Chapter 167 – Alternative Skill Development

AG. Sorry for the delay I did give a warning on discord.

Tom stretched and sighed. Weeks had passed since he had started working on Insanity Guidance or at least the precursor skills. His complete lack of progress, despite his affinity, made it abundantly clear that it would be literally years before he would be able to create it. Given that at least in the eyes of the system he would become an adult in less than three years and start his tour shortly after, it meant that timeline was a problem.. He just wasn’t going to finish in time.  Not that April was wrong to give the advice she had. The spells, without the help of Expert Danger Sense, would not have finished in time and now they would.

That just left the issue of skills.

April wouldn’t have lied to him. There was a path even with the time sink of Insanity Guidance to create the final skill he needed for his class… but the mathematics didn’t work. If he finished his intense training when he was fourteen and a half, like his revised projections implied and then started on a skill without his affinity benefit, he couldn’t see how he would be successful.

He tapped his fingers in agitation with his mind racing.

No matter how much he tried to get his head around the problem he couldn’t get it to add up

He needed an alternative approach, a way to gain more time.

Tom chuckled to himself. Sometimes he was a fool. There was no way to get more time with April, which meant he had to develop the third skill outside of her direct input. It had to be developed in parallel and it was equally clear that he lacked the resources to aim for a teleportation of some kind so that left spear work and that was definitely something that could be practiced. He could do it in the divine trial and benefit from the tailored facilities, but suffer a significant penalty. That would be reserved for skills that had a supernatural bent to them. For the more mundane technical stuff, the isolation rooms would be more than sufficient.

The question was what to choose?

A plain unadorned metal wall faced him and Tom focused his desire on it and a list of tier four spear skills appeared in front of him. There were over fifty of them in two neat columns.

Internally, he groaned.

It was a familiar feeling to be presented with the wealth of options and be overwhelmed with the desire to have all of them. He skimmed through the lists and focused on interesting names and when he did so, a brief summary description appeared next to them.

·        Obscured Point: Obfuscates the path of the weapon, allowing blows to strike unseen.

·        Projectile Shield: Spin the shaft of the spear fast enough to block incoming physical projectiles.

·        Project Weapon: Send a projection of the weapon forward with a thrust in order to damage an opponent who would otherwise be beyond your reach.

·        Echo Fighter: Create a spear to fight next to you that possesses 60% of your proficiency and attributes. 

·        Spear Dance: Your movements when wielding a spear become supernatural. 

They all imbued far more power than was obvious at the glance. Obscured Point would be a terror in a battle, as it could be used almost continuously. Project Weapon at higher levels would have a range of hundreds of metres if not kilometres and Spear Dancer would at time effectively boost physical attributes by fifty plus percent.

All of them were tier four abilities, and they showed that in what they could achieve.   

He, of course, wanted all of them, but for now he had to pick only one.

The question was what would be best.

Did he want defence, attack, utility or movement. What would boost him the most short term and in the long run? To most Spear Dancer would have been an amazing ability but for him the overlap with Fateful Earth Body was too great, which meant he would only receive a fraction of the benefit it would bring most people. In actual fact, all the movement abilities seemed to fall under that banner. Plus, with none of them being pseudo teleports they couldn’t even help him with the class requirement to integrate teleportation into his fighting style.

As for utility, those abilities just weren’t powerful enough. Rahmat had talked up how impactful Sense Spear got when it was incorporated into his domain but Tom doubted it would help him much and while Echo Fighter was cool, a spear fighting with sixty percent of his attributes and no access to his boosting skills was kind of useless.

“Attack or defence?” he asked himself.

He considered the issue for a few moments.

“No, that’s stupid. There’s no question here. It has to be defence. I have more than enough offense.” His defensive abilities included only Expert Danger Sense and Fateful Earth Body and while both of them were extraordinarily powerful neither of them were specifically shaped to help him survive drawn out battles.

Even as his thoughts crystallised, the text on the wall rearranged itself to reveal defensive abilities. This time, he studied them in more detail.

·        Basic Spearform dodge: Move with supernatural speed and flexibility when dodging attacks.

·        Immaculate Parry: When activated parrying speed is boosted 2, strength by 1.5 and structural integrity of the weapon is improved by 3 times.

·        Unbreakable Defence. Your spear becomes unbreakable when parrying or blocking.

·        Spear Defender: Creates a conjured spear to protect your back. The spear will be restricted to defensive movements and act at 70% of your proficiency and attributes.

·        Mountain Block: Block any single attack. 

There were more options, but those were the first five displayed and as his eyes dropped further down the list of sixteen possibilities, it was clear that those five were the best.

He set about eliminating them immediately. Basic Spearform Dodge was rejected with the same logic he had applied for similar movement related abilities. Spear Defender because with it being restricted to defensive movements it was worse than the Echo Fighter he already rejected. That left the three more pure defensive skills. Mountain Block was a true lifesaver. It could block an attack from even someone as powerful as Throm, striking him from ambush. But it paid for that potency with a two-day cooldown after use, but that was not a reason for him to reject it but a downside he needed to be cognisant of.

Unbreakable Defence was unusual in that it was a genuine passive ability. Once he acquired it, no weapon he used would ever be broken by an enemy attack. That made it intriguing at least even if it did nothing to improve his actual defences. When using it, he would still need to be fast enough to get his spear in the path of the attack but not having to worry about his weapon failing was a massive upside. If he didn’t have his soul storage, he would almost certainly have claimed it because losing your weapon mid battle would often be a death sentence. But his very reactive Soul Storage meant he could always get a new spear to continue the fight and if something was powerful enough to break his weapon and kill him with a single blow, he was probably dead, anyway. 

That left the final choice Immaculate Parry. A boosting skill as opposed to producing an absolute outcome like the other two. This was not a skill that guaranteed that he could block something or ensured that his weapon would never be broken. It was a skill that in set circumstances would allow him to move fast enough to parry an unexpected attack and enhance him to have the strength to do so against a more powerful opponent. Considering he should never face anything more than thirty percent stronger than him he should be able to parry all unenhanced attacks and most skill infused ones as well. The more he studied the description the more he liked it. For someone with Danger Sense on steroids and the ability to get close to the attributes of whatever was attacking him, the weaknesses of the skill wouldn’t impact him. This would just greatly increase his ability to parry an opponent’s attack, which is all he really needed from a defensive skill.

The next question, of course, was what did he need to do to gain the ability. He quickly checked the prerequisites he would have to meet to create it from merging lesser skills.. He followed the chain right back to the fundamental tier one and zero skills that fed into it.  Within short order, he had identified eight tier zero, fourteen tier one skills that would merge into seven tier two and then four tier three abilities, which, when combined would result in Immaculate Parry.

Some of the progression steps were obvious. Basic Parrying fused with Enhanced Reflexes created the tier two skill Advanced Parrying. Combine that with Battle Instinct and you’d get Expert Parrying one of the tier three skills he needed.

While he could work out the requirements easily for most, for others, he had needed to drill deeply into the skill descriptions to extract the prerequisites.  

For what he was mentally calling the ‘Speed’ development line, the connections weren’t so obvious. Instant Strike, Hand Shift, Remove Air Resistance and Quick Reposition were the tier one skills that, when combined, ended in the tier three skill Weapon Movement.

As he catalogued the list of target skills, he wondered if there was a way to progress this without April’s help like he needed. He had been acquiring skills for years now and had considerable experience on the steps needed, and if he studied the skill description, he could usually guess at the training required.

Skill: Hand Shift – Tier 1

When repositioning your grip, your hands move three times faster.   

The theoretical method of achieving the skill was easy enough to predict. He would need to perfectly move his hands through hundreds of diverse positions as fast as his attributes would allow. That was something he could practice and earn in Existentia even if finding all the different combinations might take a while.  

For some of the other skills, he drew a complete blank.

Skill: Remove Air Resistance – Tier 1.

While shifting through spear forms, Air Resistance will not affect you for a single movement.

Like most skills, it was an active one that he would need to trigger with flawless timing to get the most out of it. The issue was that he had no idea how to even approach earning something like that. How did you train in real life to ignore something like air resistence?

“Maybe, April,” he muttered. There was a chance she would be able to or have an idea. “Or,” he said excitedly with his eyes going once more to the plain metal walls. It shifted and the context of the curated list appeared. There was a new entry.

Immaculate Parry Training Pack – Cost 50 – Discount (60%)

With a shrug he bought it and was surprised by the contents.

For one, there weren’t skill stones for everything to be given to April. Instead, for three quarters of the precursor skills there was what could only be described as technique books. He opened the one for Hand Shift and was unsurprised to find a series of diagrams showing the movement of one set of hand positions on the shaft to another. There was one technique per page and literally hundreds of pages and there were the number of repetitions required printed on each of them. Some listed a thousand repeats, while some others needed twenty times that amount. 

Tom did the calculations. It was going to take him weeks and potentially months to manage even this one small part of the process, but it was training he could do in parallel in the isolation room. From the looks of it, three quarters of the skills could be gained without April. The rest he would need support for through completing that reduced number in six to twelve months was at least possible.

Satisfied with both his decision and his progress, he put it all away and when he glanced at the monitor his body was in Kang’s bedroom along with the girls.

With a shift of his thought, his consciousness retook control of his body. There was a flood of memories, but as usual they contained nothing of interest. When he wasn’t piloting, it just went through the motions and tried to be as invisible as possible.

“Ton,” Kang said knowingly. “Ton.”

“Yes, I’m here.” He agreed. The boy might have been so soul damaged that his mind and body had been impacted, but despite that he still was the only one who was able to tell when Tom was truly in control of his body or not.

“Pre, pre.”

Kang was waving at the Christmas tree to help with the interpretations.

“Presents,” Tom translated and looked at what they had gathered. Over sixty tier three items or above were placed on the ground. The vast majority had gone through Tom’s title. “They are definitely a problem.” He agreed.

“Ja.”

An invitation arrived from Kang, and without thinking he accepted it.

He had invited all of them and Tom decided to go on the offensive. “We can’t keep storing them in Kang’s room even if it makes distribution easier by having them all visible.”

“Agreed.” Briana said, immediately. “It makes Kang look like a reincarnator. We need an alternative solution. But,” she shrugged helplessly. “We’ve almost got too many riches. I guess I can put them in my storage and raise it with you all if I can’t think who to give something to”

“No,” Tom snapped in alarm. “No, no. That’s silly there are skills to examine storage spaces. I think I need to take responsibility. Given how I got my spatial storage I very much doubt any mortal skill can pierce it.”

“I got mine from the divine champion’s trial too.” Briana protested.

“You did, but trust me when I tell you that my skill is higher quality.”

“Why?”

“Don’t talk. Don’t ask. Don’t question.” Tom parroted.

She looked annoyed, but it stopped her from arguing further.  

“I have this,” he waved his hand and a stack of ten more ritual disks appeared in his hand. On the monitors that tracked his room, his body mirrored his actions.

“I’ll take them,” Briana said crossly.

She was clearly smarting at how he had avoided and arguably won the previous discussion.

“Give them to me.” she almost snatched them out of his hands as her physical body did the same in real life, and made them disappear them almost instantly.

“For the rest, I’ll store them and start distributing them more aggressively.” Tom said. He was uncomfortable with the idea, but it was his responsibility to address the current bottle neck.

“Na, Na.” Kang disagreed.

“You absolutely can’t.” Eloise chimed in a moment later.

“It’ll be too suspicious,” Briana said as her eyes flashing angrily. A clear warning to him that if he dug his heels in that she was going to blow up. “I’ll do it. You can store the excess, but I’ll distribute a little more each week.”

Tom stared at her and knew he had to be careful. “Um… I don’t think that’s a good idea. The ritual bracelets have already put a target on your back.”

“I’m not a reincarnator, so I’m safe. The assassins don’t make mistakes. They verify before they murder.”

“We don’t know that.” Tom told her. “In actual fact how this orphanage is set up suggests the opposite. This place is designed to stymie their intelligence gathering. You’d only do that if you could force doubt or errors and despite them being incapable of confirming their victim’s status, they’re still making kills. They’re guessing. This orphanage is set up both to protect reincarnators and to trick assassins into killing a normal child. I don’t want you to be that victim.”

“Maybe they have a way to tell.” She argued stubbornly. “Something like a grand ritual. And yes,” she snapped. “I know such a thing would be prohibitively expensive, but if the fate of their species is on the line then no expense will be spared.”

Tom massaged the bridge of his nose. She could be right, but it wasn’t a risk he was willing to take. “No, no. The restrictions that stop them hunting are imposed by the GODs. There’s no way a ritual even one crafted by an eternal civilisation can get around something like that.”

“There’s been no accidental deaths. They’ll see that I’m human.”

“They might not.” Tom snapped. “You’re a genius water mage and as far as they can tell, you’re creating advanced danger sense bracelets. We can’t also have you producing tier three and four items from thin air.”

Briana’s eyes flashed. “Stop babying me and treating me like a simpleton. There’s nothing exceptionally dangerous or unique about that pile. It’s just stuff that not-parents are giving us. It’s not like we’re crafting it all ourselves. If they do an investigation, they’ll be able to trace the provenance.”

Tom hesitated. Her viewpoints were dangerous on so many levels. They had the potential to unravel everything. He could protect his secrets or her. “They won’t.” he interrupted her.

“Which means that all I am is a distributor. It’s not a special role.”

“They won’t,” he repeated.

She hesitated, confusion filling her face. “What? what do you mean?”

He winced and tried to find the right words to not doom the entire gifting circle but also a narrative that would convince her of the risk they all faced with giving away these items. Pretending that these came from not parents and letting her hand them out was not a solution he would sanction.

“What aren’t you telling us?” She demanded her heterochromia eyes blazing.

“I… I… can’t. It’s not allowed.”

“ell, ell.”

He glared at Kang.

The lopsided grin and the claw like thumbs up was the only answer the boy gave. “El, el.”

“No… I can’t.”

“What is it? Are your friends from your first life giving you stuff?” Eloise asked while Briana glowered.

He knew he had to lie, so he raised his hands like he was defeated. “I have a title.” He admitted. “It lets me create a loot portal that only gives gear useful for humans. It’s very valuable and why we’ve got so much good stuff.”

“Your trump card in the trial.” Briana concluded thoughtfully. “But why didn’t you tell us?”

“Yes!” he answered. “But the magic of that place meant I could only use the portal once, and it’s based on karma or something, so sometimes the cooldown is hours and other times months.” He concluded having deliberately not answered the second question she had asked.

“All those people you’re saving in the Divine trial,” Briana said in sudden excitement. “That’s why you’ve got so much. You’re doing good and getting rewarded.”

“I knew it.” Eloise proclaimed. “I totally knew you had a title like that.”

Tom stared at them in shock a little stunned at how effective the excuse had been. “Yes, and it’s also why our abundance of goods is a problem. A lot of the stuff here is not items they’ll ever find the source of.”

Briana nodded thoughtfully and a ritual bracelet appeared in her hand. He could see the realisation go through her. With those and the fact that the excess goods were not something a not-parent had given, even her being human might not be enough. “Oh, I see. So…”

“I’ll do it.” Eloise said. “I’m not a genius like Bri. If I distribute them, it’ll be safer. They’re not going to look at me and think reincarnator.”

Tom wanted to argue, and then he considered the fate of humanity and the fact that Eloise had a good chance of not even ending up as a combatant. He glanced at Kang to see what he thought, but the context of the conversation appeared to have gone over his head. “Maybe a few pieces.”

“I can do all of it,” she immediately protested.

“A few pieces.” Tom reiterated. “I’ll talk to Dimitri about creating a better solution, but for now you can start releasing a few items.” He sighed. “The next cohort graduates soon and this gear is better than the standard stuff the adventurers get issued with.” Tom scratched his head. “I’ll give you a dozen or so items to distribute. Nothing beyond tier three so it won’t draw too much attention.”

And they’ll be stuff that might have come from not-parents, he thought. That and the handful of useful pieces of armour that his title hadn't updated because the gifts had come through Kang or one of the girls. She could give out those and be safe and he could distribute the finest pieces directly to the reincarnators and be protected by the title they all had. Until he and Dimitri came up with a better solution, it would at least reduce his inventory a little.