As my other half tries his best to add to that meeting, I have a more fundamental issue that I want to solve.

I usually worked around problems and in his own time my other half was mostly working on something that sidestepped the limits in skill level. I’m pretty sure it would benefit just about everyone below level 300 in skill and maybe even beyond with improved versions, but in the end, it was limited. It had less to do with attacking the root of the problem and more with building scaffolding on top of a home to stop its leaks. Sure, it worked, but it was impractical and almost nobody solved their problem in that manner for good reason.

I’m not content with that so I work on a real solution.

Slowly the pieces slide together, but something is missing. Something so fundamental that solving the puzzle without it seems to be impossible, but I keep going knowing that nothing less than my absolute focus would just prolong it.

I feel myself flying in the sky in just a few hours, but I keep myself tethered to the current endeavor, growing my skills to over level 100.

A lot of changes help me in my journey. My soul tethers link me to other people and allow me to leverage an intangible weight. Like the difference between a stranger saying hello in a squeaky voice and a person with a presence so strong that each errant word feels like ancient wisdom passed down through the generations. Someone with an aura so thick you could float in it.

I learned a lot about Aether constructs, how the system used them and the strange patterns in my soul while new constructs are added that seems to hold everything together. Though I doubt that is their only purpose. But have only directly witnessed its help in making the entire thing act in unison instead of a piece of junk with a thousand disparate Aether constructs bolded on top of it.

Reaching level 150 also helped my path significantly. Though I can’t put my finger on exactly what changed. I became more, I could do more and my presence was greater. Each of these things means something and I have absolutely no idea how I could replicate it. Still, I’m much closer, having narrowed the gap between level 99 and 100 in skill. Just crossing this level 100 class threshold or the first threshold as some call it, probably made my job about 3 to 5 times easier.

Those and many other details push me forward, to break ground and manage to get to level 101 and beyond with my skill even as the system makes it really clear that it doesn’t want me to succeed on my current path Pando’s help with my broken soul, the ghostly constructs that somehow return all my stats to me become an obsession of mine as I try to replicate them tell me that there is hidden death that will take ages to explore. Though I can tell his help resembles the harmonics of the system’s Aether constructs.

Little developments take me closer to my goal and I can almost taste the last step. But I just get a stronger and stronger feeling that I forgot something. Like I’m on the last day of a week long ultramarathon through ruins without carrying the key to the treasure box in the final room. Or maybe I’m climbing a 10 kilometer skyscraper without the type of fasteners that I would need to climb the antenna and reach the actual top instead of just the rooftop.

Through it all, I help hundreds of battles remotely as the enemy keeps prodding. Days of fighting continue and the numbers of casualties mount on both sides, with the enemy’s losses reaching nearly a million.

We learn and they learn.

We get better and they get better as we feel each other’s limits properly. Onix’s addition to the defense has been a significant help along with a few more aggressive groups of friends of the forest intent on protecting Pando.

The elves spend a million lives just to learn our limits. If every planetary invasion went like ours they would be seriously hurting for manpower. I doubt that they could be nearly this cavalier in most places. These losses have to hurt, even if they have a hundred times our population. Luckily with home-ground advantage, our own losses were only in the range of 20 thousand. Most of our advantage came in mobility and numerical superiority in all but Onix’s solo battles.

“I never imagined that I would say this. We are lucky to only lose 20 thousand.”

Even with my healing capabilities, I let myself and my other half sit in the closest outpost to the enemy so we can take turns healing remotely, while the other can experiment in safety. Still, even with all our capabilities, we fail to save everyone.

After all, even unlimited life had trouble healing a chopped off head, and even the ones I learn of while alive sometimes need orders of magnitude more than a bandaid, with over half of their body missing. As strong as the system may have made us, few managed to keep their belief in their chances after an injury like that.

How much and who to heal start gnawing at me in the peace between the bouts of fighting. But some would only have a chance if I spent enough Life to heal a hundred others. Saving a single person has a cost. I could try to become the all encompassing nurturing mother that coddles my babies and makes sure that there isn't a single wood splinter in the same zip code as they are. Someone that stops the slightest wind draft for miles around while pureeing food and doting on a single injured chick. Maybe not unreasonable under certain circumstances, but when the other hundred others would be left to fend for themselves exposed to what is all but certain death the calculus changed.

Numbers are often the wrong tool when deciding who gets to live, but they aren’t useless. I will seek to do more, to be more. So while I have the time, I reach out to my soul and get back on the grind.

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This time going back to a physical skill: staff mastery.

I follow a simple routine as slowly as I can, while connected to my soul and everything inside, but even as I feel the skill straining to get past this threshold as I had all the other times for months, I can feel it growing in intangible ways and I just get a stronger impression of something missing.

No other skill feels quite like this one. Probably an artifact of Blackwood’s craftsmanship.

Still, as something starts to build around the top of the tower, I realize that my impression was wrong. I might be able to cross the threshold without finding what I need, but that will leave a weak point in the middle of my tower and eventually probably multiple such weak points as I climbed past the future thresholds.

This choice would leave me with less than I started with for a smart enemy, even as I ‘succeed’. I can feel the scaffolding that would form if I keep on this path. Instead of both the outer ring of stabilizing structure to keep the central column straight and strong as I build another floor on the skyscraper that is my skill, only the outer members are being formed under the system’s restriction. I’m certain that just what I’m doing would allow me to see that number tick up to 101 and past that. It would give me power and I might even find ways to armored over the flaws.

But that seems like the wrong answer. I don’t want to leave problems in my ‘second foundation.

I stop. If I keep going, I will cross the threshold. It might take days or weeks, but without the central pillar to achieve the structural integrity I want, it will be an empty victory.

I don’t want to build the second level of my home on top of a layer of sand, I want to directly attach it to the lower frame. I want the steel bars and concrete to mechanically couple both structures together. I want to build something that will act as if I had built it all in one go. I want to strengthen and widen my foundations to make the whole thing not rely on its weight to keep it stable, but so strong that even if bend like a bamboo shoot, it will stay standing.

I want it to grow stronger as I level, not weaker.

So I enter my soul and look around. For the thousandth time, I try to replicate the patterns that I see on the bunnies with my Aether, but like the thousand times before nothing happens.

I idly test a new design before I end up entering my little island of peace protected from anything that may want to invade my soul and taking my seat in the middle.

The world whirls around me, using the time to try and reframe yet again, though no obvious conclusions show up and soon I’m once again drawing and repurposing the constructs that I have already put out into new shapes.

For some reason, my mind drifts towards a larger construct. So I drag a dozen little constructs from my imagination with soul dust to tie it all together. Without consciously understanding and being able to get the feedback from my own work, I have only a vague what this construct can accomplish, but that is not a critical factor. If one day I manage to make it all work, then I will get the feedback that I need and that’s when I will really start developing. That is what I actually need for a level 100 plus skill, though another way to bypass the need for Aether constructs may involve the system letting me mess with my own constructs.

After all, whenever I put any Aether construct in that ‘system’s space’ at the bottom of my soul, it vehemently pushes out.

My chair, as much as it may annoy the system, doesn’t interfere nor tries to imitate tis aether constructs. But when I reproduce any of the shapes inside that place, it gets pissed.

A rumbling rolls through my soul.

My memories are so vivid that I feel the rumbling of the system. My eyes are closed and I keep shaping the Aether, hopping to form a ring of Aether ‘rune’ constructs that should tie together nicely.

Even after leaving the memory, the rumble builds around me, but I’m too far gone to care. All that matters is my little creation at my fingertips. I build it out until there is only one more ‘rune’ to finish and then even through the protection of my little island, the system gets my attention.

My soul is shaking apart under increasing strain that would have broken anyone else.

I drop my jaw.

The barest of my tendrils of will reach out and I feel the overwhelming power of the system. Its gaze and attention are fully inside my soul, though it is not the living version I wanted to draw out, but that same machine system I usually encountered. Still, the system shouldn’t be over here. Not in such an indiscriminate way. Even its normal functions should only cause it to enter my soul briefly, but the resonance around me tells a clear story. The system has been here for a while. Probably soon after I started and it's pissed, but instead of stopping, I look down and complete the construct in front of me. A design that’s similar to the first one I wanted to test when I got them working, though how well it would work is still completely unknown to me. I tell a story about power, a story that in a language that I vaguely understand even if part of me is just copying random shapes.

The system goes crazy and even the muted feeling of my body is gone amidst the storm inside my soul.

I fear that the system will break everything even as I feel the chains I construct near the base of my soul cracking.

The calm pools of my three resources: Qi, Vigor and Life swirl in the storm. With a small shift of that storm aiming outside, I know with all certainty that the walls of my soul will crack once again, but thankfully that isn’t the system’s goal. That shift is inward and it all collapses towards the little island just above the middle of my soul. Power unlike anything I have seems the system exhibit trashes against my little island aiming at my construct, but not a single hair ruffles in my head.

I can feel the power, but only by feeling outside, even the vibrations are dampened in my island. But even if its gaze is all around me and the effects of its rage would disorientate me if I was at its mercy, making my construction all but impossible, my island of peace is absolute, and even the system is helpless before it.

Then the finished product starts to glow.

It is faint and builds slowly as insight streams back from nowhere to me:

“The construct is finally in the right place.”

I don’t know why only here and in that stop below constructs work, but human souls doesn’t work like the bunnies, and constructs like this only work in that predetermined area claimed by the system.

But now I learn that my little island also shares that property.

It’s small, only a hint of the size from the system claimed space that on myself has about 200 meters in diameter. But it seems to work and this first step is everything that I need.

I feel the changes in my body and the biggest grim that I can muster simply burst on my face.

“I have done it.”

Now if I could only translate this into the supporting constructs needed for a higher-tier skill.

Luckily, I had plenty of examples over the last few months in my exploration of other system users’ souls. After all the system delivered the designs for them in my lap.