---Richard---

“…and the skill has parts of this and this…Got it! I’ll mix a bit of everything with a double shot of kinetic-suppressing serum to start. Lie back on this chair here and I’ll get you hooked up.” The grad student finally finished his shit and waved Richard over.

Richard didn’t move. This was all happening with a bit too little input on his part. He wasn’t going to just strap himself to the machine without being told what it did.

A flash of the last time he had been at a ‘scientist’s’ mercy flash through his head and he felt himself tense involuntarily.

“First tell me what skill breaking is. Tell me what you’re going to do to me.” Richard backed slightly towards the tray beside him. If the fucker tried anything he’d stab him with the scissors right there.

“You came here wanting to break your skill? …fine. Sorry for jumping ahead” Walking away from the machine ‘Rags’ sat on a chair and spent a moment adjusting himself to be comfortable – oblivious to the man eyeing sharp implements behind him. Rags pulled up a whiteboard and a…strange looking pen and began sketching as he talked – his pen appearing to almost spray paint his words onto the board.

“Before I get into how I plan on breaking your skill I’ll tell you what breaking a skill means.” The student began. Rag’s verbal ticks appeared to slip away as he talked. His body began to move smoother – it was as if he was entering a trance while talking.

“New skills are locked away. We can’t access them – you can’t do anything with them. Well – except for ‘use’ them of course in their limited original capacity. Think of the skills you obtain from dungeons or nests as seeds trapped in a glass bowl.” Reggie began making a shitty sketch of a seed surrounded by a fishbowl.

“There’s many a ways to break the bowl and get the seed – and we want the seed because that’s the only way you can grow it into a tree.

The first way is to simply break the bowl and shove all the insides straight into your body. This is what you do if you want to keep the skill – it will briefly become much much harder to use…but as long as you break the bowl cleanly that will soon be fixed. Your body will form new pathways to the seed…and the seed being attached more firmly to your body will now be able to grow. Your seed will be nourished by your body. Your body will be nourished by your seed.

Sympathetic aether connections will resonate between body processes and the skill. Badda bing badda boom you now have an ability that can grow stronger the more you use it. Like a muscle breaking and growing new fibres when you work out, pushing the skill will strengthen it.

This sort of break can be done ‘naturally’ – essentially breaks need certain chemicals and thought patterns which are usually created in stressful situations. Adrenaline is a big one – why adrenaline reacts with skills so well is unknown, but the connection is easily measured.

Now –” The grad student clicked a button on his pen which turned it into an eraser of sorts – it actually sucked up all the sketches like a tiny vacuum. I want one.

Spinning his pen a bit, then clicking the button and starting a new sketch Rags continued.

“The skill itself will break naturally if you attempt to use it to do something outside of its limited initial capabilities. Using a movement skill to create fire for example. Using a skill that usually makes one type of energy make another. Aether can do that easily – skills on the other hand are usually too limited to work in that capacity.

The problem with this wild sort of break, is its rarely ever clean. Using the fishbowl analogy, you’ll shatter the bowl to place the seed in your body… but accidentally nick the seed with glass shards… or fill your body with those glass shards – best case they take a while to heal and expel from your body, worse case they negatively effect your physical body somehow. Permanent mutations. Strange dependencies and desires. People who can only use their skill in arbitrary situations or are inexplicably weakened if they don’t do certain random actions.

This is what we call a bad break – incredibly common for those who attempt to break their own skills. Any break that stunts the growth of the ‘seed’ is a bad break – there’s no point breaking a skill if you know it won’t grow in the future.

That’s why there are serums you can buy to increase the probability of breaking successfully.

Instead of needing a stressful situation, drugs can increase your heartbeat to the needed level and prep the area with the desired chemicals. A perfect serum, instead of shattering the glass bowl, melts it away and gently places the ‘seed’ in your body.

The base idea of suppression serums, is to fill your body with an inhibitor to provide resistance for your skill. If its kinetic-based like yours might be, it will block physical movement – K-Powder in trace amounts is a low-level ingredient for kinetic breaking methods.

...There are some external methods of skill suppressing that also work and will be employed by this machine.

Next, you’ll activate your skill and, if everything works perfectly, the skill will push up against the resistance and break in the process. You following?” The grad student turned from the mess of scribbles on his board to glance at Richard as if just noticing he was there.

“…yeah, straightforward enough. Break the restrictions preventing skills from growing. Got it.” Richard responded – still not completely sure he was on board with this whole plan. Maybe he should try and break it himself? No drugs? K-powder was poisonous wasn’t it? And that was just one of the substances that would be pumped into his body.

“Here’s where you have a choice. Option one is for if you like your skill. Break it cleanly and carefully then leave it alone. That’s all we need to do. Push the ‘seed’ into your body and let time and random mutations increase its strength. This option’s usually what delvers do if they find they have a skill that’s hard to replicate. If you have a dissolution skill for example, a lot of dissolution weapons are insanely expensive and a natural skill can sometimes be better than nothing...same with anything that creates matter or more accurately converts energy to either regular matter or pseudo matter. We – humanity in general – haven’t managed to replicate either of those to practical levels yet.

Some have figured out how to influence those breaks – cloaking for example is an aspect of light manipulation that gives you effective visual invisibility. Doesn’t block infrared or hide your scent or sound but its still invisibility.

It's quite easy to twist any light-based skills into a cloaking one if needed… but official channels all have permits and stuff for those – puts you on a list.

The second option is a more modern one – an option only a decade old at this point but one that a huge portion of you guys pick.

What we do in this case is to gather all the spread ‘seed’ from throughout your body and concentrate it into a single spot. We give you an interfaceable node. Push the seed into that node and scrub it as much as we can until you have a pure aether source – or as close as pure as we can get.

You see aether can do a huge array of tasks…when you realize what aether can do, you’ll bemoan most skills as lacking. Why should you have to stick with the affinity you received by random? Why should you be a slave to random mutations?

At a general glance, aether doesn’t do anything alone – instead, it's powerful because of how it affects other forces. Aether can very efficiently convert, transfer and store energy from one source to another. That’s the simplest understanding of it as a fundamental force.

Your current skill works the same way it's just not visible to you yet – it should have what you know as a cool down. That’s how long it takes for the aether to refill – and it's refilling based on your internal chemical energy.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Food essentially. The stronger your skills the more calories you need to consume – your body will convert the chemical energy into aether and your abilities will convert that aether into a result.” The inventor began to ramble about three-dimensional reaction plots and the efficiency between converting energy to aether and then back to a different form of energy…

…His explanation breaks down when you realize I don’t have a cooldown.

Finally Rag’s seemed to pull himself slightly out of his excited description to continue his description.

“Sorry, you don’t care. Having an Aether slot lets you interface with tools – mankind has only advanced this far because of their use of tools after all! Ignoring them and trying to rely only on your body is foolish…There are two big bonuses for this option – you can often use any tool that requires an Aether slot and should said ‘tool’ fail, you can replace it with another.

You can swap between weapons if you need – you won’t be forced to pick one for each slot.

And if you go the slot based option you still have a method of growth. If you maintain a connection to a tool for long enough it will increase in strength – your own Aether warping and binding it to you. The more you use tools, the stronger your Aether source itself will become. Win, Win.

So…are you ready to break your skill? Do you know what you want me to aim for?” The lecture ended – Rags staring at Richard as if only now remembering why he was explaining things.

“Shit, you sold me. Pretty good pitch all together – I’m sold. Hook me up.” Richard found himself agreeing and setting himself into place.

“So can you give me an invisibility skill? That seems like the best by far – so much better than my current skill. It would be useful for…delving.” Richard laughed trying to keep himself jovial as the student attempted to stab him with a needle. Despite being a tiny point, his defence made it hard for the grad student to manage – by the end it looked like he was putting his full force on the device just to get it inside Richard's arm.

“I’m really sorry. Your skill is too far away for me to figure it out…your better off gaining a cloaking item if you want invisibility. All it really is at the end of the day is a manner of transporting light from one side of you to the other without warping it in between…simple stuff. Not as useful as you are imagining however – a lot of monsters have a second or third way of figuring out where you are,” Rags spoke – he really did sound apologetic.

I didn’t want it to fight monsters, but I get it.

“Well…Yeah, I’m not happy with my current skill. Give me a slot or whatever.” Richard laid his head back watching as the grad student opened a drawer and pulled out several disks.

They looked like metal batteries. Perfectly round disks of roughly polished slightly matte materials.

“Titanium and the slot alloy made from it is the safest base metal to use in the body – but it's incredibly expensive. Incredibly incredibly expensive – I don’t even know how they extract that metal…

So, I’m sorry to say don’t have any on hand and even if I did, I wouldn’t be happy using it for free on a volunteer. I’d probably ask you to pay – if only to chip in for the slot price.

The Iron alloy on the other hand is relatively safe so long as you have a few defensive stats – it tends to make worse interfaces – but then again so does titanium at the start.

Copper is also a heavy metal and a bit iffy…but it has really great conductivity and you have more than enough chemical defense to deal with it…incredibly cheap but not because it’s the worst option at all.

Could also try out the one I made myself – it’s a zinc carbon mix I made weeks ago but it's untested – should be safe with the amount of defense you have.

So, what do you say? Which would you prefer? Also where do you want it inserted – some places are harder to interface with than others. Most men like them on their forearms – makes it easy to attach to guns and stuff? Could also try the back of your hand but that’s harder for me…could try the middle of your chest? Best spot for armour?”

“Forarm’s fine man.” Richard waved him on and watched as he pulled out a pad and placed it on his arm.”

“…numbing agent might not work, depends on what brand of chemical defense you’ve got.” He muttered under his breath before suddenly Richard noticed the tubes had activated.

A massive hum filled the air and steam began belching out of the side of the machine.

Is this steam powered? Really? I was starting to think the place wasn’t a steampunk city after all.

A huge whine filled the air. Pulses of something passed through the machine down the tubes and into the liquid in his side and arm and leg – how many places had the young scientist attached to him? Richard didn’t remember all those…

Turning to him partway through the grad student had a manic gleam in his eye as he shouted “use your skill!”

Richard activated [Aura of chaos].

All of a sudden, a hose unplugged – spraying a thin oily substance across Richard's leg and arm. His skill did not seem at all suppressed – that went right through whatever fuckery was going on with the tubes and machine.

Grimacing the grad student re-attached the tube and shifted a few dials – the hum changing a sick buzz passing through Richard's body.

“Again! As soon as your cooldown's done!” The grad student yelled over the sound of his machine – seeming to be studying several readouts that were passing across a board in excitement.

…Now would probably be a bad time to mention I don’t have a cooldown – just a limited resource and 2 more shots before I have to go out and cause more chaos.

Richard reached out and activated his skill – it felt strange. He already couldn’t fully describe how activating his skill felt but now it felt like pushing something through butter.

Like there was a button he had to press but it was on the other side of a stick of softened butter – the button pressed fine but he had to scrape aside some shit to get to it first.

Richard waited for the mad scientist to pull out a vial of foam – nothing else just foam – walking over to Richard quickly and shoving it in his mouth like a lollipop. Tapping the edge a tasteless bubbly material flew to the back of Richard's throat and slid down like he had swallowed a cappuccino’s top.

“Drastic measures! Again!” Rags yelled returning once more to the machine to check some dials or something.

Attempting to activate his skill Richard felt it almost work – a blue popup dominating his vision.

[Aura of Mayhem] breaking due to environment. Do you wish to break your skill

Yes No

In the background he heard the inventor shout “That one should have worked!” his voice distorting through the translator.

Selecting yes Richard felt a buckle.

A break.

Throughout his body, countless tingles seemed to swarm – now the inventor was bringing what looked like a metal detector over his chest dragging the tingles toward Richard's arm.

Pulling out a vibrating knife he sliced skin off Richard's arm next – Richard barely felt that – and pressed the copper alloy deep into the wound.

Immediately the man doused the area with a bottle of some green liquid – it bubbled and caused his skin to start rapidly healing.

Richard's body was trying to push the foreign object out.

Clamping down hard, the inventor pulled out yet another tool – this one a long rod that looked like it had just been removed from a hot fire – and pressed it down into the disk.

Richard felt himself buckle. The white-hot poker was like a super magnet dragging leftover bits of Aether source through his body – unlike the metal detector, the rod was more violent. Richard's body shook slightly as he felt something leave him.

[Body of chaos] breaking…Consent transferred.

Richard felt another wave of something – this one much much worse but also…nicer. Much more intense but…less invasive. It felt like a tight glove slipping into place his skill was already close to his body and it bound tightly in seconds.

The Inventor didn’t seem to notice – he was busy pushing various clips toward Richard's arm and waving things around it.

“I think we managed it!” Rags suddenly spoke up excitedly and stepped back to survey his handywork. “That wasn’t so bad was it?”

Richard briefly wanted to hit him before suddenly he breathed out and began laughing instead.

“Yeah. We did it – what was that foam you shoved down my throat at the end?”

“Compound extracted from a monster that is hard to damage with skills. Less scientific to use ingredients you don’t understand but it worked. You’re going to want to wait a bit before using that – there’s a high chance your body will reject and try and heal the slot out of you if you stress it... I’ll give you a small device you can use to start training it up – on the house. Just give me a bit to write some stuff down.

Pulling out his pen once more Rags began writing down his notes on the side of the machine – forgetting to go back to the whiteboard.

Richard waited, his body quickly feeling more normal. He felt great actually – better than before.

It almost felt like his skill was seeping through and fixing the death penalty – but that couldn’t be right could it? The penalty was a timed nerf to punish deaths wasn’t it?

…or was it just a natural side effect of resurrection? The gamemasters claiming the ‘bug’ was a feature and moving on?

That made a lot of sense.

… “Can I go?” Richard asked looking about. Rags seemed completely engrossed in his work – it reminded him of how NPC’s acted in games after you finished a questline. They just started puttering and pretending you had left.

“Alright, I’m heading out” Richard said and began walking towards the door. Just as Richard reached the exit the inventor turned and tossed a rod towards him.

"Use this to train your source until you have an item for it. Good luck and thanks for stopping by!" The inventor seemed to mean it.

...

Richard felt better than ever as he left the sketchy building and that meant something. It meant it was time for him to find the factory again. Find the factory. Get his money back – he needed something to buy a weapon or an invisibility cloak.

And…well. He had a few visits he needed to make somewhere in that todo list.

Richard was done holding back.