Tom looked down at the butterfly in his hand and thought about the ding. It had to be a new skill, one allowing him to extract precognition energy. He wished he had access to the ritual status screen to confirm the exact wording. But, unfortunately, here in the trial, that wasn’t an option. Or, perhaps, it was, and all he had to do was ask April. Specifics didn’t matter that much, anyway. He would ask her at his next break, but for now it wouldn’t hurt to try and feel the new ability out with experimentation.

On a whim, he released the captured butterfly, and it flew through the air, trying to separate from him as much as possible.

He ran at it.

When he re-entered its detection area, it burst forward speedily in order to escape him. Like always, it was too slow. Instinctively, he flexed his new skill as he swung his left hand at the fleeing construct. The butterfly’s wings were burnt into ash in moments, and its body imploded. His flailing arm hadn’t gotten close to it. He thought about what had just happened. That ding had definitely signified the acquisition of a skill, and it more than doubled the range he had managed with his method of creating the effect manually.

It was definitely a skill, and he smiled happily at the confirmation. It was the first skill he had developed personally in all of his lives, and he promised himself that there would be more coming. Now that he had done it once, future attempts would be easier. He could feel that deep in his soul.

Using the skill was easy, like it was with all the other skills he had ever possessed. It was like a muscle that he could flex to get the desired result. The formal skill allowed him to kill white butterflies at will, but that wasn’t the challenge April had given him; rather, it was only the first step. His job was to kill the orange ones, and that was far more challenging.

There were two approaches that made sense to him: either to store precognition energy, or stun a white butterfly and carry it around until he got closer to an orange one. He did not want to attempt the latter option, at least not until he had confirmed that the former, more complete approach wasn’t feasible. April was very deliberate in her actions. If he was doing something that was impossible and did nothing for his development, she would intercede. He wasn’t currently in combat, and the fact that he was still here meant his approach was what she wanted him to do.

With his decision made, he invested ten points, a full third of his remaining fate’s reserves, into the concept of storing the precognition energy. That was the only thing he wanted it to do: draw it into himself or nearby, then hold it there.

He saw a flash of white above and honed in on the light reflected off the fluttering wings. That was another victim to develop his abilities against. It moved more erratically than most, flying high with its speed supplemented by the stronger winds above him. The extra speed and the way it would bob upwards out of the range of his questing fingers was beyond frustrating. It seemed to have a sixth sense that let it know where his hands were. When he jumped, it just happened to fly higher and get out of range.

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For about the sixth time, it reversed its direction. Annoyed, he spun to follow it, and then the butterfly smacked straight into his face. It was pressed against his nose and, instinctively, he flexed his new skill to destroy the annoying thing.

Its energy was sucked into his open mouth.

In surprise, he shut his lips, and then he froze.

The ball of precognition energy had not vanished immediately. It still existed, despite the butterfly having been turned to ash. Tom could feel it inside him, on top of his tongue, pressing against his shut lips as it attempted to escape. It hadn’t dissipated the way it did when it entered his fingers. It was still there, trapped and available for him to direct. Even as he registered that, his mind tracked the unlikely sequence of events leading up to this. The way the butterfly had avoided him and then ran smack bang into his mouth and surprised him into using his ability.

He had always known the power of fate, but he wondered how hard it would have been to discover this method for a non-human that didn’t have that convenient resource available to help them. He guessed their April equivalent would have needed to give them more hints. She would absolutely have known about this loophole, and the fact she hadn’t told him about this spoke to a deeper truth. Like many things about the orphanage’s set-up, everything implied that there were titles to be had, and he made another mental note not to ask questions.

Tom forced his mind away from the philosophical questions and stood unmoving, focusing on trapping the power inside him. It was a losing battle, as he sensed the density of the energy start to drop almost immediately. Holding it like this was inefficient: every breath sucked away twenty percent of the latent energy as it disappeared into his lungs or the surrounding air.

Still, this was a breakthrough. He figured the solution wasn’t linked to his mouth. Any internal air gap should be able to be used. Could he cup his hands tightly and hold it that way, he wondered?

A crystal, he intuited, would almost certainly work better than his mouth. At a minimum, it would remove the problem of breathing, as that was the main source of energy loss. What was next, he asked himself?

Should he go around headbutting the butterflies? Tom chuckled as he imagined how ridiculous that would look - a butterfly sitting on a flower and him flying headfirst at it to get close enough. It would be absolutely hilarious. April would have a field day with it for months. Tom also suspected it was not a valid solution. If it was, he would do it, even at the risk of being teased. What stopped him was that using his mouth felt like a dead end, but he still needed a space to store the energy. The experience of cupping his hands tightly to hold in water told him that any attempt like that was a losing battle.

Then a different idea occurred to him. There was nothing that said the space he used had to be natural, and his healing endeavours gave him the perfect spell for this situation.

Tom focused and then activated Skin Wall on his finger. Slowly, like a pouch of a kangaroo, a second skin grew over the nail of his index finger. It took him over half an hour to finish the design and it was bulbous, ugly, and only large enough to contain three or four rice grains of space. But it created a perfect reservoir of air within his body.

When he approached the next butterfly, only his modified finger went near it. His new skill had a range of two feet, but he didn’t try to use it at that distance. Instead, he followed the butterfly’s flight until making physical contact with the creature. Only then did he draw the power into the cavity he had created.

The butterfly burned away into ash, and a small amount of energy was successfully stored in the newly shaped pouch. It wasn’t much, and only a fraction of what he had briefly held in his mouth, with most being lost as he had transitioned the power through the thin layer of skin.

It was a success, even if a minor one. Now he had to build it into something material.