Eight more hours were spent trying to improve the [Druid]’s skill with [Astral-Projection]. Those hours were quite hard mentally on them all, more so because there was a lack of time to do anything but make sure a certain man didn’t die. The Queen had been forced to request the aid of the Core at a few points, mostly due to her not having the reach for it. The requirements of delicacy had become harder the more risks were taken. While the ant was undoubtedly powerful and with skill, her ability to react both quickly and softly were lacking. The Core, on the other end, had enough of that part. Being mostly made of the same energy, it had been without too much trouble when it came to catching the man those times, the act of safely transporting him back to his body was not as hard as one would think.
Sadly, they hadn’t reached another level in the skill. The Queen had improved slightly through practice but that was just a drop in the river at that point. The Druid, on the other hand, had finally been able to walk a whole fifteen meters away from his body. It was certainly a stressful few seconds each time they tried to lengthen that distance yet the first fifteen meters hadn’t been a place of an accident after the first five hours. The [System] might not have recognized the man’s improvements but they were certainly there.
“How long have we been at this again?” the half-human named Buck asked, deep breaths coming from the man who had done nothing but lies down for the entire day. “I don’t think I can handle another run at this point.”
The Core hadn’t seen any physical signs of exhausting other than the heavy breathing. The brain was being very active but that was a normal thing during and after higher use of Mana. Perhaps…
“Your soul has likely been stretched more than it normally goes through,” the Queen agreed. The Core trusted her assumption more, the Entity not being gifted when it came to the soul-spectrum of things. Mana was understood. Souls? Not so much. “We can’t do much about it other than let you heal with time. Get something to eat and then go to sleep for ten hours. If something wakes you up before that, expect that you will have to go hide in a dark room again.”
The man did grumble a slight bit about that but took his leave into the inner room. The Core had already placed a few litres of water, some rations, and a few more of those pillows the man had seemed so fond of. Soon, they would likely have to make a room for him, though. Having him rest in the boss room wasn’t good in the long term.
‘Was the session acceptable?’ the Core asked, not having been on the spectator's row before. It understood how it was to be the one training yet the new perspective was entirely foreign to the Entity. ‘We got no messages from the system at all this time.’
‘Expecting a message from the system after messing around for a few hours isn’t something you should expect in the future, little rock,’ the Queen said as they both watched the man leave their sight, though the Core did follow his footsteps in the background. They slouched against the floor though the man they were attached to didn’t seem to notice. ‘Going weeks or even months without any response is the standard.’
‘Truly?’ the Core questioned, not feeling like that sounded entirely right. ‘I haven’t gone more than a few days without getting a notification from it.’
‘That’s because your circumstances are extremely unique,’ the Queen explained. ‘You’re mentally sound yet still a newborn. You have more than enough power and there doesn’t currently seem to be much of a limit on how you pick up things. Combining that with the fact that the first initial [System Upgrades] are easy to get, it shouldn’t be too hard to conceive the idea that you are getting them quickly.’
… That did make sense, the Core supposed. Since it also had more skills than usual, it would make sense that some had a few upgrades. A few of the skills hadn’t gotten improvements to them, though. [Purify] had been with the Entity for nearly as long as the Queen had yet it hadn’t been upgraded much. [Pain Tolerance] had gotten one or two but it had been there since almost the start. Both should have gotten at least a few improvements each but neither had gotten much other than the initial boost.
Was there a chance at upgrading them now? Well, not really. [Pain Tolerance] likely only had one way to improve it and the Core had no real desire to go through such things again. It had felt its entire body collapse upon itself for what had felt like an eternity yet the skill hadn’t been upgraded once. If that wasn’t enough, what was? The Entity didn’t want to figure that one out. And [Purify]? It would likely require that something more extreme would be removed from a host. Perhaps some extreme toxins or poisons. Yet such damage required for them to be there, to begin with. And since that wasn’t likely, the Core not owning toxic damage other than infected creatures, it was quite hard to do anything that could help.
Improving other skills, however? A few of them like [Arcane-Manipulation] could be worked on without too many complaints. There was no reason to currently since its previous uses had already been fulfilled, but the Core did suppose a few of its other benefits would be nice. [Arcane] promised many things if one got skilful enough at it. From what the Queen had mentioned off-handedly, it could even work as energy much like the coloured mana. One just had to become good enough at it.
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The time investment though… No, the Core would start on it at a later day. For now, it had a single question that had bugged its mind for too long. There had been one thought for those initial hours of looking at the man’s attempts. One idea which the Entity was more than a little fond of.
‘Mother Carapace, do you think I could learn [Astral-Projection]?’ the Core asked outright. ‘The benefits to the skill seem much too high to not try learning it at some level. Being able to walk out of your own body would be immensely helpful for me, at least.’
‘I can see how you might want to learn the skill, truthfully,’ the Queen said after a few seconds of thinking. ‘But… if I had to be quite honest, I don’t think it would work out as you wanted it to.’
‘Does that mean I can’t learn it?’ the Core asked, setting itself up for the small level of disappointment that would come in a short time.
‘Impossible? Not at all. In theory, you could learn it just as well as anybody else. Hell, you could likely even become a master in due time. With your longer lifespan, I could see you flying across half the world without ever leaving this damned cave.’
But…
‘But, that’s all in theory,’ the Queen continued, the Core knowing that the other side of the argument would come forth. ‘In practice, I can’t see you getting this skill yourself no matter how hard you try. [Astral-Projection] is something that the elves have because of a genetic quirk, much like how they can sense the Mana inside the air from the moment they are born. It’s something you either have or don’t have. Getting it when not being born with it isn’t easy.’
‘But it’s still possible for me to get in theory,’ the Core pointed out. The Queen hadn’t said it was impossible so there had to be some way it could get the ability.
‘Very much, yes,’ the Queen confirmed. ‘[In-born] skills aren’t something you can gain naturally later in life. They don’t develop out of thin air. But… it is possible to steal the skills of another. It’s an entire market, to be quite honest with you. Some rare people get a bit too close to the system and get the [Skill-Steal] skill. It’s not as powerful as you might think. Nobody in the current age has been able to develop it past the initial point leaving the power behind the skill to a minimum. Yet, it is still very much possible to transfer skills out of people with it. And where do these skills go? They go into something we can call [Skill Stones].’
‘Since you said there was a market for these, I assume that its possible to buy them?’ the Core asked, suddenly getting a lot of ideas into its head about what it was going to try doing.
‘Yes, but don’t try and get ahead of yourself. [Astral-Projection] is not something we can just search for and expect to find. It’s a very rare skill and likely costs more than most nobles make in a decade,’ the Queen said, deflating the Core’s hopes yet again. ‘We might be able to get it at some point in the future but there is no real chance of having it soon. People don’t like giving away their skills, after all.’
Well… that was a shame. The Core felt a bit sadder about its current state than it likely meant to. That was until it had begun hearing noises.
‘I think we have intruders,’ the Entity sent to the Queen. [Appraisal] didn’t work on the people but the Core could see from the armour that they were guards.
“That thing looks mighty alive for something that’s meant to be dead,” one of the armoured men stated. He was holding an axe slightly bigger than the one the [Axwoman] from before had carried. “Are you sure it wasn’t some other tree that the Warden wanted to be cut down?”
“Do you see any other trees that might be worth cutting down?” One of the other three guards questioned. The tone sounded sarcastic but it was hard to tell through the helmets.
“Well, that one over there isn’t moving,” the original guard said, pointing to the [Flowering Oak Tree]. If they got closer to that one, the Core would make the [Lacus Otters] attack from their water puddles. That tree’s fruits were just starting to show signs of growth and the Entity wasn’t going to let those results be ruined just yet.
“That one has been slated for being left alone. Cut it down and we’ll all lose our jobs,” the second guard said. “And if you think it's alive, how about you take a few more steps to see if its moves?”
The Core ordered the [Entangling Oak Tree] to not move under any circumstances. An opportunity had shown itself, after all.
“Why don’t you do it? You don’t think it's alive!”
“Well, I’m not the one who started saying stuff without having anything to back it up with. Now go over there and see if it does anything that might make you think it's more than a bundle of sticks,” the second guard encouraged. “Do you not trust the Warden to have kept his word? He said it was disabled.”
A few other encouragements finally got the first guard moving. With an axe in hand, the man moved steadily towards the very still tree. The branches weren’t even affected by the wind which the Core was trying to keep down to not make it obvious.
When the man got within five meters… nothing happened. No branch suddenly moved. Nothing at all. At three meters, the man was looking very alert. At a single meter? That’s when he touched the bark and felt nothing but stillness.
“I… I think it might be dead!” he shouted back to the small group of guards a healthy distance away.
“No shit,” the other guards said, slowly walking over to him. “Now start getting it cut down. It needs to be gone before they’re opening up this place tomorrow.”
‘Alright, you can move now.’
The first guard was barely allowed to prepare his first swing before a branch to his right hit him in the neck, separating the cervical vertebra from the skull cleanly. While the skin remained in place, the man was dead on the spot, blood filling his helmet within a few seconds. It seeped out into the grass where the other guards could see it without issue.
They left without comment and without cutting down the tree. The Core reported as much as the Entity absorbed the corpse and armour on it.
So… they were opening up tomorrow? How fun. With the darker Mana in the air, it must only have been a few hours away. The Core had some work to get done before that.