The next night, Tom snuck out from his bed the moment he thought he wouldn’t be noticed. Barely an hour has passed since the lights had gone into night mode, and he wasn’t certain everyone was asleep. On the other hand, they would have to have been watching carefully to have spotted him, and six-year-olds didn’t do that.
He had been tired all day, and most of him acknowledged that what he was doing was stupid. Ideally, he would be catching up on sleep, but he had an itch. He didn’t want to drop the ball, and the fear of delay meant he had to get his resistance training started. The idea was stupid, but acknowledging that fact hadn’t stopped him from leaving his bed. He was going to start the process today, because he didn’t want to keep delaying; plus, pushing himself like this might have some minor benefits. From his first life in Existentia, he knew there were lots of skills available to both manage and reduce the need for sleep, and it was possible his nighttime activities might help him reacquire some of them.
Once he reached the ground floor, he was surprised to discover that, of the four isolation rooms, one set of the doors was firmly shut. Tom stared at them. That change was like a flashing neon light that said something suspicious is happening here. He almost abandoned his plan to use the isolation rooms immediately, but then he remembered the hidden cupboards.
He narrowed his eyes and focused internally to communicate his intentions. The door wavered, shifted positions, and, as he watched with raised eyebrows, it reverted to the normal open state.
Silently, he snorted. Of course, that was how it worked. The designers of this place had thought of everything. When you shut the door, it created an illusion of it remaining unoccupied by making it look like the door remained open. It was only his abnormal ability that allowed him to pierce the illusion. It showed what was really there, while everyone else walking past would have no idea.
While forcing his title to remain inactive, he tried to move toward the one that he knew was occupied, but his eyes kept drifting to its neighbour. That, he thought, was the one that he should be using. Tom shivered at the subtle compulsion that was in play; with a simple internal wish, he reactivated his ability, and the desire to go elsewhere vanished. He could see the shut door once more.
It was an impressive magical setup, but would do nothing against the assassins. But Tom guessed that wasn’t the point of it. The risk of assassins being physically present in the building was managed separately. This was a protection for what was the more insidious threat to a reincarnator’s identity. Namely, the risk that enemies with clairvoyance abilities would borrow the eyes and senses of normal people and discover reincarnators that way.
These minor illusions were almost certainly a hundred percent effective against all the children and volunteers that wandered the corridors. Tom had no way of confirming it now, but he was sure that everyone who had abilities that let them see through the illusionary defences would have additional protections against being used in an enemy’s scrying spell.
Why the default was to use this rather than just having the doors shut was a mystery, but he suspected it was probably to allow a person in Dimitri’s position to track what was happening in the orphanage better.
Once he was safely locked into his own isolation room, Tom quickly built his makeshift ladder to access the hidden cupboards.
A minute later, he had a vial of pinkish acid in his hot little hands. As per instructions, he measured out two drops into a full beaker of water. The pink, super-concentrated substance landed in the water and dispersed, leaving a colourless transparent liquid that looked innocent.
Tom knew it was anything but that.
With a mini-shudder, as he thought about exactly what he was about to do, he completed the final preparations. First, he stripped off his clothes to give himself easy access to his body. Then he sat right up next to the healing crystal.
“Let’s do this,” he said.
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Touch Heal turned off his nerves, and then he poured the liquid over his legs and left arm. The instant the liquid touched the skin, it started to blacken, and the sharp scent of noxious chemicals assaulted his nose.
Another tweak with Touch Heal switched off the scent of smell and removed the issue.
He sat there quietly and observed the war being waged between the acid and his healing. As a layer of skin was burnt away, new growth replaced it in a tug of war that kept the acid from burning deeply into his body.
His mana dropped precariously, and the acid started to win in spots; without hesitation, he drew healing from the crystal that he was leaning up against. Having seen the specifications of the off-line batteries, he was confident that it would have enough juice for the entire session, so there was no need to devote energy to using it efficiently.
Within a short amount of time, he realised he was bored. Attempting this with the ability to turn off the pain was a massive cheat.
While being very careful not to get acid on the papers, he reviewed the next set of spells he wanted to develop. The current spell he was aiming for was called Lightning Lance. It was tier-three, and it could add a powerful long-range option to his battle abilities. There were over a dozen intermediate steps to obtaining it, but each of the spell forms was an advancement of the Spark spell he had already mastered, so he expected it to go quickly.
While he couldn’t really spare any magic to cast the spell properly, given the circumstances, dedicating a single point to manipulate the raw mana and create the first stepping-stone spell was acceptable. The spell was too weak to be anything but an intermediate step. He glanced at the description and wrinkled his nose. It definitely wasn’t going to contribute to combat effectiveness.
Spell: Lightning Bolt – Tier 1
A short-range offensive spell.
It only had a range of five metres, which was barely longer than the range he had with Spark, and underperformed compared to his pet spell on all the other different power metrics, including density, penetration, max energy invested, and power-to-mana ratio. It was a tier higher for that slight extra range it granted, and for no other reasons. This was not a spell to be happy about, beyond it being a step towards something greater.
The beaker he was using to apply acid ran out.
“Under twenty minutes,” he muttered to himself when he checked the time. That was ten minutes faster than expected.
He shrugged.
It was good news. If he could finish things sooner, that was a bonus, and there were still more efficiencies to be extracted. Maybe he could finish this in four instead of eight hours. His healing capacity hadn’t really been challenged through the process, and the draw per minute on the healing crystal had been far lower than he had forecast at all points. There was definitely some scope to ramp things up. For the next round of acid, Tom decided he would keep the current dilution, but he would apply it to his torso as well as his legs.
That was going to accelerate matters.
Hours passed, and he increased both the concentration and the area that he was applying it to. He was now splashing it on his back and front. With the ability to suppress his nerves, it was completely painless, and nothing like what had happened with his first venom title, which had been almost a day of continual agony.
Finally, after five hours of practicing Lightning Bolt, but without even attempting to cast it once, there was a ding.
Tom’s disquiet deepened when he checked the time and his acid consumption together. It was far higher than expected. The process he was following was clearly flawed. Each step had gone faster than expected, but he had ended up using seventy percent more acid. Either the relatively high dilution levels had an unknown penalty, or he hadn’t been applying the substance aggressively enough to get the most out of the deadly acid. While he wanted to jump up and confirm that he had got the title, he remained where he was until the sizzling of his skin had reduced to nearly nothing. Only then did he move to check the ritual status screen.
Title: Acid Resistance (I): 1% chance to gain 30 seconds of immunity when exposed to an acid. All acids do 2% less damage.
Awarded for: Being subjected to topical exposure of sufficient acid to kill you thirty-two times over in a single day and surviving.
He stared at the outcome of over five hours of effort. He had hoped the level one title would be a fifth as powerful as the level five version, but that had proven to be a forlorn hope. Instead of being twenty percent as strong, it was closer to three or four percent. The nature of the protection offered was also different. The venom title granted the chance to gain immunity to a specific venom, while this one offered a chance to be immune to all acids over a brief period.
Overall, he guessed he shouldn’t be disappointed. Even small advantages added up over time. This current title was almost useless, and all he could do was to hope that the presence of thirty-one different types of acids meant that he could upgrade his title as expected.
It was three a.m., so he returned to bed to grab an extra five hours of sleep.