Having secured an item of real magical power at last, Brennan could almost taste magic, he was so close.
But still not quite there. That last hurdle felt outright impossible to cross. He’d done everything he could think of with the item, and while Sense Magic had made decent gains, he couldn’t find a way to harness the mana for himself. No way to replicate the simple feat of channeling mana into a ball out of his fingertips that he had witnessed in that tavern more than a year ago.
[Sense Magic (Uncommon) Lv. 67] -> Lv. 71
Even if he now had a better picture of what precisely was happening inside the artifact when he sharpened an object with it, that didn’t suddenly unlock all the secrets of magic for him. After a week of trying every method on his checklist, he became a lot more sparing in his use of the whetstone.
The item itself didn’t disappoint; it functioned as he expected it to upon discovering what it did, and worked in various environments too. For example, water mana got absorbed with the same ease wind mana did. Whether it enhanced the blade’s edge in a certain type of mana over another depended on the density of a particular type.
To illustrate, that meant if he held his whetstone in a place where the mana around it mostly consisted of blue motes, the edge would be sharpened and gain a bit of witness during its next cut. Honestly, Brennan questioned the utility of that particular combination.
Earth made him think he failed, at first. Full disclosure, he was still only half-sure about it now, but he thought it made the edge harder or something. Yeah, he didn’t know what to make of that either.
Fire took the spotlight on this one, occupying Brennan’s time for the longest by far. Where wind enhanced the cut with sharp gales, fire released flickering sparks every time the orange particles danced along his blade. Testing their effectiveness had almost set a tree on fire—the fact that it hadn’t gone up in flames had been due to his timely intervention and vigorous dowsing techniques, ergo him taking his shirt off and slapping it against the burning bark in panic.
Granted, more elements existed in his range. However, those made themselves far harder to gather or create an isolated space for. Given that he couldn’t move any of the magic specks even an inch with the power of his mind, the mana in the trees remained an enigma to him.
Ice mana was another consideration. If he managed to create a pocket of that, he might get a freezing weapon, something that would have a variety of uses he could think of. Sadly, Craswidge enjoyed a rather mild climate. Year-round, it was never too hot or cold, forcing him to accept his chances of encountering snow anytime soon were close to zero.
The whole ordeal made him wonder if he shouldn’t just get a weapon skill to better utilize the sharpening tool, and he was stopped only by the fear of it being stolen. Because in the end, that was what it came down to: he couldn’t guarantee that it would never be taken from him, thereby making a skill investment that might be rendered useless in the absence of such an item risky. He didn’t want to center his build around a rare tool and then suffer the consequences of relying on things he lacked the power to protect.
Had it been more common, he might’ve gone for it anyway. Weapons themselves could be replaced in a short time. Crafters were a dime a dozen across the vast reaches of the kingdom. If your spear broke, you could have a new one by the end of the day. With an enchanted stone he hadn’t read or heard about, no guarantees like that existed.
Besides, who said he wanted a weapon skill? He aimed to become a mage, not some two-bit warrior whose sole specialty was sparking knives. For this reason, he refrained from pursuing it further.
Oh, and his dad may or may not have found out he took the knife and confiscated it, so that ended up solving the problem for him as well. The toolbox had also been relocated. Not that this was a permanent obstacle. He fashioned a short makeshift edge out of a tree branch, but he wouldn’t have metal weaponry available to him unless he got it elsewhere.
That done, he’d gotten around to picking up his long overdue Focus training in order to push it to the next level. It’d been stuck at the bottleneck for so long while he’d been immersed in making magical cuts. High time to get it over with.
On a sunny afternoon, Agnes threw a pebble at him while he simultaneously concentrated on twirling a stick between his fingers, balancing a ball on the back of his other hand, and dodging. They’d been doing variations of this for hours, and he was sweating like a dog at this point. He felt just about ready to fall over when the notification came.
Skill upgraded!
[Focus (Common) Lv. 99] -> Lv. 100
Rarity upgrades available.
[Pulse Focus (Uncommon)], [Multilayer Focus (Uncommon)], [Deep Focus (Uncommon)]
And he’d actually gotten it. He laughed, waving for his friend to quit. “That’s enough, I got it,” he said. She smiled.
His eyes went over the other options first. Deep Focus was the standard upgrade one would get from reaching level 100, just the regular step of progress on the path of improving the Focus skill. It would make up a building block supporting what could be an overall solid build. He would’ve probably gone for it if he didn’t have a more specific goal in his head.
[Pulse Focus (Uncommon)]: Focus is enhanced in shorter intervals, allowing the user to go from rest to complete concentration more quickly.
Did he even need to mention that he had no plans of taking this? It didn’t suit his work ethic in the slightest. If anything, upgrading into this would make it worse. If he saw a lot more active combat this might be helpful, except he was a child running around in a village with an inability to enter Zones at will. By the time he could, he hoped to have the skill at Rare. He definitely had the time.
Moving on, he got around to the skill he had been attempting to acquire. The idea had come to him on a quiet night when he realized his odds of unlocking Divide Attention by continuing to fail just as miserably at executing multiple tasks at once were… low. When it came to remedying this issue, his options were limited. The solution he had come up with was using his Focus skill to do similar training, slowly adapting the improved performance to handling separate activities in synchrony.
Originally, he’d wanted to acquire the desired skill and then trigger a skill fusion on top of that, but that was probably asking too much. He hadn’t even received the option to fuse with any of his existing skills, unlike his first time upgrading a skill to Uncommon.
Maybe he was spoiled and skill fusions wouldn’t be the norm for him at all. Time would tell, he supposed. Nevertheless, he would obviously do his best to get as many as possible.
[Multilayer Focus (Uncommon)]: Activate multiple instances of improved focus at the same time.
In any case, he more or less got what he wanted.
Upgrade selected.
[Multilayer Focus (Uncommon) Lv. 1]
He opened his list to look at it.
Skills:
- [Lucent Comprehension (Uncommon) Lv. 5]
- [Multilayer Focus (Uncommon) Lv. 1]
- [Sense Magic (Uncommon) Lv. 71]
- [Writing (Common) Lv. 99]
- [Sprinting (Common) Lv. 55]
- [Drawing (Common) Lv. 14]
- [Situational Awareness (Common) Lv. 5]
That made nearly four skills in the next rarity, and if he was correct about his multitasking hypothesis, he would start progressing faster from here on out.
He told himself to trust the process, that the gains would come soon, and it worked to an extent. The prospect of finally having a skill show up on his status that would help drive other skills forward more quickly by providing an opportunity to practice them at the same time, did sound appealing. Calling it a meta-skill would be a stretch, but it was a step in the right direction. This story is hosted at novelping(.)com.
Despite that, worry churned in his stomach, the temptation to take another skill greater than ever. And why wouldn't he? The three empty slots just sat there, staring him in the face, waiting for him to make them count.
He only lacked the skills he wanted. It all boiled down to that, at the end of the day. Kind of like a bodybuilder wanting a set of specific supplements in order to achieve a certain physique—no, bad analogy. More like a sculptor needing the right tools and material to get the result they strived to realize.
And he had a single core trait he aimed to incorporate in his final build, with no clear path to reaching it now that his one lead failed to produce meaningful results outside one parlor trick. An impressive one, but still a parlor trick.
He needed to reinventarize. The promise to himself lingered in his mind. He had until Sense Magic upgraded to rare to find magic, or else he would stop reserving slots for it. It was only at this moment, when he had witnessed how difficult it was to unlock magical abilities unaided, that he was beginning to come around to the idea of maybe filling one more slot.
Because he couldn’t have it both ways, regardless of what he might wish for. Either he became decently strong early, or he held out for an opportunity that could have spectacular rewards or could leave him with nothing. Either choice felt awful, painting the options in stark contrast… He wouldn't get a leg up on other kids if he handicapped himself voluntarily, let alone Agnes.
But Lucent Comprehension helped him along already. Plus, three skills filled up at once was still extreme, he reasoned. He would keep it at one, and only after he went to bed. He'd deemed it inadvisable to make rash decisions while he wasn’t done riding the high of his upgrade yet. Later, with a calmer mind, he could make his choice.
His archive had a few decent options, and he had the opportunity to grind for more if he could come up with interesting ideas or ask an adult such as one of his parents, or another specialist. Craswidge in general was full of people with developed paths.
A shadow fell over him.
“Girl,” a deep voice rumbled.
Agnes froze.
The interruption arrived right as they were in the middle of their next game. Simple tag, it had been.
Brennan turned around gradually, revealing a giant muscular man with an enormous double-bladed battle axe strapped to the back of his guard uniform. Dark eyes glowered at them from under weathered brows, a thick beard on his face that was just short of running wild.
“Mr. Whytmere,” Brennan laughed nervously. “What a surprise to see you here, you don’t usually pick up your daughter this early.” Or ever, but he didn’t mention that part.
Indeed, this was Agnes’ father. They rarely saw each other save for the times when his friend had to go back home and he went all the way to her house, which he’d never been invited into before.
Whenever they split up to go their separate ways for the night, she always looked a little sad. Much like now. She looked at Brennan, then back at her father.
“We must go,” the man decreed, ignoring Brennan’s greeting. Neither child contradicted his word.
Agnes hesitated and took measured steps towards her father, then faced Brennan. In a rare show of initiative, she spoke first today.
“Bye,” she said softly, turning to follow her only parent. “I had fun.”
Yeah, fun. He almost made some snide remark to diffuse the tension of the moment, but instead simply waved. The family of two walked off, leaving him to wonder where they were going or how long it would take them to come back.
He didn’t see Agnes again that week.