“If you have some time. There’s something I wanted to discuss with you. It’s something you’ll want to hear about.” The message from Rudolf takes me by surprise, leading me to wondering what he’s up to.

“You can’t send it in a message?” I ask.

“I’d prefer a proper conversation.” He sends back. It’s almost like when you’re texting someone and they decide they have to have this conversation through a phone call instead. It’s a bit frustrating, given the timing, but it sounds like whatever it is, it’s important enough we should hear him out.

“How critical is this? Is the world going to burn? Someone going to die? Is on the level of soiled pants and a cold dinner, or is the ceiling going to collapse on our heads?” I ask him, planning out my schedule.

“Someone might die, or be currently dying. I don’t really know and that’s the problem.” He replies.

“Someone I care about?” I ask.

“No one you know, no.”

“Give me half an hour, then.” If someone really is in need of help, I’ll be in a better position to help if I’ve worked through my Skills first. I’d rush if it was my own people but it doesn’t sound like that’s the case.

New Skills. Better to slay them with. Better to see their tears, taste their blood, and dice their flesh. More steady flames, for a better, slower charring on the steak yet to be cut from the whole.

I may have to delay dealing with these violent tendencies too then. It’s already getting quite old. Is it strange to be used to this already? It’s getting a bit boring really, I should be focusing on more useful things.

Like Skills, I’ve been delaying dealing with this for too long and now, relying on the things that work without bothering with anything else.

Some days new Skills pile up too quickly to deal with, other days are much slower, but in the end, I’m left with a long obnoxious list of Skills that I hardly use. In good games you don’t have all this bother, but then again games have to be limited by their very nature. Reality offers too many options, and in consequence I have to figuratively ‘clean up my room’.

So let’s take in the state of things.

-Chip Shredder

-Multi-mind

-Tag

-Mana surge movement

-Reactive defence

-Fire burst punch

-Annihilation magic

-Charged casting (Annihilation)

-Mana form flow fixer

-Branching magic

-Swimming

-Annihilation fire burst

Even my cut down list of favourited Skills is now too long for my liking. First cuts are the things that aren’t developing any further. Skills that work fine as they are and I can use casually, completely forgetting about them.

Sure, it’s good to have a Skill to shred brain chips, but do I really need to be reminded of that fact all the time? It’s not going through any large changes, and it’s just an altered, directed use of my mana drain ability.

With that in mind, I move it into my junk Skills category for later perusal if I’m ever bored out of my mind. With it goes my Swimming, Multi-mind, Charged Casting, Mana form flow fixer, Annihilation magic and Branching magic.

While some are useful, they’re more useful blended into other combat Skills. It’s fine to keep them as they are and simply blend them into new combat Skills as I need to.

-Tag

-Mana surge movement

-Reactive defence

-Fire burst punch

-Annihilation fire burst

Clean away one more move and I could be called a Pokémon, heck I’m already working on my evolution. Cutting Fire burst punch gets me all the way down to four moves, the legal limit for proper Pokémon battles.

While I thought the Skill would be useful, Mana surge movement supports my punches already, and there’s not many situations where I’d use fire over annihilation anymore. Annihilation fire burst is just a plain improvement on fire burst magic, and I see no reason to go back.

Annihilation fire burst is my go-to attack, spammed openly and without prejudice. Anyone who needs to die will get their turn.

The annihilation spirals through the target in a chaotic mess, before fire is born in the hollow veins formed, blasting apart the surrounding flesh. I still need to improve the fire aspect of the attack, too much mana turns into fire and too little infuses those newly born flames.

Reactive defences need to be renamed Annihilating defences, or maybe ‘the mincer’ or something? No that’ll be too confusing later, let’s stick to a simple naming scheme. I get the feeling annihilation is going to describe a good many of my Skills as time goes by.

Mana surge movement remains unchanged, I simply need to keep training it to perfection. Sometimes stealing Eshya’s development of the Skill when she makes significant breakthroughs. Sharing is caring and all that.

“Tag Skill needs to be reworked significantly and I believe I know of a few changes that would be suitable.” Nel says, interrupting my cleaning session. “First of all, Vii’s Skill ‘Record’ can be adapted such that we can see through the eyes of someone influenced by the Tag Skill. It requires not only touching the target, but feeding your mana into them in an unusual manner. Essentially, you’ll need the target to be incredibly weak, or fully consenting in order to tap into the record aspect of the developed Skill.

“Even so, I’m also working to try and develop countermeasures against this Skill and others like it.”

“We shouldn’t share that Skill around. It’s dangerous.” I say.

“It really is.” Eshya agrees. “We should keep this one between us.”

“We should. Which is why I’ve also developed a shielding Skill ‘privacy shield’. It’ll allow us to guard our Skills from others using the new support devices.” Nel says, sharing it with us. “You don’t need to consciously do anything, but from here on you’ll have to allow for your Skills to be shared before they’ll be transmitted. We’ll practice in a moment.”

With the new ‘privacy shield’ Skill which I throw quickly into the ‘junk I don’t need to think about’ list, and the modified ‘Tag’ Skill which sits at the top of my current favourites list. We move on.

“I’ve been working with some of our people in the dungeon, and we’ve found a few Skills that could help us. First, a few to assist you with your sword fighting, Eshya.” Nel says, listing off a few Skills that have been pried from the mess of available options within the vast library of our new Chips. “I’ve had these checked over by others with our body shape, and they are safe, but you will need to take some effort to fully adapt them to your exact body shape.”

“Thank you, I get a headache every time I try looking through the list.” Eshya says, flicking through the options described.

“Yes, I’m hoping that over time we can develop full Classes of Skills adapted to each body shape and career. It will take some considerable time to perfect, however.” Nel says with a proud smile. “Until that is finished, we’ll be fishing up Skills and developing our own. So, let’s continue.

“Vii, here are some wind magic and flight Skills you might like.” Nel says, sending the girl digging through her Skills lists.

“Adler, I think you’d do well to learn the mana surge movement that we learned from Barry. That ancient elven training machine. It’s a useful Skill to develop your mobility and it seems like it’s useful even for fully crystalised warriors.”

“I’ll do that.” Adler nods her head and looks into the Skill.

“Kyra.” Nel finally gets to me. “Have you tried looking into fire magic?”

“I couldn’t find any battle magic when I looked, and I really haven’t had the time,” I say with a shrug.

“Then practice with some other non-combat fire magic, many work under the same principals, and it will help you to refine your spellcraft. You’re lucky that annihilation magic is so simple, but the rest of the combat magics require a little more finesse that you would do well to learn.”

“Ugh, finesse.” I say, with a grunt as I gather a few of the Skills that she suggests. Among them is one Skill simply described as ‘Pop’, which is meant to cause an internal explosion on target. I’m not sure if it’s meant for cooking or what, but it’s certainly useful for my ends.

It could nearly perfectly be transplanted into my own magic as it is. I’m going to put some effort into adapting it for purpose, but already I can feel some of what I’m doing wrong with my fire magic. Just how to balance particular flows and intentions in the magic.

“Any other new revelations?” I ask.

“We nearly have healing magic figured out.” She says lightly as if it’s nothing at all. “Obtaining the initial breakthrough to allow use of the magic requires immense understanding of biology, the magical, chemical, and physical construction of the body. Even those with a natural talent in healing magics need to spend considerable time studying.

“We all have Skills that contain everything we’d need to know to make a healing magic breakthrough, but at the moment it’s stored as information that we can only parse through reading displays. I’ve been working with others to try and have the information directly imprinted onto our minds instead, copying the information into our memories.”

“That sounds…” I begin.

“It’s not going well.” She replies. “Though in the process of testing we’ve found a better method of accessing the information. We’ve been working on a Skill that will allow us to process the knowledge stored in these ‘book Skills’, which is what we’ve been calling them.”

“How is that different from your first plan?” Eshya asks.

“Instead of copying the information from the support device into our brains, we’re reinforcing the bridge between the two of them allowing us to process the information while it’s still on the support device. There has been some success.”

“Where did you learn to do all of this?” I ask.

“I’ve been in contact with the creator of these newly developed chips, The Gamer Elf.” So, his name is genuinely ‘The Gamer Elf’ in Chip? I supress a laugh. “You told me about him, and I made contact with him while working on this project. He has been… difficult.”

“Yeah, he is. Do you think it’ll work?” I ask.

“We’ve had some success already.” Nel says, noncommittally. “It does come with some unique difficulties, however. When engaging with the information stored in the Skills you’re overcome by a strong sense of deja-vu, which on its own isn’t really a problem but can cause a headache.”

“So, you already have it working?” Vii asks, leaning forwards keenly. “That’s like crazy big!”

“I haven’t gotten to the real issues yet.” Nel says with a frown. “At the moment most healing ‘book Skills’ we have are contradictory in some smaller details. Not enough to be an issue most of the time, but convinced of two contradicting ‘truths’ simultaneously can be… confusing.” She says. “I’m having some compilations put together that will be easier to process.

“The other issue is that even with this tool, learning healing magic is not guaranteed. Some people are simply unsuited to certain types of magic, and I don’t believe this will change anything about that.”

“That’s not a ‘problem’.” Adler says, staring at Nel in wonder. “It’s just admitting that you aren’t a god.”

“Is there anything else you’ve discovered?” I ask, amazed at how much she’s already brought up.

“You want more?” Vii asks.

“Always.” I reply, with a smile. “But anything more might be a little difficult to work with at the moment. I’m already training to my limits.”

“I’ve nothing else to bring up at the moment.” Nel admits, smiling happily to herself, clearly proud of her achievements.

“Then with that through, I have to have a conversation with Rudolf. There was something he wanted to bring up.”

“What about those violent frustrations of yours?” Eshya asks, “Is it under control?”

“Somewhat.” I say.

Nel grumbles to herself, getting off of the couch and pulling me up beside her.

“Quickly then.” She says, “I still want some of your time today, and you need a break.”

“My people are fighting. I shouldn’t be resting, I should be training.” I complain, restless at the thought of the fights breaking out in the dungeon below me. “At least I can prepare myself for the next fight.”

“It’ll do you more good to get better first.” Adler says. “You seem capable of handling it, but violent thoughts like this can lead to violent outbursts. Simply leaving it for later will hurt you more in the long run.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s hear Rudolf out first and decide what to do after that.” I say, leading the way out of the room and looking for the man. I don’t remember ever tagging him with my tracking Skill but apparently I did at some point.

Even with my sense of direction it’s rather easy to chase after the marker. If only I had quest markers for everything in my life.

Go there, kill someone.

Go there, get paid.

Go there for class.

Go there for training.

Collect these items for the alchemist.

You have a date over there in three hours.

It’s strangely possible using the support device and Skills. Just smash together my ‘Tag’ Skill with a day planner, and I never have to wonder what I have to do. Give me a quest log on top of it and I’ll practically be living in a game world.

Except without any respawning.

“Rudolf, it’s good to see you well.” I say, finding him in the council room. It’s much more spartan now than before, fit for purpose, considering the nature of our meetings. He sits on one of the chairs along the side of the long table, looking up to greet us.

“Kyra. It is good to see you so well. The rest of you too.” He says, nervously toying with some gadget. It doesn’t have much of a mana signature, so I don’t think it’s enchanted or anything. Just some nature of toy or puzzle more than likely.

“You too.” I say.

Pry the eyes from their sockets and.

Nope.

“What was this business you were wanting to discuss?” I ask, taking a seat at the table. “Someone might be killed?”

“Well, yes.” He says. “It’s… my allies. My sponsors. They haven’t been responding to me, and they really should have by now. You already know that I was working with a rebel faction, yes?”

“I… don’t quite remember hearing about that, but you might have. Give me a quick overview.” I say.

“I recruit potential rebels from among the students and send them on. I don’t know much about the rebel faction I work with, just that they want more talented, spirited people to join them, and it’s my job to act as an intermediary in that process.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“They haven’t contacted me in a long while now. I am meant to travel to a certain part of the ruins if this happens.” He explains, “I imagine I’ll meet with other group members there, and we can make connections and exchange messages.”

“So, the people you were working with died and you’re meant to go meet the replacements?” I ask.

“That’s likely what’s happened, yes, but my position here isn’t what it was anymore.” He chuckles. He never did return to the rest of the rabble partying down here, choosing to stay with us instead. Was it Orsa? The violence? Something else? I don’t know, but I should.

“So, the question is,” He says, looking up at me. “What do you wish to do about this?”

“Well, it would be bad to ignore an opportunity, but then again they mightn’t like how I run things here.” I say.

“I don’t think they really care so long as they make their quota of recruits.” Rudolf says, shaking his head.

“And I’m not happy at the thought of shipping people off to join another faction. It sounds like issue enough.” I reply. “You don’t know anything else about them?”

“I don’t.” He replies, shaking his head. “What I do know is that they get people off world somehow.”

“That is a little more interesting.” I say, leaning forwards. Relying on Arduelle, Frey, or the Unified States to get us off world is far from ideal. We need our own means of transport, and this sounds like a potential opportunity. At the very least it’s an option we need to consider.

“They have ship? Or a talented space mage? It seems the former is more common from what I’ve seen.”

“I would guess one or the other.” Rudolf replies.

“You really don’t know much about these rebels?” I ask. “Who they are? Where is their base? Their social values?”

“I don’t know. Sorry.” He says, looking down at the puzzle in his hands.

“That’s fine, but I’d like to get an understanding of who this faction is, what they want, and how we should respond to them. If they’re an ally we could potentially get some support from them, if they’re an enemy I’d like to know how much of a threat they are.”

“There’s no need to rush into this.” Nel says, interrupting me. “We should discuss this with Red first, and see what forces can be spared for an investigation.”

“I don’t think they’ll react well to an army showing up with me.” Rudolf says. “That’s up to you, though. If my contacts did die, it might actually be better to bring an army.”

“We can’t spare the warriors.” I say, shaking my head. “Red will be training them with all the energy she can spare. If we’re careful, I think we should be alright. They expect Rudolf to head down there on his own, so it shouldn’t be too dangerous of an area.”

“Fine.” Nel grumbles, pulling on my arm. “We’re not going down there tonight; you need the rest. We have class to attend and Red was planning a battle for tomorrow, something to weed out Loekan’s assassins.”

“Which means we have to prepare for both.” I admit. Relaxing a little as I plan things out. “Do you think we should ignore this for now?”

“I’ll leave that up to you.” Nel says. “We’ll have a better idea of the state of things in the dungeon after tomorrow. So, we should delay the decision until then and, at least for tonight, please just try to relax.”

“Alright.” I say sitting back. “I can do that.”

“Good, then I have some dinner ready for us.” Nel says, walking off to a side room.

While I have a moment spare, I focus on spinning my mana about, while testing out what adaptions the new shards can offer me. My gut burns, as I think of the battle raging in the dungeon without me. I think of Loekan destroying everything I’ve created.

I can’t afford to be weak anymore.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Skills & Stats

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 943 units

~Mana distribution:

Category Current Max. Defence 0% 98% Offense 0% 84% Mana Sense 20% 100% Recovery 0% 59% Gluttony 0% 56% Misc. 78% 78% Efficiency 78% 100%

~Favourited Skills:

-Tag and Film

-Mana surge movement

-Annihilation defence

-Annihilation flame burst