“This is… new.” Eshya says, gazing into nothingness. She just got hit in the head with a library full of new Skills, so I don’t really blame her for being a bit dazed.

While this new weapon is sure to be useful, it’ll be some time before we can fully embrace everything it has to offer. Some things we never will, not unless our lives get turned for the weird and we decide to start cultivating crimson-blade seaweed in a deep-sea farming operation.

Instead, we have a fight to prepare for.

We’ve kept Red and Bessy for far too long already, and I’d rather not waste time hoping that they’re executions are still in the distant future.

No.

We’re doing this before the weeks end, even if I have to skip a few classes to make it happen.

In surprisingly short time, Eshya is able to set aside the invisible displays. She’s quick to take up her sword, and wave it around in familiar patterns.

“You’re not going to look through the new Skills or anything?” I ask.

“Later.” She replies, “It’s more productive to sort that out together. I’d rather ensure that all the Skills I had before are working properly. Who knows when we’ll need to fight again?”

“About that… I was thinking of rescuing a few ‘beasts’ from captivity before the end of the week, so…” I say fiddling with a few more settings that I’ve fumbled my way across.

“Of course you were.” Eshya laughs, “In that case, it’s even more important to be ready.”

“Oh, a sticky note function?” I say as I discover something new and start labelling everything in my head. There were a few thoughts floating around here that deserve to be pinned down and labelled with a scathing review.

“Isn’t there some more testing that you wanted to do? Something more important than sticky notes?” Eshya asks, while laughing at me.

“I guess I should practice some of the Skills that I lost.” I say, setting aside what I was doing and facing her, “I copied your mana surge movements, but they’re not quite the same as what I lost. I need to change the Skills to suit me, I think.”

I try to use the Skills but it’s quickly made clear that they were made by someone with a slightly different body. My arms and legs don’t quite move right, and it takes a bit of focus and effort to get my own understanding of the desired movements to overwrite what’s already stored in the Skill.

It feels a bit like wearing a tight bodysuit that’s in the wrong size, then having that suit come to life and start spinning you around like some fleshy marionette. It’s all fun and games until it starts bending your arms and legs in ways that they aren’t meant to bend.

Note to self: Do not steal Skills from gymnasts. You will die.

Eshya slowly leads me through the movements as I shadow her. Every step is slightly more smooth than the last, and every punch a little closer to perfection. Even my breathing is a part of it, something that was never the case for my own lost version of the Skill. A little shout is forced out of me with each punch and kick, I know that it somehow makes me hit a little bit harder, but I sound like an idiot. Or a tennis player.

The mana surges through my muscles and limbs, pushing me to move faster, and hit harder. I still can’t compare to Eshya, not until my muscles and bones grow used to the dense mana, but at least now I can move and punch properly again.

This new device isn’t quite as thrilling as I was led to believe. I suppose you just can’t trust a passionate engineer to be reliable in their marketing.

It reminds me of my own exploit that I developed, and still helps me regain my mana nice and quickly. There’s so much promise in it, but it’s just not as good as I was hoping for it to be. It’s not that there aren’t any shortcuts in real life, but they just aren’t quite as overpowered as in games.

That, and everyone is out there looking for their own exploits and cheats, to make life easier. I just lucked out in finding my own and then borrowing this one from that gamer elf.

“You two are already right into it.” Nel says having just awakened, “How quickly can you get new Skills working properly?”

“It’s taken an hour to get my mana surge Skill back under control.” I say.

“Not good, not bad.” She says, her eyes flicking about a few invisible screens. “I can work with it.”

“You want to join our training?” Eshya asks.

“Not just yet, I’ll list the Skills that are best suited to me in order of necessity and claim them one at a time.” She explains. “I’ll join you when I’m ready.”

“I’ll work on my own sword Skills then.” Eshya says, before turning to me “If you don’t need me for anything more?”

“No, I’ll see if I can do something with my shooting.” I say, taking out my repaired pistol. Wally and the others are working on their next prototypes, trying to figure out both the mana usage issues, and the loading mechanisms so that I can have more than one shot before reloading.

The perverted smith has also been given our sizes and is apparently working on our armour. I’m trying not to think too much about that.

“I’d like to develop a Skill that’ll work with the pistol. I couldn’t find anything in my new Skill list that would work.” I say, “And I’d like to get my multi-mind Skill back.”

“Multi-mind?” Eshya asks, quickly drawing her sword into a blindingly fast horizontal slash. A new Skill that she’s taken from the library.

“It lets me split my focus better. I have a lot of work to do, especially with fixing my new Chip, so that Skill is critical, but I can’t find it anywhere in the system.” I say.

“It sounds interesting…Send it my way if you get it again.” Eshya says, nodding along, “What other weaknesses does the new device have?”

“One: Mana form, and mana expenditure. There are skills that simply cost too much mana or require a mana form far beyond mine.

“Two: magic types, and breakthrough. I can’t use Skills that require certain magics to be available that I simply can’t use at the moment and might never be able to. Healing, for one.

“Three: Familiarity and acclimation of a Skill. As we’ve just gone over, these Skills were made by different people for their own use. My arms aren’t as long, or are too long. My body weighs less, or more. I’m stronger, or I’m weaker.

“Familiarity with a Skill will also let me know when it’s worth using and how to use it to the best effect. For example, I’ve got a Skill for ploughing a field, but I still have to learn what to look for in a good field, what sort of equipment I’d need to use, and what season a field needs ploughing.”

“Good lecture.” Eshya says smirking my way, “So, there are still lots of kinks to work out.”

“Yeah,” I reply with a sigh, “But it is a step up from before. It seems much better than learning all of our Skills from scratch.”

“We’ll need every advantage we can get if we’re going ahead with that prison break.” Eshya says, grunting with effort as she splits air with a glowing blade. “I’d like to hunt a few beasts down here first, if you’d join me.”

“Of course,” I reply cheerily, “I could always use more mana, and beasts are easier to devour than chunks of metal. That and I think Wally would get angry at me for eating his metal again.”

I place a shot on the wall and reload. I try to recognise the act as important enough to be worthy of a Skill, but it’s not working just yet.

“What are your physical mana integration stats like?” I ask.

“What are you talking about?” She replies, thinking a moment before she realizes, “Oh, that stuff? I’m still working on my last percentages.”

“Last percentages?” I ask.

“Yeah, unlike little mana-dry you, the rest of us grew up around mana.” She says, “It’s not unusual to get your mana form and physical form fully acclimated for those our age.”

“Damn, another thing to catch up to.” I say redoubling my efforts in forcing my mana form through my mind. I’ve pushed up and through the 60% mark by pressing my limits and letting some mana leak from the fraying vortex, but I don’t think I’ll manage to perfect myself this month. Especially if I shift my focus to more defensive areas as I know I should.

Thankfully at that 60% mark, my understanding of my mana sense went through a powerful development. I’m to the point where I can see the difference between simply having my mana form integrated with my mind in terms of pure numbers and having actual experience working with it.

I can see only a fraction of the mana moving through the air and the dust, and the walls around me. Their types and natures are barely noticeable but like a person learning to see for the first time, I don’t know a colour by its name. Connecting a certain mana affinity with its name or purpose is difficult.

“It’s best to focus on the few things that work.” Eshya says, looking up from her own training as she meditates and starts waving her limbs around while balancing on one foot. Her sword moves slowly through the air, as she bends and twists.

“Split your focus too much and you won’t be ready for our next fight.” She says, “I’m focusing on the sword and using the pistol as a support weapon. A few magics, like the one I used before, are only useful in supporting my swordplay. What role are you focusing on? Where do you see yourself in a fight? What do your current abilities lead you towards?”

“When did you start thinking about all this stuff?” I ask, as I set aside my training for a moment to think. For some reason my multi-mind Skill just isn’t forming today, I’ll have to figure it out later.

“Well,” I say taking pause to consider, “My strengths come from my ability to spend chunks of mana that would kill others, and to recover it quickly. It’s how I killed the crabs so easily. My mana drain is a nice weapon sometimes, but it’s just too difficult to use in a proper fight.”

“So, your role is to hit hard with attacks that can finish an enemy quickly. What are your weaknesses?” She asks, finishing her meditative sword dance, and sheathing it at her side before messing with her pistol.

“Mana. If I don’t have mana to replace what I’ve spent, then I’ll run out. I’ve been lucky so far, and I’ve won the fights and recovered mana from the corpses of my enemies, but there’s no guarantee that’ll be workable in the future.”

“What else?” she asks, loading the pistol and lifting it up, before snapping it open to unload and repeating without ever shooting. Training to get a reloading and aiming Skill perhaps?

“I’m left with a weakened mana form after attacking.” I say, thinking it through, “My defences and use of mana in my body become more and more restricted as I use heavy attacks. Also, I need more ways to use my attacks. If I come across something which I can’t hit with a bullet, I’d be in a pinch. My fireballs just aren’t mana efficient enough at the moment.”

“So, you need a way to supplement your defences, and more tools and abilities to use your massive mana attacks with.” She says, “Focus on that first.”

“Thanks.” I say, settling down and putting my back to a wall as I try and put my thoughts together, “There’s suddenly so many options available that I’ve been a little lost on what to do.”

“I noticed.” Eshya says with a smile, “If you want a distraction, I can help with that too.”

She flickers her fingers about, looking over me with a familiar intimacy. I know her well enough to recognise her flirting, and to know that she’s serious.

“Does the place really not bother you?” I ask, looking about the bloody room which still smells of bug guts. While the guts and scrap has been cleared away, it still looks and smells like the inside of a dumpster that’s recently been used to hide the corpses of a half dozen rotting hobos.

It reminds me of my dorm room back in university, but without all the furniture.

“The place doesn’t bother me much, no.” She replies, “In fact it’s a little better like this. It’s cute seeing your awkward reactions as you know that you should say no, but temptation slowly eats at you.”

“There’s no temptation here.” Nel says, while still sorting out her own device, “This is not the time or the place for it.”

“You heard her.” I say with a grunt as I stand up and step over to Eshya. “Can you make sure I don’t hurt myself. I’d like to practice a few close-range Skills. There are a few in the massive library that might work with my technique.”

“Your technique?”

“Dumping as much mana into it as I can and seeing what happens.”

Eshya nods and watches over me as I push my body to its limits with the Skills of warriors far greater than me. I overstretch, and twist too far, nearly hurting myself dozens of times throughout the session, but in the end I manage to walk out of it without anything worse than a bruised ego and a few scrapes.

It seems as though all the Skills I’ve borrowed that have anything to do with unarmed combat are for people with six arms, people with tentacles for arms, people as tall as a building, people who live underwater, or people who take their brawls up outside of the atmosphere.

While it is certainly a wide selection, all it’s taught me is how to blacklist Skills.

I end up choosing to adapt something that I’ve already worked on earlier. Delayed mana infusion punch, fire flavoured.

It’s an alteration of the same bug popping technique I used on my first expedition into these ruins, where I condense my mana into an enemy through a punch and let it activate into a mass of fire. The Skills in my new Chip are helping me to work out efficiency in fire magic, and how to properly use and adjust the delaying of its casting.

As I train, I start to think about our greater team build, and the weaknesses that we have as a team. The biggest of which, we’ve understood all along, but we’ve been unable to resolve.

Healing.

There were some potions down here that seem like they’d be perfect to supplement our healing needs in the short term, but we need a proper healer, and then redundancies for after we get them killed. One of those redundancies that I’ve been seriously considering is the making of a spell book like what we found back in Fluffy Butt’s den.

May her butt remain ever fluffy until we next meet.

There’s a limit to what each member of a fighting team can do, a limit to the magics available to them, no matter how well balanced. A spell book with a proper assortment of spells could fill any gap, be it healing, damage dealing, defence, or distraction. It opens up hundreds of opportunities.

If I ever do get together a decent sized group of rebels, it could become a crystallisation of all their combined Skills and abilities. For after I get them all killed.

Thus, I’ve decided on my current direction.

Developing magics, Skills, and tools that allow me to release my mana in a variety of one-hit-one-kill attacks.

Armour to defend me when my defence is lowered after such attacks. I’ll also want to keep my mind open for other forms of defence if I can think of any.

Skills, and abilities that can keep me alive when my mana is low. Including mana skin, which I’ll set my focus on in place of investing in my mana senses, and the mana burst movement that Eshya perfected.

Mana storage to supplement my mana and allow me to use more attacks and prevent me from being vulnerable for a lasting period of time after I attack.

My crafters are a wonderful resource that will help me through this, and this new form of support device will be great in pushing my development to a faster pace, but it still doesn’t make me an equal to the more experienced warriors.

Red would still wipe the floor with me, even if I boosted my mana up to her equal. Nothing can quite make up for a lack in actual fighting experience, but the right tools can still help.

“We should finish up.” I say, “We have class tomorrow.”

“What class was it? Bestiary studies?” Eshya asks, after a bit of thinking.

“That’s the one.” I reply, “I might actually have something stored in my new Chip to learn a little quicker.”

“I’ve already found that.” Nel says from the side, finally standing up and joining us, “It’s in the Classes, listed as a Skill but it won’t engage, instead it opens up a number of pages, like a book. It has a comprehensive list of monsters, types, and categorisation methods.”

“There’s so much to fix.” Vii moans as she joins us, sluggish in her steps as her eyes look wildly about at invisible sheets of information even now.

“Thank you for this.” Adler says, her mana stirring into the shape of some strange magic, before she cancels out at the last moment and brings her mana back under control.

I dive into my new collection of menus again as I struggle to make things work as they should. I know that I’m far stronger than I was just a few days ago, but I feel that much weaker now that I can see everything that is still beyond me.

How is an explosive shot pistol meant to help me fight against a civilisation that spans across countless worlds? How can I hope to fight against beings that contain more mana than whole planets, compressed into a body no larger than my own?

These weapons and tools give me the strength to overwhelm the small creatures that hide in the darkness under the surface of this world, but that’s about it.

It’s not enough.

It’s not nearly enough.

I sigh and climb up the darkened stairs up towards the surface of the world. There’s no time to waste on worthless thoughts, we have a prison break to plan.

“Do you think Red is going to be any nicer after we rescue her?” I ask as we wander up the stairs.

“No.”

“Nope, nope.”

“It’s doubtful.”

“Maybe we could just keep her in a collar?” Adler says, sweating as she realizes who it is I’m planning on breaking out of prison.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Skills & Stats

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 782 units

~Mana distribution:

Catagory Current Max. Skin 25% 25% Muscle 0% 12% Mind 0% 65% Cardiovascular 0% 11% Misc. 0% 10% Efficiency 25% 79%

~Favourited Skills:

-Chip Shredder

-Mana surge movement

-Mana surge punch

-Infused Delayed Casting

-Fire burst