Chapter 5: Lost Velder. 

Trent only had one Skill. It wasn’t clear how he could get more, but both leveling up himself and training with his current Skill seemed like good starts. Because he only had one Skill, he apparently forgot that it could do multiple things. But this one wasn’t his fault really. After all, this was the first enemy that wasn’t entirely compromised of mana. 

But the mana inside of it was his problem right now. And nothing in the description of Voiding said that he couldn’t just nullify the mana inside his enemy. He turned his attention to the inside of the demon. 

As he focused on it, he realized that he could sense his enemy’s mana via his Skill, and that he had already been slowing the demon’s regeneration passively. But Voiding was rooted in his will, and because he was focusing on something else the effect was not pronounced. 

Once he began thinking about suppressing that mana as well, it started to drop precipitously. In fact, it didn’t take that much more focus than just using the momentum decrease alone. The demon’s mana started dropping. At this rate it would take… about 10 minutes to fully deplete it. Ugh. 

Trent wished he could get further away from the slobbering monster, but both functions of Voiding were limited in range. His stat increases—particularly Mind—had affected the range, but it still ended just over 13 meters away from him. After that, he could neither slow the creature or attack its mana. 

As he waited for his Skill to do its work, he internally berated himself. He had built up Voiding in his mind as a defensive aura, but the effects were far more than that. 

Skill Name: Voiding

Nullify and void the very foundation of existence. Decreases the strength, quantity, and connection of all mana in the target area. The more active the mana, the more it is affected. Can be used in a spherical area around the caster to decrease the power of all external spells, magical abilities, and magical Skills that pass through or are cast from the zone. The user may also decrease relative momentum of objects and beings in the zone. Can also be used on contact with a being or object to focus the nullifying power on the target. On an object, this has a greater effect on inactive mana and can weaken or destroy enchantments and can instantly eliminate a chunk of momentum. On a being, this increases the power of the effect and allows it to affect internal spells, magical abilities, and magical Skills as well as hinder the ability to gain momentum at all. 

It clearly stated that it decreased the quantity of the mana in its area. It should have been obvious that it could be used this way since it could kill the Morels, but apparently he wasn’t as smart as he thought if he had fallen into such a stupid assumption. 

It seemed that the monsters intelligence was quite limited. It didn’t react at all as its mana disappeared slowly. Once it was all gone—and the regeneration nullified by continued application of Voiding—Trent attacked. 

He still had no desire to test how strong it was, so he only got close enough to throw some large rocks at it. After getting much better at hitting headshots with football-sized chunks of rock than he ever thought he would, the monster finally died. 

*Defeated Lost Velder (Lv. 10). Bonus experience is gained for defeating a monster 5 or more levels above you. Bonus experience is gained for defeating a high-tier monster above your level.* 

Level up! You have reached level 5. +1 free stat points. +1 Mind and +3 Perception(phys) from Affinity. +1 Vitality, +2 Endurance, and +2 Strength from Sub-affinity. You have a Skill pick available. 

The kill message wasn’t all that interesting. It might mean that this was some sort of boss, or that level 10 was a huge power boost. Nothing actionable or useful, just speculation. The level-up was the thing that drew him in. Skill pick available? Yes please. But first, to collapse on the ground and enjoy the simple pleasure of not being chased by a relentless zombie. 

After centering himself a bit, he focused on the message of his Skill pick. Another screen opened. 

You have reached the first level milestone and gained access to your choice of five basic skills. Three additional Skills are available due to your accomplishments and stats. 

Skills (pick one): 

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Power Strike 

Power Shot

Mana Bolt

Taunt

Endure

Power Throw

Sprint

Farsight

Spectral Bane

Please note that any Skills not chosen will be available in the next Skill pick in addition to all new Skills. 

Wow. Thats quite a few Skills. And he can only choose one… Can he see the descriptions? That would certainly help. 

Skill Name: Power Strike 

Attack with 50% more physical force. 

Skill Name: Power Shot

Shoot a projectile with 50% more physical force. 

Skill Name: Mana Bolt

Shoot a projectile of mana out of your hand. This costs mana. You cannot choose this basic skill due to crippled magical stats. 

Skill Name: Endure

Brace yourself to receive 10% less damage and 60% less knock back. 

Skill Name: Taunt

Incite anger towards you in all enemies within range. 

Skill Name: Sprint

Run 50% faster while active. 

Skill Name: Power Throw

Increase the physical force of a thrown object by 150%. 

Skill Name: Farsight (passive)

Physical Perception is far more effective on your eyes when perceiving things a long distance away. 

Skill Name: Spectral Bane

Enchant a weapon with the ability to hurt ethereal beings, and do bonus damage to them. 

He could immediately eliminate Spectral Bane, as he neither had a decent weapon nor needed a way to kill ethereal opponents. Power Shot was also easily discarded. Taunt and Endure were also useless to him at the moment and there wasn’t any sign that that would change. 

Mana Bolt was disqualified before he had a choice. It seemed that it wasn’t actually normal for humans to start with zeroes in half their stats. Let's hope is was something everyone on Earth had and not something wrong with Trent. 

Actually, why hope that it was common? He should just hope that it wouldn’t be too disadvantageous in the future. Maybe it would even grant him immunity to some things. 

Power Strike could be considered to have some benefits over Power Throw, but throwing rocks was currently so much better than punching things that it wouldn’t matter if punching ‘scaled’ with strength better. And Power Throw had three times the bonus. That left Sprint, Power Throw, and Farsight. 

Farsight was interesting, and it being passive implied that the others had a cost other than mana. But ultimately, being able to scout out the area farther just didn’t compare to a 2.5x amplification of his rock throwing or the ability to actually get away from whatever was chasing him. 

So it came down to offense, or avoidance. Well, when put that way it was easy. More offense meant leveling faster which meant he could get stronger faster, while also allowing him to just kill whatever was after him. After all, Voiding would stop them from getting too close but if he sprinted farther away they would be freed. 

Skill gained: Power Throw. 

Trent then focused on his inner self. He watched with wide inner eyes as complex pattern wove itself into being right next to the pillar that was Voiding. He tried to access it but it wouldn’t activate. He tried again while holding a rock and the ball of runic circuits and fractals reacted this time. 

It took a bit of practice, but the skill performed as advertised. He was throwing fist-sized rocks so fast they looked like bullets. Even then, his powerful Perception allowed him to almost track them. After all, his Perception was five times stats base while his Strength and the Skill came up to almost a 10x boost to the power. 

In fact, he suspected that his comparatively low Agility was holding back the power of the throw a little. Oh SHIT! He had forgotten to assign his free point to Agility. He quickly rectified that with a fierce reminder that he wasn’t anywhere near as infallible as he’d like to think. 

He confirmed that he could throw the rocks slightly harder now. That was… convenient. Hey, one of his speculations had turned into a concrete theory. So that was nice. 

The Skill also had one other unexpected benefit. By studying the complex structure of the Skill, he was able the mimic parts of the structure with the power source of his other Skill. He had isolated the main functions of Power Throw into three broad categories. The amplification effect, the application mechanism, and the fucky conceptual part. 

The conceptual stuff was fucky because it was basically the core and base framework of the Skill. It both powered it and made the restriction of needing to throw something. Ideally, this was what he would replace with his own power. 

The amplification effect turned the concept into something that increased physical force. But he definitely wouldn’t have been able to tell you that if he hadn’t used the Skill. It was far too complex. 

The application mechanism was the thing that focused the Skill onto the object being thrown along with his arm or whatever else was doing the throwing. It was also the simplest part and what he was currently attempting to replicate with void energy. 

In spite of his hate of grinding, it all faded away as he got engrossed in figuring out the incredibly complex process. He was making good progress, only occasionally even checking his surroundings for any danger. 

He was thrown out of his experimentation by a wave of familiar dark energy sweeping across the land, and the godly presence reappearing.