The key to power, which most people don’t seem to understand, is simple. It is finding the loopholes in System descriptions, finding new ways to use common skills with straight-forward behaviours.

If, for example, you had a Fireball (of course, Fireballs had long been unattainable), there is nothing in the description that says which direction it needs to come from. Or that it needs to go straight, and cannot swerve in a zig-zag pattern. Or that it even needs to be launched, and that it can’t just pop into existence underneath your opponent’s feet or in their pockets. There isn’t even anything that says what size it needs to be, or what color, or even that it needs to be visible.

And yet, most Fireball users would have a standard, basket-ball sized, orange fireball that would come from their hands and zoom straight forward.

And that is why most Fireball users were mediocre at best, and dead now.

Because they only noticed what the System did say, and didn’t think about what it didn’t. The great thing about most Systems, including System #2344323432345677, is that a Skill is not limited to what the System says it does.

To use our Fireball example from earlier, a System description might say:

(A) Fireball

Creates ball of fire that explodes when it hits opponent(s).

That leaves a lot of room for interpretation. A Fireball can become a surprise attack, silently exploding as it slams into your back, or a mine that explodes beneath your feet as you step on it, appearing out of nowhere. It can be a teeny-tiny, invisible ball of flame that goes up your nose and ears and privates and explodes. The limit to a common, run-of-the-mill Fireball is one’s imagination.

That is what truly separates the great from the good, the Mythic from the Legendary, the thriving protegies from the dead ones.

Imagination.

It could be argued that the thing that most kept my parents at Epic for so long, relying on easy xp farming to get there, was their insistence to conform to what they thought the description said.

I did not have that problem.

••••••••••

The first skill I hacked was my single active one, Mirror. Apparently, it was supposed to create a metaphorical “mirror” which deflected all attacks.

I cast it once. I felt a slight pull in my gut, and, in front of my very eyes, a shimmering, vertical sheet of slightly-blue tinged light, about a foot across and three feet tall, appeared in front of my eyes. It was transparent, yet I could also vaguely see myself, and my surroundings, reflected in it.

The longer I kept it, less than three seconds later, the stronger the pull inside my gut was until it was nearly unbearable and it fizzled out in a shower of blue sparks. I felt a distinct sense of utter fatigue, and it required all of my concentration just to continue standing.

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WARNING: NEAR COMPLETE MANA DEPLETION. DO NOT USE MANA FOR THE NEXT HOUR UNTIL YOUR ABYSMAL MANA POOL (MP) REFILLS, OR ELSE. IT IS YOUR CHOICE.

Well, then. I thought about what I had learned- it manifested in front of me, but didn’t need to be attached to the floor or form a wall. According to it’s description, it would deflect all physical attacks, and said nothing about what shape it needed to be in.

And so, once my mana refilled, I had quite a few ideas for what to do with it, beyond being a wall to stop multiple strikes at once.

••••••••••

Until then, I had business to take care of. My mother’s body was still, of course, rotting away in her decrepit tent.

Before he was killed for xp, a Tentmaker had invented touses (tent houses, not very creative I know, but alas, what can I do? I am, quite literally, only a god), portable, foldable tents with every possible accessory and comfort imaginable tucked away in extra-dimensional storage. How did my mere-Epic parents, who were neither entrepreneurs nor successful employees, afford one? They couldn't.

So they stole some from a band of Tinkerers after killing them all for xp, obviously.

The main problem with touses, or an exploitative streak of genius from the creator with the System-issued patent, was that nothing was replaceable or repairable. No, once something was ruined, like the carpet stained with blood, for example, you could never, ever get the stain out. And once the smell of death had infused itself with the interior, well, there was no getting rid of it. And so the touse was ruined.

I grabbed the pots and pans, and the various weapons, from it’s kitchen, and put them in my own, and then I folded mine up and put it nicely into my backpack.

And then, snatching a match, I set my mom’s tent on fire and watched it light up the sky in one great burst of flame. I watched it as my mana continued to slowly refill, until eventually my mana was not only full, but my parent’s tent was nothing but ashes on the ground.

And then I went on the move.

••••••••••

I had three main ideas for what to do with my Mirror.

One was to use its reflective and transparent properties to provide myself with a complete 360 view. The key would be making it small enough where I could maintain it near-continually, and have it be in a way where people wouldnt notice it. And then I had to train myself to focus both on what I was seeing in front of me while also keeping an eye on what was behind me- I had to keep my attention in two places at once, while keeping myself in the present and not letting anyone know what I was doing.

Of course, the real trick would be to keep the hopefully close-to-passive effect going while I was using other Mirror applications.

My other idea was, of course, for it to serve as a floating shield, deflecting all attacks and able to be contracted and destructed at will, appearing wherever I wished. As the System clearly didn’t say, Mirror didn’t have to be connected to the floor nor did it have to be in any specific shape. This was, I would argue, by far the harder idea to implement.

Afterall, Mirror was an extremely mana intensive Skill, as it had demonstrated when less than 3 seconds of casting had left me completely drained, and so in order to have it be a viable blocking option, I would have to be extremely precise in accuracy and size. I would have to figure out what the most efficient size was in order to block an attack, time it correctly, and have it just at the right spot so that it was also completely deflected. And then, I would have to master quickly creating and destroying Mirrors so that I could keep up with barrages of attacks.

Along the lines of shielding, I had another idea. But while the other one was for more physical attacks, this one was for magical. Of course, the precision in accuracy and size was still important, arguably even more so, the mirror and deflecting aspects of the description made me think I could control where it was deflected to. Just like a mirror can reflect light in different ways according to where it was aimed, I suspected that I too could do the same thing with my Mirror skill. The key would be to flawlessly calculate where my opponents were and then aim my Mirror at just the right angle so that their spell would boomerang right back toward them.

••••••••••

Clearly, I had plenty of training to do. And I did so while walking.