“First off. Let’s go through the ancestral memories you’ve collected.”

Guan Zhenyan led him through re-examining each of the techniques that were passed down in Ancestral Memories through each of his merges. When Guan Zhenyan saw the techniques he was actually impressed, “Wow, you were quite lucky weren’t you. I was thinking Spirit Power is your strong point, but I was wrong. It’s only a shame I’m not a Soul Cultivator or you would be the perfect inheritor.”

Sage had thought the same as soon as he first merged with the Twin Ringed Soul Serpent. While it wasn’t a very powerful beast, its innate abilities were truly unique and combined with the Insect Immortal Index, had been the main reason he could survive to this day. Guan Zhenyan finished his search and Sage felt a sort of mental confirmation that they could move on to the main event. Sage dispelled his reservations and initiated the Chrysalis process just as he had a few times in the past. Normally, he would have spun himself a cocoon or dug a burrow to protect himself during the transformation process, but Guan Zhenyan told him to skip that step to save time and avoid any interference. Sage got his assurance that the man would protect him.

“Ahh, here we go. Now, just take your time and examine each and every one of these bloodlines you’ve collected. Don’t worry about any possible changes for now, let’s just see what you’re working with first.”

Sage sorted through the different bloodlines, their physical features and abilities, as well as the creatures they were descended from. Guan Zhenyan was constantly paying attention, examining each of the bloodlines as Sage did. At that moment he felt like he was back on Earth, playing a game. Guan Zhenyan was the friend looking over his shoulder and was soon going to give him advice on what he should spend skill points on.

“Like I thought, you focused on quantity and not quality. As I told you before, you weren’t aware of one important factor.”

Guan Zhenyan used a demonstration to teach him about what he was missing. Sage had to visualize adding on another dozen different body features to his current body. Guan Zhenyan had him familiarize himself with the feel and aura of this new form. Then he started over, this time he visualized taking away features from his current body. Again, he familiarized himself with the feel and aura of the proposed body.

“Do you feel the difference? That quality you feel that is so drastically greater is the intensity of Body Power. Body Cultivators train to increase Body Power, and advancing ranks in Qi Cultivation will also provide a proportional increase. The more special abilities your body has, the more energy it will take to increase your Body Power.”

Sage performed the exercise a few times with different changes to get a better feel on what Guan Zhenyan was talking about. After a few tries, he was able to fully isolate the feeling of Body Power. After a few more questions, Sage confirmed how Body Power worked. It was sort of like he was building his own class in a game. The more powers and abilities he put into it, the more experience points it would take to level up. He would have to find a good balance between physical features and speed of improvement.

“Now, lesson two. Now, you can feel the aura of Body Power, but did you know you can actually control it? You can direct it to different body features and give them priority.”

Like before, he was led through another few tests. Different body features could be allocated a far larger amount of Body Power and strengthened above the rest of the body. Sage also learned this was a method to recover abilities from further back in the bloodlines. Normally, he had only partial pieces of those abilities, so he chose to ignore them. With this new capability, a large amount of Body Power could be fed to them and it could restore the ancient powers. The downside being the large loss of Body Power. In short, it was not worth doing unless the recovered ability was extremely unique or useful.

Guan Zhenyan led him on a more thorough search, trying to restore parts of the ancestral abilities to see if any of them were worth going after. Sage wasn’t sure if his luck before was good or his luck now was bad, but there weren’t any standout abilities that they could easily restore. All they found was a fire breathing ability in the Fire Crested Iguana line. They did learn an interesting tidbit about the origin of the golden egg that hatched Ruanfu. The egg had come from a ‘Myriad Wyrm’, descended from a line of White Dragons. It was specifically an offspring of the Rainbow Serpent and Luck Dragon. A hybrid creature that had grown into a race of its own, they were famous for their power to split their soul, hence the title of myriad. The particular egg Ruanfu was born from was a very weak bloodline of its species, which explained why it had never hatched. Sage didn’t have enough Body Power to restore any of the abilities of the Rainbow Serpent or Luck Dragon.

Now that Guan Zhenyan had explored all of his skill trees, he started to outline a few builds that Sage could pursue. Or at least, that’s how Sage thought of it. Guan Zhenyan was still linked to his mind, so he got to experience the strange thought process as well. When he mentioned how odd it was Sage grew fearful his origin would be discovered, but then he remembered their mental link didn’t share memories. He calmed himself down and Guan Zhenyan just took it as him being an oddity. In fact, Guan Zhenyan simply started using the terms himself.

“First off, the decision to specialize or generalize. Of course that is in itself a generalization. Everyone will specialize in one weapon or technique over others, and also generalize to some extent in their defenses. Without specialization, the end result is merely muddy water. Sure, it can slake thirst, but nobody will choose it over other options. You are a good example. While versatile, it can’t compare to someone who focused all their effort on a single overwhelming area.”

Sage tried not to feel insulted, but there was still a tinge of animosity that would always happen when receiving criticism. Guan Zhenyan would of course notice, but he didn’t even make mention of it, “On the other hand, a specialist can be extremely powerful and overwhelming in their area of expertise. The downside of course being when they run into something their specialty can’t defeat, or an enemy that targets one of their many weaknesses. So, we see that the truly strong blur the lines between the two concepts.”

Since they were currently in the middle of Sage’s Chrysalis process, they focused on his physical body for now. Guan Zhenyan laid out a few ideas and Sage couldn’t help but to label them with gaming terms almost instantly. He was eager to get started and pick the one that seemed most exciting, but the problem was that if he chose the wrong ‘build’ then he might not have the correct techniques to support his new choice. It would be a tricky thing to make the most optimal combination of physical abilities, Qi techniques, Heavenly materials, and also future growth. On the other hand, he could always just use Chrysalis again. Even if he lost a few years of progress, he would just have to consider it as a ‘respec’ cost.

So then, shall I choose Tank, DPS, Controller, Assassin, or Ultimate Speed?