The only question was what Skill I had to make. I’d had solid idea of what I wanted before, but my bodily training with Kimakt had given me more than a few new ideas. There were quite a few fascinating things you could do with the body alone, at least if the words of a millennia old expert were anything to go by, and I was looking forward to expanding on that with skills.

On the other hand, I could go with what I’d already been thinking about, a Skill I was calling [Soft Step], and would hopefully significantly expand on both my mobility and my stealth.

I looked over my soul again, but there was no way I was scrounging up any extra juice for a second level. There was the partial scaffolding of a Level to come, but it was far from complete and I certainly wasn’t about to wait around for it to finish. I had to make do with what I had.

And if I had to make do, I was better off getting better at what I was already good at. That meant [Soft Step], not fiddling about with body modification.

I breathed deep and let the trance take me, sinking down into my soul. I envisioned my feet pounding the earth as I ran, buoyed to incredible speed by panic and fear. I envisioned softly creeping with an exacting patience born of long practice, each step settling down as lightly as a butterfly.

Then I combined the two, forcing the conflicting ideas together. They rebelled at the very notion, pushing each other apart, but I split them each in two and fused the pieces together. The full speed and force of a headlong sprint with the soft silence of a gradual creeping. It was an impossible combination, but with the powers of the soul the impossible became possible.

I inserted a bridging step into the image, smoothing out the sharp divide in imagined action. Now instead of an abrupt switch there was a smooth transition, and the nonsensical made sense. The kinetic force of my push left my body as it always did, coming out my foot in a sudden surge of energy, but it didn’t leave alone. A burst of soul energy came with it and consumed it, becoming dense with physical force.

I left the ground, but the ground had yet to bear my weight. While my imaginary body moved on I let it dissipate and remained focused on properly conceptualizing what I would leave behind. The energy construct was awash with energy, barely contained, but I exerted my will to force it to bleed out that energy gradually rather than explode.

And so it did, spreading out the force of my movements through time just as snowshoes spread one’s weight across space. The soul construct emitted a pale shadow of the force my leap would naturally exert, but did so for nearly five seconds before the kinetic energy was gone and the construct began cannibalizing itself, dissipating into the air.

Satisfaction overwhelmed me and my mind drifted from the conceptualization far enough that I could just barely feel the smile spread across my real face. This Skill was humble at first glance, but only to people who didn’t know the tedious torture of trying to inch across warped floorboards without making a single squeak of sound.

I’d have been tempted for this alone, but the fact that it would allow me to safely make large movements that might otherwise break unsecure footing? Priceless.

I ran over the Skill again and again, engraving it deeper in the Level with each repetition until I was finally ready to stand up and put my new Skill to the test.

I cast my eyes about the chamber but these caves at least were too well constructed to have loose stones strewn about, so stripped off one of my many rags and cast it on the ground. I put one foot on it and pushed at a sharp angle. The reduced friction slid the cloth across the floor.

I nodded. It would do, if the Skill functioned properly the delay would let me be long gone before my footing gave out, but if it didn’t I’d fall flat on my face. I kneeled down into a runner’s stance, front foot firmly planted on the slippery cloth, muttering a quick “[Soft Step]” before I surged forward with all the frantic force of a goblin fleeing for their life.

All of which promptly pivoted as my footing gave way to plant me square on my face.

“FUCK!” I rolled over clutching my poor aching nose. Bloody hells and shattered stars, what had ever possessed me to think that was a good idea!?

“Are you alright?”

ARGHH! I rolled over on the ground and glared at the newly materialized Kimakt. “I’m damn well fine, piss off.”

“You don’t look fine.”

I forced myself to sit up and remove my hands from my face. “See?” I waved them around. “Absolutely fine.”

Kimakt folded his arms. “Oh, I don’t doubt your ability to survive a few minor head injuries, I’m more concerned with the decision-making that led to it.”

“Look, I’m doing a thing. And you’re not helping.”

“And hurting yourself is?”

I sighed and looked away. “Some things take practice. And what practice ends without a few bruises?”

Kimakt shrugged. “If you say so. I just hope whatever you’re practicing is worth it.”

I winced, suppressing the welling anxiety in my chest. I knew the time constraints, knew that every second I spent practicing was a second I wouldn’t have for actually escaping, but I also knew that obsessing over each and every wasted second would only sabotage my efforts.

I’d already decided how much time to spend on this, after the end of the day I would be done whether the Skill was fully formed or not. The only thing left to do was spend that time practicing with as little stress and pressure as possible.

I took a deep breath. No pressure. I’d practice, and if it worked it worked, if it didn’t it didn’t. No failure, no consequence. I didn’t have to finish the Skill, just spend a few more hours on it before I left. That was all.

And maybe that’d kill me. But what doesn’t die anyway?

“[Soul Sense].”

I sank back into my soul, letting its soft light surround me. My bodily senses faded, but I clung to my kinesthetic sense, maintaining the interior sense of position that told me where all my limbs were. It was easier to juggle alongside [Soul Sense] then most other senses, which was good because I’d need to in order to construct a better test.

I leapt forward, off of solid ground this time, triggering my malfunctioning [Soft Step] Skill as I did so. I watched the Level flare to life as the energy within it activated, but even as it sent energy forth that energy dissipated throughout my body, triggering delayed effect all across my lower body rather than on just my feet.

I landed, my maintained kinesthetic sense combining with my memory of the terrain to enable a far less embarrassing landing even while blinded.

Interesting. The Skill was activating as it should, but never getting where it needed to go, at least not in enough quantity to matter. How could I change that?

“[Beggar’s Disregard].” The Skill activated smoothly, as it should, broadcasting ignorance in every direction.

Was that the secret? I deactivated the Skill and immediately activated another one.

“[Rag Armor].” Just like the first, it broadcast its power in every direction equally. The only difference was that [Rag Armor] terminated just above my skin, never traveling more than a few inches from my body in any direction. There was no need for it to go further, not unless I felt like wearing a foot thick parka.

I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. For now the important part was that both my functional Skills were omni-directional.

Or at least two out of three were. A quick check on the still-running [Soul Sense] showed that it was fundamentally different from any of my other Skills. Unlike anything else, it never had to leave my soul at all, only travel from the Level of its origin to the central and original Level, where my consciousness resided.

And if my memory served me, [Soft Step] didn’t start going off course until after it left my soul.

In other words, the body naturally diffused soul energy. All else being equal, it would spread equally throughout. Not a problem for omnidirectional Skills, but for directed ones?

It was a massive pain in the ass.

But not, in fact, a pain in the ass without a solution. I already had one method of guiding soul energy throughout my body, and I hadn’t even had to create it myself!

I moved my focus to a different Level, one of my very first. To this day, it remained devoted to pumping my Stats. Looking at it now, I could see some flaws, some of which I even thought I could fix, but I didn’t have time for the admittedly intriguing idea of improving existing Levels right now. I just needed to follow the gates.

The ‘gates’ were something that I’d first observed immediately after drinking that elixir, and they bore very little resemblance to the kind you’d see in castle walls, but hells if I could think of a better name. They were circular portals that directed the energy fueling my Stats out into my body.

I’d followed the streams of power before, and I followed them again now. Starting out as one for each Stat they quickly branched out, multiplying exponentially each time. Still, just picking one at each split allowed me to follow it down to its final destination and see how it worked.

I started with Dexterity, and found the end of the channel terminating in what I dimly recognized as some kind of muscle group, maybe?

Cut me some slack, nothing looks the same zoomed in that far. If it weren’t for my mother’s exhaustive teachings I probably wouldn’t have recognized it at all.

I did a brief random sampling of each Stat to get a general idea of where each ended up while examining the energy channels at the same time. Dexterity seemed to be focused on muscles, with the odd tendon or nerve fiber thrown in. Agility was the opposite, almost always ending up in a joint or ligament. Metabolism affected internal organs for obvious reasons, while Toughness spread evenly throughout the body. Constitution went to organs too, but not just the digestive tract like metabolism. It hit pretty much all of them, plus a light spread across other areas.

Speed was really the most surprising, mostly going to muscles like I would have expected, but a couple ended up in the brain too.

I stepped back from the Stats before I could get too sucked into it. The closer look was giving me all kinds of ideas, and knowing more about how Stats affected my body could be essential for the Hob transformation, but I had more immediate concerns.

I carefully mimicked the gates and channels of my Stats, extending a path of my own creation down to my pelvis, where it split off to send one to the sole of each foot. The construct was simple compared to the pre-existing Stat channels, and made of crudely repurposed divine energy, but if it worked that didn’t matter.

And it did work.

Finally, the Skill activated and I sprinted across the room with nothing more than a whisper of my passage.

Then the Soul energy ran out.

I sighed. Yeah, that happened. But a quick check on my soul showed the Level already beginning to regenerate, so I wasn’t too concerned. The Skill would grow in time, just like my other Skills had. Until then brief bursts of silent speed were still an upgrade, one I was happy to take.

Although the list of upgrades I wasn’t happy to take was pretty short.