After unlocking Basic Elemental Form Water the first thing Tormacc did was test it out. In part that was because he wanted to know exactly what it did, but it was also because of the two abilities it revealed: Water Limb Extension and Elemental Form Water, an upgrade to the skill he just unlocked. Without testing out the skill he didn’t know if getting the upgraded version was worth it or not.

Activating his water form, Tormacc felt his body become insubstantial, his form blurring slightly as his flesh turned to water. It wasn’t a complete transformation, as he could tell that he was still confined to his normal body, it was just that his normal body was now mostly made of water.

Testing it out, he moved around his hotel room, trying to find the limits of the skill. It was a strange feeling, and he knew that optimally using the skill would take some time, as while his body was mostly the same, the feelings he was getting form his sensory organs weren’t. In particular, his sense of touch was magnified to the extreme. Along with his body his clothes had also turned to water, which left him essentially naked, his sense of touch exposed to the surroundings. But while normally that would only mean he could feel the air flowing over his skin, while using Basic Elemental Form Water he could feel so much more.

Almost all air had some amount of water vapor in it, and with his skill he could feel the droplets in the air around him, his sense of touch extended almost a meter around his body. He was able to unlock some skills that had a similar function, but he had a feeling they wouldn’t feel as natural as his current senses: his elemental body skill not only giving him new sensory inputs, but also giving him the needed skills to process those new senses. He suspected it was similar to Athra’s inborn Stonebending ability and her corresponding Stonesense, except while she was able to do it naturally he had to activate a skill to achieve a similar effect.

After getting used to his new senses he next tested his physical defense. He was now (mostly) made of water, so there should be some physical changes that went along with that. After trying to cut his arm with a knife it turned out that the skill did give him some bonuses against physical blows, but the bonuses were limited, likely from the skill’s low level. When trying to cut his arm there was a slight resistance, and the knife was able to be partially absorbed before it actually cut him.

But while all the bonuses so far were great he could tell that they weren’t the real effect of the skill: the real effect was improving his use of his other water-based skills. While using Basic Elemental Form Water not only would he gain physical benefits, but his use of other water element skills would be improved, and after some experimentation, the improvement wasn’t small. He didn’t have a good way to gauge the bonus, but he thought his water skills gained somewhere from 1.25 to 1.5 times the power.

What all the testing came down to was that the skill was certainly powerful enough to get the upgrade, so without hesitation he unlocked the tier ten Elemental Form Water. His two tier eleven options were Advanced Elemental Water Form and a skill called Water Resonant Body, which he wasn’t sure exactly what it did form the skill description. He knew his elemental form was a powerful skill though, so he went ahead and unlocked Discount from the bottom section of his Fate Wheel before unlocking the advanced form of his elemental form skill.

He didn’t check out the two tier twelve skills he unlocked, as since he couldn’t unlock them anytime soon it wasn’t worth getting distracted, but he did check out the two new skills he revealed from unlocking Discount. They were Haggle and Pricing, and one allowed him to haggle better and the other gave him the ability to estimate the price of something. They were fine skills in certain contexts, but not worth much to him now. Perhaps in the future he would unlock them.

The next step was using his spheres, which netted him 40,000 Essence thanks to his tier eleven skill. After using the spheres he had a grand total of 49,164 Essence, and it was time to spend it.

Tormacc went on a spending spree, unlocking lower level abilities left and right, greatly filling out the lower tiers of his Fate Wheel. Now that he was generating Essence in the thousands he could afford to waste a few hundred on some speculative abilities, so he wasn’t as worried about wasting Essence. Before it would have been dumb to unlock those lower tier abilities, as it would have directly impacted his combat strength, the Essence spent on lower tier skills meaning he couldn’t save for higher tier skills.

As he went through and unlocked abilities, he started to figure out what type of build he wanted to go for. He already had some ideas before, but seeing the various options presented to him solidified his choice. At the moment he had two strengths: his water element attunement and his healing and regeneration abilities, so he decided to combine both of them to create a sort of elemental berserker build.

Water as an element was already one of the better elements for healing, and with a skill like his Elemental Form Water he was confident he could synergize water’s healing effects with his other healing abilities to give him a huge boost in survivability. At the current moment he still needed to get a few more offensive skills, but after his spending spree he was confident he could outlast most attacks unless he was instantly killed or dismembered.

He had spent most of his Essence on abilities, only leaving him with 274 left in his Fate Wheel. It was Essence well spent though, and he was much more confident about going into the Sealine Shard than he had been going into the previous Shard, especially considering how his water abilities would be boosted by the environment. He was looking forward to the trip, and as he got in bed to get a good night’s rest before setting out tomorrow he once more reviewed his newly purchased skills.

Top Section of Tormacc’s Fate Wheel

Tier two:

Inspect – Allows for greater understanding of materials.

Message – You can send a short telepathic message to a willing target.

Tier three:

Improved Understanding – Improves understanding of learned knowledge.

Implementation – Increases your ability to put ideas into practice.

Synergy – Allows for more synergy from actions and creations.

Tier four:

Body Understanding – Allows for a better understanding of your body.

Improved Synergy – An improved version of the Synergy skill.

Right section of Tormacc’s Fate Wheel

Tier four:

Centered Balance – Help you keep your balance.

Read the Flow – Read the flow of battle to better dodge attacks.

Tier five:

Sustain Life – Gives you the ability to stay alive for a short period of time even when internal organs are failing.

Elemental Senses – You can channel your senses through an element you are attuned with to extend your range of perception.

Improved Dodge – Improves the Dodge skill.

Tier six:

Improved Healing – Improves the effects of healing from all sources.

Recover – Channel internal power to heal wounds.

Greater Sustain Life – Improves the Sustain Life skill.

Unhindered – Allows you to exert combat strength as if you were injured less.

Water Senses – You can channel your senses through water to extend your range of perception.

Elemental Strike – A physical strike imbued with a chosen element.

Tier seven:

Greater Healing – Greatly improves the effects of healing from all sources.

Heal – When the ability is used you are healed for a small amount.

Healing Essence – Heal for a small amount when gaining Essence.

Berserk Fury – Increase strength at the cost of vitality.

Pierce Resistance – Gives a small resistance to piercing effects.

Slash Resistance – Gives a small resistance to slashing effects.

Increased Defense – Gives a slight overall increase to your defense.

Water Strike – A physical attack imbued with the water element.

Tier nine:

Healing Water – You can channel water to heal both yourself and others.

Tier ten:

Decimating Fist – A decimating fist attack.

Bottom Section of Tormacc’s Fate Wheel

Tier four:

Surge – A berserk type skill that when activated supercharges abilities but is followed by an intense period of weakness when the skill finishes.

Ability Perception – Allows you to have a better understanding of the abilities that other people use.

Compass – Never lose your internal sense of direction to places you have been.

Hunch – You get a hunch sometimes about things.

Tier five:

Strength Estimation – Allows you to better estimate other’s strength.

Tracking – Makes you better at tracking.

Camping – Makes you better at camping.

Lucky Break – Gives you a lucky break once before the skill is spent.

Tier six:

Skill Tier Estimation – Allows you to better estimate the tier of the skills other people are using.

Skill Sense – Gives you a better ability to know when someone is using a skill.

Light Rest – Gives you a better ability to sleep lightly.

Tier seven:

Tireless – Reduces your need for sleep by a small amount.

Left section of Tormacc’s Fate Wheel

Tier three:

Overcharge – Charge an ability to increase its power.

Shaping – Allows for very small tweaks to be made to what an ability does.

Elemental Boost – Set an element to get a boost.

Elemental Blast – Shoot out a blast or pure elemental power.

Tier four:

Improved Overcharge – Improves the ability Overcharge.

Improved Range – Slightly increases the range for all abilities.

Improved Precision – Slightly increases the precision for all abilities.

Elemental Casting – Slightly improves the use of all elemental abilities.

Elemental Shock – Creates a burst around you of a chosen element.

Elemental Shield – Create a shield of a chosen element.

Tier five:

Rapid Casting – Slightly improves your ability to use abilities in rapid succession.

Improved Concentration – Improves your concentration.

Greater Range – Increases the range for all abilities.

Greater Precision – Increases the precision for all abilities.

Elementalist Aura – When active, boost elemental abilities at the cost of non-elemental abilities.

Elemental Terrain – Draw power from an attuned element in the surroundings.

Elemental Wave – Send a chosen element out in a wave attack.

Elemental Armor – Create armor from an attuned element.

Tier six:

Greater Focus – Improves the Focus ability.

Mental Resistance – Slight resistance to mental impairing effects.

Aura of Water – When active, boost all water elemental abilities.

Elementalist – Provides a small boost to all elemental abilities.

Water Domain – Draw power from surrounding water.

Water Control – Control surrounding water.

Tidal Wave – Send out a wave of water.

Water Armor – Creates armor made from water.

Tier seven:

Elementalism – Gives you better understanding of the elements and ability to harness them.

Water Attunement – Increases your water attunement.

Greater Tidal Wave – Improves the skill Tidal Wave.

Tier eight:

Greater Elementalism – Improves the skill Elementalism.

Tsunami – Create a tsunami.

Tier nine:

Greater Tsunami – Improves the skill Tsunami.

He had unlocked a truly obscene amount of skills, gaining more than seventy in one go. The process was fairly straightforward, other than concerns over skills he wanted to unlock but didn’t have the Essence for, of which there were quite a few. But there was one thing that stood out to him, which was that once he had gained water-specific skills in tier nine they seemed to work retroactively, as he then saw water-specific skills as soon as tier six when unlocking more abilities. It was a small thing, but certainly something to take note of, as it was a clear demonstration of how his Fate Wheel was evolving in real-time based on what abilities he unlocked. It was yet another reason why Stella had told him to specialize instead of binge unlocking lower tier abilities. By spreading himself thin he would miss out on so much extra power and synergy. Luckily he wasn’t dumb enough to ignore her advice, and now he was benefiting from his previous actions.