Was that why Energy Manipulation was able to skyrocket in levels here? Tercius asked himself, his wide eyes taking in the gray fog and the Energy he towed behind himself.

A part of him assured him that he was onto something and he latched on.

His Energy Manipulation had always seemed a bit underused, out there in the real world. He couldn’t compress Energy nor could he expand it like he could Mana with Mana Manipulation — he could only direct it to where he wanted it to be. His body, skills, and Well were the ones who did the rest without any input from him.

Lacking Energy Metamorphosis, Tercius didn’t think of that much before, but now… what if he was truly not utilizing Energy Manipulation for what it was supposed to be used for? Or rather, what if he was, in his ignorance, using Energy Manipulation for only a part of what it was capable of?

If so, what exactly was that other part he was missing out on?

There was only one thing that came to his mind. When he had manipulated those massive amounts of Energy and caused the skill to level insanely, he had somehow manipulated Anima as well.

Was that the other part of Energy Manipulation? Or was that the eventual point of that skill? To one day manipulate anima?

His eyes went even wider at some parallels he made. Was the point of Mana Manipulation to eventually manipulate the body?

Was that how some Magi managed to stave off old age?

When compared to Mistress Kalina, Mistress Prime’era and Perdinar looked like younger siblings of his Mentor. When compared to the rejuvenated Mistress Helfira, they looked like they could be her children. Tercius knew that Mistress Helfira — who was close to eighty years of age, yet currently looked like she was in her late-fifties to early-sixties — was the youngest of the four.

Since he saw that both Perdinar and Mistress Prime’era looked in the prime of their youth, Tercius had been asking himself how something like that would be done. How could they change their bodies to be that way, seemingly eternally locked in a certain state of body? Maybe they were eternally reversing the effects of aging? What about their animas? Were animas required to be reshaped for something like that? Were these actions upon the body and anima done through some masterful use of Energy and Mana, through a skill, spell, enchantment or potion? Or was it done by direct manipulation of body and anima?

Now that he thought about it, didn't Perdinar himself confirm to Tercius, just weeks ago, that Energy had the ability to remodel the body? If Tercius’ Well hadn’t formed when it did, the man told him, then his body would have expanded like a balloon until more space was made for the channels, possibly indefinitely.

A wobble of Energy above him was the only indication of his slipping control as streams of Energy were swallowed by the waiting fog. Dispelling much of the excitement and the fear that came from that realization, Tercius immediately clamped down on the Energy.

Tercius looked at the fog surrounding him and then once more glanced at the Energy he held. If this conjecture was true, then his current quest to break the barrier of Small Blades Mastery here, in his anima, has lost much if not all of the ground that he based it on. The idea had been that if he broke the barrier here, then if he were to make throwing knives or daggers out of Energy, that he could maybe powerlevel the skill in the manner of Energy Manipulation if he were to perform the exercises here, but now…

What should he do now with the Energy he carried? Go on as intended, or should he just swerve and dump the Energy that he harvested and carried into the last leg of pacification of Spring of Crystal Thoughts? That was a core that would be much easier to find than the one of Small Blades Mastery…

Instead of going forward towards the core of Small Blades Mastery, or changing his route to the core of his telekinetic skill, Tercius fortified his hold on the Energy and decided to take a break right where he was, if only to give this new development a bit of thought while the ideas were fresh.

What Mana was to a body, Energy was to this fog, this anima. If mana could influence the body, and he knew for a fact that it could, then the assumption that Energy could influence anima stood as logical.

According to Mistress Kalina, all Skills were part of the anima and part of the body — part Arc, part Mund — but Tercius wasn't sure that he agreed with that. If all skills were found inside anima, as they were, then how could they be even partly of the body? It didn't make any sense. How could— But they weren't all inside anima, were they?

Was that why he couldn’t find the core of Familiar Bond? Because it was more on the physical side?

It was possible.

Blazing Hells, he had just started getting confident that he knew something. But this was good, he comforted himself. This was all progress.

So… in the spirit of progress, maybe he should be more flexible. Maybe he shouldn't think in terms of skill nature as just one side against the other, but rather think of it in terms of everything that’s found in between those sides. A scale. If skill nature was to be a scale, then what would be the extreme left and what would be the right?

On one side there would be the body and on the other side anima, the first factor of which was Physical and the second was Metaphysical. Perhaps… where the skill Core was established where the two sides met? Was that what Mistress Kalina meant when she said that all skills were part Arc and part Mund?

Skills weren’t only part body and anima, they were also quite obviously aggregates of Mana and Energy. Mund’ane and Arc’ane, as Magi termed them.

From what he inferred, Mund was body — perhaps a better translation would be corporeal or physical. If he went in reverse that would mean that Mund’ane would be… what? Something like corporeal… power? But Tercius saw issues with that immediately, besides the issue that Mana sounded much better than a mouthful of "corporeal power". For one, mana was not corporeal, at least until it was made to be corporeal…

Tercius almost smacked himself.

Mana was corporeal, at least partly. He could feel other people's mana even without a skill, couldn't he? And all it took for mana to become utterly visible to the naked eye was to purify it enough. Even Energy was corporeal, in some way, otherwise how could it interact with his body and refresh and diminish his need for sleep, to say nothing that its presence in his body enhanced Mana regeneration to absurd proportions?

Well, now he was not sure of anything anymore.

Tercius shook his head in frustration. He was thinking of all of this with a narrow mind and from a standpoint of pre-established knowledge. Flexibility ought to be the word of the day. Night. Whatever.

What he should be doing is reviewing everything he knew before, sort it out, compare it to what he learned now, see how it all interacts, and only then start formulating entirely new conclusions out of all those collected pieces.

The four factors of skills were Mana, body, Energy, and anima.

Tercius remembered that Mistress Kalina told him once how Mana and Energy were two different sides of a coin. Now, it was body and anima that seemed to be in one such relationship as well. The body was the physical component, the corporeal part of him, while his anima was the metaphysical part, the incorporeal of him. The body obviously had mana channels and the Well. The anima had skills.

No, perhaps not skills themselves. Let’s leave the word “skills” out of this, Tercius corrected himself. The anima is a home for skill cores. Whether these cores are skills themselves, as I thought they are, or just the metaphysical part of skills, remains to be determined. And since I’m at it, I should not forget the skill garden. Or should I call it the core garden?

Per his current theory, skill cores were agglomerations of Mana and Energy. Mana and Energy both had a physical and metaphysical nature, a nature which mana channels shared. Close to a year ago, when he had been just about to open his Well, it was Mistress Lovela who had explained to him the physical and metaphysical nature of mana channels.

Suddenly he wondered if he should change the misleading name to something else. Just channels, perhaps? Channels then.

Channels were present in every living being, from a plant to a human, that Tercius was able to observe, forming a root-like structure all around the body, a structure that was extremely similar in appearance to that of the cardiovascular system.

The same dual nature that was present with Mana and Energy was once again repeated with the case of the Well and the Core Garden — after all, the Well was formed from channel growth and the Garden provided the space for crystal growth.

Mana, body, Energy, anima, channels, cores, the Well, and the Garden… Each of those was connected to each of the others.

He could even draw a duality between the Well and the Garden, and since the body and anima, as well as Mana and Energy, were also in a relationship, then could he tentatively draw the same duality for skill cores and channels?

Was the network of channels the other, more physical, side of skills? Was that the actual meaning behind Mistress Kalina’s explanation that all skills were part physical and part metaphysical? The physical part of the skills were the channels and the metaphysical the cores, which meant that half of each skill was inside the body and half inside anima?

The only problem that he saw was that channels existed even before a person had a single skill. The Well was formed at a later date from the said channels and he had no idea about whether The Garden was an inborn quality of anima or something formed in the same manner that the Well was…

Despite the rather large unknowns in his rapidly evolving theory, Tercius was excited beyond belief. Just the fact that he was able to widen his base of concepts was a step in the right direction.

He jotted down all of his ramblings in a couple of minutes of Visualization, finally reaching for Quick Learner to memorize it all properly and make sure that nothing of these past few minutes was lost. Nothing.

For some reason, he didn't get that feeling that the skill was at work. What’s going on— Just as he came to realize why his skill wasn’t working and what exactly he was doing by reaching for the skill here, the sphere of Energy at his back moved in response, a massive part of it slipping away from the firm hold of his Energy Manipulation and disappearing off into the fog.

Quick Learner [20] is now Quick Learner [21]

Well, that's a waste on so many levels… Tercius thought bitterly, but his cheer was difficult to be eclipsed. He had planned to sacrifice Quick Learner to Teaching, on Perdinar’s suggestion, but now…

There’s a lesson on what can happen when you leave things for a better time and place right here, I’m sure. I guess that Quick Learner and Teaching will have to wait for [40]— or will they? Does the sacrifice have to be at the same level as the receiver?

No matter how much he combed his memory, he couldn’t find the answer to that. According to what his parents and grandparents told him years ago, they both should be at a barrier, but… he could easily infer from what he knew of skills that only the receiver skill had to be at a barrier. The donor was just there as fuel or food. Instead of trying to see if he was right, and in doing so ended up risking two very good skills, Tercius decided to ask his Mentor tomorrow.

I wonder if tomorrow is already today? I should hurry either way… Oh, what the Hells… After all of that, I don’t think that I can fall asleep…

***

*****

***

A little while later, Tercius was searching for the core of Small Blades Mastery.

Running high on inspiration, Tercius had an idea that he decided to test out immediately. If it failed, little harm would be done. But if it worked, like he thought it would…

Then this could change everything.

The core of Small Blades Mastery was a spinning crystal of metallic gray, surrounded by a field of metallic grey light, a common theme with all the cores that he didn't try to customize.

Customization, or rather visualization of what the skill should look like, was only needed for skill sacrifice. What Tercius thought that this did was establish, or enhance, a connection between skill cores, which was what allowed for sacrifice to proceed.

Tercius stepped out of the fog and into the metallic field that surrounded the spinning crystal, at his heels a sphere of Energy almost as big as the core of the skill he was in.

The skill’s core was long ago pacified so he approached as close to the metal-looking crystal as he could.

Satisfied with the location, he nodded to himself. Time to try.

Without using his specialized skill to aid him, Tercius pictured a thick and red cloud. The cloud was moving from his body to his anima, to the core. The Energy in his hold roared at him and he pressed back, rapidly regaining control before any could get away. The response of the Energy was too fast here, likely the result of the location. But the location was key, so he would just have to endure a bit more until he could form the function he wanted.

It was difficult to hold the Energy with Energy Manipulation and imagine the cloud perfectly, but he tried to picture as many details as he could. Again the cloud formed, as dense and as red as blood. Out of that mana cloud, he started carving a set of lifelike throwing knives — the ones Lux left for him, creations of perfect symmetry, wickedly sharpened edges, and round handles of naked metal.

Seven of those knives were hovering around him in a semicircle and he had one in each of his hands.

With each detail, he could feel the Energy in his grip deforming with a stronger force, as if trying to answer the call that he was sending out by any means. This time he didn’t hold it back strongly but instead, just like he earlier called for Quick Learner, he now called for Small Blades Mastery.

Even if he wanted to, there was no holding back the Energy. He could feel that a part of it was still under his control, but most of it just rushed in around him, rapidly integrating itself into the fabric of the core. The metallic crystal next to him suddenly blazed with an even stronger light, the core's sphere of influence gaining brightness from it.

Small Blades Mastery [20] is now [21]

He called for the skill and a knife appeared in each hand, wave-like patterns decorating the length with metallic blues, reds, and dark greys, up and down the blades. He glanced over his shoulder and there the rest were, just waiting for his command. Tercius smiled as he looked over the other shoulder. Everything seemed to be in order so far. The expanded function had worked.

Now, it was the moment of truth to see if the customized function was able to accomplish what he intended it for.

***

*****

***

Opening his eyes, Tercius glanced at his hourglass. According to the instrument, he had just enough time to take a cold “wake up” bath before breakfast.

He had ended up spending the entire night awake.

But it was worth it. It was so, so worth it, Tercius thought as his fists clenched.

Small Blades Mastery [34]

The speed with which you gain familiarity with the tool is increased, while the skill is in use. Every skill level increases the effect by a small degree and lowers the cost of use by a small degree.

It had taken only an hour for him to go from [21] to [34]. One hour. Unfortunately, the Energy reserve had run out and Flu was back in the core of Energy Manipulation.

Instead of going back to finish off Small Blades Mastery, Tercius decided on another course. Knowing where the core was located, he went to it and repeated the same function for Stealth. He imagined a cloak for himself, a cloak as dark as night and made of mana, right before he called for the skill to work in his anima. The leftovers from the function were spent on leveling up the skill to [29].

Even after he had done all that, he still had some time so he finished pacifying the core of Spring of Crystal Thoughts.

It had been a long, productive night and now it was behind him.

Shaking his head, Tercius took out the set of knives his uncle gave him and as the skill came to life, the two that he held gained that same awareness that he had with the sword, if a more powerful version of it. Where before the tether binding them had been a tiny sliver of spider silk, now it was an entire blade of grass.

The blades danced on the tips of his fingers, the feeling so familiar and pleasant, a second nature in development. He felt that he knew each part of the crafted weapon. He knew that he could learn to do anything with these weapons. As the skill went away, so did the bond with the small blades recede.

Feeling giddy, Tercius took a cold bath.

Perhaps it was the sudden lack of heat that nipped at every part of his body, or perhaps it was just that he finally remembered where he was going and for whom, what day it was and what he would be doing come evening, but he finally got around to Meditation and its barrier.

The event with Amber could have likely been enough for some kind of a function, but luckily he had no Energy at the time to fuel it. It was a bit of a waste to use the function he thought of back in Nurium, now that he had a function specifically made to powerlevel mana skills, but Tercius did not hesitate anymore. He left his body in the cold water and went to fill his Well to the brim with Energy. The function for Meditation went ahead as previously planned.

Meditation [60] is now Meditation [61]

Now, if his grandmother needed relief from her pain, he could provide it without depending on anyone else. If a wisp visit came to pass at the right moment and she proved able to see them, even better. That would alter the loose plans he had for Rona, Ciron, Petra, and Septimus, should they choose to accept the offer that he was tentatively still considering, of course.

As for the Spirits, there should be no problem as long as Rona didn’t harvest Energy, which she wouldn’t be able to do, considering that she wasn’t in the know about the details of effigies – the gateways to anima and skill cores – which were only created by the wisps by altering a skill visualization.

No effigy, no gateway, no Energy.

Shivering, Tercius got up from the bath refreshed and ready to tackle his last day of stay at Everstorm Citadel.