As the afternoon sun crept ever closer toward the western mountains, Loran sat in the Workshop surrounded by the loot brought back from the raid. He had not moved from this spot for five hours and still hadn’t finished sorting through the pile of items left behind by the other players.

‘Fuck…my head feels like it’s going to split open!’

The remaining items were barely a fraction of what he started with, but he just couldn’t continue. He tried to form another Mana Hand to continue his training, but the moment he tried to make even a single point of mana move a sharp pain shot through his head like a hot needle. This method of training put an immense amount of strain on his mind, more than any feat of magic had before, and while it felt like he could force his way through the pain for a while he recognized that he should probably stop before he hurt himself.

Letting his body fall back Loran lay in the grass, eyes closed as he gave his mind the rest it had so desperately needed for the last few hours.

‘Still…at least I got something out of all this.’

It had taken him two hours to control the first Mana Hand while rapidly using [EXTREME PERCEPTION], but once he got used to that learning to control more hands was significantly easier. By the time he was finished, he was able to control four hands with one-second activation cycles.

‘Four hands at once,’ he thought contentedly. Considering that he could control up to twenty spells at once with his base Intelligence it seemed like a small number, but that showed how much effort it took to abuse [EXTREME PERCEPTION] like this. Furthermore, Mana Hands required more concentration than his usual attack spells since he needed to control each finger and not just their general movement, so the effectiveness in combat was likely much higher.

“I’ll need to test that out later…”

“Test what out?”

Loran opened his eyes to see Yang and Syrus standing over him.

“Don’t worry about it.” He closed his eyes again, hoping to ignore them. “Did either of you need something? Please say no.”

“Yeah, I wanted to ask you some questions,” Yang said. “Sorry, not sorry.”

“Fuuuuck,” Loran groaned. “My brain feels like it's going to explode out of my skull…Can’t it wait till later?”

“I suppose, but knowing you you’ll just go right back to messing with magic the second you can and blow your brain out again before I can ask.”

“...Alright,” Loran sighed. He sat up and looked at the unfinished pile. “Sorry I couldn’t finish sorting through this crap.”

“Dude, don’t even worry about it,” Syrus said dismissively. “We might have been faster but you still cleared out that whole pile on your own. We can take it from here.”

“Thanks.” Loran tried to stand up but felt his knees shaking from the effort. He then raised a hand to Yang, who took it and easily pulled him to his feet. He clutched his head as the sudden movement agitated his throbbing head.

“You good?” she asked, still holding him up with one hand.

“No, but I already told you that,” he said, eventually finding his balance. “I’ll probably be fine in an hour or so.”

“You’ll need more than an hour with that debuff,” Syrus said as he finished loading the raw iron into his inventory.

“Wait, debuff?” Loran opened his menu and sure enough, there was a new debuff causing his headache.

[HEAVY MENTAL EXHAUSTION]

Duration: 24 Hours

Reduce all Mental stats by 50%.

Reduce MP regeneration rate by 50%

“Damn, I wonder when I got that?”

“So what, you were thinking so hard that you managed to hurt yourself?” Yang asked jokingly.

“I think it’s more an issue of how long I was concentrating than how hard I was trying.” Loran’s brow scrunched up. “Why isn’t the duration going down?”

“Wait what?” Yang’s eyes widened. “You don’t think it could be bugged do you?”

Loran’s eyes widened with fear for a moment before he started scowling. “Oh fuck no. I did not just spend the last five hours training for a permanent debuff.” Loran paused and stared at his menu, reading over each line several times. “NEO has managed to be bug-free so far. Maybe I’m just missing something.”

“For your sake, I hope so.” Yang remained silent for a moment, waiting for Loran to think of something before a thought occurred to her. “Hey, didn’t Zed say something about his exhaustion debuff not going away as long as he was up and moving?”

“Yeah but what does that have to-” Loran froze for a moment before groaning and letting his face fall into his hands. “Are you telling me I might need to be asleep for this debuff to wear off?!”

“Sounds like it.”

“That is such bullshit.” Loran stared at his menu for a moment, debating if he wanted to just blow off Yang so that he could try to sleep immediately, but as he glanced at his other debuff he had an idea. “Hold on a second…can I…”

“Can you what?”

‘Just give me a minute, okay?”

Loran activated [EXTREME PERCEPTION], noting that with his Intelligence cut in half the bonus from his Unique Skill was significantly less effective. His headache worsened, but he forced his way through the pain and summoned up as much mana as he could before forming it into a healing spell.

‘I hope this is enough…’

He focused on thoughts of healing, on alleviating pain and suffering. He thought of the relief he felt whenever an injury quickly healed in the game. Most of all, he channeled thoughts of restoring permanent damage and correcting old mistakes.

Loran wasn’t sure how much time passed, but after a moment of concentrating he felt the pain start to subside, accompanied by a bizarre feeling from the inside of his skull, and after a few more seconds the pain was gone. Opening his eyes and looking at his menu confirmed his hopes. His new spell had just removed the debuff.

“Oh hell yes!”

“Wait, did you just remove the debuff?” Yang asked, a grin slowly spreading across her face.

“Yep, now let's see if I can do it again.”

Loran looked at his crippled arm. The scar tissue wrapped around his forearm like a hellish wristband, lines crossing back and forth wherever the skin managed to heal. Clenching his hand, he could feel the muscles tense and strain where they had been improperly connected.

Casting the spell a second time, he centered it on his forearm and set the mana to work. He shivered as he felt the strange sensation again, only more intense as he watched his arm move and ripple as it was healed. The spell was undoing all the damage done by his hasty attempt to reattach his arm, forcing all the skin, nerves, veins, and bones to slowly shift into their proper positions. The process took much longer this time as the physical damage was far more extensive, but eventually, the patch of scarred tissue was replaced by smooth, unblemished skin.

“Fucking finally.” Rather than excited, all Loran felt right now was a relief. For weeks he had to deal with the chronic pains and constant frustrations of having a crippled arm, and now even the fact that he could move his hand freely filled him with an indescribable elation.

“Congrats on not being disabled anymore,” Yang said, patting Loran on the back hard enough to make him stumble.

“Thanks now can you please not break my spine?” he asked incredulously.

“You’re fine,” she chuckled. “Besides, can’t you fix that now?”

“...Just because you’re probably right doesn’t mean I want to test that myself.”

“Yourself? So you’d be okay with me breaking someone else's back for an experiment?” Loran said nothing for a moment, his brow furrowed in deep thought. “You know what, don’t answer that.”

“Alright alright,” he chuckled. “Anyway, you said you had questions for me? Did you need more help with magic?”

Yang shook her head. “I wanted to ask you some questions about that Unique Skill of yours.”

She explained her plan as the two made their way to The Pit, stopping by the Kitchen so Loran could get some food. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for him to become just as interested in Yang’s plan as she was. The players have seen a total of five Unique Skills since the start of New Eden Online, and each of them has incredible potential if used properly, and that's if they weren't outright game-breaking (1). If they could discover a method of reliably acquiring such Skills it would be even more of a power boost than the introduction of iron or even magic.

“Of course, that’s assuming we can actually pull this off,” Loran said as they sat down in The Pit.

“You think we can’t?”

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t get my hopes up.” He paused to shovel some Moss Wolf stew into his mouth, closing his eyes to savor the taste.

“But you still plan to help me with this, right?”

“Yeah. As near impossible as this is, the simple fact is that the Pioneer System is still a computer program. All code is vulnerable. Even if we can’t literally hack it, the fact that it triggers based on our actions means there must be a way to create such situations. The biggest question is how it differentiates between normal Skills and Unique Skills.”

Loran’s [EXTREME PERCEPTION] may be unique in how powerful it was, but objectively speaking it was a Skill that enhanced his perception and mental processing power. There was technically nothing stopping someone else from doing the exact same thing, and while Loran felt like it complimented his preferred playstyle well, he could see it suiting others just as well.

“The other Unique Skills all felt a bit more…personal I guess. The Wise One is the commanding leader of the Moss Wolves. The Monster was a terrifying beast that instilled fear in everything around it. I guess Soze’s Skill seems a little off but that might just be because I wouldn’t have expected him to get a Skill based on spite or that it would negate debuffs.”

“I um, asked him about it earlier,” Yang said, her voice solemn and her shoulders sagging. “I’m not about to spill info about his real life, but trust me, I can see the connection. And I can see one with you too,” she said, perking up as she changed the topic.

“Oh? How so?”

“Well, for starters you’re absolutely the type to get hyper-focused on things. Remind me, how many times have you just dropped everything to develop a new spell once you had the idea?”

“I guess.”

“You also absolutely push yourself to your limits and end up too exhausted to function afterward.” Yang smirked. “Need I remind you of your little marathon a few weeks ago?”

“Okay, that’s definitely true.”

“And you said it ate up a bunch of your perception Skills right?”

“Yeah so?”

“How many of those Skills did you discover yourself?”

“Technically that’s just two out of five, but I see your point.”

Perhaps the Skill reflected less of his real world self than he would have expected, but once it was pointed out to him it undeniably reflected certain aspects of him and his gameplay style.

"I guess there wasn't much else to draw from..."he mumbled bitterly.

“So, any ideas on how to break this?” Yang asked, snapping him out of his thoughts.

“Sorry…give me a minute,” he said, setting aside his half-eaten stew and opening his notification menu.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m pulling up the original notification.”

“WHAT?!” Yang’s eyes widened.

“I want to have the exact wording from the Pioneer System.”

“That was days ago! And you killed so many Drones and Warriors!”

“Yeah well, you basically want to data mine an MMO without the ability to directly interact with any of the code. This is the kind of shit we have to do.”

Yang groaned and flopped back onto the grass as Loran calmly scrolled through the hundreds of kill notifications, searching for the one he was looking for.

(1) Game-Breaking is a term used to describe when a feature of a game is so effective that it renders other methods and features obsolete by comparison. if access to such features are widely available then it almost becomes a requirement to play that way.