[]

Weakness ran rampant in my body, crawling and infecting every iota of my body and more. I felt my mind shift and boil under the pressure of that invasive force, taking something away from me, permanently. By the time my head cleared I saw the new Resources and Skill in my status, already having opened it before my short episode began. What gave me pause, though, was my Mana. 0/0.

Just like Aquila and every other user of magic had ever said to me, I had no talent or ability in wizardry. No point dwelling on what I couldn't change though, and so I moved onto a new notification in my vision.

[]

The system had asked for 4 points to go from a fatally to critically disrupted soul, and now its asking 2 points to go from a severely damaged body to what I assume to be only slightly damaged one, though there may be a tier in between that; it would be strange if there was no moderate tier, I suppose. If I assume it follows that pattern and that slight is the tier below severe, even if it was odd, then could I spend all 3 points and fully repair my body?

[]

As if reading my mind, which it probably was, the recovery offer updated to conform to my wishes. Nice. My medical capabilities aren't the greatest so its probably best I go for the full repair, at least in hope that it heals my broken leg somewhat too.

"Offer."

[ 0/3>]

[ Slightly Damaged>]

[ Slightly Damaged>]

[]

[]

Whilst all my Stamina drained away, dirty blood and dead skin began to ooze out of my open wounds, even seeping through the bandages I had put on some of them, ejecting whatever healing my body had already tried to complete. Then, like a healing chant had washed over it, the lacerations forced themselves shut, tissue born out of nothing bridging and reinforcing the closing gaps. My broken leg convulsed, twisting itself forcibly back into position, a mixture of different things coming out of not only the open cuts and lacerations of that leg, but through the pores in my knees and joints too. I prepared myself for pain yet no such thing came in the end. I would've been happy if not for a sudden tiredness that invaded my body, and some of the closing-up damages stopping mid-way, re-opening slightly. The repair, if only partially, was unsuccessful, and I had just wasted an extra point of Stamina because of it. And I was still partly deaf despite all that.

"Fuck."

* * *

[]

It had been a few hours since the failed recovery, and since I could finally stand on two legs, I went to properly look for supplies. Though most of the backpack's contents were lost, I found a few basic camping tools, rations and a sleeping bag, alongside the rucksack itself. Cleaning and bandaging the rest of the un-healed wounds earned me an extra level in [] but since then, no new messages come through, the hope that the soul attribute would miraculously heal itself once more being dashed. Not wishing to wander upon the demon again, I moved away from the carnage that was left in its wake and returned to true woodland, looking for a stream of some sort. It was a long search but I was rewarded in the end with a small pool too. Refilling a canteen I found in the salvaged supplies, and washing my ruined clothes, I finally had time to bathe.

Despite the frigid cold of the water, and the thought that while bathing here I was without the protection of the broken sword I also picked up, I felt myself relaxing, pushing away the shivering and sinking deeper into the water. I tried my best to avoid the wounds that I had removed the bandaging for before getting in, but washing and scratching off all the dried blood and other unsavoury things caked onto my body was tough work, and I inevitably reopened a few in the process.

It was therapeutic in a way, marvelling at the lack of scars and marks on my body from the forced healing, the smoothness of my skin revealing itself as I peeled everything away, like some children's magician's trick. Finishing the cleanup, my mind drifted to the other things I had learned and gained. My new and unexplored []. The absence of a moderate tier was strange but nothing too weird enough to think about, so I my mind went to the Skill instead and I tried something new.

"Skill Resilience Description."

[]

[]

[]

[]

Never mind then. Though the first error is a bit unexpected, it seems that Adapted Skills are unable to be explained. In a way, it made sense, as they were adapted from your already existing skills so don't have a proper, official definition, yet the existence of the second error suggested something otherwise. Either a higher level in the monarch skill itself could unlock skill descriptions or it meant that the system was hiding something.

It was a theory that had been cooking in my head ever since the system redacted part of the unsuccessful recovery citation. In a way, I could understand the other redactions, those parts being more of the wider system itself and thus needing a higher level of authority to access, but this? This stinks of something and it isn't anything good. Then what is in [] that's different?

"Skill First Aid Description."

[]

[]

Adapted from the short yet effective first aid training you had in preparation for the King's Passage, this Skill will provide assistance in the basic treatment and maintenance of any injuries you may accrue.

Rk.0 Effect: Monarch will be able to use first aid equipment and the like more effectively.

Rk.1 Effect: [REDACTED]

[]

[]

This all but confirmed it. [] had nothing other than the obvious removed and yet [] had everything gone. And all that becomes even more suspicious with the odd calmness I'm feeling currently. You could argue it is shock, my brain detaching myself from the situation so that I could survive properly. It's just that this period of 'shock' has lasted too long and, if my status isn't lying to me, my mind is apparently working at 'normal condition', whatever that meant. Even discounting what happened with the demon, I've gone half deaf and I'm not even worried about it! Then there were the memories. Certain parts of recent events that I remembered differently, blanks where parts were simply erased and others where things were revealed. Even then, though, I had no idea what was altered, removed or added in the first place. All I had was the feeling that something did indeed happen to my memories, not that I knew what was different. One of the alterations was obvious though, the system notifications about the monarchy initialisation during the rest of my childhood. I'm sure I would've mentioned that to someone when I started hearing it, meaning that only now could I have began to hear those messages; not when they started though, only that they had appeared one day and never stopped. And there was that period of insanity - or was it lucidity? - when I called out to them to run. It made no sense, there just had to be something there. It must've been. It... None of this makes sense. This is all insane. I must've gone crazy. I probably had a seizure in my sleep and this was my brain trying to comprehend the irreparable damage that had been done to it, by imagining some impossible scenario to entertain me while I slowly die. I was going to die.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I was going to die. I'm going to-

[]

Huh. What was that about? Must've lost track of the time, probably spending too long in the pool, the cold getting to me. Drawing myself up and wiping myself dry with some reserved bandages acting as a towel, I got back into my half-wet clothes, barely feeling the cold of them as I was already too chilly from the water. Looking at my system messages once more, I noticed the description of [] pulled up, along with a few other inconsequential notifications, most likely the attribute updates from the unsuccessful recovery. Ignoring them, I read over the description for the first time, comparing what I had felt using [] with the listed rank one effect of the skill. I did notice I had done things I probably wouldn't have done in that situation, too panicked to think straight: the sanitising of the tweezers with the alcohol; and the pushing down of my initial and immediate instinct to pull of that particularly nasty wooden chunk and instead do it carefully.

If this is what every adapted skill was going to give me, then I couldn't wait until I could adapt something actually useful.

Well, why wait?

Pulling out the broken sword, I readied myself into a beginner's sword form, being mindful of my injuries and taking a few paces from the pool towards a small clearing as not to fall in accidentally. Remembering fondly what had earned me my small but only praise as a squire, I performed every swing of the basic style I was taught perfectly, fighting against an invisible enemy. Remembering the parts I could from watching the Saviour of the Sword's demonstrations, I interwove the infinitely smooth strikes and gliding movements in between attacks of his path into my basic style, repeating it over and over again, until I felt a familiar feeling. The feeling of the system's touch, brushing against and inspecting the skill I had displayed. A touch that turned into a firm hand, offering a way to greater and greater heights.

[]

[]

I almost accepted the adaptation immediately, swept from my feet by the long-awaited promise of power that I had wished for in my sword since I was very young. That was until I focused more on the wording of the message, and my attention was drawn to a single word: styles. It wouldn't just adapt my basic skills, it would adapt it all. The second-hand impressions of the Path of The Gentle End, the stray, forgotten memories of random swordplay I might've seen and even things that weren't necessarily swordsmanship, but instead something that presented itself as it. No. In accepting the adaptation, I somehow knew it was all going to be melted down, the well-honed and rubbish bits alike, and forged into the skill itself. No. I could add things like the Path of The Gentle End on later, for now I just needed to evolve the style I was comfortable with and practised for all my life so far.

[]

Updating like it did during the recovery of my body, I read it over once more and accepted.

The overwhelming sensation of absence was more prominent this time than with the other two skills, the sole thing that had comprised a large portion of my life being taken away in an instant, leaving me with nothing, not even that talent as a squire. However, the weakness was short-lived. It all came back shortly after, made anew by the system and stronger than ever.

[]

[]

  .

  .

Skills: Entries Revealed

    Adapted:

      Swordsmanship: Rk.0/Lv.1

  .

  .

[]

Readying my blade once more, I urged the Skill to flow through me, letting its power guide my body and mind, merging them into one. [] couldn't have felt more different than the other two Skills in use, with [] showing me the way, this Skill instead forced my body to move where I wanted it to move, allowing me to perform parts of the style I was taught I was never really able to before, their display previously stunted by my own body. It was freedom distilled into a Skill. Complete, unchained, freedom.

Lowering the broken sword, my thoughts once more drifted to what little I was taught about the Path of The Gentle End and the general concept of cutting these tiny particle-like things in half. Allowing [] to help my instinct, I dug deeper into that insight, deeper than an eight year old really should be able to at that age; all of the consequences of such a fact, all of their intricacies were revealed to me, including something new. As if the way had been illuminated, I knew where to attack . I felt the broken sword slice through the air in a small, swift swing but the air felt different. There was no resistance, there was nothing in the way fighting against my blade's movements. It was as if I had swung the blade through the gaps in the air, through the gaps between the particles that made everything up, and sliced an infintesibly small cut through nothingness itself.

[]

[]

It was a long system notification that appeared in front of me the second I made my realisation, lots of flowery, system-y words that ultimately failed to describe the full gravity of what that message meant. I could follow the Path of The Gentle End.

Almost making the same mistake gain, I paused once I read over the hard-to-comprehend writing once more and found a similarly strange wording like the one in the [] adaptation notification. The system would be adapting more than one path into the Path of The Gentle End. Could I have made my own personal path? Even then, it probably would've been combined into the Skill as a whole, rather than offered as a derivative skill, if I understand the meaning of that word correctly as an off-branch off of the main Skill...

There was something more to that insight about particles. When he had explained the path to me back then he had been talking about cutting the particles in half and not achieving anything close to the path he had seen from Irene Bagonid. Then, before the King's Passage, he had an epiphany and got close to the path once more, an epiphany he didn't share in the end. And when I was offered this derivative Skill it was by cutting the gaps between particles, not the particles themselves. So what if I did just that; what if I cut the particles themselves into two?

I followed [] once more, travelling along the same trail of thought that had led me to the Path of The Gentle End, right up until the last couple steps. I diverted from it just barely, bringing my broken sword up an imperceivably distance. With a slow, steady movement, I swung it down slightly, just barely passing through what I interpreted as one of these particles, feeling the vibrations of them against my blade. Vibrations that, with each quivering, tiny shake of my blade, only intensified. They built and built until I reached it. The target of this new path. The target of my path.

The sword went through it.

And then? There was nothing.

If I hadn't felt it through the broken blade of the sword and my Skill I would've thought nothing had happened. After all, there was practically no visible effect unlike the Path of The Gentle End that made the sword glide. I hadn't even cut through the particles I had targeted in the first place, the edge of my blade too thick to cut through it precisely. But still, I had felt it. A miniature, negligible force that resisted my sword. A force that did not at all feel like the regular resistance of air. No, this felt like a recoil from something. A tiny explosion, happening at the particulate world rather than the one I resided in. It wasn't much, but... it was there.

[]

[]

What a grandiose name for such a small thing...

Yet, what better path could I use against the Saviours than one that inflicted suffering? The literal antithesis to his path, violating all he believed in. This path wouldn't inflict a painless death, no, it would return all the pain that he had caused me in one fell swoop. It was...

Incredible.

[]

[]

[]

[]

  Name: Thanren of Aldfield

  Pure Sin: Envy

  Alignment: 100%

  Body: Slightly Damaged

    Stamina: 0/3

  Mind: Normal Condition

    Mana: 0/0

  Soul: Severely Disrupted

    Will: 0/5

  Skills: Entries Revealed

    Adapted:

      First Aid: Rk.0/Lv.4

      Resilience: Rk.0/Lv.2

      Swordsmanship: Rk.0/Lv.1

        Path of The Gentle End: Lv.1

        Path of Endless Suffering: Lv.1

    Monarch:

      Envy: Lv.1

[]