Chapter 98

There was one thing that had to be done before anything else, and that was evolving the Unity skill. Otherwise, Michael could be losing a lot of potential experience since he wasn’t sure what happened to the experience he gained by doing things while the skill was capped at level ten. The problem was that when he sat down to actually do it, Michael found himself clueless about how to proceed.

Firstly, he thought about what rarity meant. He knew, thanks to Johanne’s data and all the skill stones both his teams and the Fae were gaining in their missions, that rarity wasn’t exactly what it advertised itself as: it wasn’t just how hard it was to get a skill as a dungeon drop. There was another caveat, an important one. Rarity was intrinsically connected to the kinds of energies involved in the skill and its effect. A common skill commanded control of mana, elemental energies, Chi, and Jing in varying amounts. It didn’t need to be able to control all of them—even one was enough—but it could not control any of the higher tier energies at all. Uncommon-ranked skills were able to control Qi in addition to the lower energies. Rare ones could incorporate Intent.

Michael assumed this went up all the way to the highest ranks.

This was only applicable to the SKILL system, anyway. Other systems had their own quirks. Cards of the DECK system were based on the metal they were made of, with Copper being equal to common, Silver to uncommon, Gold to rare, and so on. Tomes and grimoires were still under study. In any case, this information was important. It meant that the effect was not related to the rarity. One could have a legendary skill to manipulate water, or a common skill that allowed someone to summon a particular species of dragon—one that came from a planet with three different factions and always one that had lost a fight to its rival faction moments before. This worked as long as the first used all the energies up to Legendary to do it, and the second only used mana.

Preliminary studies showed, so far, that all the energies could theoretically do everything, and the difference was how easy it was to coax them to do different things. One could, in theory, use the Fire element to freeze something by sapping all the heat with a special flame, but it would be harder than using the Ice element. Conversely, to lift a stone, one could use an element such as Force or Gravity—all theoretical since, for now, all they had were hints of the existence of said elements—but one could also use Mana, Aura—which was another unknown—or even Qi. Michael could somewhat do stuff with Qi, but he and Qi weren’t the best of friends. Intent? Maybe, he wasn’t sure. Magic was weird in that it seemed to have universal laws, but simultaneously, it didn’t like it when people applied the scientific method to its study. Not that it would stop them, or Johanne, for that matter.

After all, without the scientific method, he would never have the data he needed to come to his conclusions.

All of this also meant that a legendary skill wasn’t always stronger than a common skill. There were many factors. How convoluted was the skill’s mechanism to make something happen? The dragon summoning skill would probably work better as a higher-rarity skill due to how convoluted it was. To do the summoning using only an Element might be possible, but how would an Element find the right dragon to summon? Intent would surely help a lot and make the skill easier and faster.

A telekinesis skill would probably be fine being common-ranked. Then there was to consider the fact that skills—unlike all other systems so far—had levels. Then there was the interaction between energies to consider. Sure, using Qi to lift objects was harder than just using an Element, but if an elementalist were to try and wrench a stone from a Qi user’s control, whose energy would win? Would rank matter, or would understanding and training matter more?

This was where magic truly reared its head against the scientific method. Not only was it hard to devise experiments for this because mastery was subjective and there were a lot of factors involved that a scientist would have to take into account with a tiny sample size of weak magic users for now, but also, there was no consistency. What about aura ranks and types and everything else?

Ranks, rarities, and energies were all nice to label, but then sometimes they worked outside their labels as if they didn’t care about the headaches they were inducing in the people trying to study them.

Magic was intuitive, but also not. It was made of different energies, but all of them seemed to be able to reach all goals, except in different ways.

Michael took a deep breath. In the end, none of this had ever managed to stop him. He had already evolved his skills, and he had done so without all of this scientific nonsense. To him, magic was intuitive. Let Johanne worry about making it scientific. In fact, he had an inkling that perhaps there were many paths to power—scientific rigor was one, and intuition was another—and both could help him bolster his power. Magic was about prevailing against the natural order of things, but also negotiating with the forces of the universe to make them willing to help you.

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He felt at the cusp of something, as if his mind was beginning to touch upon some greater truths.

Michael thought back to the other times his skills evolved in rarity. [Candle Light] had gone from uncommon to rare when he had understood a deeper purpose for it. Growth through understanding. [Magic Manipulation] had come into being thanks to his relentless training. Growth through repetition. [Mana Sense] had evolved thanks to an insight. Every time, he used a higher form of energy as the catalyst for this evolution. Could a skill have done what it did in its evolved form without needing the higher form of energy?

The sensation of being on the cusp of something great deepened. Michael struggled, feeling [Unity] begin to draw Qi to it. He delved into his Skill Sanctum and got a glimpse, a look into something. A direction towards his Dantian, maybe, but he didn’t care.

“Growth through genius,” he murmured.

He pulled. He forced the Qi to stop. He didn’t care where his Dantian was, not at the moment. The Unity fractal began to dim, but Michael wasn’t done. With pure effort of will, bolstered by his monumental Resilience stat, he flexed his aura and directed his mana and Elemental Fire into the skill. It quaked, shook, and morphed. Pain seared his veins, but what was pain to Michael? It was free training. He had cut himself to pieces just to gain a measly level in his healing skill. This was nothing beyond his capabilities, although perhaps he was the only one in the world who could say so.

Mana flowed. A trickle, then a stream.

Insight Gained.

The “system” is not all there is, is it? You begin to see deeper. After all, you know of other magic systems that don’t have it. Can you really quantify magic? Rules are a shiny prison.

Then a slew of messages followed. Strangely, they were no longer the blue boxes that Michael had grown so used to seeing.

[Magic Manipulation] reaches level 7.

[Magic Manipulation] reaches level 8.

[Magic Manipulation] reaches level 9.

[Magic Manipulation] reaches level 10, reaching its final bottleneck. You can manipulate, store and project any magic that you understand, up to energies equivalent to the rarity of this skill. Your proficiency is proportional to your understanding and to the strength of your Aura.

Known magic:

* Elements: Fire (Aura), Ice (Beginner)

* Chi and Jing (Beginner)

* Mana (Intermediate)

* Qi (Beginner)

* Intent (Beginner)

[Magic Sense] reaches level 9.

[Magic Sense] reaches level 10. You can see all the kinds of energies that exist, up to the rarity of this skill. The resolution, distance and depth of your sight varies depending on your knowledge of the energy.

Michael immediately felt his aura deepen. With a thought, a ring of fire manifested around him, startling Drullkrin but setting fire to nothing. He had perfect control over the fire— his fire.

He understood now. His aura was not any of the other energies. He had thought it was made of mana, but it wasn’t. It was not mana; it was not Intent, nor was it Qi. His aura was special in that it contained the Fire element but was not made of it.

Auras had ranks: Copper, Silver, Gold, and so on. But ranks, when applied to aura, did not mean the tier of the energies involved. Ranks had to do with the potential to affect the world. A higher rank meant higher potential, which, in turn, made all the rest of the magic of a strong aura user much more potent, and its capacity to grow much larger. Aura was the box within which a mage put all their talent and the way to express it—a box that, itself, could also act without using the tools inside of it.

As such, Michael’s Silver aura was strong because it had expressed a lot of its potential. It was a small box, as it was only Silver, but it was a strong box. Suppose someone was Gold-rank but had never trained their aura. Their box would be bigger, and the tools inside of it meaner and more numerous. But when it came to the quality of the boxes, Michael would win. Aura against aura, he would triumph.

Well, except for the fact that size was an advantage of its own, and it would have to be seen whether the size increase from Silver to Gold was a gap that could be bridged easily. Besides, all of it was based on the assumption that Michael could survive all the strong tools the other aura user’s bigger box had at their disposal, no doubt complete with ways to forestall an aura attack long enough to neutralize the threat in other ways.

Michael felt a chuckle rise in his throat. Another unscientific thing about magic. Aura could not be quantified or seen at a glance, merely experienced when it was pitted against another’s. No doubt Johanne or Travis were going to try and slap a label with a number on it: Aura strength: xxx, or something similar. But aura was more fundamental than a number. It would take pages to fully express its state, and it was in constant flux.

Still, Michael wasn’t ready to discount magic, no matter how much his past troubles with math and physics might tempt him to. It was just so complex that it was beyond his capabilities to understand fully, for now. But already, he understood much more of it than before.

There was one last message waiting for him—the thing that had triggered all of this:

Unity level up!

“What happened, my lord?” Drullkrin inquired.

Michael said nothing for a long second. Looking at the new description for the [Unity] skill, he wondered if he could even call his skills ‘skills’ anymore. Shaking his head, he replied, “A lot has happened. Let’s leave. I need to digest this in the Valley.”