“These hidden requirements are really pissing me off!” Kurushimi shouted, cursing out the system and its hidden requirements. Of course, sword aura, the next skill she wanted to learn, also had one of them. The amount of times she had looked at a skill now only for the system to say ‘nuh uh, hidden requirement!’, along with all the other bullsh*t that came along with this crappy system was at the point where it generally angered Kurushimi.

She could understand why the hidden requirements were a thing. If one could just easily learn a ton of overpowered skills like that, they would get stupidly strong with almost no effort. So, making skills less accessible through the hidden requirements was understandable. But, how the hell was anybody supposed to discover them?! What was the point of having all these skills if no one was going to be able to learn them in the end? She felt that there at least should be some method of figuring out what they were other than pure luck…

“Ah, wait…” Kurushimi suddenly muttered. Just as she was thinking about it, she remembered something. She had only just recently made the discovery that there was a method to gain more information from system text. The skill, appraisal, had served the usage of looking further into skills. Through that, she had managed to have a way of seeing all the possible uses of specific skills. If what Kurushimi was thinking of worked, this could be big…

With mana gathering into her eyes, she concentrated on the three question marks that appeared under the requirements. And with the usage of appraisal, she ended up getting results from the question marks. Revealing new text, it changed from ‘???’ to ‘Reach enlightenment’.

“Reach enlightenment?” Kurushimi stared at the new text that had replaced the hidden requirement. Although she was now able to see something, not much had changed. After the appraisal, she had only gained two words that vaguely told her to reach enlightenment. Furrowing her brows, she questioned, “Is this because appraisal isn’t a high enough level?”

Her current appraisal, at the grand level of 3, was able to actually view a good amount of information and its ability to appraise seemingly anything made it a lot more powerful than it originally came off as. Kurushimi felt that the appraisal in this world was similar to the cheat-like appraisals she had seen a lot of protagonists abuse.

However, viewing more information on the hidden requirements of skills seemed to be on an entirely different level than anything she had used appraisal on before. It was natural for that to be the case, because this could potentially be the most powerful use of appraisals ability to gather information. So at this stage, what she got back was very short and also very vague.

“What the hell is enlightenment supposed to be?” Kurushimi questioned. The first thing she could think of was the literal meaning, which was to gain new knowledge and thus enlighten oneself. However, since this was a fantasy world, such a mindset generally wouldn’t get you anywhere. “If we’re talking about fantasy tropes…”

“Then it’ll be somewhat like cultivation.” Kurushimi wasn’t too knowledgeable on cultivation. She preferred to watch anime and read manga, rather than manhua where cultivation was much more popular. However, she had seen some manhua and had rough knowledge on the concept. It generally involved refining ‘Qi’ but as far as she knew, she didn’t have qi. She had mana.

“Mana is pretty similar to qi I think… Maybe I can try using mana?” Kurushimi sat down, sword in hand. Her goal here was to learn sword aura through enlightenment. She doubted she would be able to cultivate her mana like in a manhua, but she wasn’t trying to do that. She simply wanted to see if this could assist her in finding out how to use sword aura.

Meanwhile, Voice-san watched on puzzledly. It wasn’t strange for Kurushimi to suddenly start going on about things she didn’t understand. Kurushimi was from another world after all. But, as far as Voice-san knew, Kurushimi’s old world shouldn’t have had anything like magic. Mana was supposed to be a unique existence like skills and levels were.

The only conclusion Voice-san could come up with was that Kurushimi was trying something from fiction. Meaning whatever she was trying, shouldn’t work. That is why Voice-san, who was normally very monotone and composed, abruptly shouted out, “Hah?!” after viewing the next few moments.

Up until now, Kurushimi had only moved mana with the system's help through the activation of a skill. However, although she found it a fair bit harder than with the system’s help, she managed to move the mana on her own and store it into her blade. As her blade lit up with a rough crimson aura, the ‘ping’ of a system message rang out.

[You have gained the skill 'Sword aura'!]Kurushimi held up the mana-imbued katana, which glowed with a crimson light. “Looks like I can use sword aura now…” She said, her eyes looking over the lit up blade. In the end, it was fairly simple. Through storing mana in her blade, refining and condensing it, she had managed to do it.

Although she had achieved enlightenment, this was probably only the beginning. Kurushimi doubted that the system had changed levels to mastery just for a name change. Upgrading her current mastery of sword aura would require a lot more than brainless leveling up and would most likely be a lot harder than simply reaching enlightenment for the first time.

“Mm, I’ve got sword aura but it’s still too rough.” Kurushimi nodded her head, looking at the way the crimson light barely stayed contained in her blade. She found it hard to believe that it actually looked more unstable than a shadow construct when in the process of making weapons. But that was nothing compared to the much bigger concern.

“What the hell is that mana consumption?!” Kurushimi shouted as her mana rapidly depleted. With that, she hurriedly stopped using sword aura in an attempt to preserve her mana a little. For a long while now, she hadn’t had to care about her mana. As she got more, the cost for using abilities never changed and after every fight, all she needed to do was suck some blood and she’d be at full mana. However, it seemed that she would suddenly have to start watching her mana again or she could easily run out mid-fight!

“I’m going to have to use sword aura in short bursts. It looks like… Using it for long periods of time uses up too much mana.” Looking at the mana burn, Kurushimi realised that the best thing to know about using sword aura, is when not to use it! “But I’m gonna need to re-activate it real quick…” She said, once again getting ready to let mana flare into her katana.

Now that she had learned sword aura, she would need to test it out quickly, wouldn’t she? Besides, a short activation wouldn’t use up so much mana that she couldn’t ever use it except for dire situations. The crimson light ignited once again, covering the blade in Kurushimi’s mana. “Is this the colour of my mana?” she asked, looking down at her blade.

Since the mana surrounding the blade is pretty much her untampered mana, this would probably be the closest thing to seeing what her mana really looks like. “Crimson, huh? Haha. Reminds me of blood!” With a slight chuckle, Kurushimi swung her katana. With a series of loud crashing, the single swing had not only cut down the tree she slashed but also the tree behind it and even the tree behind that one.

Kurushimi flopped to the ground, laying her katana beside her. She was quick to disable the sword aura before it burned up any more of her mana. In front of her was the wreckage of her sword aura’d strike. For only just learning sword aura, it had done a good amount of damage.

“Since I cut down a single tree without sword aura before… With sword aura should be about 3x stronger?” She estimated, comparing her previous test with another unlucky tree before. It wasn’t exactly the most thorough of tests, but it gave her a rough estimate of what sword aura could do. However, to get a better showing of sword aura, she would have to actually test it on monsters. As she had said before, trees can’t build endurance like monsters or herself can.

“92/145 MP…” Kurushimi said, looking at the mana bar in the top right of her vision. She had full mana prior to use and she hadn’t used it all that much yet she had lost over a third of her mana. This amount would be perfectly fine for slaying smaller monsters where she can regenerate her mana afterwards, but when she uses this against the rock golem she would definitely have to watch the amount of sword aura she used.

“Hopefully mastery will include lessening the mana burn…” She said, standing herself up along with her katana. Now that she had learnt sword aura, it was time to head over towards the large crystal area to grind XP and stats. Or, it wasn’t time yet.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” As Kurushimi had started to head over towards her location, she was suddenly stopped by Voice-san.

“Huh? Am I?” Kurushimi responded, caressing her chin with her hand. There was something she forgot? Skills, large crystal area, farm, skills, large crystal area, farm… Sword aura and… “Ah, movement speed skill! I forgot!” As she pondered over her current plans, she eventually came to what she was going to do. Having almost forgotten, she really thanked having a second person with her to help with these things.

“Ha… You are too forgetful.” Voice-san sighed. Kurushimi hastily went back to the skill list without responding, pulling up skills that had to do with movement. Lots of skills appeared that were similar to short-distance teleportation, allowing various forms of dashing around or whatever. However, she was specifically looking for something that would help her run faster. Now that she had the ability to get a clue, although not very useful, skills with hidden requirements weren’t out of the choice.

“There isn’t really much difference between these skills.” As she looked through them, most of them simply said something along the lines of ‘Increases movement speed’ and then some kind of condition or force causing said increase. But what she was looking for the most here was consistency. Something she could use whenever, in any situation.

After some time longer looking, Kurushimi finally stopped at one and said, “This one looks good.” The name of the skill was ‘fleet footwork Lvl. 1’ with the description as following, ‘Improves the footwork of the user to be quicker and more agile, allowing for greater movement speed and nimbler feet.’

“It’s a movement skill but it also looks good for fighting… and doesn’t require any conditions for it to be active!” Kurushimi said, satisfied with her find. The skill was a passive skill that was always active, meaning it filled the condition of being able to use it whenever. Not to mention, it would help her fight. It would be a nice pair with evade.

At this rate, with the living armour spectre, evade and fleet footwork, it would be a miracle for the enemy to actually land a hit on her. Although she would still be absolutely screwed if she ended up in a situation where she was surrounded by rock golems again like in her first death by the rock golems.

“Now for the hidden requirement…” And naturally, it still had a hidden requirement. However, that was no longer the giant wall that used to restrict her so! With a gleam of mana in her eye and the activation of her trusty appraisal, the question marks that mocked her changed around into new and comprehensible text.

“...’Move’? That’s it? Even less text than sword aura?” Kurushimi was dumbfounded. She thought the two words, ‘reach enlightenment’ were little. But now it has been reduced to a single word! And it was even less helpful than the vague ‘reach enlightenment’. “If that’s all, I could have figured that out myself!” She shouted, swinging at the system text, causing it to disappear.

But, at the very very least, she had an idea of what to do. With the requirement being confirmed that it had to do with movement, she was at least pushed into the right direction. Now, the rest was up to her to figure out.

“It has to do with footwork, right?” The skill was called fleet footwork, meaning it had obviously to do with footwork. Would she have to try to train her footwork? Maybe dodge enemies' attacks with her footwork?

“Are there any training techniques you remember from your world?” Voice-san cut in, providing input. Being from another world, there were many different training techniques for various things created throughout history. Footwork was definitely something many athletes would train in with advanced techniques such as…

“Sidesteps?”

“How about you try that then?”

“...Okay.”

And thus, Kurushimi started sidestepping.