“I guess one-second intervals are still too much for me at the moment,” Loran mumbled, surrounded by seven dead Moss Wolves. One more was trying to hide in the tall grass behind him, completely silent as it waited for a moment to strike.

It had remained hidden while the others moved in to attack the lone human, uncertain about attacking the being who fought with strange lights, but now it hoped to catch the human off guard. It watched as it made the lights disappear, kneeling down to examine one of the wolf bodies. Now was the time to strike.

With the rustling of grass as the only warning, the lone Moss Wolf burst from its hiding place, not even 10 feet away from the oblivious human. It leapt into the air, aiming to bite at the back of Loran’s neck.

“....Damn shame these guys don’t give more EXP,” Loran said, calmly stepping aside. A blade of mana flew out from where it was hidden by his body, slicing through the Moss Wolf’s throat.

The wolf tried to slash at Loran with its claws as it flew past, but missed the soft skin of his neck by less than an inch. The Moss Wolf landed on the ground, stumbling as it struggled to breathe through its slit throat. Before it could do much more than glare menacingly at Loran the blade of mana came back around and buried itself in the back of the wolf’s neck, killing it.

Loran shrugged and began putting the bodies into his inventory. “At least they’re good target practice, and they’re quick enough to practice cycling against.”

It had been around three hours since he left the village, and barely a minute since he was ambushed by this pack of wolves. With [EXTREME PERCEPTION] increasing the number of spells he could cast it had been a simple process to take out the wolves with a barrage of basic Mana Darts and Mana Blades. With his stats, each dart was strong enough to practically carve chunks out of their HP bars, and the blades had quite literally cut them to pieces.

Loran smiled. “At this point, the sheer number of spells I can put out is practically a hard counter to getting swarmed by enemies,” he thought out loud. “I guess the question now is whether or not I can keep up with being surrounded by players.”

He can’t exactly start slitting throats during the competition, and even if he could there were still a decent number of players that would be able to just endure the blows and force their way through to him.

“This won’t be decided by who takes out the most people…the smart thing to do would be to hang back and wait until the end.”

For most video games that had a King of the Hill game mode, the victor was decided by whoever held the designated point for the longest time. They couldn’t exactly do that right now, but by making the competition depend on whoever was the last man standing just incentivized waiting until the majority became tired and swooping in at the last second. This was Loran’s best chance to win.

‘And yet…’

Loran frowned and shook his head. “There’s still two days before the competition. For now, let's focus on what I’ve learned.” With the bodies put away, it was time for Loran to start planning. Using [EXTREME PERCEPTION] to control multiple spells would be the foundation for his new playstyle, but what spells would work the best?

“During the raid, I just spammed basic spells, but while that could be effective for a sudden burst of damage he had spent hours in the Workshop training for an extended battle.

‘What spells work best with the effects of the Skill…’

The vague description of [EXTREME PERCEPTION] had been problematic, but by this point, Loran was starting to understand the full effects of his Unique Skill.

The first was his more passive use of [ANALYSE]. Instead of spending SP to get a menu description, he could get a surprisingly detailed understanding of anything he looked at with just a glance.

‘I thought this one would be pretty good at first, but honestly, it’s kind of annoying.’ Because the information was effectively being uploaded directly to his mind, the information would become muddled if he wasn’t focused. During his fight with the Moss Wolves, he hadn’t been able to figure out what their actual stat values were because he was more focused on controlling his spells.

‘At least I can still get a rough estimate of their stats, but Skills are a lot harder to read like this.’

Fortunately, this all seemed like he could get used to with practice, but when compared to everything else he had to relearn, this had such a low priority that he wasn’t sure he would ever get around to fixing it.

The second effect was his improved [DANGER SENSE]. The original Skill allowed players to use their enhanced senses to perceive the world around them without using their eyes. At Level 10 [DANGER SENSE] was enough for most players to practically have eyes in the back of their heads, but it could still feel a bit fuzzy at times. For Loran, [EXTREME PERCEPTION] was like a 3D map of his surroundings being projected directly into his mind, giving him the exact location and movements of everything within 50 feet of him. If he concentrated further, he could even count the individual blades of grass with his eyes closed.

‘How does that even work?’ he thought with wonder. ‘Is it like I’m feeling the vibrations of it through the ground? The air? Am I smelling or hearing it?’ Even with the information right in front of him, it seemed too fantastical to be real. It almost seemed like the game was just throwing any attempt at realism out the window and was arbitrarily giving him godly senses. It still had limits, as some things were blurry no matter how hard he tried to concentrate, but he just couldn't figure out what the internal logic for how it worked.

Third was his improved predictive capabilities. This one had confused him the most since none of his original Skills had helped him with something like this, but he slowly began to realize that it was essentially an unintended side effect of mixing so many Skills together. Between [DANGER SENSE] tracking every little twitch an opponent made, along with [GOAT WHISPERER] and [ANALYSE] giving him information on their emotional and mental state, he was subconsciously making predictions on his own.

‘It’s not that the Skill is helping me make predictions, it’s that I have more information to work with, so their movements seem more obvious by comparison.’

The last and most immediately powerful effect was the massive increase in his ability to control mana, giving him an effective Intelligence of 120 while the Skill was active. However, this wasn’t a direct increase to his stats, since the bonus didn’t improve his MP regen like a stat increase would.

‘But what else can I do with that?’ Loran wondered.

With magic being fully dependent on only two stats, having one of them receive such a massive boost must have more bonuses than just the ability to control more mana at once.

‘I know that it also improves my ability to use idea manipulation, but is that it?’

Summoning up a bead of mana to practice with, he began moving it around while cycling [EXTREME PERCEPTION]. His training so far had been to adjust to using his new Skill and his focus had been on cycling the activations properly, but now he needed to get a feel for how it interacted with his magic.

At first, nothing seemed different, the spell was simply flying about as it usually would, but as he watched he began to feel like something was off.

“...Were my spells always this fast?”

It wasn’t in relation to [EXTREME PERCEPTION], but as near as he could tell the spell seemed much faster than it should be. He tried to think of how this could have happened while playing with the spell some more, and eventually, he remembered that he hadn’t just received a new Skill during the raid.

“To heal the Elder, I nearly doubled my Spirit stat…I guess that means Spirit is basically the Agility for my spells….” As the words left his mouth, his eyes narrowed and questions filled his mind. “...so what determines the other stats?”

Most spells would only care about their damage output and flight speed, both of which he now knew were reliant on his SPT, but constructs like his Mana Shields had durability and his Mana Hands must have a weight limit, meaning they had Endurance and Strength stats of their own.

Creating a Mana Hand, Loran decided to test it by having it try to push his own hand down. Sure enough, the spell easily overpowered him, and using [EXTREME PERCEPTION] didn’t have an effect.

“My Spirit is almost double my Strength stat, so that makes sense.” Loran shook the soreness out of his wrist as he pulled out his sickle. “Time to test out the toughness.”

With the construct taking his attacks directly, it was easily destroyed by the first attack. The blade tore through the ethereal material like soft flesh, leaving a gaping wound from which the construct began to dissolve.

“Damn, I knew these things weren’t that tough but that was too easy.” It seemed like he might be able to repair the damage if he concentrated and supplied it with more mana, but was an experiment for another day.

Creating another Mana Hand, Loran activated [EXTREME PERCEPTION] and attacked. This time the spell held up to not only the first attack but six more direct hits. Interestingly, there wasn't any visible damage for the first few strikes, even though the blade had partially penetrated into the construct.

“Okay, so Intelligence controls how tough they are.”

Overall, the correlations made sense when he thought about it. The INT stat dictated how well he could control mana, meaning how well it could retain its form, and SPT was responsible for how potent his mana was, meaning how much force it could exert for speed and power.

As he thought this, Loran looked down at the weapon in his hand.

‘If my constructs are going to have better stats than me…’

He tossed the sickle into the air, quickly forming a viscous wad of mana that wrapped around the weapon's hilt and hardened. With a thought, the blade began twirling around just as- no, even more dexterously than he could manage with his own two hands. Glancing at a nearby tree, he sent the blade flying forward.

The enchanted weapon easily tore a massive chunk out of the tree, destabilizing it and causing it to fall.

Loran smiled. “Oh, this is going to be so cool.”