Nighttime was the perfect time to test the new and improved stealth, and what better way to do that than battle? I headed to the Drago-Worm’s territory in search of an opponent, luckily they didn’t disappoint.

RUMBLEEEE

BOOM

A worm dived out of the sand to attack me….but it found nothing. The skill worked just as planned!

Instead of wasting energy on hiding myself from vision, I diverted that power to hiding my scent and sound making the worm unable to find me at all. Since my scent and sound were hidden, I could divert its attention elsewhere by faking it. I created a loud cacophony right before escaping to lead the worm where I wanted.

As the worm dived back into the sand preparing for an attack I in turn readied my bow. I was aiming for the worm’s neck joint and to make sure I could accomplish this I used stealth to conceal the arrow I was about to fire.

ROAAAAAR

When the sand worm soared through the air again I used my newly created brain boost combo, and since I was using berserk all my other stats were raised….including my strength.

Time virtually slowed down as I drew the bow string back as much as I could without breaking it. I was able to predict where the worm would end up thanks to my laplace authority, releasing the arrow there. I added on my Power Strike skill to ensure the kill and watched the arrow as it was released.

The arrow split the air as it travelled to the point I aimed at seeming like a beam of light, slicing straight through the worm…and finally ending this battle.

[Congratulations! Player has Slain a Sand Drago-Worm]

[Experience Gained]

[LEVEL UP]

[Laplace Authority is now Level 2]

[Parallel Thinking is now Level 2]

[Speed Processing is now Level 2]

Seeing the fruits of my training in a real battle was reassuring to me. It showed that even I could grow stronger through training, strong enough to leap through this wall called “talent.” Now that I’ve found a path that I could head on….I needed to devote my all to completing it.

As I headed back to the shelter to improve on my newfound training, I checked what my powered up skills could do:

[Laplace Authority Lv2: Passive gives the user prediction bordering on true foresight up to 5 seconds forward, repeated use my cause mental stress]

[Parallel Thinking Lv2: The user can now execute even more complex thoughts in tandem while decreasing the strain on the brain]

[Speed Processing Lv2: Gives the user processing ability equivalent to that of a modern computer]

I couldn’t have asked for a better way to improve, now that I could execute more complicated thoughts while lessening the strain on my brain, the brain boost combo was only going to get stronger from here.

I had come to learn that the system offered me two ways to improve. Levelling up skills through combat caused the system to force my body to catch up and be able to use the skills.

On the other hand, gaining understanding of a skill and levelling it through repetition gains familiarity and improves my body without a feeling of disconnection.

The former is like holding onto a speeding car and launching forcefully behind it, never quite catching up while the latter was closer to picking up the speed slowly enough to reach it on your own.

Although I had no clue how to better my understanding of some skills, I definitely did have skills that I could better assimilate into my being, thereby growing stronger.

The next skill I wanted to focus on was Power Strike. Although the concept of this skill was simple enough, the skill itself had a lot of destructive potential in my eyes. I rechecked the description for this skill as well.

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[Power Strike Lv2: The user’s next attack can possesses up to 5 times the power.

Max MP Cost: 100]

This was the first skill I gained that used the mana status, giving me an even firmer belief that I could improve it. I activated the new and improved brain boost combo while applying power strike to a sword I pulled from the inventory.

As I activated the skill, I watched very closely the mana that was being drained from me. I was looking for two things, its origin, and its end point.

When I focused on the feeling of being drained and followed it, I found that the mana’s origin point was in my chest, more specifically my heart and lungs. This was quite a surprise for me, that unlike with stealth, I actually had my own mana to utilise.

I watched the mana travel to my sword, but instead of coating the sword as if I were using Stealth, the mana seeped into the blade itself as if merging with its steel, creating a sort of lattice-like structure.

This time, without activating the skill, I tried to sense my mana and how it travelled. I focused on my lungs first, more specifically my breath. As I sat in a meditative position I felt the mana from the air going through my breath down to my lungs. From there, the mana seeped into my blood and travelled into my heart.

However instead of travelling directly from the heart, it stayed there for a few breaths as more mana was added on. When the mana finally pumped from the heart, there was much less, but it felt much purer and spread to the rest of my body while “something” was expelled out as I exhaled.

I realised that this “something” was impurities, and the reason the mana stayed in my heart was for it to be purified. As soon as I reached that conclusion, I felt my body get lighter and my brain get flooded with information while the system sounded out:

[Congratulations! Requirements for skill unlock achieved!]

[Unlocked Skill, Mana Sense (Beginner)]

[ Mana Sense (Beginner): You can sense the movements of the mana around you and discern the different types.]

The world around me gained a new depth to it as I started to feel dizzy from all the new things I was now able to feel. If I was able to feel the movement of the mana as a single entity before, I could now sense the different particles moving individually.

Another thing I could feel were those “different types” mentioned in the skill, it was as if the particles had a distinguished feeling to them. About one fifth of the particles I could feel were very stable and unmoving, robust even. Another set was quite the opposite, very free in their movements and unable to stay in one place for too long. Although I could sense more types of particles, one felt much fainter than the other, those particles were quite ‘fluid’ and flexible. The last and most abundant particles around me felt very warm, like the sunlight, but somehow more dangerous and unpredictable.

I decided to test my newfound mana sense in depth the next day, but for now I had to focus on my other skills. I also chose to practice power strike while learning more about mana sense, meaning it had to be delayed until tomorrow. Now this only left one skill on today’s agenda, Navigation.

At the beginning, the skill was very useful to me, but now with my heightened senses and the fact that there were monsters that could hide from it, the skill lost many of its uses. I desperately wanted to learn how to improve this skill.

I activated the skill this time and tried to spot any “mana fluctuations”…. which netted me an unexpected gain! The particles around me started vibrating before moving out, specifically the “free-spirited” particles. Once they came back the mental map started forming, this meant that this skill worked like a sonar!

I activated the skill a second time, but this time, I activated a brain boost. When the wave was sent out, I calculated its frequency by counting the amount of “waves” coming back in one second. The waves were fast, but not too fast to count in this state. However if it was the old brain boost combo I wouldn’t have been able to do it, the levelled up skills improved this combo by around tenfold.

Anyway, as I was counting the frequency of this wave I realised that it was quite fast, but with said speed came a bit of inaccuracy. For the third test I tried to use the skill as a medium, like with stealth, to control the frequency of the wave, making it slightly slower.

This way, as I predicted, I was able to get more details about the surroundings even if it took slightly longer to show up. The slower the waves went the more details I got, but eventually it became too slow to really help me navigate. I managed to create the perfect ratio of speed to accuracy after a few more tries improving the overall quality of this skill. My progress was displayed to me as a system message:

[Navigation is now Level 4]

[Navigation Lv4: User can now control the speed and accuracy of the navigation along with the distance up to a certain point.]

This filled me with satisfaction, but I wasn’t done yet. For my next test I wanted to try using other particles like the fiery ones or the robust one. I couldn’t use the fluid-like particles because they were very sparse in this area.

I first tried to test the fiery particles because they felt close in feeling with the free particles. As I sent them out, what I received next shocked me. Instead of a map that looked like it came from a GPS, I instead received a thermal map. The map had different types of heat signatures but it was mostly just the ambient temperature surrounding me.

Since I had to further test this one in battle, I decided to try the robust particles. When I activated the skill this time, instead of flying through the air, the particles dove into the ground for a small amount of time.

Instead of a map of the surroundings I got a map of the underground…..this was amazing. I wasn't completely sure but this might be my solution to detecting the sand worms and other underground enemies. I couldn't test the last set of particles so I decided to call it a night and got ready for the next day… I could not go home just yet. There shouldn't be a problem since only a few hours should’ve passed outside….