[The Generic Skill: ⦓Study⦔ can be used to closely investigate objects and creatures within your direct vicinity.]
[The amount and quality of the information gleaned is dependent on the skill’s level.]
“That’s...sort of useful.” Desmond murmured to himself. After the initial shock of suddenly progressing, he’d realized that he could see the interface he’d caught a glimpse of before just by thinking about it. At the same time, he learned that he could simply think about the skill and it would tell him what it did.
Now, all that was left for him to figure out was how to use it. It couldn’t be too hard, right?
From what he remembered about the ‘Nexus Heart’, it was something most people awakened to in their lives. Apparently, it helped people just...live their lives in whatever way they wanted. Using it was just like using a limb, he’d often heard. That part had never made much sense to Desmond, but he figured now was the perfect chance to learn what it could really do for him.
His gaze focused on the most damaged plank of the floorboards and nodded, resolve budding in his core. ‘⦓Study!⦔’.
[Wooden Floorboard: A simple wooden floorboard. It has seen better days.]
The boy paused as the voice filled his head one moment and was gone the next. He stared at the floorboard, then narrowed his eyes in barely contained fury.
‘That’s it? That’s it?! That was worthless!’ Fists balled, he ground them into his eyes, kicking his legs in a weak attempt to let the contempt flow out of him. Moments later, his head fell back against the floor again and he let out a long, drawn-out sigh.
‘No, no. It’s fine. It’s still only level 2. It’ll get better if I level it up, so...’ Desmond nodded, his resolve building up again. Once more, he looked up again and made sure to narrow his eyes, intently focusing on only the damaged plank of the floorboard as he activated the skill again.
[Wooden Floorboard: A simple wooden floorboard. It has seen better days.]
‘Argh, no! Again!’
[Wooden Floorboard: A simple wooden floorboard. It has seen better days.]
Desmond nearly groaned aloud, just barely managing to hold himself back as he activated ⦓Study⦔ some more.
[Wooden Floorboard: A simple wooden floorboard. It has seen better days.]
[Wooden Floorboard: A simple wooden floorboard. It has seen better days.]
[Wooden Floorboard: A simple wooden floorboard. It has seen better days.]
[Wooden Plank: A wooden plank, one part of a wooden floorboard. It is damaged, but still functional.]
[Generic Skill: ⦓Study⦔ has leveled up to Lv. 3!]
[Additional EXP has been awarded for leveling a Generic Skill!]
The boy nearly cried out in relief.
‘Finally! Something new!’ He let out a quiet hum, obviously pleased with himself, before he got back to work. ‘Okay...let’s see. It’s not too much better, but it’s...better.’
[Wooden Plank: A wooden plank, one part of a wooden floorboard. It is damaged, but still functional.]
He ⦓Studied⦔ it again, hoping for another instant level up, but was instead sorely disappointed. This was going to take forever!
‘Fine. I’m just going to have to keep using ⦓Study⦔ until it eventually starts helping me. It’s not like I have any better options...’
►⚉◄
[Wooden Plank: A wooden plank, one part of a wooden floorboard. It is damaged, but still functional.]
[Floorboard Plank: A wooden floorboard plank. It has seen much more damage than the other parts, mostly due to termites.]
[Generic Skill: ⦓Study⦔ has leveled up to Lv. 4!]
[Additional EXP has been awarded for leveling a Generic Skill!]
►⚉◄
[Floorboard Plank: A wooden floorboard plank. It has seen much more damage than the other parts, mostly due to termites.]
[Floorboard Plank: A wooden floorboard plank. It has seen much more damage than the other parts, mostly due to termites.]
[Damaged Floorboard Plank: Termites have riddled this plank with holes and weakness. It’s close to falling apart, but remains sturdy enough for the moment.]
[Generic Skill: ⦓Study⦔ has leveled up to Lv. 5!]
[Additional EXP has been awarded for leveling a Generic Skill!]
[You have leveled up! You have gained 5 Stat Points!]
►⚉◄
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[Damaged Floorboard Plank: Termites have riddled this plank with holes and weakness. It’s close to falling apart, but remains sturdy enough for the moment.]
[Damaged Floorboard Plank: Termites have riddled this plank with holes and weakness. It’s close to falling apart, but remains sturdy enough for the moment.]
[Damaged Floorboard Plank: Termites have riddled this plank with holes and weakness. It’s close to falling apart, but remains sturdy enough for the moment.]
[Damaged Floorboard Plank: Due to termites and old age, this plank is incredibly weak and, if attacked at the right spot with enough strength, could fall apart almost instantly.]
[Generic Skill: ⦓Study⦔ has leveled up to Lv. 6!]
[Additional EXP has been awarded for leveling a Generic Skill!]
[Generic Skill: ⦓Study⦔ has evolved into the Personal Skill: ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ - Lv. 1!]
►⚉◄
Though Desmond couldn’t tell, he had spent the better half of seven hours ⦓Studying⦔ the plank and slowly progressing. He’d begun to hear his stomach rumble two hours in, but ignored it in favor of the task at hand. Five hours in, light began to peak through the cracks between the boards again, and yet, the young boy didn’t notice.
Only now, after ages of intense ⦓Studying⦔, did Desmond see the fruits of his labor, as boring as it was, come to fruition.
Once the voice left his head, Desmond let out a tense sigh and finally shut his eyes for some momentary peace. He’d worked for this long, though, and refused to wait for much longer. All too soon, he sat back up and activated his new skill, ⦓Eye For Detail⦔, on the damaged plank.
At first, it didn’t seem like it did much differently.
[Damaged Floorboard Plank: Due to termites and old age, this plank is incredibly weak and, if attacked at the right spot with enough strength, could fall apart almost instantly.]
That is, until he focused harder on the plank and noticed something that wasn’t there before. A tiny little speck of glowing, purple energy that sat right in the middle of the plank, whipping and waving in the nonexistent wind.
As soon as he saw it, it sank into the plank in front of him, disappearing for a moment, before the glow returned in the forms of cracks and dots across the plank’s surface, pulsing as if to make sure he couldn’t miss them.
Directly in the center of all the glowing purple cracks was one large dot which seemed to glow even brighter than the rest.
‘That must be the weak spot it mentioned.’ Desmond picked up the knife, holding it gingerly between his small, shaking hands. He leveled the tip of the knife until it pointed straight up at the spot. ‘So if I just..!’
He jammed the knife upward, into the mark on the wood. Immediately, he heard it crack and splinter inside; so loudly, in fact, that it startled him and the knife tumbled out of his hands. His eyes widened in fear as the knife turned tip over handle, the blade hurtling back toward him.
Something in Desmond clicked into action as he turned, swiveling his head out of the way. The crawlspace was tight and restrictive, though, and he only succeeded in moving out of the way enough for the knife to nick the top of his earlobe instead of his cheek.
Warmth immediately pooled around his ear and a stinging sensation spread across his face. Desmond sucked in air through his teeth, crying out in pain as his hands jumped to the wound instantly. Contrary to what he felt was a grievous wound, there wasn't much blood at all.
When he pulled his hands away, there was a short stream of blood that trickled from his fingertips down to his palms. The sight of it made his breathing kick up in pace before he clenched his fists and was able to will it off for the time being. He still needed to get out of the hole.
Rubbing his hands on his shirt to get rid of the blood, he picked the knife back up. His hands were much steadier this time around, and he accurately stabbed it right back into the same spot from before, still lit up by his ⦓Eye For Detail⦔. Splinters rained down over his chest as he jammed the knife further into the plank. It cracked, fractures spreading from the point of impact from the knife and further outward until, in large chunks and waves of splinters, the plank fell apart like tender meat falling off of a bone.
Desmond watched in awe as the wood fell over him and sunlight broke into the crawlspace at full force, basking him in light and heat that he hadn’t felt in ages to him, and five days in reality.
“I...I did it.” He muttered with thinly veiled excitement. “I did it!”
A large smile spread across Desmond’s face, unable to help himself as jubilance spread throughout his previously cold body.
“I can’t believe it worked. I can’t believe it...” Desmond huffed happily before turning to the next plank of the floorboard, activating ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ immediately. Just like before, he watched as a small globe of purple energy appeared against the surface of the board before sinking into it, and reforming in a slanted line across the surface of the plank.
Desmond immediately brandished his knife and, with renewed vigor, got the work sawing into it. With his newfound energy, it took him merely moments to saw through the next plank, which fell apart onto his chest much like the last. He paid no mind to it, though, and simply moved onto the next one. As he worked, though, the planks got tougher and had fewer weak spots.
This was to be expected, though, since he’d started with the weakest plank overall. But still, none of them were impervious. Even the most stable of the planks on the other end of the floorboard cover still had one particular termite spot in it that went much deeper than he’d expected it to. His ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ made sure that once he got the tip of the knife deep enough into the plank, it fell apart just like the others.
Finally, Desmond's exit back into Calcheth was open and he was surrounded by and covered in wood shavings and small splinters that poked into his skin uncomfortably. For the life of him, though, he couldn’t seem to care about them. His eyes were locked on the open hole above him, through which he could finally see the sky again.
It was cloudy, and the little bit of the sky he could see was gray. He sniffled, smelling petrichor in the air. It was going to rain soon. His Father hated when it rained; he’d always complained about it over-watering his flower garden and drowning his hydrangeas.
The thought of the flower garden was what eventually compelled Desmond to rise from the crawlspace. Clamping the knife handle between his teeth, he used both hands to reach up onto the edges of the hole and pull himself up and out, back into his town.
At first, all he saw was rubble, including the large cabinet that had been trashed and thrown over the bottom half of his hiding spot, and the remains of what he believed was once a fireplace. As his feet cleared the hole and he stood up, however, he realized just how much worse it actually was.
Desmond stood in the ruins of his family home, right where the living room used to be. He could still see the indentation of the wooden floor mere feet away where Father’s favorite plush, green armchair sat, while the actual chair itself was laying on its side ten feet away, a large chunk taken out of its back. He would sit there and drink his cup of tea in the morning after watering his flowers, staring out the front window and watching the main street, where people would begin their days in the mornings and end their days in the nights.
Funnily enough, that wall was still there, window and all. The window was shattered, of course; Desmond wouldn’t be surprised if the screams were enough to shatter most, if not all, of the glass in Calcheth. But there was still enough glass in that little cavity of a windowsill left for Desmond to catch the light reflecting on it.
Looking around, he could see that just about every other building in the immediate area was in a similar state of gross destruction. His own home looked like something had run straight through it, tearing it in half. He could trace the path whatever it was took through five other homes down the road before it suddenly veered out of sight. What he could recognize as dried blood littered almost every surface in sight.
The two-story home across the street—It had belonged to the Pyrehorn family, who had a daughter about his age—had been reduced to merely a pile of rubble, much the same as many of the other houses that he could see from where he stood.
Desmond frowned. He remembered Carolyn Pyrehorn. She was a couple of months older than him, with bright orange hair and a very kind smile. She was one of the only kids who didn’t leave him behind just because he was sickly. She was...sweet. He called her Lyn.
Maybe the memory of her is what brought it on, or maybe it was just that seeing Calcheth after being hidden for days simply broke the dam inside of him. Whatever it was, it compelled Desmond to walk over to his Father’s chair and heave it up off of the floor. Before he’d awakened, he wouldn’t have been able to even wedge it up off of the floor. It was easier now, but still difficult with his weak, underdeveloped muscles and lackluster strength.
He pushed it back into place, where it belonged, and very promptly crashed into it; lounging like a lazy old cat where his Father would instead sit like a gentleman. If he could see Desmond now, he would surely reprimand him for his posture.
The boy gazed out of the broken window, yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see the Calcheth he remembered. Instead, all he saw was his own broken reflection in the remnants of the glass window.
His wavy black hair was dirty and unkempt; wooden shavings and splinters still populating the waves that his mother loved to run her hands through. His spruce brown skin was covered in dust, and the nick through his earlobe was covered in already dried blood. The whites of his eyes were red, more than likely because of how little he slept over the last few days and his need to stay awake and alert. His brown eyes looked as if they had receded further into his head and he had deep set bags that he swore he’d never had before.
His mother had always told him how much she liked his eyes. They reminded her of his Father.
It was then that the dam finally broke and Desmond, who had been holding himself together as tightly as he possibly could, collapsed in his Father’s favorite chair and tears began to flood from his eyes as he cried over what he’d lost and what he’d never be able to get back.