“Alright, this should be far enough.” Ace pushed through a thicket of trees in the forest that surrounded Wickerbound, just outside the sphere of darkness that engulfed the town, into an open grassy field. “Thanks for coming out here.”

“Can you just cut to the chase,” Draxl said, stepping into the clearing.

“Ok, um, can you teach me about skills?” Ace asked.

“You mentioned something, back in the sewers at Kaimen, about a feeling of intense helplessness. Does this have anything to do with that?”

“You got me. Congratulations. I just … can't imagine myself being useful right now. To anybody. Especially you guys. I don’t like that, so I’m trying to change it, but I don’t have any idea where to start.”

“You done?” Draxl asked.

“Yes, Draxl, I’m done,” Ace said, sitting down.

“Good.” Draxl threw his cloak on the ground. “Now listen up, because I’m only gonna explain this once.

“In general, everything a living creature does drains them in some way. For instance, running drains you physically, while solving a puzzle drains you mentally. However, being drained in one way, also drains you in the other, albeit not to the same extreme. If I asked you to solve a puzzle after you ran till you were out of breath you’d take a lot longer than if you were sitting in your room all day.

“Skills are no exception, but rather than draining you mentally or physically, they pull from elsewhere. Commonly the body is understood to be split into three parts, mind, body, and soul. Being drained mentally taxes your mind, being drained physically taxes your body, and using skills taxes your soul. The soul I’m referring to is likely the same as the spirits you’re able to talk to.

“There are various terms used to denote the strength of one’s soul, and depending on where you are in the world you’ll hear different ones: mana, qi, chakra. The universal term is essence.

“Similarly, you’ll sometimes hear skills referred to by different names. Typically these are subsections of skills. Terms such as magic refer to a subcategory of skills. Inside of those there are even more subcategories like fire magic and wind magic. Inside of those there are even more subcategories and so on.

“Some people have a natural affinity for certain types of skills. As a result they’re more likely to awaken those skills of that type, and develop them faster. This affinity can come from a lot of places: bloodline, curses, boons, and a ton more. Cili’s a good example. Her being part pink dragon gives her an innate affinity for fire and wind magic.

“The quantity of one’s essence is determined much the same as the strength of a muscle is. Some people are born gifted with a huge pool of essence and experience rapid growth. Others are born with very little and develop slowly.”

“If all you needed to do to increase your essence was use skills like training a muscle then why wouldn’t people just go out and use a single skill until they’re essence was depleted, wait for it to charge back up, then rinse and repeat?” Ace asked.

“It’s not a terrible idea, but that won’t get you very far,” Draxl said. “Although I compared essence to a muscle, that's in terms of talent at birth. The way the two improve is nothing alike. A muscle grows bit by bit over time through diligent hard work. Essence growth, on the other hand, is explosive and exponential, since it almost always coincides with awakening new skills.

“Are you familiar with the term hysterical strength? When ordinary people are placed into extraordinary circumstances they are able to perform superhuman feats. A person awakens to skills much in the same way they experience hysterical strength. Whenever we use a skill we conjure up an image of what we’d like to do at that moment. However, the skill can’t always match exactly what we want to do, so we use chants and crosses to modify its functionality at the moment. This gives an approximation that’s close enough to what we envisioned, but never exactly accurate.

“However, when pushed to your limit, if you’re lucky, and ready, your soul will awaken to a new skill that isn’t an approximation of your imagination, but identical to what you envisioned.

“The only thing is, skill awakenings only happen when somebody is pushed to their breaking point. So while training could push somebody in the right direction, ultimately there’s no guaranteed way of learning a new skill. That is unless you count artifacts with an innate skill, but that’s a gray area. I guess becoming an avatar would also work, though that’s not really up to you.

“It's for this reason that adventurers are oftentimes far superior to soldiers in combat. Whereas soldiers train and study, adventurers chuck themselves into dangerous scenarios all the time, so they’re constantly primed to awaken to new skills.”

“So what, I should just throw myself at whatever danger I see?” Ace asked.

“That goes far beyond recklessness straight into the realm of insanity.”

“Then how do I improve my essence and get new skills?”

“Unfortunately, it's not something you can really control,” Draxl said. “If you go into a situation searching for that one-in-a-million moment where mind, body, and soul are all forced to work together, you’ll never find it. The truth is you can’t really be proactive when it comes to improving your essence or awakening skills. It’s more about how you react when that type of situation arises.”

“How will I know when I’m in that type of situation?” Ace asked.

“You’ll know,” Draxl assured Ace. ”I mean you’ve done it once before.”

“I have?” Ace asked.

“When you got your first skill. In that moment, you became aware of your own essence, and a way in which to shape it.”

Ace was confused. Perhaps it was because he was busy dying at the time, but he didn’t remember any sort of special feeling when he first unlocked [Pact]. The best guess he had was that it was because he was granted the skill by the Devil rather than awakening it himself.

“Okay, so improving my essence is a no-go. I’m assuming you aren’t just telling me there’s nothing I can do, so what else is there?” Ace asked.

“Well, while training to improve your essence may not be very useful, training does have its merits, particularly concerning skill usage,” Draxl explained. “The basics of using skills can be broken up into something called the 3 Cs of skills: casting, chanting, and crossing.”

“Wait hold up, before that, how do skills even work?” Ace asked. “Like I know I’ve used them, but I kinda just knew how mine worked the moment I awakened them.”

“That's what you think, but you’re actually wrong. You’re assuming that how the skill functioned was set in stone, and that knowledge was somehow imparted upon you the moment you received the skill. However, what you’ll find is that for all skills it's the other way around. How you imagine the skill working determines its functionality.”

“So why can’t I imagine one skill to just be anything I want?” Ace asked.

“Again, you’re forcing it. Subconsciously you’d know you were forcing that interpretation, so it wouldn’t work. However, a genuine shift in perspective could completely transform a skill.

“Essence is inherently formless, thus we can’t do anything with it. Skills are what shape our essence into something usable. Now let me ask you a question. Why when a skill is used is it spoken out loud? Wouldn’t it be far more beneficial to simply remain quiet?”

Ace cocked his head and stared up at the sky as he delved deep into thought. As he pondered Draxl’s question Ace found himself muttering his thought process under his breath. He quickly realized he was muttering, and stopped; then a flash of realization came across his face.

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“It's to reinforce the imagination,” Ace answered. “The same way you mutter under your breath while thinking to reinforce your thoughts. By speaking the skill’s name aloud you reinforce your imagination. You said yourself that a skill’s functionality correlates to your imagination of how it works. By strengthening your imagination of the skill, you strengthen the skill itself.”

“Half-right,” Draxl said. “I guess more accurately you got full marks, but missed out on the extra credit. The other benefit has to do with the 3 Cs I mentioned earlier: casting, chanting, and crossing. You’ve seen me and some of the others add lines before saying our skills or even say two back-to-back. By speaking these aloud it helps to distinguish between the various uses or perspectives we have on a singular skill.”

“YES! I’ve seen you guys doing this shit, and I have no idea what the fuck is going on!” Ace exclaimed. “When you say a line, then pause, and say another line, pause, and then say the skill. Or you say two skills and then ‘cross’ in between them. What is that?!”

“The 3 Cs, casting, chanting, and crossing, denote the three ways in which you can speak aloud a skill to shift your perspective on it, thus changing how you imagine the skill to function and therefore, its actual effect,” Draxl explained.

“The first C, casting, refers to speaking aloud the name of the skill itself. A quick cast refers to when you use a skill in isolation, simply calling out the skill’s name and nothing more. This doesn’t consume much essence but prevents you from changing the skill. Moreover, since it uses less essence it lacks power but makes up for it with speed.

“The second C, chanting, refers to adding lines before announcing the skill. The more lines a chant has, the more essence it consumes, and the harder it is to pull off. Notably, although you may have the necessary essence to perform a chant, a lack of proficiency with a skill could prevent you from doing so. The same goes for crossing. For reference, an average person’s strength caps out at around a 3 line chant.

“Chanting provides the most freedom when modifying a skill, but at the cost of taking a long time to complete one, especially if it's more than 1 line. Do you know the skill [Flash Step]?”

“Yeah, I, or I guess Kegan used it, though it was just a quick cast,” Ace said. “It emits a bright flash of light and teleports you.”

“Right. That also goes to show how Kegan was extremely proficient with the skill and likely had a humongous amount of essence, given that a quick cast was so effective. I also have that skill though mine is much weaker than Kegan’s.

“A simple way to augment the skill [Flash Step] would be to add the one-line chant ‘shine bright.’ This simple one-line chant would cause the flash of light to be bright enough to disorient my opponent, whereas without it, the light likely wouldn’t have bothered them, and only be used to obscure myself.”

“Out of curiosity, you mentioned that the average person tops out a 3 line chant, so I was wondering how many you can do?” Ace asked.

“Depends on the skill,” Draxl said. “The skills I’m most proficient with I could probably manage 3 lines, though it wouldn’t be something I could pull off several times in a row.”

“Damn, so you’re already at the average person’s peak.”

“My most impressive feat was a 3-line chant and a 2-skill cross, but that technically doesn't count.”

“Wait, you can chant and cross at the same time?” Ace asked.

“Why not? We’ll go into that another time since you probably won’t have to worry about it for a while,” Draxl said. “For now, let’s get back to the basics.

“The third C, crossing, is the most complex of the three. It involves combining multiple skills to get a new result. It carries the highest risk, but also the highest reward of the three. Because it involves multiple skills it consumes the most essence, which also means it provides the greatest boost in potency. Notably, unlike a quick cast which provides consistency, and a chant which gives you fine control, crossing is more limited.

“However, there are some tricks that can be used to expand your options. Let's focus on crossing two skills since crossing three skills is a level even beyond a three-line chant, so you won’t have to worry about that for a long time. The order in which the skills are spoken can change how you interpret the result. In general, the first skill serves as the basis and the second one serves to enhance it.

“With this in mind, let me give you an example. You’ve seen me use [Accelerate] X [Second Wind] before to jump the gap to the mayor’s house back in Kaimen. The first boosts my speed, while the second is typically used for recovery, mainly healing. In this case, the speed was augmented with the recovery allowing for a mid-air recovery in the form of a second jump. Now, what would [Second Wind] X [Accelerate] result in?”

“Well, in that case, the recovery would be augmented with speed, so it would heal your wounds faster,” Ace answered.

“Correct,” Draxl said. “Now, follow up question, what would [Flash Step] X [Accelerate] result in?”

“Uh … um …, you would teleport, but faster?”

“Now you understand the limitation of crossing,” Draxl said. “Sometimes you can’t imagine what a cross between skills would look like. There are some cases in which the two skills are so compatible, and they work together so well that neither is augmenting the other, but each contributes 50-50 to the effect. In this case the order doesn’t matter, though switching it could be a good way to fake out an opponent.”

Before Draxl continued he noticed Ace staring at the ground, muttering to himself again. “You can speak up, you know. It's just us. I checked.”

“Oh, I realized something interesting about the 3 Cs,” Ace said.

“Go on.”

“Okay, so it seems like there are four general categories that we care about when using a skill: essence usage, speed, power, and versatility,” Ace explained. “Now if you rank each of the 3 Cs, with casting assuming the role of quick casting, and award points, with 1st place being 3 points, 2nd 2 points, and 3rd 1 point, you get an interesting result.

“Quick casting uses the least essence and is the fastest of the 3, but lacks power and versatility. So 1st in essence usage, 1st in speed, 3rd in power, and 3rd in versatility for a total of 8 points.

“Chanting is in the middle with essence usage, and power, but is dead last in speed. However, being able to use whatever words you want to augment your skill easily makes it the most versatile. So 2nd in essence usage, 3rd in speed, 2nd in power, and 1st in versatility for a total of 8 points.

“Crossing expends the most essence but in exchange provides the greatest power of the three, with its versatility and speed sitting in the middle. So 3rd in essence usage, 2nd in speed, 1st in power, and 2nd in versatility for a total of 8 points.

“Each one has a sum of 8 points. There’s no clear best option, so at every point in time you have to question which is the best to use while keeping your imagination vivid.”

“It’s a lot, but you get used to it,” Draxl assured Ace. “Besides that’s where training comes in. Experimenting with different chants, and crosses. Finding where your limit is to figure out how far you can afford to push yourself. Sure, training won’t improve your essence, but it will improve your skill usage.

“Also, my biggest tip is that imagining a skill is a lot like breathing. It’s easy if you don't think about it, but once you do, you can freeze up. Save the focus on imagination for training. In a fight, rely on instinct and go with the flow.”

“So training isn’t about expanding your toolbox, but instead learning how to use the tools you have in the most efficient way possible,” Ace said. ”When the time comes, focus on what to do, not how to do it.”

“Looks like you finally got it, and just in time too.” Draxl glanced up to see the sun slowly rising overhead.

“We should probably head back,” Ace said. “Everyone’s gonna be awake soon, and it's best if we all meet Cally together, as soon as possible.”

“Agreed,” Draxl said, retrieving his cloak. “Out of curiosity, why’d you ask me to teach you?”

“I’d figured you would give it to me straight,” Ace said. “If I was hopeless you’d tell me that plain and simple. Galina, Halvor, and Cili I felt would try to sugar coat it. Also, I felt that you could dumb things down so that I could understand. Riven and Kai seem like straight shooters, but I think a lot of what they say might go over my head. All that, and the fact that you mentioned sleeping 4 hours on our way here so I figured you wouldn’t mind if I woke you up while you were asleep.”

“To be fair we were all awake, because of Cili coming into our rooms to hand out those bracelets.”

“Oh shit! I left mine in my room. Ah, whatever, I’ll pick it up when we get back. Do you think she stayed up all night making those? I mean she came into my room super late.”

“Probably,” Draxl said. “She's got a good heart for sure.”

“Won’t be that way for long with how much your friend keeps rubbing off on her..”

“Kai is not my friend. We’re acquaintances at best.”

“Really?” Ace said. “I think you’re more friendly than you let on. I mean you took time out of your day just to teach me.”

“It was purely logical. We’re about to be going on a mission that is likely highly dangerous, to obtain my freedom, so ensuring you are as capable as possible, I assure you, is purely out of self-interest.”

“Whatever you say. But if you keep helping me out I might have to start calling you my friend too.”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

Draxl turned to look at Ace. Ace turned to look at Draxl. After just seconds of eye contact, a grin crept up on both their faces, followed by stifled chuckles from Draxl and roaring laughter from Ace.