Chapter 101
Michael had a problem. Something was happening to his [Unity] skill inside his Sanctum, and he didn’t like the sight of it. Just like when [Unity] had tried to evolve before, the skill was now drawing massive amounts of magical energies towards itself. Unlike before, however, the draw of Qi was truly enormous, coming in three separate flows from three regions of Michael’s body. As it did so, he felt himself deflate, like a balloon being drained of air, but it wasn’t air that was leaving him. Rather, it was a sort of sensation of vitality, like he was being sapped of the very essence of life. This wasn’t just Qi; it was something more, as the [Unity] skill wasn’t a simple common skill trying to evolve to uncommon.
This time, he didn’t force the process to only take mana as a fuel source. He wasn’t even sure he could have forced the process if he wanted to, not to mention the potential damage to his other skills or some part of his magical network or body that he didn’t even know existed yet.
“Unfortunate,” he muttered to himself. “I wanted to see what the skill would do if it was forced to use just mana again. In fact, you know what? There’s no power without struggle, right?”
As he came to a decision, Michael mustered all the willpower he had and directed it towards the evolving skill. He cut the flow of Qi with his [Magic Manipulation] skill—or at least he tried to. The three streams of energy, however, were like water, slipping through his metaphorical fingers and finding new paths towards his skill. Bringing the full might of his aura to bear helped mitigate the problem for a while, but soon Michael’s lack of knowledge about Qi became evident, as he didn’t really know what to do with all the excess energy he was redirecting.
For a moment, he saw a notification.
Unity level up!
He checked his status. It did say level 12 now—12 out of 10. He didn’t have time to see much else, though, because the excess Qi was threatening to blow up in his face. In the end, he had to admit defeat. Relaxing his control over it, he let it flow towards the skill in a controlled fashion, the struggle to regulate the wild stream of backed-up energy making him sweat more than all the exertion of the past boss fight. Only when all the roaring Qi dried up, leaving nothing but tiredness and a sensation of sore pathways that could offer insights into the nature of Qi if they didn’t hurt so much, did another message appear.
[Unity] is now Uncommon-rank. By unveiling more of its destiny, you discover new facets of its power.
Indeed, the skill itself was different now.
[Uncommon - Unity]
In the tapestry of existence, each challenge conquered weaves a thread of mastery; Unity is the canvas of my potential. It expands, painting a saga of growth and accomplishment.
A vanishingly rare skill, its incalculable might concealed from all prying eyes.
Fate: you gain a level system and access to a Status. By breaking the chains of Fate, your potential is limitless, and you can train any statistic. Upon reaching a new level, you gain statistics equal to its number. Level 12/100.
Truth: your third eye becomes attuned to the truth. You can force this Fate upon others.
A lot of stuff to digest. Firstly, it appeared that the level-up mechanic remained the same. He would gain more stat points at higher levels, just like he had gained 11 points when he reached level 11. He didn’t know for sure whether this was due to his tampering or not, but since the Unity energy had to go somewhere, he thought that not much must have changed compared to the common version of the skill. Unlike with the first ten levels, however, the gains were not fixed anymore and were going to increase a lot in the later levels.
The second change was what made him think that perhaps he should have just let the skill evolve normally in the first place.
“Even though,” he mused, “I feel no changes. What does it even mean that my third eye has become attuned to truth? Does it imply that I’ve always had a third eye and now I can use it better? What even is a third eye?”
Many questions came along with the level up, and most of them were questions that would remain unanswered for a long time. Chief of them all, Michael still had the somewhat broken version of his system that he got after forcing the skill not to evolve the first time. Apparently, letting the process finish did not undo the damage, although so far the damage seemed only cosmetic with most, if not all of the system’s functions still intact.
Looking through his skills list, he saw that most of the descriptions had shortened, but trying the skills out showed no substantial difference at first. Only after a few tries did he realize what had truly changed: now the skills were more flexible, capable of adapting to his will with much less effort on his part. He didn’t need to force them with [Magic Manipulation] as much anymore to make them do what he wanted.
This also meant that they were much more unstable. The safety wheels had come off. The system’s limiting effect had lessened, and with it, Michael had also lost part of the system’s help.
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“Good.” He grinned. “The road ahead will be harder, but the gains will surely be greater.”
***
The second time around, Michael and Drullkrin only stopped at the hut for a quick rest before heading back to the boss arena. If killing the boss reset the floor, it wasn’t a stretch to assume that it would also make the boss respawn.
“Making it the perfect grinding spot for some levels,” Michael commented.
“It is quite the underhanded strategy, my king,” the goblin remarked. “Tricking the dungeon in such ways. I hope it doesn’t decide to punish you for it.” The goblin shivered. “It is quite the remarkable strategy, my king,” it repeated, a broken record only slightly deviating from the original script, “however, you should plan contingencies. What if your ploy loses efficacy over time?”
Michael, after recovering from the shock of seeing the Fae glitch in real life, shrugged. He tried not to show it though: Drullkrin was clearly unaware of what had happened, and Michael didn’t want the goblin to worry about something neither of the two could do anything about. In his mind, however, he bumped the priority of finding a way to counteract the brainwashing effect of the dungeon up.
“Don’t worry about it,” he reassured the goblin. “It’s inevitable that farming a boss will be less and less effective the more you do it. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t milk it for all it’s worth until it becomes a waste of time. It’s basic RPG game theory; you should read up on it.”
The goblin nodded furiously. “Of course. How could I turn down more knowledge about magic? I will be sure to study it all and come up with better strategies in the future.”
“Besides,” Michael added, “it can be good training. Now that we know we can end the fight in a single move, we can dial down our power and practice some strategies.”
***
“…and the first thing I know?” Michael exclaimed, spearing a piece of white meat with violence. “They fucking turned to roasted chicken before my very eyes! Smitten out of existence!”
There was a round of laughter at the table. The mess hall was always lively these days, now that Site 00 boasted quite the number of eccentric people living and working there, but with the top brass all gathered together before a mission, letting out some steam before they needed to lock in and focus, the atmosphere was eerily strange. The Fae food helped, delivered straight from the second floor by a specialized team who had been granted access and tasked to ferry the food for several hundred people twice a day from the denizens of the Misty Valley. Only Johanne was missing, off to do something.
“You know what?” Old Dave grumbled, his face mean. “Good. They got what they deserved. Assholes, swans and geese both.”
“What?” Travis sputtered. “You have it out for avians?”
“Not avians,” the old man clarified with a slow, stoic shake of his head. “Swans and geese. That’s it. One is noisy and rude, and the other has managed to scam half the world into thinking its kind is majestic and all of that. It’s not.”
“Pff,” Travis scoffed, banging a fist on the table, making it shake dangerously. Good thing it was reinforced. “This is good shit.”
“What happened then?” Trevor inquired, much more interested in Michael’s narration than the two heads of the operation bantering together. Perhaps it was because he knew he couldn’t really join in on the banter, not with the difference in status between them.
Jennifer beside them was watching it play out in silence, not missing a single thing while at the same time somehow managing to disappear into the surroundings. It almost felt like she was using magic to do it, and perhaps she was. Squinting, Michael noticed the subtle hints of mana around her. A common-ranked Tome, but not a bad one.
“Then,” Michael continued, “a scorpion made of obsidian emerged from the lake. It was as big as a building.”
“Let me guess,” Travis drawled, monotone. “You ended it in two moves.”
Michael shook his head pensively. Then he grinned, raising one finger.
“One?” Travis exclaimed.
“It was a combo move, does it count?”
Old Dave was sitting in front of Michael, and his expression suddenly darkened. He hummed, as if pretending to follow the conversation but with his mind elsewhere.
“Yeah, and then the floor reset,” Michael said, not hiding his annoyance. “We started farming the monster, but no more levels. Just reset after reset. It gets boring after a while, even for me.”
“Except,” Travis interjected graciously, “perhaps most people struggle to understand what ‘a while’ means for you. How many times did you kill it?” He talked loudly, making sure everyone could hear him. Michael felt, rather than saw, everyone in the mess hall listen intently—Operators, staff, and scientists alike.
“A couple hundred times,” he replied, downplaying it a little. To be fair, Drullkrin was the one counting, and Michael hadn’t dared ask the goblin how many times they’d done the same fight.
Annoyance from the lack of gains compounded itself with the feeling of being watched. It felt good to be the boss, well-liked and looked upon with admiration, but this wasn’t it. He could feel it at the back of his head, like a sensation he could barely parse. Most people were afraid, some were incredulous, others had doubts but didn’t dare contradict the owner of the company and the head of Candle Light in public. Others yet were envious.
Then came the question from Travis, almost posed to maximize how annoyed Michael was feeling. He could swear there was a grin on the other man’s face.
“Did you make progress, though?”
He inhaled. “No,” he stated.
“Why?”
“The dwarves arrived. Did you know that they are quite racist? Every time I got close to them, one of them would point at the sky and talk about how a raven circling up above was an ill omen of the cold coming back to their land or something. Too bad I never heard the end of it, ‘cause every time they spotted Drullkrin, they all went fucking berserk! I must have killed a thousand dwarves with all the resets. Oh yes, because if you kill them, the floor resets! Gah!”
He punched the table. While much stronger than Travis, his control over magic meant that only sound carried, while everything remained eerily still. It had the unintended effect of making everybody else’s auras shiver and ripple, shuddering as a superior force pressed on them for the briefest of moments.
Most people in the room recoiled. They looked away, embarrassed and afraid. Fear of what? a part of his mind wondered. Of him, the other part supplied.
“Great, just great. This is going to be one of those days, isn’t it?”
Status: Michael Lexington
Level: 11/100 -> 12/100
Base Statistics
Advanced Statistics - Soulfire Silverweb Aura (Low)
Strength
311 -> 326
Mana Capacity (Silver)
2.21 -> 2.68
Dexterity
251 -> 267
Elemental energy Capacity
221 -> 268
Stamina
344 -> 361
Qi Capacity
22.1 -> 26.8
Reflexes
312 -> 329
Intent Capacity
2.21 -> 2.68
Intelligence
225 -> 237
Resilience
680 -> 747
Memory
239 -> 251