In the afternoon, Tom reported to the clean isolation room when it was confirmed it was secured. He grabbed the bottle that he was going to use.

Quitona Venom – Tier 0

Causes intense pain in a localised area. Doubles the area affected every fifty minutes. Non-lethal.

He licked his lips.

This was more powerful than anything he had injected to date, and he hoped the extra challenge it presented would help him merge the two spells together.

Carefully, he used the syringe to extract the recommended dose of ten micro litres and then increased it to twenty – the more the better. Then he injected it into his forearm.

Immediately it felt as if he was holding a red hot poker against his skin, but the intense burning pain did not reduce. It was a magical pain that defied common sense. Even while he was holding the arm still, it waned and intensified in waves that defied any attempt to get used to. Basically, it performed as expected, and time would not dilute its impact.

“Please, work!”

If his barrier attempt failed, then his entire arm was shortly going to feel like it was being continuously dunked in boiling oil. His eyes flicked to the healing crystal. It would help, but he had already determined that while it was good at bones and flesh wounds, its ability to purge nonlethal substances was sub-standard.

“You’ve got this.” He told himself and the radiating pain from the tiny spot on his arm reminded him he didn’t have a choice.

He was committed to the attempt.

Tom wanted Skin Wall to evolve with a sideways evolution. He needed that to happen, and he knew how close the manually constructed spell forms were to reaching perfection and granting him the system-assisted spell. Earlier today, when he was practicing, the spell forms had combined so well that he had been worried that it would be considered to be perfect, trigger the granting of the spell, and in doing so neuter his chances to get a sideways evolution.

He didn't know the percentages, but his gut told him that when an intent to create a sideways evolution with fate was active, the success would be of a magnitude more likely to achieve that aim as opposed to relying only on the title. The title's wording suggested to him a three to four percent chance with each merge or evolution to a higher tier skill, but with fate he thought he could probably boost that to one in three.

Being successful at a practice cast was wasteful.

Having formed a strong mental image of his needs, he emptied his entire fate pool and then mentally rehearsed what he planned to do. The healing domain pages were on the ground in front of him, open on the wireframe diagrams of the spell he aimed to generate. He compared his memory to the paper. There were no differences.

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Then he looked at the tiny spot on his arm that was generating such powerful waves of pain. The two spell forms that he wanted to join were created next to each other over the spot. Then, with his mind, he forced them into the same space. He was well practiced in the process, and flexed his will to merge lines - or to keep them apart - as the diagrams required. Then, in meticulous detail, he went over the partially-merged spell forms and compared them to the paper in front of him.

The waves of agony from an area no bigger than a needle point helped him focus. The spell formed, and he pushed it to surround the spot. Cells from the skin expanded downwards, linked together to create a seal and trap the venom.

The pain stopped. Simultaneously, he heard a ding.

He smiled, while maintaining his focus on what he was doing. A miniature scab had appeared, and with a sharp knife, he flicked it out of himself. It was a cylinder, twice as deep as it was wide, and it left a small hole in his arm, one around the size of a grain of rice.

It had dinged! Even as it started to bleed, he grinned. It had dinged, and now the only thing left was to confirm whether the sideways evolution had happened as he hoped. He slapped his hand on the healing crystal. Its energies flowed, and the wound disappeared without a trace of pain. The venom he had injected had been trapped and expelled.

Excitedly, he used the ritual to check what he had received. The screen updated almost immediately.

Spell: Skin Wall

Skin cells can be attuned and used to grow a barrier to trap venoms, poisons, curses, and foreign energy.

Sideways Evolution 1: Skin wall can block foreign substances a full tier higher than proficiency and energy invested in the spell would usually allow.

“Yes!” he exclaimed as he jumped up and down. “Yes! It did it.”

It had worked, and better than he had expected.

Tom reread the wording of the evolutions. It was a cracker, and far more powerful than the other one he had received. Unlike that one, this was not a niche ability – rather, it applied to the core of the spell. Every time he used Skin Wall it would be triggered. While the evolution would do nothing to reduce the cost of cell growth, that was only half of the spell’s equation. What this extra ability did was to lower the energy requirement needed to get the converted cells to resist whatever was being trapped. The effect would be material. Instead of needing ten layers of reinforced cells to contain something, he might only require three. When the solution was to reinforce the cells directly in those cases, then, rather than ten mana, only two might be needed.

It was particularly valuable when he was fighting enemies of a higher rank than him. For them, most of the cost of negating their venom was on this reinforcement, not growth. And Tom wasn’t delusional. He would always be fighting things stronger than him. Given how experience worked, it was the only way to grow his strength fast enough.

“The evolution’s so good,” he whispered to himself. Tier-adjusted, it was probably the best he had ever gotten. He wanted to tell someone and celebrate, but he realised there was no one around to share the news with. His time in Existentia had gotten him used to company once more, and, despite being surrounded by people, admittedly mostly young ones, he was lonely. He had no companions to confide in, celebrate and grow stronger with.

Well, there was April, but confiding in a million-year-old trial spirit was not the same.

He needed companions and friends. Unfortunately, he was not sure how to find them, given the restrictions he was under. Some of his excitement faded.

Frowning, he returned to training and, still sad, fell asleep. Progress was frustratingly slow.