After maxing out all his important skills, Allen was left with a rather long list of improvements. His headache hadn’t gotten any better either, so he didn’t spend too much time going over every detail. There would be time to test everything later on.

He pushed the conversations happening around him out of his mind. The sky hadn’t darkened or changed at all since they had entered the dungeon node, but it was still getting late. “Well, from the top I guess,” Allen told himself.

Skill: Suppression

Channel mana into an enemy to daze and confuse them.

Category: Channeling Magic – Type: Active – Tier 8

Effects: Send a burst of mana directly into the target on contact. Dazed enemies may be startled, blinded and/or confused. Enemies below 3/5 of your level will receive an additional fear effect. Duration and effectiveness proportional to the difference in level and intelligence between you and the target and the tier of this skill; Max of 10s. Selectively numb 50% of the pain from any of your attacks; unlimited duration and no level requirements.

Cost: 50MP.

Allen stopped at tier eight for Suppression, not really feeling it was that important at the moment. “I wonder how I can use the pain numbing feature, that seems interesting,” he told himself. “I might still replace this skill though.”

Skill: Expanded Awareness

Focus your mind on sensory inputs to become aware of more in a single instant.

Category: State of Mind – Type: Active – Tier 10 Max

Effects: Increase your perception and sensory range by 800% for a single instant. Any information that you perceive through any means will be filed into your consciousness and memory. You can choose which senses or information to ignore. Overuse will cause extreme mental strain.

Cost: 100 SP

“So… sensory range as well as perception gets boosted now… and I can choose stuff to ignore. That’s a good upgrade, eight-hundred percent too.” Allen read over the skill again, catching something else while he was at it. “Information is filed into my memory as well? I don’t think that was there before. I already have lots to test.”

Skill: Feather Walk

Enhanced with magic, you are unheard and unfelt until it’s too late.

Category: Enhancement Magic – Type: Active – Tier 10 Max

Effects: Reduces the sound and vibrations caused by all movement by 50%. Reduces the weight of your steps by 50%. Increases your movement speed by 50%. Eliminates any damage you take from falling if you land on your feet at an additional cost.

Cost: 5 MP/s while in use; >50 MP for additional effect.

“No more fall damage and some more numbers, which is always nice… but now this is my only movement skill. I’ll have to see what else this job offers.”

Skill: Killer Instinct

Estimate the success of your moves before you make them.

Category: State of Mind – Type: Passive – Tier 10 Max

Effects: Predict your enemy’s weak spots and how much damage an attack will deal or how much damage you will take. Foresee the potential danger of your actions or the actions of your enemy.

Cost: None

Skill: Dead Calm

Become like a true assassin: Dead inside.

Category: State of Mind – Type: Passive – Tier 10 Max

Effects: The furor of battle calms you; the stress of pursuit steadies you mind. As the fight drags on, your focus, wisdom, dexterity, and stability increase; +10%/min, max of +500% modifier.

Cost: +5%SP usage while active.

“Killer Instinct and Dead Calm are both familiar. They don’t change much until tier twenty or so, it’s just better predictions for Instinct and bigger numbers for Dead Calm, now fifty minutes to full charge. Nothing to see here.”

Skill: Body of the Lurker

Your body changes to blend in with the silence.

Category: Enhancement Magic – Type: Passive – Tier 10 Max

Effects: Your body is 40% lighter and 30% more flexible. Your bones are 15% more elastic. You can double these effects at will for a much greater cost. You become harder to perceive while in your enemy’s peripheral vision. Your body will no longer make sounds or vibrations on its own. Effective power of channeled Dusk miasma is increased by 25%.

Cost: 50MP/min – 100MP/s(enhanced)

“I don’t think this skill had a cost before.” Allen thought. “It’s not much though. And 80% weight reduction for… a lot of mana. That could be useful.”

Skill: Assassinate

Deal more damage when your enemies are unaware.

Category: Martial Arts – Type: Meta – Tier 10 Max

Effects: 400% base damage when attacking while unnoticed by the target. 200% base damage when attacking while unseen by the target. Successful activation can be given an additional paralysis effect to enemies below 3/5 of your level; duration proportional to the difference in level between you and the target; max of 10s.

Cost: 500SP (to paralyze)

“And there’s the paralysis effect at tier ten, just like I remember.”

Allen moved on to the additions to his Chaotic Destroyer skills. Unlike many of his skills from his other job in the Assassin tree, he was completely in the dark on how it functioned. “It’s also a Monk job, so I shouldn’t get any weapons skills for anything more than a knife, which fits I guess. Punching stuff sounds cool too.”

Skill: Chaotic Destruction

Release chaotic mana in a single attack to cause devastating destruction and chaos.

Category: Destruction Magic – Type: Active – Tier 10 Max

Effects: Instantly charge an attack with mana to the base minimum to release a physical burst of chaotic destruction. Overcharge by any amount to deal additional chaotic magic destruction; overcharged magic is chaotic and difficult to control. Chaotic magic lingers in your enemy, disrupting their synergy and dealing damage; duration dependent on enemy stats. Damage dealt is proportional to strength, intelligence, and the tier of this skill.

Cost: 500MP Base – 1000MP Max – 200MP/s (overcharge)

“Wow, it instantly charges to the base now and its almost five times as powerful as Break used to be. There’s also a lingering effect, I need to test that.”

Skill: Heavy Jab

Apply damaging magic to your attacks.

Category: Channeling Magic – Type: Active – Tier 8

Effects: Increases the physical damage of your attacks by 80%. Increases the speed of your attacks by 25%.

Cost: 100MP

“This one is meh. I might not need it anymore, now that Brea— I mean Chaotic Destruction charges instantly. Moving on…”

Skill: Accelerated Chaos

Accelerate your magic into a chaotic maelstrom.

Category: Enhancement Magic – Type: Passive – Tier 10 Max

Effects: Instantaneously increase the charging, casting, and propagation speed of your skills at the cost of stability and synergy; magnitude of 250%. Accelerated skills will become chaotic and difficult to control. Miasma can also be accelerated, giving it increased chaotic power at the cost of synergy.

Cost: 150MP/s

“I’m still not happy about losing Heavy Accelerate. I didn’t see that coming at all, but this could increase the charging speed of Chaotic Destruction to less than a minute… It just depends on how bad it fucks me up when I use it.”

Skill: Chaotic Synergy

You become more in tune with chaotic miasma despite its nature.

Category: Enhancement Magic – Type: Passive – Tier 7

Effects: Chaotic miasma is 30% more stable under your control. You are able to more easily predict the effects of chaotic miasma by any means; effect proportional to focus and the tier of this skill.

Cost: None

“I should get a Dusk synergy skill too. This should help with the, um, Chaotic part… and it’s proportional to focus, which I have out the ass right now.” Allen hummed to himself. “I’ll do some testing before I put any more points into it though.”

Skill: Vital Strike

Your strikes land true and cripple your enemy.

Category: Martial Arts – Type: Meta – Tier 8

Effects: Your enemy’s vital zones are 20% larger against your attacks. Attacking your enemy’s critical vital zones will ignore 10% of their resistance. Taking more than 75% of your enemy’s HP in a single hit will cause paralysis; duration proportional to the difference in level between you and the target. Max of 5s.

Cost: 50SP Base – 100SP to cause paralysis

Chaotic Blow

Weaken your enemy’s stability with a chaotic blow.

Category: Chaotic Magic – Type: Meta – Tier 6

Effects: Take more than 80% of an enemy’s HP in a single attack to decrease their synergy by 10%; duration proportional to the difference in level between you and the target; max of 5s. Use of Chaotic magic in addition to this skill will inhibit mana regeneration if the previous condition is met; duration dependent on enemy stats.

Cost: +25% MP use per attack.

“These two skills are sort of similar. Just more numbers, except for the mana regeneration part. That looks fun.”

Skill: Damage Control

Control the focus and spread of the damage dealt by your attacks to a certain area.

Category: Martial Arts – Type: Meta – Tier 7

Effects: Focus the damage and magic from your attacks onto a smaller point or cause it to diffuse onto a larger area. Change the shape of the damage and magic from your attacks as you wish. Damage amount remains the same.

Cost: 5% of mana used by the main skill.

“This one could use some testing; I might get rid of it if it doesn’t work well with Chaos aspect magic.” Allen glanced over his list of skills again and then let out a deep sigh. After going through fifteen skills, he still had thirty-six skill points left to use.

“And then there’s this,” Allen thought, looking at his new Mentalist Job. With two points in it, it had jumped to tier three.

Job: Mentalist

One who knows the mind and how to deceive it.

Class: Rogue/Ranger – Type: Basic – Tier 3

Description:

The Mentalist is a master of misdirection and deception. A Mentalist understands how people think, and knows how to twist reality with a trick, or even a bit of magic. With a Mentalist, nothing is as it seems.

Requirements: None

Modifiers: None

“One might think the Illusionist job is the best for illusions, but they’d be wrong, in my opinion. It just takes a bit of time to get to the actual mind magic.” Allen had some points set aside to put into a few Mentalist skills he knew he’d need, but first he would have to deal with his lack of any movement skills. “It’s probably best if I keep that kind of stuff to my Assassin job and the DPS to the other j—"

“AH! Of course!” Christopher’s sudden exclamation launched everyone out of their thoughts, including Allen. “Teleportation is possible with the Death aspect, theoretically that is.”

“Have you been thinking about that this whole time?” Allen asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Nah, that doesn’t make any sense,” Camila blurted between sips from a wine bottle, “Allen’s just fuckin with you.” She flopped back onto her mat and turned to face the outside of their small camp.

A small breeze blew past everyone while they either rolled their eyes or snorted to themselves, or both in Allen’s case. Christopher cleared his throat and formed a perfect octahedron out of rolling miasma. It appeared to be white at first glance, but it wasn’t bright like the light aspect or flat and rigid like control aspect. In fact, it wasn’t truly white either, it was iridescent, shimmering as it spun lazily above the professor’s palm.

“The arcane aspect is the origin of the other aspects,” Christopher began. “Each of the sixteen aspects are really just the arcane aspect shifted by a certain degree. The greater the shift at higher levels and the greater the synergy with that aspect, the greater its power will become.”

Allen shared a look of puzzlement with Shoam. “That’s basically along the lines of what Amon taught us,” he thought. He could almost hear the elf say the same thing back, even without words.

“The Death aspect is probably the aspect I’m least familiar with, even more so than Dusk,” the professor continued. “Still, I know enough about it to speculate. So, we usually think of death as the act of dying, but because it’s the opposite of life, death is actually the state of being dead.”

“Where is he going with this?” Allen wondered. “Well, Doc says weird stuff like this too, actually.”

“That distinction is important because it means the death aspect involves more than just killing things. I remembered that, at high levels and high synergy, death mages and necromancers can use death magic to achieve astral projection, which is basically as close to dying as you can go before staying dead.”

“What does astral projection have to do with anything?” Amelia asked, looking skeptical.

A glint came to Christopher’s eyes as he grinned enthusiastically. “It stands to reason that a powerful enough necromancer, like the Black Healer, would have enough command over the state of death to surpass the limitations of astral projection. He would then be able to actually kill himself, decompose his body into mana, travel somewhere in second stage detachment as a soul, and then resurrect himself at his destination.”

Allen caught some strange looks as he glanced over everyone in the camp. Most of them just seemed confused, including Ty, Nora, and Camila. Amelia looked upset though, like she couldn’t believe Christopher’s lengthy explanation.

“Huh, well that does sound like something Doc would think of,” Allen said. Shoam laughed a little to his side.

“If his Death attunement is high enough to manage that, then he definitely shouldn’t also have life aspect at all,” Amelia said, looking off to the side.

Christopher hummed in agreement. “Yes, that is true, but as I was thinking of how death aspect transportation could be possible, I realized it would require certain meta magic that is only possible with arcane aspect. Magic that acts on magic itself, so to speak.” His smile returned with an edge of victory and satisfaction. “I figured that since The Black Healer’s arcane job is separate from his life and death jobs, he is able to use his arcane aspect magic as a bridge between opposing aspects. After all, mana shifts towards an aspect have no effect on any arcane aspect jobs or skills.”

Amelia’s eyes widened with realization. “So you’re saying…” she began.

“It looks like its possible to use diametrically opposed magic so long as you have even more powerful arcane magic at your disposal to mediate the two.” Christopher

The professor and the Healer started arguing rather passionately about healing and mana shifting. Apparently, Amelia knew more about magic than she had let on, likely from her studies at the Order of Pain.

Allen would have reacted more to having his mind blown, but his headache had only gotten worse. He decided to drink a healing potion, since the really low-level ones basically worked like Tylenol, and just go to sleep. His body was just as exhausted despite the superhuman strength and endurance it had, thus, he was asleep in mere minutes.