The day passed and most of my time is consumed further delineating the limits and learning about the system restrictions on increasing my skill level. Sweat intermittently covers my skin as I vary my speed while dancing with my staff.

I keep myself updated on the enemy’s movements and developments, but neither of the 2 main enemy encampments nor the smaller ones that we discovered across the globe became a problem. They haven’t gotten any reinforcements and somehow the Elves must have warned the others to stay in their small protective encampments or there was something else at play here that I didn’t understand.

In the end, I leave it for the others to improve the response systems and protocols for the nearby populations to deal with the enemies. I can’t do everything on my own, and trying will just split me in too many ways. So for now I concentrate on developing my own skills and studying how the system makes these upgrades on others.

I realize that increasing their level a little and then going back to using my own resources should be possible. I likely wouldn’t level them very quickly unless I reserved my own resources for a few critical use cases, but that would just mean that I would always be inside that cloudy and foggy glass stopping me from really seeing the world, and for as little as I knew, I trusted my gut that I needed to see as clearly as possible.

As I think about it, I realize that even a few minutes for each of my main skills to cross the threshold still felt like the wrong choice. That would likely be the common path but it felt short sighted. I had deviated even of an Aether wielder without hesitation and it had mostly worked out till now, so once again I trust my gut. There is a nigh infinity field of things that I didn’t know, but if I can’t trust myself I might as well just give up now.

The days pass and drilling with my staff stops teaching me anything until I feel that the only thing halting this last micrometer of progress, is a thin plastic film. I can twist and rotate my goal in every single way imaginable. I can run my fingers over it and place it anywhere within my personal space, but the micron’s thick layer still stops me from actually crossing that boundary and actually touching it the fruits of my labor.

Still, even if progress towards this particular skill is stuck, I have another dozen at 99 and that is where I turn my attention to. Opening the system prompt, I try to think about which I should work on next.

Mana Manipulation Lv. 99

Deep Meditation Lv. 99

Mana Infusion Lv. 99

Space/Time Interaction Lv. 99

Fire Manipulation Lv. 99

Water Manipulation Lv. 99

Earth Manipulation Lv. 99

Wind Manipulation Lv. 99

Nature Manipulation Lv. 99

Magma Manipulation Lv. 99

Blacksmithing Lv. 99

Staff Mastery Lv. 99

Running Lv. 99

Runic Language Lv. 99

Perception field Lv. 99

One step towards connection Lv. 99

So far 16 of my skills had stopped at this threshold, most of the ones I use regularly. The rest just were gathering cobwebs… and more important, didn’t get much of my attention when I did use them. After all, even the few dishes that I actually hand washed didn’t get more than a thread of my attention. No sudden boats of inspiration on an improved dishwashing technique. Nor was I an artist that had taken up painting or used another of the dozens of minor skills gathering cobwebs in my system prompt to any appreciable degree.

The two I settle on are the misnamed Mana Manipulation while simultaneously working on my Runic Language.

Luckily most of the ways that come for me to train with those two skills overlap.

Free form magic comes to mind. A skill that I hadn’t hit level 99 with. It’s dangerous, but after a lot of tangential development had increased its level to 84 becoming part of my core capabilities. Blackwood had warned me about using it and though I tried to avoid it in the chaos of battle, it had its uses when I was calm and focused especially with the protection of simple runes limiting the unrestrained potential of the skill. The worse that happened was the occasional singed hair or light backlash of trying to do something beyond my capabilities an appropriate rune to mitigate the dangers. Though I rarely took more than a few minutes experimenting with it, my Qi helped me brake a lot of conventions.

As I run through my mind the last few dozen times I experimented with it, I realize that only once I did it without a single rune. All the other times I used the hybrid version of the skill.

A single water rune is definitely not enough to create water, shape it into a ball, and shoot it. In fact, the only thing it did was help me more efficiently covert the mana if you have very good control, but it gave me a focus and narrowed down my ‘options’ making ‘free form’ casting more viable even mid-combat. That had dangers of its own, but acting on instinct had an appeal of its own. And I couldn’t be second guessing myself every time I entered a scuffle. That’s half the only reason I even managed to reach this level. If I had to depend on casting it without any other runes, it would probably still be on level 10 or I would have already blown myself up.

Most other mages took longer than me to cast anything useful, but it was still the difference of 2 fractions of a second instead of one that I needed for simple spells unless they used their class skills and relied entirely on the system to do the heavy lifting. When the average level increases once again the power equation might change. With more classes and subclasses, mages and other magic users would get enough discreet skills to make up enough for the lack of flexibility.

Still, I don’t feel envious at their ease of casting, speed or even mana economy that most of them enjoyed because while those had their advantages I had my own. And my impressions grew when I learned who the strongest people in the hundred instances we contacted were. Every single one of them chose classes that provided more general skills. The best fire mages got something like an upgraded fire manipulation skill instead of the common firebolt, spear or even a firewall skill.

I spend days and days on mana manipulation and runic language trying to eke out every bit out of them, slowly growing more used to their limits. Shaping mana with all my new willpower and perception increased my feedback so much that drawing a Qi line a hair’s width away from its ideal position become instantly clear to me. I cycle carefully controlling my Qi, trying to impart into my magic that intangible quality that the others had on their spells.

But this wasn’t something that I was supposed to do myself, but something that came from on high.

I tried to change what I was doing, to achieve parity with what the others did, as they are propped up by the system and guided along an avenue so advanced that I had yet to take the first step. Even finding words seem like a useless exercise, but every time those thoughts flit through my head I try to find some new way to encapsulate what was going on.

Slowly new ideas and experiments take me ever higher. Although I can’t replicate Blackwood’s feat, I don’t actually need an external tool to show me the way.

And then I find a bit more about the system.

For the hundredth time, I bring one of the people with skill levels approaching the 200s and observe them channeling various effects that maximize the difference between my skill level and theirs. Fraction by fraction of a mana point, they break my concept of reality and how things should work and the Aether constructs they acquire make their presence impossible to miss.

A mage with a nature mana main class sends his will into Pando reaching a LOT farther than should have been possible. He can almost...

My mind halts and a world of possibilities explodes in my mind.

“I’m not sure how that would work, but… can you let Pando in?”

“Let Pando in? You mean trying to connect with him like you do?”

“Kinda, but it is not just in the same way as you do while casting and moving his roots around or using telepathy to communicate. I’m talking about something deeper.”

“Never tried, but I’m willing…” he says pensively.

He stares into the horizon, which in the middle of the grove is barely 200 meters away. Which is only further limited by the narrow window in my hut. As his mind whirls he reaches out and pulls hundreds of tiny root tendrils to cover his entire body.

In the very heart of the grove, I walk behind him and encompass my body reaching for Pando and almost feeling like he is just a missing limb that I forgot I ever had and then I sit down with my back leaned against his.

Then it comes into place. As he spins a ring of wind around us, I try to use our tangential connection with Pando to translate whatever he is feeling in a different dimension as my other senses could provide me. Still, something is missing. Something completely beyond my senses.

Even the perception field fails right now. My nigh omniscient sphere of knowledge about everything physical and even most system effects after I learned to see mana with it proves insufficient.

My skill, one step towards connection, fell short. As much as the mentality that lead and fed the increase in skill levels was helpful for me, it was just one side of the coin. I needed more, a lot more to have any chance of breaking free from this cycle of dependency on the system.

Although I could compromise and for a time still keep up, the path that I took was completely different from other people and the system had pretty much explicitly told me that it would allow me to increase my skill levels if I caved at least for a second and used the resources it provided.

That would always be available to me, but it feels like another dead. The same dead end that billions, trillions of people already walked under the council’s thumbs. Walking two paths this far apart would only tear me into pieces so I would walk the tightrope for as long as I could and if I fell, so be it.

I rather take this next step in the right direction from the start, instead of trying and most assuredly failing to become two people. Just the time transitioning back and forth from system resources would take too long if it didn’t become dangerous.

The wind picks up, in contrast to anyone with a lower skill level. Instead of losing momentum and reaching a plateau a few seconds after it starts, the ring of wind continues speeding up highlighting the main difference between skill levels with this particular skill, I seemed to bypass some of the principles of physics beyond what sub level 100 people could do.

Then I witness another level increase.

It was a relatively rare event, which I had only witnessed a few times with such high level skills, even that was more often than I could have hoped for, statistically speaking.

After leaving the instance progress had slowed to a crawl. Even low-level skills that had taken a day or two to get to level 10 failed to increase once per day now. Though on the other side of the coin is that without being heavily ‘subsided’ by the system, when our skills levels increase the person had a more solid foundation to work from.

Curiosity overwhelms me as the Aether construct from the system shoots into him and I expand my senses. Senses that I barely recognized I had, but that I spend years polishing, senses that I only seem work in full once before.

Connection comes, as I find his soul, and after only the barest of hesitations, I plunge inside it trailing the Aether construct.

A confusing and cramped space of chaotic whirls threatens to knock me out, but I simply rush in trying to follow the system’s construct trail until I see its destination. Rejection tries to swallow me whole. Something all around me compresses and pushes me out. So I let it take me to the edge again even as I get a glimpse of the construct in the middle of his soul that the system put there and the biggest grin I can muster is plastered on my face. Because it seems both larger and simpler than my own.

Not a 3-dimensional sculpture weaving billions of spider silk threads, but millions of sewing threads that are a bit more tangible.

Perhaps I can do something with that.

Crossing the threshold scrambles my mind and it takes me a few minutes to regain my wits.

“Next time, I shouldn’t allow myself to be kicked out. Last time it wasn’t nearly this hard.”

He stares at me and bores his eyes on my sitting form for a few feet away.

“You.. what the hell did you do? I felt something that shouldn’t be within me.”

“Ohh, sorry about that, Inspiration struck and I paid a quick visit to your soul. Don’t worry, I have no plans to return unless you invite me.”

“Well, I can’t say it was comfortable, but that’s fine. Now, explain it to me before you try anything like that again.”

I just nod and a few minutes later he takes his leave. I would learn a lot from even a few peeks in other people’s souls, but I definitely need permission beforehand.

Still, a question burned in my mind: if my Soul was about a kilometer wide and the Titan’s reached 700 meters, why did his only just cross 200 meters? And why did the system treat the constructs it send his way with so much less care?

A moment of thought and another question strikes.

“Ohh, this is gonna be a long night.”