We had five days until the next trial, and I spent them practicing with my new mask. There was a whole binding ritual where I had to bleed on it, then dance around it, then sing it a song…I was pretty sure at least half of that was Zeke fucking with me to see how far I would go, but I’d been assured that cameras didn’t work through shadow copies, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

When it was done, the mask was…connected to me. Zeke said it was kind of a dummy version of my bond to Callie, though it didn’t show up on my stat page. I COULD feel it though, and because of that I was able to dump all the soul strain from my pseudo Domain on it.

The mask was C-rank, so it was able to handle the strain better, but like Zeke had warned me, being an inanimate object made its ability to endure soul damage much weaker, and I only had about five minutes with it per day. I had to get used to working with it, testing my domains, getting my moves down to the slimmest margins for the best effect.

I even reworked my domains a bit, adding the fog back into Limbo permanently and tweaking Gluttony to reinforce itself with some of the swallowed power. Not the physical form, since it already did that, but the actual pit, which should make consumption smoother and faster as it snowballed.

Of course, the five days were also a good opportunity to crank out some wishes, but given the coming trials I didn’t stockpile this time. Forty wishes at seventeen points per wish was six hundred eighty points, not to mention a serious boost from my progress in the last trial. I DID get way more Might than anything else, which I was choosing to view as a positive reflection of my strength and NOT an assumption that I was a big dumb meathead who had taunted the trial examiners to torture us all more violently than they otherwise would have (not that I thought that was true anyway).

I dropped that six eighty into Vitality, which was lagging behind a bit, and the other thirty two hundred was all Might.

The next trial was later in the day, sadly, so I ended up with the morning to myself. Normally that would have been fine, but I always hated the wait before a big event. I tried to sleep until the last possible moment on days I had to do things, because waiting around all morning for an afternoon task made time feel like it was flowing in reverse.

So I did what I often did when bored or annoyed, I tormen-er, that is, trained my apprentice. I’d come up with a truly spectacular exercise to try to teach her better defensive instincts, and watching her attempt it was endlessly amusing.

“Ow, shit-” she cursed as a fist made of dust crashed into her face, spinning her into a backhand before another closed fist smashed into her gut.

Pit of despair had been layered only an inch deep, creating a large circle of fine silt that I was using dust construction to animate into long tentacles with fists on them, attacking seemingly at random. Seemingly because I was using my overlay to easily find her weaknesses, and she was so much slower than me that the simple ability was having zero trouble with the process.

“Almost dodged that one,” I said brightly as she staggered to her feet, slipping in the nearly frictionless dust and glaring at me. “What’s wrong? You’re improving so much.”

Honestly, she was. She might hate the process, but it was helping. Her instinctive use of the forms had been much smoother, and she’d unconsciously flexed Mornax to block a few of the hits, though she hadn’t noticed she was doing it. If it had been actually pointless I’d have stopped, I wasn’t Abel.

My apprentice, sadly, did not appreciate my care and consideration. “You’re so MEAN to me!” She wailed, literally stomping her foot and slipping in the dust. “You’re supposed to be teaching me, not beating me up!”

“Check your Skill,” I told her lazily.

“What? Why would I need to check my Sk-” She froze, eyes wide. “In-Intermediate already? How? And how did you KNOW?”

I shrugged. “You started tapping into the forms more smoothly a few minutes ago. I’m surprised you didn’t notice, although I suppose you WERE distracted. Am I still me-” I was cut off by a furious tackle hug as my apprentice slammed into my torso, her arms failing to encircle my armored body but squeezing me tightly anyway.

“You’re the best master EVER!” she squealed, completely changing her tune. “Now that I’m Intermediate I can start making the technique my own, right? Tweaking it to be more personalized?”

“Sure, and you could paint a big smiley face on top of the next expensive piece of art you buy,” I said disdainfully. “Doesn’t mean you should. No, don’t mess with the Skill yourself. I’ll adapt it for you, customize it to mesh a little better with your Path. Or, alternatively, you could leave it as is and customize your Path to mesh a little better with the Skill. I’m good at this, and put a lot of work and time into making those forms. Messing with them isn’t going to be an improvement.”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

I kind of felt like I was my ancestor, creating a perfect fine tuned machine that any tinkering would unbalance. Of course, my staff art was so far removed from the perfection of the Wish ability it might as well be in another dimension, but the comparison was a nice fantasy while it lasted.

Still, I wasn’t lying. Minor tweaks to the Skill, such as deciding on a manifestation or something, would be far more beneficial than any crazy involved tinkering she could do. My own Intermediate tinkering had massively fucked up my DS Mastery in ways I had only recognized and been able to repair later. I hope to help my apprentice skip that particular minefield, and hopefully take advantage of my experience for a better start to her journey.

I think she could tell I had good intentions, because she nodded slowly. “Then what should I do?”

“Manifestation,” I answered bluntly. “It’s a common tweak to weapon masteries, which the Goetia Staff Art technically is, and one I missed out on. I could probably force one as a technique, but I have other tools now. But for you, who is so tied up in the martial side of the forms, it’s a good choice.”

The more I considered it, the more I wondered WHY the tweaks at Intermediate were so commonplace. I mean, I did understand why, novelty was how Ascendants made their mark, but knowing what I knew now, I suspected part of the reason established factions like the Spear Legion that Lament and Wren had been part of back in the Moonglade Vale Tournament defaulted to manifestation.

Someone clearly knew that crazy ridiculous alterations done blind would hamstring you later without the proper skillset to fix it. I just kind of wish they’d told ME that. With Zeke bound by his geas to minimize interference, I’d been left to flounder, and only my exceptional luck had prevented me from fucking myself over in the long run. I was determined to make sure Bella had better support than that.

I’d expected at least some argument, knowing that as a less experienced warrior Bella would probably want to try more new things and blaze her own path (pun intended), but to my surprise, after a moment of silent introspection, she just nodded. “Alright.” At my slight start, she smiled. “I know I can be a pain, but I really appreciate you teaching me. I’ve never even heard of a Skill this complicated or versatile. You built it and you know what I need to do with it. It would be pretty silly to try to reinvent the wheel before I even learned how to drive on the normal ones.”

I burst out laughing at that. “I guess it would.” I waved a hand, and the dust beneath her feet pushed her up slightly, raising her to a level surface before re-solidifying. “So, are you too tired from training or do you want to try to get manifestation down before I head out?”

Bouncing excitedly she skipped backwards about twenty feet, getting into position. “Alright, I’m ready. How do I do a manifestation.”

“Oh, I have no idea,” I admitted. She froze, staring at me. “What?” I asked with a shrug. “I told you I never bothered, I did my own alterations, though they ended up being a mistake in the long run. More on the fly changes I tend to use techniques for, but doing that won’t work here. Luckily, I have a decent idea where to start. You know how to brute force a Skill change, right?”

Back on Callus, when I’d been learning how to alter Skills in the Scavenger Hunt, I’d needed to use the brute force method. Essentially using my stats to bully my Skills into doing extremely niche things and then repeating it until the Skill essentially learned what I was doing and changed to reflect it.

She nodded slowly. “I can do that. You said you were going to do the changes yourself though.”

“Not literally,” I said with a shake of my head. “Through you. Just…do your thing.” I opened up my Eye of Revelation, then, with a quick flex, triggered Afterburner making sure to burn several of my boosts on the vision skill. Staring hard, I looked…through, my apprentice. Our connection through the Skill only we had was enough for me to at least see the makeup of it the way I could my own.

I doubted I could study the Skill construction of ALL her Skills, but I didn’t need to. “Begin,” I told her firmly.

So she did. I watched as she wielded her staff. She tried to do a full manifestation right out the gate, but I stopped her. “Don’t rush,” I said in a calming tone. “Start small.” So she did. A same size copy of her staff, an image that was basically just a reflection. She worked with that a few times, and I corrected her image a bit, slightly changing her impressions of what she was doing and seeing how that affected the stat distribution.

This was HARD, like trying to do surgery blindfold by describing where the other person should cut. But it was a VERY simple alteration, which was why we’d settled on it, and soon enough she was working with a mostly perfect manifestation. It only took another hour or so of repetition for it to click into place, and the Skill altered itself to fit her. When she finished, she slumped to the ground, mentally exhausted.

I called Archie down, letting him flood me with Life Nova to offset the sequelae to Afterburner, then smiled at my apprentice. “That’s enough alteration to count as making it your own, which means you’re free to train for Expert. I wouldn’t expect it to be fast, just take your time. Work on incorporating the manifestation into your combat style.”

I was looking forward to how effective she would be with that trick. Without the ability to trigger forms she was at a disadvantage, but the range improvement should help a lot. Abel was devastating with that trick. Maybe I could have him give her some pointers after we left.

That brought up the question of whether Bella was coming back with me, which brought up the question of whether I would make it back at all. Luckily, Archie’s flames had me in a good enough mood to banish that thought as I waved goodbye and headed for the next trial. I figured a nice leisurely walk would clear my head.