Callie beamed at me as she called up her stats. Then paused. “Um…do you have some paper I could use?” She helplessly held up her hands. “This isn’t the real world, so I can’t bring my stuff in here, which means I don’t have anything to write on.”

Thinking about it, being able to carry objects into my soul and leave them there like the staff would have been useful, but probably pretty ridiculous. I cleared my throat and snagged a book off the shelf. I decided since I was custom making Callie a technique, adding her exact stats to it might make things easier. Strong reference points seemed to help.

After conjuring her a pen (I could make basic things in here, like my dad had made that chair when we were talking during my Chronicle condensation), I sat down and considered my possible options while she worked.

My techniques worked best when they had a baseline. I could make one up out of nowhere, but finding a way to embed Skills or forms let me bind it into my mythos, allowing me to make it a cohesive part of my legend. It was like adding rebar to concrete. Concrete by itself was pretty solid, but that strength was compressive, not tensile. Adding rebar allowed it to withstand other kinds of pressure.

This technique couldn’t include my forms, because I needed to be able to teach it, but it COULD include Skills. DS Mastery was a Skill that other people could learn, which meant techniques based on it would be far more functional for your average layman than one based on my forms. I could probably teach Bella something like that, but everyone else would struggle immensely.

So what I needed was a defensive ability as a base, something with a mental component, and possibly something to amplify the effects. The last one was simple, Afterburner was my most consistently used Skill when creating forms or domains. As for the first, Mountain Stance would be perfect for this. My main issue became the mental component. So while Callie copied down her stats, I meditated on possible solutions.

I started with Mountain Stance. Defense was paramount here, and an important aspect of the technique. Mountain Stance was also a solid foundation to use symbolically, being the hard ground underneath the feet of the user. Next up I used an inversion of Marked for Death. It usually allowed armor penetration on the opponent, but in this instance my alterations turned that penetration inward, changing it from a literal armor piercing attack to a mental penetration ability.

My third ingredient was one I hadn’t used much. Blood Curse. A rogue skill I’d gotten at D-rank, one which let me use blood to affect a target at long range. I didn’t do much cursing, but the mechanism of the skill was thaumaturgy, and working with Sable had shown me the possibilities in that particular art.

Blood Curse linked something big with something small. In this case, using the penetrative power of Marked for Death, I was using the conceptual structure of Blood Curse to connect the physical body with the infinitely more complex mind and spirit. I started trying to put the structures together in my head, combining the various skills as perfectly as possible.

I failed. And then I failed again. And again. It wasn’t a shock. This was the most complex technique I’d ever made by a large margin, and I had to structure it in a way that would make it simple enough to be used by anyone. My usual techniques involved using my strong soul and talent to bully reality into doing what I wanted. Since I got the library, I’d been learning to refine and improve them as I went, reinforcing the core structure that I used as a baseline.

I grabbed a book off the shelves, a blank one because I didn’t need Callie’s stats for this part, just for her reworked Dance of the Abyssal Fairy. For this I needed to start from scratch. To write my own brand new story. It wasn’t complicated. A story of mind over body, of conquering the flesh with the power of the soul.

Since I needed this to be general application, I avoided my usual demonic imagery. This skill was all about human ingenuity. Or rather, the flame of human inspiration. I focused on that image, fire. I needed that as a connection point for Afterburner anyway, and it gave me the perfect foundation.

Prometheus, an ancient figure who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind, lighting the fires of creativity in the hearts of humanity. It was a ubiquitous myth even now. It would be perfect as a foundation for this.

So I leaned into that. I wove a story about Prometheus stealing the flame and carrying it down to earth, once it arrived, he passed it to mankind, and through that flame humanity evolved. The spark lit the path that showed them how to take their earthly nature and transcend the mundane to become something more.

Mountain Stance provided the earthly foundation, Blood Curse the mechanism, and the inverted Marked for Death gave it the penetrative nature. Finally, with the structure completely formed and the spark lit, I poured Afterburner on the flickering ember, and it burst into a roaring flame. The book I’d been writing in shook, the Skill shuddering under the influx of power as it basically fault tested itself.

I made changes, small alterations to the story, wording, sentence structure, even the stats used for the individual words. Inside the library, the Ten Demons Tome’s full power was instantly at my fingers, and Dantalion whirled in my mind, deducing various possibilities as I drew on that framework, truly pushing my creative abilities for the first time.

The potential of the library had never really sunk in. It was impressive and useful, but I’d never grasped EXACTLY why it had made my ancestor so unrivalled. Not really. Not until right at that moment.

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The book fell from my fingers, slamming to the table as I released it, my mind spinning from the overwhelming task of deducing the technique I’d wanted. I felt like I’d just run a marathon with my brain. I’d simulated the technique, over and over again, slowly altering it, falling into the story headfirst in a way that I normally needed…I froze, my eyes flicked over to the staff quietly hovering above the tome.

My Ten Demons Tree, that was what had changed. Where before I could see and alter techniques easily with the books, I could only adjust them based on my intuition and technique. Now though, the staff had combined with the library. It had let me run the technique through a sort of testing program, over and over, working the kinks out slowly in a way that was even more terrifying than the library itself.

The Primordial Tree Sea hadn’t lied to me. That staff was the PERFECT companion for me. This one ability alone combined with my library gave me an advantage that no one else in the universe could match.

Of course, it only worked with techniques because of their intrinsic nature, further specializing me away from hard skills, but that didn’t matter. I’d long since shifted my focus to the Path based aspects of cultivation rather than hard Skill creation. That was my ancestor’s path, not mine. I stared at the tome, almost in awe of it, slowly picking up the technique and passing it to my wife, who had long since finished her own work.

“I wrote out the Dance in the book,” she said as we traded. “It should help give you a starting point for deducing it. This is the defensive technique?”

I nodded solemnly. “I call it the ‘Promethean Fire Soul Body’. It’s probably the most amazing technique I’ve ever made. Try learning it, and let me know if you have problems. I’ll work on your technique while you do. Having some more detailed data on how your techniques work should help me refine it more to make it accessible to everyone.”

She nodded, opening the tome and starting to study it. While she did, I focused on her own tome, opening it up to study the stats I’d been so looking forward to seeing.

Calliope Wyndham. D-rank. Ability: Master Abyssal Infiltration- Enter the shadows and emerge where you will within range, shape the darkness to your call, moving it as if it were part of your body, and even extend your senses through the shadows to spy on your enemies. Might: 67,550 Impact: 105 Vitality: 29,742 Fantasy: 56,520 Focus: 17,908 Perception: 36,375 Creation: 27,485 Progress to next rank: 235,667/1,000,000 Soul strength: Amethyst Soul Body Pet: Wolf named Rellia Skills: Minor Tracking, Beginner Dual Dagger Mastery, Intermediate Stealth, Intermediate Trap Mastery, Beginner Disguise, Lesser Balam Mastery, Expert Shadow Manipulation Mastery. Expert Paired Dueling. Path of the Abyss-Illusory. Technique: Dance of the Abyssal Fairy

I was impressed. Even in my current high power deduction state, I had to stop and admire my wife’s progress. I’d passed her by a solid margin, as I’d expected, but there was still only a fifty thousand point gap. Even with months of godslayer rep and becoming the apprentice of an S-ranker (and marrying into the royal family of the WCP) she must have been putting in a lot of work to gain that sort of recognition during her training.

But I shook that off. The Dance of the Abyssal Fairy was Callie’s movement technique, and a powerful one at that, but it wasn’t perfect. I went through the tome manually first, reading the story, making small alterations in places where I could see the stats making up the content weren’t being fully expressed. Then, once I finished my first pass, I triggered my new state.

Mentally, I was calling it “The Wisdom of Solomon”. The Ten Demons Tree shone in its place above the Tome and my mind began to whirl. I saw the Dance of the Abyssal Fairy play out, once, then twice, then a hundred times. And each time it got a little better, a little more perfect, slowly transforming, sublimating under the pressure of repetition as Dantalion became more and more familiar with it through the Ten Demon’s Tree’s simulations.

Finally, I finished, and I dropped the book, drained even more by the effort. I turned to find Callie waiting again, apparently the Wisdom of Solomon took a while. That was fine. We traded books again and she gave me her notes on what parts were too difficult or abstruse to learn without talent like mine.

I deduced it again. Then returned it to her. Then again. My brain was getting foggy, but Callie opened the bond, pouring her energy into me to reinforce my mental state. I smiled warmly at her, and we continued. Research and deduction, perfection and evolution. Until finally, the technique was done.

We emerged from the library and I pitched forward, Callie catching me and easing me down onto a nearby bedroll. “Watch yourself, honey,” she said softly as she helped me get comfortable. “I’ve got you. Your part is done. Get some sleep and I’ll work on teaching the others, ok?”

I was drowsy, but I forced myself to stay awake to make sure everything was done. “Are you sure it’s done? You can teach it?”

“I’ve got it,” she said firmly. “It’s completely finished. Not only can I teach it, after reading that whole book I’m basically an expert. I can explain this thing in my sleep. You did an amazing job tailoring it. It’s going to make all of us much safer.” She moved my mask aside, leaning down to kiss me gently. “Go to sleep, love. You handled the hard part, now leave the rest of it up to me. Everything will be better in the morning.” And you know what? I believed her. I was still smiling as I let myself fall into blissful slumber, Which was definitely different from passing out.