---James---

“If that’s all you need, we can start on the survey?” R asked with a noncommittal question – as if he didn’t quite care about the answer either way.

James hesitated for a moment longer than nodded.

“Perfect, one second” R began and began tossing his blue sheets to the side each sliding into James’s view a moment later.

Magical break.

Would you like your magical affinity focused outwards or inwards?

Internal magic requires manipulating mana within your body while external magic requires manipulating mana through external means. Internal mana scales on both body and mind stats while external may scale on variable requirements. Internal codified as [magic warrior], External codified as [mage]. Direction chosen locks your focus heavily and while warriors can affect the world outside of themselves and mages can effect their own body expanding from the field chosen remains more difficult.

Internal External

James only hesitated for a second.

Internal, my goal has always been to turn my own body into a weapon not give my power to random weapons.

Energy focus, effect focus.

Purify the power of a skill into a pure energy source using the effect mechanisms as fuel for the capture and containment of source aether – Physical node required to generate a slot. Majority of ability to create effects with aether source diminished until a tool is obtained or created and linked. Labelled Slot break.

Purify the power of a skill then dump into the body without containing it in a dedicated slot. Labelled natural skill node.

Focus on the ability to create effects by enhancing the effect mechanisms into physicality using source aether – additional trauma required to fuse ability base. Labelled Esper break.

Toss unenhanced effects and unpurified power into body hoping for some result. Labelled wild skill break. Aether aligned non focused break. High chance of keeping existing skill while unlocking growth potential. Chance of existing skills combining or influencing wild skill. Chance of skill mutations.

Each additional break may end in any of the focus areas, but subsequent breaks will lean heavily towards existing break methodology.

One broken skill needs to be set aside to embedded slot into item: AI.

Assign additional (2) skills to [Slot, Node, Esper, Wild]

This was a stranger question.

James hadn’t heard much about aether breaks if he was being honest. Everyone seemed to focus on creating slots as the meta. All three of the other versions seemed better to him – Wild was if he wanted to keep his current skill while ‘breaking’ its growth suppressor. Node was if he wanted a skill but didn’t like the skill, he was breaking to fuel it. Esper seemed new – he’d heard of espers while researching aether but hadn’t known how they were made. That sounded cool but also risky as there wasn’t much focus on what it would actually do. Node was also risky in a way – at least with a wild break he knew the type of skill he could grow, if he made a node it could be worse than the skill, he broke to make it.

And of course, until he figured out how to start making devices having a slot break would…be wasteful.

James thought for a bit then assigned things.

Haste – wild break. James liked haste.

Kinetic retaliation. Useful but…no he wouldn’t gamble on seeing what an Esper break would be or try and reset and grow a new one. This could be a wild break as well.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

So that left transference. A skill that so far was too niche to work properly. Could be useful if it worked instantly and didn’t require random positioning but…easily the skill James used the least. This could be the slot he used for an AI? Yeah, it seemed the safest.

…if he had broken skills already there was a high chance, he would have more than three skills by now. Sad but…at least now James could start picking up new ones.

Confirming his selection, the next question appeared.

Note Body stat you wish to host your off affinity.

Defense, moving on.

…no final panel appeared. James paused then glanced to R who was nodding to himself.

“That’s it?”

“Yep! Told you it would be fun. Now, are you ready?” R asked.

James took a moment then nodded.

“Alright then. This should move quickly once I start. First off, the base.”

Snapping his fingers a copy of James appeared standing just in front of him.

James tensed slightly and stared at the clone. It was his body all right…although it looked a bit weaker? Like his stats hadn’t been applied?

Suddenly a sharp burn was felt in his side and James looked down in shock.

R’s hand was embedded into his body. James started to move but found he couldn’t

Slowly R brought one of James’s two cores out of his body. R’s hand looked sharp for a second before turning normal outside of James’s stomach. Stabbing his hand into James’s clone James watched frozen as R did an incredibly rough transplant – no this couldn’t be a transplant. This was just shoving organs into people and healing their skin over top of it.

Pushing his clones kidney into his James’s body R stepped back licking the blood dripping down his arm absentmindedly.

“Now the chip and split. R spoke and suddenly James fractured.

----------------------------------------

---James---

James regained consciousness as he felt a forging object burrow through his head. The Ai…but it shouldn’t feel like this. Why does it feel like a metal spider is crawling through my ear? Richard said you barely noticed it.

His body felt…weak one moment and strong the next. Ahead of him stood his clone looking as shocked as he did…his clone was wearing James’s backpack.

Oh I’m the clone.

R snapped his fingers in front of James’s face.

“Alright, Consent has been acquired already so…Break as you’ve broken before.”

With those words James found a dozen ignored breaks suddenly rush through his skills. Each time he had dismissed the break message, each accrued break suddenly caught up to him.

Everything began to feel hot – James vaguely recognized the feelings of foreign energies traveling through his body and pooling in his stomach before a with a sharp gasp the defense in his body began to weaken and accommodate the energies.

Vaguely aware of R pushing a pill down his mouth James collapsed and felt the rampaging energies push aside and draw upon his bodies defensive stats.

Most of James’s defense was located in his blood. His veins and his heart. At the time he had been trying to avoid bleeding out and hoping the stats would minimise the weakness James had with dehydration…

Now they became channels for energy.

Suddenly not letting James rest R spoke once again. “Two as one.” And James blacked out for the second time.

----------------------------------------

---James---

James awoke, he had two sets of memories of the past minute or so confusingly jumbled and then…suddenly compartmentalized and fixed by his brain.

He remembered the feeling of the AI crawling into his head the aether – or had it been mana? Pushing through his veins.

He remembered feeling like the world was resonating with his body each of the concepts his skills contained slowly sinking into his very being. Revenge, Hording, accumulating, stealing, Escaping, All of >him< being infused by speed, Transfering, creating a decoy…

James shook his head and tried to make sense of things standing up slowly. Everything hurt – it was hard to focus on anything but how unstable his body felt.

R was trying to tell him something.

James blinked and refocused.

“Got you. Okay, I’ve briefly combined your two potential bodies into the same one. You are incredibly unstable right now but luckily, we have some glue standing over there.” R waved towards the towering monster less than a hundred meters away.

‘Go and fight it. The achievement should set your current body and finalize this break. You have anywhere from an hour to a day before you rip into two bodies each trying to hold onto your soul, and you settle on one side. Good luck finishing off your break!”

What?

James blinked as R’s words caught up to him.

He felt…he felt both of the swirling energies in his body, but he didn’t have time to focus on them. R was already pushing him towards the massive monster like he was a child being made to ‘go play’.

James began running. His skills were gone…but they were still here with him. It felt strange – he could distinctly remember each of his two bodies and their breaks and remember how he had felt in the seconds following them. ‘Oh, this is what the skill was, it was this energy and these concepts all along’. ‘Oh this is what those skills were, they were this energy and that set of intangible structures.’ And then he had combined and he suddenly realized how different the two felt. They were clear oil and water – incredibly similar looking…and yet distinct when shoved in the same container.

Instead of ‘one energy held in his body defense’ and ‘one held in whatever free spot he had’ they…were both held in both but not necessarily at the same time. One moment his veins were mana the next raw aether.

As James began to move forward, he felt the last of the confusion sort itself out. His body was his – the mana in it was his, the aether in it was his. The barest remembered guess of the reason R needing a life of his having something to do with that clone that appeared…all thoughts faded away to focus on the fight.

James filled his body with speed.