point into endurance, bringing it up to 14. Five more stat points would give him more leeway to both practice and work his skill into combat. For a moment, Michael had toyed with offering the stat point to Kyrie since she had helped significantly in the battle, and as far as Michael knew she had not gotten anything from the fight in the basement. Whereas he had gotten two attribute points and the green drop they had come for. However, Michael had quickly decided against it. She had not requested anything, and his greed won out over consideration.

“All done?” Kyrie asked, snapping to her feet. She once again had her jacket donned. She had removed it for a few minutes to address the wounds on her forearm and shoulder, before quickly throwing it back on. “Now give me my machete back,” Kyrie snapped, holding the bat and knife out for him to take.

Michael sighed. “Darn, I was hoping the trade would be permanent,” he said, exchanging weapons.

“You wish, now tell me about what you got while we find a place to clear out for the night,” Kyrie directed.

It did not take them long to locate a suitable place. There were several manors in the historic residential area that would be suitable. Clearing one out was a simple task since they only ran into the basic zombies. There were a couple tier 1’s but they could hardly pose a threat for either of them at this point. Michael’s guilt over keeping the extra drops from the bosses today were alleviated slightly when Kyrie got a white drop during the process.

Michael had told her about his skill and his assumptions about the possibilities during their trip and during dinner afterwards. She was clearly as excited about the prospects as him, but the excitement was tempered by the fact that she was not the one with the skill to level. After dinner, Michael excused himself and found another inner room. They would sleep in the same room for safety, but he wanted to try out his new skill.

He summoned a basic white ball of energy for light and quickly found that it did not hamper his ability to actually use the skill. It only took him 10 minutes to get a good handle on things. It was difficult to really ascertain the boost to his attributes during the skill’s usage since he was in a room by himself with no other things to reference, but he did glean a couple of key insights. First, there was a cooldown period required between uses. Right now, it seemed to be anywhere from 6 to 10 seconds.

Then Michael could feel himself pushing the boundaries of the skill, when he focused on its use. It was possible that the skill would upgrade automatically if used enough, but Michael was sure that if he was intentional with pushing the boundaries, he would increase the level faster and get greater benefits for doing so. He would have to be extremely deliberate everytime he used the skill.

Michael continued on for another hour, but eventually he had to call it quits. His SP simply would not regenerate fast enough to make continuing worthwhile. Michael felt slightly let down, that his skill was still level one, but when he reentered the room and saw Kyrie’s dirty look he could not help but smirk. She was clearly jealous of both his new skill and shaping ability. She could only lay there and practice her mental control.

Not his problem, Michael decided plopping down in the opposite corner. Kyrie probably would not kill him in his sleep… probably. They had known each other for basically one full day, but they had been through quite a bit together. Then it occurred to him that he would be sleeping in the same room as a female around his age. He felt himself flush at the thought. Michael could not help but dwell on the thought.

Kyrie was not the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, but she was probably prettier than any girl that he could have hoped to end up for the past 19 years. Maybe that was not saying much, his life expectations had been fairly abysmal since he was stuck in the bottom half of Steeple city with little hope to progress.

It was then that he noticed it, and all thoughts of his companion dropped from mind. There was a second name on his contact list that was grayed out with a line through it. Michael stared at the name right above Vince and Shin. Michele, the tall strong blond he had met on day 2 had died at some point today.

A somber feeling took over his mood. Once again like Hannah, he had not really had much more than a brief interaction with the blond, but she had been a very pleasant person, both on the eyes and as a person.

How had it happened? Michael wondered, although he could not help but eye Vince’s name. Michele had allegedly been the strongest of the trio, so it was a bit surprising that she would be the only one dead. Michael thought about it a little longer. If Vince had killed her, it was unlikely that he would not have also dealt with Shin, so perhaps he was mistaken. In the end, it was sad, but unlike the situation with Hannah where he had refused to escort her to a safer area, he had not interacted with Michele for days. In no shape or form could he construe that if he had made different choices she would still be alive.

Michael dismissed his interface and lay back on the pillow he had taken off one of the wooden chairs in another room. It was still pretty early, but if he went to sleep now, he would wake up even earlier. With how strong he was now and with Kyrie’s help there should not be an issue going out before the sun had even risen. Like him, Kyrie wanted to leave as soon as they were both ready. Now if only his left foot was not throbbing in pain. It had been so easy to semi ignore, during the day, but now that he was laying here…