“Hey Athra,” Tormacc said. “Why did you ask if I could heal myself?”

“You are wounded, yes? No reason to wait. If you couldn’t heal, we would wait. Since you can heal, we could battle.”

Her reasoning made sense. If he hadn’t been able to heal himself, it would have taken days, maybe even weeks, for him to heal naturally from the damage Athra dealt to him during their spar. He could have used a healing potion, but wasting a limited resource like that without reason was incredibly stupid. He guessed that if he hadn’t been able to heal Athra wouldn’t have agreed to the spar.

“So you mean that most people can’t heal themselves, right?” he asked, seeking clarification.

“Of course. You Humen are weak, squishy things. Need lots of time to heal. Pop very easily.”

He didn’t like the mental picture it brought up when Athra talked about people popping, but what she said confirmed his hypothesis; his ability to heal was rare, and likely even more rare was his constitution. He wasn’t actually healing with a skill after all. Regeneration was just a supplement. His active healing came from the ritual he went through after first entering The Tower. It was something he had gotten used to and relied on during his first six months in the starting zone, so he hadn’t thought much of it. It had become another part of him, just like his arms and legs.

But it wasn’t actually inborn. The first ritual he underwent was activated from within, sure, but did the Fate Wheel see it as part of him? It was doubtful; it was an external feature, the same with the ritual from Kaz Ehen and the Elixir of Toughness he drank back before entering the Shard. He had a total of three different body enhancements, if that didn’t induce some variance in his Fate Wheel, what would?

It was so simple, but because it was simple, he had missed it. He had been thinking of his body as part of him, so any augments were just upgrades, not anything external. But for unlocking abilities in his Fate Wheel, those three physical enhancements could make all the difference. He had been confused before when choosing between the two abilities unlocked by Enhanced Vitality, Rapid Healing and Regeneration. Both of them seemed similar, and now he knew why: it was because of the variance caused by his physical enhancements.

“Thank you, I think I know what to focus on now.”

“Any time, little Tormacc. Quickly heal so we can get back to hunting.”

He would have pictured someone made of stone as very patient, but Athra could be surprisingly proactive. He still didn’t know her very well, but by all accounts she was a goal-oriented person. If she saw a problem, she found a way to deal with it. Like how she was having trouble killing Stone Giants by herself so she found a partner. She wasn’t satisfied by her rate of Essence gain, so she did something to change it.

It was a refreshing change of pace. It wasn’t that he couldn’t focus on goals, but he tended to get bogged down in the minutia. When something didn’t go how he wanted it to, he had a hard time shifting gears. A good example was fighting the rat horde. He was focused on fighting them, which was good up to a point. He had gained a sizeable amount of Essence from them, but if he had cut his losses earlier and been more careful he wouldn’t have had so many close brushes with death.

Having that outside perspective was helpful, as it allowed him to more reasonably consider his options. Focusing on his healing and physical power might seem obvious in hindsight, but he had still needed that outside input for him to figure it out. It reminded him of something from home, but it was out of reach, his memories hidden behind a veil of fog, only the illusions of feelings left to tantalize him.

It only took an hour for him to heal the damage from the spar. Having a skill like Regeneration helped, as it made it easier for him to focus on guiding his Essence throughout his body, rather than him having to guide it and focus on the healing aspect, as Regeneration did a lot of the healing for him. Once he was healed up they continued walking, although calling what they were doing walking wasn’t quite right. Athra was pushing off the ground, each step propelling her over ten meters. Tormacc was running, his speed faster than any record set by a normal Humen, but to him the speed felt like a light jog.

They planned to migrate a fair distance away from where they were ambushed before, and since his mind could wander during travel it was the perfect time for him to examine his Fate Wheel and plan out where he wanted to spend his Essence. Right now he had around 3,000 that he could afford to spend, and he needed to decide if he was going to spend that now or save it for later.

Part of him wanted to save for a tier ten ability, especially as one of the revealed abilities, Giant Growth, was very tempting. But after the recent fight he felt that the utility he could gain from the 3,000 Essence was too good to pass up. He was nowhere near invincible, in fact far from it, and every increase in survivability mattered. So if he was going to spend the Essence on immediate power, the question was, what should he unlock?

There were quite a few movement type abilities that looked useful, and even after his revelation about the physical enhancement side of his Fate Wheel he knew he would pick up at least a few movement ones. Movement was the basis of all combat. If you couldn’t hit someone, you couldn’t hurt them. And in addition the utility movement skills granted during combat, they also doubled as escape skills. If he could run away from someone it didn’t matter if he could beat that person in a fight, no matter what his pride said.

Thinking about it, he was honestly a little jealous of Athra’s ability to achieve a wide range of proficiencies by focusing on one thing. By using her earth elemental talents, which he was sure were at least partly racial, she could cover offense, defense, and even movement type abilities. For example, he hadn’t seen her go all out with her rock surfing, but he was sure she could outrun him in a race. Perhaps not in a dead sprint, but in a marathon it wouldn’t even be close.

He didn’t have the luxury of focusing on an elemental power like she did. It wasn’t very efficient to do so without some sort of outside bonus, and the only element he had an affinity for currently was water, perhaps the weakest element out of the four basic on this Shard. Athra’s earth elemental powers were multiplied by the Shard they were on, and while he was sure she could fight without access to infinite quantities of stone, having it there and ready to manipulate gave her a huge edge. It was likely the reason she chose to come to the Shard in the first place, and it was only when she encountered the Stone Giants that she realized there were some downsides to the Shard too.

Deciding to first focus on which movement skills he wanted, Tormacc took a look at the options he had available to him out of the revealed skills in his Fate Wheel. He didn’t want to spend all his Essence on movement skills, so while skills like the tier eight Air Walk looked amazing, as it allowed him to walk on air for a short time, it cost too much for him to consider it for his current situation. Out of the revealed skills, the two he was most interested in were two tier six skills.

They were both revealed by Speed Boost. The first was Flash Step, which allowed him to move so quickly it would appear he was teleporting to someone without improved senses. This would be a powerful trump card in battle, either allowing him to either rapidly close in on an enemy or evade one of their powerful skills. Without unlocking it he couldn’t be sure how long the cooldown was, but he had a feeling it was fairly sizeable, which would make the skill unsuitable for running away, but otherwise it was currently number one on his unlock list for movement type skills. He had seen how powerful Dash was in the last fight, and Flash Step was even more powerful.

The other skill he was looking at was Quick Reflexes. The skill wasn’t a movement skill, exactly, but it did fill a similar purpose. It improved his reflexes, which would improve his speed, so it counted as a movement skill in that way, but the bigger reason he wanted it was to keep up with someone who was faster than him.

Speed often operated at breakpoints. As long as you could keep up with someone, you could defend against their attacks. But as soon as they reached a certain speed threshold, you would be unable to respond to their attacks, effectively leaving you at their mercy. During his previous battle with the bandit he was able to defend thanks to his superior skill in combat, but with how fast the other party had been moving if the bandit had used any combat maneuvers he would have been dead, unable to reach the required speed to match his blade.

Tier six abilities only cost 500 Essence, and with his new windfall he decided to unlock both of them. They were both powerful, the sooner he unlocked them the sooner he would be able to incorporate the skills into his combat style. Unlocking skills in combat could get him out of some sticky situations, but that was more for a unique skill effects he needed against monsters. Against another person trying to unlock a skill in battle was suicide.

Now down to 2,000 Essence, he turned to the physical enhancement side of his Fate Wheel. The first ability he unlocked was Rapid Healing, as it was only a tier four ability, so only cost him 100 Essence. The two abilities it revealed were Replenish Blood and Rejuvenation. Replenish Blood did as the name suggested, improving his body’s ability to replenish his supply of blood, while Rejuvenation greatly increased his healing for a short period of time. He was interested in both of them, but before he unlocked them he went back even farther in his Fate Wheel to look at the tier three abilities.

He hadn’t thought much about these early abilities, but now that he wasn’t so constrained on Essence, it made sense to unlock them to give himself more options. If he split the right side of his Fate Wheel into two sections, there would be the top section branching off from the tier one ability Inner Strength and the bottom section that branched off from the tier one ability Impact. Between the two section, he had mostly focused on the bottom one, but he did unlock both the tier two abilities in the top section. But out of the tier three abilities he had revealed all four but only unlocked two, and which were Enhanced vitality and Iron Skin, as opposed to the bottom section where he had unlocked all four abilities.

The other two tier three abilities were Iron Stomach and Body Boost. Body Boost allowed him to temporarily boost his body’s abilities, while Iron Stomach increased allowed him to digest food easier as well as be slightly more resistant to toxins. Both were fine abilities, but what he really wanted was the options revealed by them, and after unlocking them he had a whole slew of interesting tier four options. But at this point he was down to only 1,800 Essence, so instead of immediately making a decision on what to unlock he took his time pondering his options as he ran across the blasted plains.