Nathan glanced at the paper before asking “What would you recommend for me?” The list was small, but contained the names of over fifty different skills and techniques. Nathan had no clue what the vast majority of them would even do. What exactly did the ‘Doom Strike’ entail? Not for the first time did Nathan lament the naming scheme of most techniques.

“There's three on there that are suited to you specifically. It mainly depends on whether your looking to shore up weakness or built up your strengths. The Etherium Aura Creation technique will convert etherium into aura with far more efficiency and speed than the natural process. You could burn through all the excess you’ve built up over your life in an afternoon of dedicated effort. The Steel Core will allow you to practice the Steel Body technique passively. Other than that it's mostly a standard Core. Finally there's the True Breath cultivation art. It harvests ather at over twelve times the natural rate. Combine that with an aura mining technique and you could produce enough tera crystals to live happily.” He explained. Nathan knew what he should take almost as soon as he said it. A cultivation art was still an incredibly rare thing, even in spite of the age of information making most varieties of techniques easily available. One that could increase your ather harvesting rate by twelve times was ridiculous. Plus he could likely find an aura technique capable of multiplying that even more. A bit of shorthand math told him that he could likely make more sitting at home with that combination than he did working at the Auto Fill. Nathan thought hard about it, as this was a literal once in a lifetime chance. Nathan thought it to be a bit of cosmic repayment for the three thousand teras he would never see again. Eventually he settled on asking two questions, one of vital importance, the other a mere curiosity.

“Do you think that I could ever be someone someday? With these techniques I could guarantee myself an easy life, but is that all I can aspire to? Also, you said these were your techniques, but there is literally no way you could know so many different moves and the sheet has over a dozen different cores.” Nathan blurted, scared of the possible answers to his first question. His heart sank when Jack laughed but he quickly voiced his thoughts.

“You already are someone, but if your curious about your potential i'll go ahead and say that your already on par with most F tier arena fighters and some D rankers. As for your other question, I myself am an A rank fighter. My personal fighting style relies on having access to a wide variety of moves and energies that most opponents can’t account for. You may know me as Myriad.”

“So your saying you passed up the opportunity to call yourself Jack of Attacks?” Nathan quipped. Jack merely smiled in response before resuming a quiet patience. Apparently he wasn't getting much more out of him. So Nathan went back to thinking. The Steel Core was right out. The Steel Body technique might be agonizing, due to the fact he was injured every inch of his body and healing it until it couldn't absorb any more energy or he ran out, but it wasn't difficult to do. The benefit of the core was mitigated by the fact that he could simply do it himself. With that out he had two real options, a massive spike to his ather intake that could give him the fuel to empower himself far faster, or a technique which gave him a use for the lifetime stock pile of etherium he had in his soul and would finally give him an aura that wasn't simply pushed away whenever someone stood too close to him. But what put the nail in the coffin was the simple nature of what Jack had said. He was already good enough to be an F tier fighter. That may not be much, but an F tier made a hundred bucks per fight regardless of win or lose. With a powerful defensive aura he could fight several times a day, and realistically he could likely out earn his current job fairly easily if he made it to the D ranks. Nodding to himself and hoping he wasn't about to make a terrible mistake he asked for the Etherium Aura Creation technique. Jack gave him a brief smile before concentrating on his hand. Nathan opened his mouth to ask what he was doing when a small crystal formed in his palm. The man handed him the crystal and gave him a simple “Goodbye” before going back to his meditation. Nathan caught up with Dale who explained how to use the skill shard before sprinting home at max speed.

Nathan came home to a furious brother, several cans on the floor crushed into scraps of metal, and a half eaten pizza on the table in front of his sofa. Of those the one that most interested Nathan currently was the pizza, it had all his favorite toppings(jalapenos, bell peppers, and every meat known to man and some unknown) and Nathan had not had pizza since starting his dieting and exercising. That and the fact that he didn't eat lunch due to a robbing. Oh the robbery, that's what Reggie was yelling about.

“Listen Reggie I'm sorry I didn't call you after all that but get this okay, I'm heading to the gym and-”

“You could have been dead. I saw that there was no casualties but bodies get missed. You didn't call, you didn't come home after a traumatic event, you didn't even eat considering the fact that you're eyeing up my pizza like its made of gold.” He said, not quite accusingly but Nathan definitely picked up on a hint of unhappiness in his tone.

“I get it, but im hungry, stressed and want to learn a new technique that should give me a major jump in strength so I don't ever have to deal with something like that ever again ok?” Nathan tried. Reggie seemed curious about what technique but after glancing at the crystal in his hand nodded. Apparently deciding that just accepting that Nathan was ok would be the best way forward he said “Fine, you can have some pizza. If you can beat me at a match of Death Punk Tournament.”

A few slices of pizza and hours of gaming with his brother, who was apparently going to get his own apartment in the city soon, Nathan went to his room and used the skill shard. It took a bit of processing the instant collage of memories but soon Nathan was capable of converting etherium into aura. What once was a slow and inefficient passive process suddenly became an active and quite efficient method of emptying his entire etherium reserves. As the sun rose in the morning Nathan flexed his aura into a small cylinder. Crushing with all his strength didn't even leave a mark. Nathan walked into his living room and upon seeing Reggie still asleep cooked some breakfast. Soon enough Reggie awoke to the smell of a glorious breakfast made with only the cheapest ingredients.