《Damsel of Distress》The Wave 17: Reflection
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While the first step to improvement was accepting your faults and mistakes, the second one would be reflecting on your actions and looking for ways to improve. That had always been the way Victoria learned.
Thus, it was time to look back on the fight and find out what she was missing.
Of course, she was still lacking in many areas, more than she liked to admit, but most of those she was already working to change that. But most of all, there was one big issue she only realized now that she had been in her first fight. She was severely lacking in her ability to multi-task.
Well, 'true' multi-tasking was something humanly impossible. The human brain just isn't capable of thinking more than one thought at a time. What people call multi-tasking, isn't doing two things at once, but doing one thing consciously, and the other subconsciously, quickly switching their attention from one to the other if necessary.
Thus, Victoria had always believed that it was more efficient to do one thing at a time with her full concentration, bringing it to an end, before she does something else.
But that, wouldn't be possible anymore, not if she wanted to fight at her full potential. But that would mean, using Aura, Psy, and Mana all at the same time, all of which required a considerable amount of concentration. As the earlier fight had made painfully clear, her telekinesis had huge potential if used correctly, but she didn't even have the time to think about using it while she was engaging the monster.
Sure, not having been able to train with it for very long was also a factor. With enough training, she might be able to shoot needles like that on reflex alone, but that wasn't where she saw the highest potential of telekinesis. And the same went for magic as well.
Their potential didn't lie in shooting needles or spells in practiced patterns. Rather, Victoria saw it in the opposite, the endless adaptability that would stem from feely controlling the needles and creating spells on the fly, according to what the situation required. Well, doing that with magic might be too much of a risk, considering what happened with Daniel's black fire. Creating new spells on the fly might end up badly.
But even if that wasn't possible any time soon, having full control over potentially several needles would be a powerful ability. That was, of course, if she didn't become unable to protect herself in the process.
In conclusion, training in multi-tasking was a must. And, if what Andrew said was true, and she could turn it into a reality-bending ability, she might even become capable of truly doing two things at once. That might also open the doors to making dual-wielding viable, allowing her to fight not with two weapons in concert, but even fight two enemies with one weapon each.
But she was getting ahead of herself. Now that she had made this realization, she would have to actively train for the Skill and take the risk that it would become a Combat Skill and not a Household one.
The next matter was that of using overlapping Skills and 'misusing' Skills. She had already noticed some time ago that if she 'danced' while fighting, her Dancing Skill improved her movements to some degree, made them more elegant, and even allowed her to use some slightly unconventional moves. Her last spar with Garry was a good example of that.
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Sure, none of these effects would be as good as a martial arts Skill on the same level. But even if those Skill brought her to the absolute perfect performance Andrew had talked about, she thought that the Dancing SKill would still bring something useful to the table during fights. Even if the only thing it did was making her look better in the process, it would serve to intimidate enemies to a certain degree.
And to take full advantage of that effect, there was one Skill that shouldn't be overlooked. The Sewing Skill, which primarily increases the precision and speed of complex movements. To take advantage of that, Victoria had determined two conditions.
The first was, obviously, to use needles. Something she had already decided on simply for the overwhelming penetrative capability of projectiles with that shape. Sure, guns used bullets, but that was simply because they had no telekinesis that could keep the projectile straight.
The second condition, the one that she had been missing in the fight before, was a thread. Sewing without a thread was simply poking holes in the material. This, however, was not something Victoria thought of as a problem. Rather, it gave her a hint on how to solve another problem.
While telekinetically controlled needles had high penetrative power, they could barely do any damage. Where a bullet could rip pretty big holes into a person, a needle could just go through the body and come out the other side, leaving behind barely any damage. Sure, it would hurt, but even a normal person could survive getting stabbed in the heart as long as it was something small like a needle. Hell, there were even people who survived getting an iron bar shoved through their brains.
The only reason she managed to kill the Squirrel was that she used all her Psy at once and self-destructed the needle inside its head. Which was, if she might add, terribly inefficient. She had tried it before, and the result was barely stronger than a firecracker. She was capable of creating much stronger telekinetic explosions with much less Psy, but it worked almost the opposite way to telekinetic manifestations like the needle, resulting in that terrible inefficiency.
Anyways, that was where the thread would come into play. Or to be more precise Thread Magic.
Overall, there are two types of magic. Elemental magic, that starts from one of the elements and adds a concept. And conceptual magic, that did things the other way around. That was at least what Andrew had explained to her.
The difference may be small, but significant. While elemental magic had the advantage in its unlimited variety of effects it could create, a water spell would always take the form of a ball of water, or maybe a wave. Conceptual magic, on the other hand, had only a limited and slightly predictable number of effects, depending on the element used, but it could theoretically take any shape imaginable, be it a curse, a summon, or a thread.
Sure, using conceptual magic would be the direct opposite of what she was planning to do with magic. But if she combined telekinetic needles with magical thread, it had the potential to become quite the terrifying and versatile technique. Moreover, it would be a continuous spell, which would allow her to concentrate on controlling the needles once it has been cast, needing only a little concentration to maintain.
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Finally, there was one more matter to think about. Detection capability. It was only thanks to Victoria's mana sense that Lucy didn't die to the first attack. At the same time, it was because they had only been able to rely on chance to find an opponent that they were distracted in the first place.
Of course, Victoria would continue training her mana sense until it reached its full potential. But that much was part of the course. Just as it was just a matter of time before she ran into an enemy who could even hide from that.
She needed more ways to detect enemies. And she needed ways to seek them out as well.
The first thing to come to mind was obviously detection magic. But that was something Victoria quickly decided against. Just with Thread Magic, she would have already more than enough Skills to train. If she added some useful water spells, like Cleaning Magic, for example, she just wouldn't have enough Mana left to support the training of even more spells. Even now, she already would have to prioritize.
That left her with Psy and Aura.
For Psy, it didn't take her long to figure something out that might be possible, something that she wanted to try either way. Telepathy, or to be more precise, detecting thoughts.
Victoria had absolutely no idea what range she could get out of it, or if she would even be able to determine the source of the thoughts. If even reading thoughts was possible, she didn't think that it should be too hard to just detect their mere presence.
Of course, there was every possibility that there would be severe limitations. Maybe she would be unable to detect stupid people that way, who could know?
Lastly, she could use Aura to improve the senses she already has. Something she should have done from the start, really. She had even talked with Andrew about it. Though, that was a bit of a lottery.
Sure, enhancing her skin had been pretty easy, though she still had to optimize her Aura usage. But that had only been because she had direct feedback on the information she wanted to have. It was easy to see if your skin color changed, if it got harder, if it contracted, or if it turned into leather.
Enhancing her senses would be a lot different. Considering what Andrew had told her, there was a good chance that, even if she found something super useful, she wouldn't realize it. But it was even more likely that she simply found abilities that end up being more or less useless. If she wanted something specific, like sonar ears or heat vision, she would have to experiment for a long time or be very lucky.
Finally, she got to the best part: "Status."
Name: Victoria Bright
Waves: Lv. 0 (0/1)
Class: Wife T1
Level: 1 (3,4/10 exp)
Stats:
Endurance: 10 + 0 + 1
Strength: 10 + 0 + 0
Concentration: 10 + 0 + 0
Willpower: 10 + 0 + 0
Magic: 10 + 0 + 0
Magic power: 10 + 0 + 0
Free: 1
Talent: Learning Lv. 1 (1,1/55 exp)
Skills:
High-heels: Balance Lv. 15
High-heels: Surfooted Lv. 15
High-heels: Style Lv. 15
Needlework: Sewing Lv. 22
Spindle: Thread spinning Lv. 13
Styling: Clothes Lv. 4
Styling: Hair Lv. 3
Cooking: Timing Lv. 6
Cooking: Cutting Lv. 3
Cooking: Temperature Lv. 4
Movement: Dancing Lv. 10
Body: Agility Lv. 5
Body: Meditation Lv. 2
Body: Sleep Lv. 2
Magic: Mana-manipulation Lv. 1
Weapon: Cut Lv. 1
Weapon: Chop Lv. 1
Weapon: Stab Lv. 1
Weapon: Block Lv. 1
Weapon: Parry Lv. 1
CQC: Punch Lv. 1
CQC: Kick Lv. 1
CQC: Block Lv. 1
CQC: Deflect Lv. 1
CQC: Throw Lv. 1
Enhancement: Beauty Lv. 11
Enhancement: Precise strengthening Lv. 2
Telekinesis Lv. 3
Telekinesis: Helping hand Lv. 9
Telekinesis: Needle Lv. 13
Water: Creation Lv. 1
Water: Cleaning Lv.5
Call: Andrew
single-use grant Skill: single-use: Reset Status
Okay, not not the best. If she was being honest, it was a bit overwhelming. She hadn't even been here for a week, and she already had a huge number of Skills. It made a lot of sense now why Daniel hadn't shown her his complete Skill list, he may have tens of low-level Skills he picked up along the way but never bothered training.
Well, the one thing Victoria was the proudest of, was definitely her collection of Weapon and Close-Quarter-Combat Skills. Correction, the absence of a collection of Skills for numerous Weapons and Fighting styles.
The ones she had now made already up for almost a third of her Skills. She didn't want to imagine how it would look if she had multiple versions of each of those Skills. It was a horrifying thought.
Besides that, there were two things she noticed.
One was the Free stat point which she was still thinking about where she should put it. Also, she realized that when she regained some stamina after leveling up, it was probably related to the extra point she got in endurance.
The other thing was the amount of experience her talent had gained. One point one. That meant that the experience bonus of her talent also applied to the talent itself. Some quick maths told her that, for now, that number was inconsequential.
For now, her talent would only level up when she reached level ten, just like everyone else. But from that point on, she would only get faster. Well, now wasn't the time to think about that though. She was still many levels away from that point after all.
And as for the stat point? She finally decided to put it into strength. While they had been asked to put them into endurance, Victoria had one already there, not even thinking about the one she got from her talent, and putting it into strength had a similar result. Just instead of having more stamina, she would need to use less.
Also, she wanted to keep her stats balanced. That might be a bit of a risky move early on, but in the long run, her talent would counterbalance it, resulting in her having a larger repertoire of abilities.
All in all, her first real fight had been a disaster, but the result wasn't exactly one to be happy about. On the other hand, however, as long as she put the work in it could only get better from now on.
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