Gaze Of The Depth

For the cradle rocks above the abyss, existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Surrounded by specks of chaos, it stares, deeper than any being can possibly go. Nothing escapes this gaze, for one, when the end is the true beginning.

Allows user to see beyond the walls of illusions, the reality of the world.

Grants user immunity to awareness-altering effects.

Grants user immunity to Mind Magic.

Grants user racial attribute [Mana Sense].

Grants user racial attribute [Mana Manipulation].

New Trait unlocked!

[Resonate]

Alec sat there, reading the description of his first stigma. At first, he was anticipating of gaining a new offensive skill, that would have been able to improve his survival rate.

But this... This went far beyond his expectations. It was like one of those premium growth packages in games from his previous world. He knew it wouldn't be able to help him right off the bat but, in the long run, he couldn't have asked for anything better.

First thing that caught his attention was the skill description. The way it was enunciated, sounded ominous at first but the more he read, the more he understood. Not everything, just some bits here and there, like the last sentence, and the first one. Both shared a deeper meanings. There might just have been a more deeper meaning, but Alec took it for the face value of the written description, but it wasn't his current concern.

Then, there was the usage of the stigma. There wasn't anything like the skills. No mana cost, no type, no power, no range, it was just there. Having the ability to see past the illusions of the world? What exactly was that? He had no idea what kind of illusions waited in this strange new world. Like he initially thought, skill was somehow useless for his survival from this hellhole, yet, he was hopeful, perhaps this was the key to his escape from this castle. This whole place was a mess. Nothing but death crawled here. There was no exit. I don't know how big this thing exactly is, but there is surely something else in action here. One vote to magic fuckery! No objections? Man I love democracy.

Perhaps, some things are not what they seem to be, the same should apply to this strange castle.

The next thing that caught his attention, was obviously his immunity to awareness-altering effects. He was truly scared of the system since the day he came here. He wasn't fine, the way the system was altering his basic understanding of something was not something he was able to overlook. He was worried, if somehow or someday, when the system would literally alter his very existence and he would be helpless to do anything against it.

Did the system checkmate itself? Or is it just a troll and the skill is useless against a being like system.

He didn't have the answers, but the skill gave him a basic level of reassurance, if it did what it said, he wouldn't have to worry about the system brainwashing him.

He moved onto next skill. The immunity to Mind Magic. Not resistance, not a defensive skill, it was a straight up immunity. The first time the scrolled through the ability page, he noticed mind magic was there but he had no affinity. He just scrolled past it, like any reasonable person would have, in his condition. Or am I a reasonable cat now? A reasonable infant demon pussy? That sounded way worse than he had expected.

He had the immunity to one whole skill tree, something he totally was not expecting. I have been here for like... Two days? I don't know the exact flow of time down here. There was no sunlight down there or he would have been able to assume whether it was daytime or nightime.

But it was just an assumption, based upon his current mana regeneration. It was 0.003mp/s, he had a total of 72 mana when he woke up. If he had to calculate, it had been 12 hours since he was out. Which was a scary thought. He had been laying defenselessly , for nearly half a day. What if another centipede came looking for him while he was in his own void of darkness. Would I have ended up becoming some insect food? Before his brain added a picture of him being munched alive by a centipede to his collection of nice-and-fresh-traumatising-series, he quickly dismissed the thought.

The next ones were the racial attributes. Mana Manipulation and Mana Sense. The base skills for being a mage, ability to sense the mana and being able to mold it the way he wanted, was surely good but obviously, for the long run. He didn't have an immediate use for these two, like any other skill so far.

There was something more basic than Mana Manipulation, it was the nature of mana. The nature of mana, what was the point of manipulating something you don't even understand. Without understanding the true nature of mana, manipulating it would be of no use. Like want to do after manipulating? Mold it in a ball? Play catch? There would be no directions to work with. It was just like molding different metals together, hoping to create a better alloy, without even knowing the basic structures and properties of base metals.

The system helped him in directly casting the spells without the need to manipulating mana itself. There might have been some basic procedure, perhaps with the help of mana manipulation, he would be able to explore this field further? But that was for the future, he didn't had the luxury to worry about in his present state.

Mana sense, the base for mana manipulation. What's the point of having mana manipulation when you couldn't even sense the mana. It was like preparing phenol in chemistry lab, picking two chemicals at random, assuming one was benzene, other was oleum and mixing them. What could go wrong?

He doubted the result would be any less severe than a lab explosion, even greater regarding the basic nature of mana.

Finally it came down to last skill or as it said, trait. He had no idea how this actual worked, so he decided to pull down to information page.

Trait: Resonate[Lv1(0/10,000)]

Allows user to resonate two or more skills.

The effect of resonance increases with trait levels.

That's all? What the fuck?

Hey, system, it's too vague, can't you give me some more information?

Nothing.

If silence had a voice, he would have heard system telling him to fuck off.

The skill information was vague but it actually stated what it did.

Resonating two or more skills, he didn't know how it actually worked or even what's the significance of resonating multiple skills.

Hesitatingly, he activate resonate.

[Resonate]

He felt something deep withing him shifted. Then it came, a sudden surge of cold, sending shivers down his spine. It felt like system was asking him to do something. By something, it meant a choice. It wanted him to choose a base skill to resonate with others.

He took a moment, before choosing his cheapest skill, Blood Claws. He wasn't sure how exactly it worked but to avoid the mana starvation in any face, he chose the skill with lowest mana usage.

After completing of the base, the cold surge calmed down, asking him to chose which skill he wanted to resonate with the base one.

He wasn't sure about this one. Resonance was cool and all, but how was he supposed to know if his skills were even compatible with each other?

It was something he had learnt in his past life, if the skill worked as it said, it was a double edged sword. Resonance could work in increasing the effects and could even further hinder them. He paused for a while before finally selecting blood chains. Perhaps not one of his wisest choice. But it just felt natural to think that two blood affinity skills must be compatible with each other.

Nothing.

Alec waited for a while. There was no change. Did the skill not work? He was confused, he did exactly how the system directed him to. Then why? Was he missing something here?

He tried, for whole next hour, taking difference skills as base and trying to resonate them. Nothing changed, result was the same.

He scrunched against the wall when he was finally exhausted. His health and stamina gauzes were full, but he still felt mentally strained. The mana further increased by nine points implying the skill did not use any amount of mana. Which was good, implying he would be able to experiment with it without worrying about blanking out in the middle.

His emerald eyes widened when he noticed a strange movement to the left of the darkened corridor.

He quickly shifted his gaze towards it. The blood mana essence, radiating a bright crimson hue, floated in the air.

What the hell?

He backed off, following his instincts and hastily activated the mana sense. Perhaps not the greatest time to be testing his new skill but the situation was ideal. Wherever there's magic fuckery, there's mana.

But what welcomed him was not what he had expected. At first he was overwhelmed by the details of what he saw, he quickly closed his eyes and slowly opened them.

It was a sight to behold. Crimson fog surrounded the crystal, getting suctioned towards the void made by the centipede's core. The crystal floated closer and closer to the floor until it was out of sight as the a crimson smoke swallowed it. The whole floor was drenched in crimson mist, the same for the walls and ceiling. He could see it clearly, through the darkness.

It wasn't long until the mist around where the crystal had disappeared, shifted. It shot up, shifted and slowly continued to increase its size increased until it took a form of what appeared to be a serpent. The crimson clouds dissipated, revealing the creature he despised the most.

OH YOU GOTTA BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!

Sanguis Scolopendra Lv1