After recieving the message Aster had gone to retrieve the new ID, of course before entering the shop they had already swapped minds and appearance. It went well, the man said that they were really lucky and succeded on it very easily.

‘Lucky...’ Aster was thinking while going back home, M.Aster had already told him about the pendant and to use it more often ‘I even forgot I had it... maybe it was thanks to it that I was able to meet Sophie, after getting it I was able to meet her by coincidence and she’s been actually very helpful to me, of course I shouldn’t forget about paying her back in the future’

While walking around the city, he examined the pendant, holding it on his hand.

T5 lucky Lv11 (fixed)

An incredible power that let’s the user change fate itself, while not omnipotent it is still very powerful.

Because it has been refined as an object it’s growth has been stopped and its uses changed, letting it store luck and releasing it when used.

Stored luck 0.5%

‘mmh, so its different compared to its natural version? Maybe if I had the skill itself it would had let me change my luck at will... oh well, it is what it is, it’s still very useful right now and that's what matters’

Thus he put on the pendant and kept walking, now that he was ‘officialy’ the apprentice of an alchemist, he was able to finally get materials for training.

...

In a room fully illuminated by the sun from the open window there was someone stretching after writing in a book, Zale had finished his homework, and because his parents were still away he was now able to use the sword again.

It became a sort of a pastime seeing the fantasy world, it was like fully experiencing a movie on first person, except that it was real and it was something he had already experienced but doesn’t remember.

The last thing he experienced was Mortis training him, Lux, on swordmanship and other weapons. It seems Mortis had been trained to use multiple weapons to be able to be sold as a battle slave, but because he was still a child he couldn’t do much, he would truly show his full potential once growing up.

But the most important thing from all that is... he actually learnt the basics of it! Not Lux, but the present Zale. Now while holding a knife he could remember the training Lux recieved and use it himself... but it felt weird, he didn’t know how to explain it, it just felt weird living two lives at once.

Putting those thoughts away, he prepared the room, grabbed the sword and repeated the process.

.

..

...

Waking up, Lux felt a pain all over his body because of the training he recieved yesterday, Mortis trained him because they were about to reach F-ranks and to reach that stage they would need to complete hunting missions, meaning it would be obligatory to at least have a knife for self defense. Mortis had also teached him a bit of swordmanship, but because of their small bodies they couldn’t fully use them, thus why they trained only with knifes for now. Oh, and also how to read, he couldn’t always guide himself on quests just by their drawings, so Mortis was also teaching him on the free time to read.

“come on get up” Mortis said, shaking Lux’s body with both of his hands “we’ve got more training to do”

“I can’t, my body won’t move...”

“excuses for later, now it’s time for training!” he said as he grabbed his leg and dragged him across the floor.

“ugh...” he could only struggle without success.

“come on, you survived as a beggar and this is all you can do? I expected you to have a stronger body”

“I never actually fought, I only found food and money while hiding”

“and you expect to be a hero? Really...” he sighed as he took him out of the room still dragging him “we have enough money to survive four days without doing any quests, we will train, buy some knifes and after becoming F-ranks we will hunt some basic monsters, so now get up and let’s get training!” grabbing him from his arms, he made a sudden pull and made him stand on his feet “there, much better”

Even though Lux was standing up, he couldn’t move as his legs were shaking.

“wow, you really can’t move, that’s... pretty bad” he said with a thoughtful face, trying to think of something “okay, let’s do it this way, if you train today I’ll teach you something very useful”

“wait, really?” Lux’s legs stopped trembling from excitement “And what is it?”

“I will tell you only after training” Mortis said will crossing his arms “now, let’s go training!”

And as he made him train all day with some straw dummies, the black night took the sky in a instant.

At their room, while Lux was laying on the bed, Mortis started explaining a secret technique that he learned while being trained as a battle slave.

“first of all, you know those classes that let’s you use spells and magic, right?”

“uhu” Lux nodded slightly with his head, as he couldn’t move his body.

“well, they use mana from the air, collecting it and storing it in their bodies thanks to the system, but what if I told you a way to use it before that?”

Hearing that Lux started to sit up in the bed, picking his curiosity.

“while we wont be able to use spells, we can use it to get stronger physically”

“really? And how can we do that?” Lux's face was brimming with curiosity, wanting to know how to become stronger.

“there are only two problems with it, first will be the money, we will need to buy mana cristals for the training and second will be the process, as it will be painful to do.... also, I think it’s a bit taboo to use that technique?”

Lux only stared at him with a blank face, as if he were judging him.

“d-don’t look at me like that, I know it sounds a bit bad, but it’s our only way to become stronger and we have to take every oportunity we get in life, and this is one of them” Mortis tried to persuade Lux on the training method he talked about, making it sound less bad than how he said it.

“...what about the taboo part?”

“don’t worry about it, it’s something unoticeable, the only way people would know is if you told them directly or they saw you doing it”

After some thought, Lux finally accepted the offer, making Mortis smile “I knew you would, now let me start explaining how to use the technique, let’s call it for now ‘Crystal merge’”

Mortis kept teaching Lux on the procces of absorbing mana from its crystallized form, and as the moon was at its highest, they fell asleep.

...

..

.

Zale woke up, fully remembering what Mortis had teached him “...” he just couldn’t believe for such a way to exist, he remembered the process perfectly.

By making a cut in the palm of each hand and holding a mana crystal in between the two wounds tightly, the mana crystal would slowly emit the mana inside the body, fusing itself inside the muscles and enhancing them.

But as Mortis had said, when the pure mana starts fusing with the muscles it will hurt, a lot.

While it didn’t sound that crazy or powerful, the most important thing was that anyone could do it, even unawakened people.

And thus a thought entered Zale’s mind “could I do it?” the mere thought of trying it made his heart race, he had the necesary materials as there were mana cristals in the basement.

He felt nervousness of such a drastic change of his life, but he accepted that change, he wanted to feel new things and he didn’t want to wait anymore. Unlike other times in wich he would think more carefully, this was the first time that he made a rash decision, something he wouldn't have done if it had been anything else.

He got up and walked to the basement, grabbing a mana crystal from a large box and went to the kitchen with it.

After reaching it he grabbed a knife and made a cut.... made a cut.... made a cut?

Even though he put the knife on his hand he just couldn’t cut his palm, the fear of pain stopped him from cutting his palm. After trying multiple times and the knife touching his palm, he just couldn’t do it.

With his forhead sweating and his hands trembling, he put the knife away, thinking on a way to do it less painfully...

But at that moment, he fell, tripping over his own leg as he walked. He tried grabbing anything to not fall to the ground, thus grabbing the corner of the kitchen table, the granite table and it’s sharp corner.

Because he couldn’t hold his grip well enough his hand slid over it, accidentally cutting his palm.

As he fell to the ground he finally noticed the wound on his hand, after the pain finally reached his brain he started to roll on the ground, holding his pain.

After a few moments of calming himself he tried to get up from the floor, but be it bad luck or good luck, the moment he leaned on the table because of his dizziness he accidentally put his other hand on top of the knife he left earlier, the blade was looking upwards.

Feeling another pain this time from his other hand, he cursed inside his mind to the whole world and his sudden strike of bad luck.

He looked at his hands, they were bloodied but the cuts didn’t seem that deep, ignoring the deep pain he was feeling he knew it could be easily cured after going to the hospital.

As he started walking towards the bathroom where the emergency medkit was stored, he saw the mana crystal.

‘....wait, isn’t this what I wanted?’ he had second thoughts on it, maybe it would be better to treat his hands....

“oh, FUCK IT!” he decided on what to do, he already had gone this far so better take the opportunity while he had it.

Grabbing the mana crystal, he sat down on top of some pillows and it in between his hands, it was uncomfortable as the smooth crystal was making his wounds itch and burn, but he endured it.

As minutes passed, he didn’t feel anything weird, only the crystal becoming a bit smaler, as if it were melting like ice.

More time passed and his body started aching, but it was still not painful just uncomfortable.

Finally after 15 minutes, he felt a stinging sensation all over his arms, as if dozens of bees were attacking it, then came his torso, his legs and then his neck and head. It was painful enough to make a few tears fall from his eyes, but still he didn’t open his hands, maybe it was because of his willpower or because the pain was tightening his muscles, making him not drop the crystal.

Finally, after thirty minutes, the crystal dissapeared along with the two cuts, but Zale couldn’t even move his body as he fell bacwards, any movement he voluntarily made hurt like hell, having to wait for his body to relax.

After resting on the ground for a while, he was finally able to move his body, he looked at his arms as they weren’t any different, he asked himself if it had worked because he couldn’t see any changes.

After making some effort and getting up, he didn’t notice anything different, the only change was that his two cuts were now gone.

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“...I hope I did it correctly...” because it was starting to get late he decided to go sleep to get a long rest, as his body trembled from just standing up.

Deciding on cleaning his hands later he just dropped on his bed and fell asleep.

...

At the middle of the night when everybody was asleep, a man was standing on top of a building, Adam had finished another day of looking over Aster like his boss Erick had said. Taking notes of everything that happened today he wrote something, holding a pencil in his gloved hand and in big letters on his notebook.

“AWAKENED”

That was the only explanation of what he saw, for Aster to be able to change his body like that...

But he still had more to see, it would be better to get all information possible before meeting up with Erick again and telling him everything.

He had also noted what Aster did today:

‘today Aster went to two stores, ones that he shouldn’t go, the first shop may be illegal and may have given him something to do with his shapeshifting power and the second one was an awakeners shop in which he bought materials for something, I’m sure that Aster would’ve been unable to find them naturally thus bringing in Sophie, the one person Aster had been meeting up with, because of her high status I’m sure she told Aster about those places... but why? It’s still unknown what plans they have, thus needing more time to see for myself...’

After some more writing, Adam stopped, he already wrote everything from today, now it was time to take a small rest, a daily hour of sleep was enough for him.

...

After a good sleep, Zale woke up, feeling more energized than ever. He looked at his hands as they had dried blood “oh, right, I should clean them now” going to the bathroom he scrabbed the blood from his hands with some soap, rinsing his hands, they were now completely clean.

He noticed that his steps felt very light, looking at his body he couldn’t notice any difference by sight, but after touching it... it was harder, like, a lot. He tapped his bicep again, feeling as if he had touched a rock “...isn’t this a bit too much?” did he do something different? Because the results were outstanding!

“maybe after seeing the effects on my pas-” before finishing his words, the alarm on his phone activated, he had half an hour to go to school.

After turning it off, he looked at the sword he had been using, leaving it again on the table “I’ll have to do it later” right now he had to go to shcool.

And after reaching it, Zale noticed more changes, the walking wasn’t tiring at all, his backpack wasn’t heavy even with all the books inside of it and his senses were sharper, he had dodged a ball from some kids that had hitted it too hard, without even looking! With all those examples he knew that something weird had happened after using the mana crystal, if the changes were this big, then he couldn’t even imagine what would happen after Lux and Mortis did the same thing...

As his curiosity was increasing he saw Aster’s back, it seemed that he came earlier than him.

Getting closer he called out Aster “hey Ast-” he stopped on his tracks looking at his face.

He had two large dark circles under his eyes, had a messy hair and... smelled a bit burnt?

“dude, are you okay?” Zale asked him, curious why he was like that “did you pull an all-nighter just to play another game or did something explode at home?”

“....ha....”

“...” Zale realized now that Aster was completely zoned out, he was talking to a walking corpse. Escorting Aster to their classroom and seats, Zale saw how after reaching his seat Aster disconected completely, falling asleep “good thing we came here earlier” he decided to wake Aster up once the teacher appeared.

Meanwhile, Aster was inside his mind while sleeping, thinking about yesterday while sitting on the ground.

“FUCK!!!” he was angry.

...

Yesterday, at night, he decided to test the ingredients he got, thinking that then he would be able to learn it as a skill like the AI production (wich made him remember to also evolve)

But oh how wrong he was, it was completely different than programming, this was something only awakeners could do.

Preparing a small ‘cauldron’ (it was a simple cooking pot) and a fire, he distilled some water on a separated pot, put it in the cauldron and waited for it to heat up. Once it was hot enough he threw in some red leaves, seeing them taint the water to a redish color made him excited, making him pour a sticky green substance, he brought his face closer to the pot as he saw the liquid start to create a lot of bubbles, curious about it he examined it, suddenly, the liquid exploded, filling his surroundings and face with a hot sticky liquid.

What he wanted was the most simple healing potion, but all he got was a mess to clean up.

Coughing a bit of the liquid out of his mouth, he controled the wood that acted as pillars to absorb the liquid, cleaning it up.

On his second try, this time, he held the alchemy book, following the instructions by reaeding it for safet measures, what he did wrong was his timing.

Now following the correct timing he was able to fully merge the two togeth-

And the liquid was gone, only leaving a small slimy substance at the bottom of the pot.

After cleaning it and making more distilled water, he made sure to not use too many materials this time, resulting in a less colorful liquid, making another failure.

And another one, and other one, and one more...

Finally, when morning came, he finally made it, storing it in a plastic bottle... But he didn’t get the skill?

Looking back at the bottle, the liquid seemed normal, testing it on himself he drank a bit of it, the moment it touched his tongue it started itching and burning.

“...” he was pissed, so angry that he threw the bottle to the wooden pillar, breaking it and splashing all its contents everywhere. Sitting on the ground he put his hands over his face and started mediating, calming himself down.

He wasn’t mad because of the failure, but because of the waste of materials and time. He looked at his phone, in half an hour his family would wake up...

“...maybe...” he thought on one thing, maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t made for it, maybe he should just let M.Aster do it.

“... man, I really wanted to do it myself” with a bit of sadness he changed with M.Aster.

Noticing the change, M.Aster looked around, after Aster told him what to do he prepared himself.

And just like that, in one try, he did it.

skill basic alchemy has been obtained

T3 basic alchemy Lv1

the basics of alchemy, there’s still a lot of growth for it and this is just the easiest step.... you did it by yourself, right?

Quality and speed production +150%

...

At present time, Aster was still angry, remembering the waste of materials and the sarcastic tone that was in the description of the skill.

“I should leave it to M.Aster, he’ll have to take care of it...” sighing, he laid on the floor, even with all his powers he just wasn’t made for some things... well, actually, could it count as him doing it? In the end M.Aster was a modified part of his mind, M.Aster had superior intelligence and patience compared to himself, but in terms of physical strenght M.Aster was lower than normal.

“and the same goes for all the other modified wills” FABL was physically stronger, AT.Aster was faster and stealthier, SP.Aster was... what were his qualities? He wasn’t particulary strong mentally nor phisically, he was stronger... spiritually? He just left it at that.

As he laid down thinking over it, he felt his body move, Zale was waking him up.

He sighed as he woke up ‘now time for classes...’

...

And the day continued, after classes Aster went back home and continued training while Zale went back into his dreams of the past.

.

..

...

Time had passed since the day when Mortis explained Lux about the ‘Crystal merge’ and in that time they had been training with knifes, even fighting against each other. (though Lux always lost)

“okay” Mortis clapped, making Lux pay attention to him as they stood in the training grounds “I think we are ready for the advancement!”

“wait, really? I don’t like I became stronger...” Lux was sad as he couldn’t feel any advancement.

“that’s because you have to fight to get stronger, through experience in true battles! You can’t get stronger by lossing against me every time” he grinned at Lux on the last part, taunting him.

“uuhhh!? what do you mean by that” the taunting worked as Lux got angry.

“nothing, nothing at all, and I’m also saying this because we don’t have any money left” Mortis said that with a straight face.

“..... WHAT!?” his anger transformed into worry “why didn’t you say that earlier?! we need to make money now!”

“that’s why I said we needed to advance to F-ranks, their rewards may vary, but the most simple ones can pay you three times more than the G-ranks! If we do it well it will save us a lot of time” Mortis had it all planned already, from what missions to do and how to do them, he even bought two metal knifes for the two of them.

But there was one problem, and that was Lux himself “can I... really do it?” he had never fought before, there were only worries in his mind as he thought of it, and as he was being consumed on those worries, a hand fell on his shoulder.

“trust in me” Mortis grabbed Lux from his shoulders and started shaking him “who do you think trained you, huh!? do you think someone like you can’t defeat some weak monsters!? so let’s go and show them what you can do!”

Shaking him Lux’s worries went away flying, as well as his mind because he was left dizzy from the shaking, but at least he felt better than before.

And thus, they grabbed their things and provisions, leaving the guild prepared for the hunt.

After showing the guild cards to the gate knights, they left the city.

“okay, our first mission will be slimes, while they are very weak you shouldn’t understimate them as they can fuse with each other, and the more slimes fused the stronger they are. What we need to get from them is their mucus, as it is used as an ingredient...” Mortis explained to Lux the mission on the way to the forest, the most important that he paid attention was how to fight them “slimes have a layer of solid mucus, which covers their entire body and can be extended to attack, but inside they are liquid, so we can defeat them by draining them enough of their liquid or destroying their core” he stopped for a second thinking of something “but we will have to drain them because our daggers can’t reach their core, which is bad because the drained mucus will be stained from the floor, becoming unusable and making us have to hunt more” he rubbed his head, he could have bought another weapong to be able to destroy their core without problem, but they had run out of money cancelling that option.

Meanwhile, Lux paid complete attention, resuming it in his brain ‘slimes can extend their bodies, attack their bodies draining them, wait till they died at a safe distance, collect their leftover mucus’ it sounded simple, but he had to be careful to not get hurt and having to waste more money on healing himself.

As they were walking, Mortis grabbed Lux’s head and made him crouch behind some bushes, he pointed forward as a yellow squishy ball slid forward.

“stay here, watch and learn from me” Mortis got up and left the bushes.

He grabbed his knife and readied himself in a defensive stance, slowly getting closer to the slime, he looked at its core as there was only one dot on it, meaning it was only one slime.

As he got close enough, a tendril grew from the slime and rushed against him, Mortis jumped to the right, dodging it. The tendril went back to the slime and then rushed again towards Mortis. It repeated like that a few times, until Mortis finally counter attacked, slashing at the tendril and leaving a large cut as he dodged to the side.

The tendril rapidly went back to the slime as its body was oozing a liquid, the wound started healing as the solid layer started closing the wound but now the slime was smaller and more wrinkly.

He repeated the process a few times as the slime finally lost enough liquid to stop moving.

Mortis sighed “phew, it was easier than I thought” he grabbed his pouch and took out a small bottle, grabbing what was left of the slime he made a small opening and drained the liquid in the bottle, filling it up.

“if we had destroyed its core we wouldn’t have wasted so much time and we could have gotten four bottles instead of one, at least its core can also be sold for the same price as another two bottles” grabbing the core the size of his small palm, he stored it in the pouch with the bottle of goo.

“now let’s find another one for you, we still have a lot of time for hunting” cleaning the knife with a cloth, he stored it back.

And like that, they explored the surroundings finding another slime, this one was orange.

“okay, this one has a single core, so it’s like the other one, now go and do the same as I did earlier”

Breathing deeply, Lux stood up, walking the same way as Mortis did. As he got closer his heart started beating faster, his hands trembling and legs shaking.

His brain was filling up with worry as he couldn’t fully procces the tendril comming to him, he was able to dodge it to the side without any major injury, only leaving a small scratch on his arm.

Mortis kept looking at him, unless something dangerous happened he wouldn’t help at all on the fight.

The scratch on his arm stinged, but he was still fine, Lux didn’t feel that it was that bad, thus positioning himself in a defensive stance and getting closer to the slime again, this time looking directly at it and its tendril.

once again, it launched an attack, but this time Lux evaded it without being touched, it was not as good as Mortis but he was getting better at it. And like earlier he did the same as Mortis, dodging and getting used to its attacks, until finally, he counter attacked and cut the tendril in half, repeating the process, defeating the slime.

Draining the slime for the leftover goo, Mortis congratulated him “good, good! You did a good job! Now you’ll have to do it 19 more times!” Mortis said with a smile on his face.

“...what?”

“we need to get 40 bottles filled up to make twice as much as we were getting from the G-rank missions, 20 me and 20 you, easy and once we get accostumed to it, we will increase it to 60, then 80, then-”

Lux cut Mortis talk, interrupting him “let’s just continue, I don’t want to sleep outside like before”

“sure sure, let’s get our precious slimes”

Finishing draining the slime, they continued like that for the whole day without any problem, they only found slimes with a single core luckily and finished the job earlier than normal.

As they were returning to town, Lux asked some questions “so, what’s the difference with multiple cored slimes?”

“well, you saw that when being attacked they always retracted their tendril, right? With multiple cored ones they can use more tendrils depending of the quantity of slimes fused, and once reaching a number of slimes they can do even more things. For example, the different colored slimes are actually their elemental affinitys, with a weak core they can’t do much with it, but as more slimes fuse, depending of the ones fused they’ll be able to use those elements”

Lux was surprised after hearing that “isn’t that too strong?!”

“yes, yes it is, that’s why it’s very common for people to always hunt slimes, as long as we have them in check nothing dangerous will happen...”

“and how do you know so much? Did they teach also you that?”

“of course! I also studied a bit on my own but I’ve got a ton of monsters memorized, while I don’t know them fully I atleast know the basics of them” Mortis said that while looking high into the sky, filled with pride “but now let’s go sell all this bottles, we don’t have any empty bottles left anyway” (the bottles were given by the guild, as long as they are not returned broken they are free to use)

After reaching the town and entering the guild, they recieved double the money compared to a normal day of completing G-rank quests, having enough for more days at the guild’s inn and a tasty dinner.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Have you ever asked yourself how can a low-mid rank skill like future sight be so OP? Well, the thing is that.... it actually isn’t the future!!!

Well, not on its entirety.

It evolved from the skill based on prediction, so, future sight is another form of prediction, that’s why even by the smallest mistake there could be great changes made in those visions.

“Then, how could have Aster known about the invasions from another world!?”

That’s why I said it wasn’t ENTIRELY a prediction skill, a part of it is still a, you could say, mystical power, the same as freezing the air and controling your own blood.

Basically, future sight is a form of prediction powered by time manipulation, making the user see more than what his normal predictions could do.

(Let’s just say that magic affinities with space and time are a lot more rarer and stronger than other elemental affinities, then the same happens with unique powers, being the most common body enhancing powers and the most rarer and stronger space and time manipulation)

So, right now, future sight is halfway on changing into a fully time manipulation skill, but on its T3 it’s just a greatly enhanced prediction skill.

The same with blink.

As an example, a cube can pass through a hole shaped like a cube, but not shaped like a triangle.

The same happens with the user of that power, to reach a place it needs enough space to let him pass through or he’ll crush into it, but if it were to evolve, that limination would be eliminated as it would become a fully spatial skill and it would let his form change while moving through places, like Adam’s power. (good job Adam)