Nicholas stepped out of the cave behind the waterfall and sniffed the air. The world smelled fresh and clean in a way he hadn't appreciated. He kind of knew that his idea to improve his senses through finding a prey animal was an excuse. But after the chaos with the core and the chaos in general, he wanted to spend at least a bit of time in the quiet. He wanted to learn magic, to explore the new world. He probably wouldn't find a way home in this forest. Since the rabbit village didn't have much advanced magic, he assumed the similar settlements that must exist here were much the same. World-hopping was probably expensive and powerful, just not something he could replicate. So he'd do something else, and hopefully find something else along the way.
His paws touched the serene grass softly, not making a single sound as he touched the soil. His claws dug into the soft earth just a little as he walked. He wasn't used to retractable claws, but he wasn't used to being a small salamander or giant orc either. He could handle this much.
The instincts of this body kicked into gear as he moved. He'd discovered this when using the orc's body, that the body contained basic instincts all its own. He just had to rely on them.
Just as he started to properly walk towards the trees, he felt another presence in his mind. Or rather, three. The puma's soul seemed to have finally awoken with two other entrants. He wanted alone time, but that wasn't a luxury he had access to when he was sharing someone else's soul. If he could tell them to go back, to return to the core or the prime avatar, he knew it would be rude. So he just sighed. Maybe he could use it to his advantage, though.
Entering the canopy, he felt both Eye of the Black Dragon and Eye of the Red Dragon activate simultaneously. They didn't cost nearly as much anymore, at least. After all, they had a continually climbing amount of maximum mana now with their ascension to F-Grade. While Fuzem had maxed out their Mana Regeneration, granting them 30 mana each second from seemingly nowhere, their actual pool still had plenty of room to expand.
The forest before him lit up as if the sun was right above their heads. He could also see sources of heat, even ones he didn't expect. The towering trees were mostly dark, though their canopies were dimly lit in dark red. The grass and other plants at their feet were a bit brighter, and distantly, he could see an almost blinding light.
Approaching it, he found a massive mushroom. It had a flat top and grew straight from the forest floor. It was mostly a pale white with streaks of almost lavender purple, though its cap was a much darker color. Around it, there were more mushrooms. Some were similar to its towering mass, and others weren't in the slightest. Red and white, some were a pale orange, and others a dim blue. The majority, however, were smaller flat-topped purple mushrooms.
Nicholas didn't know how far they were from the core, as he'd lost track of time nearly a week ago. Things took as long as they took, and when he rushed, it moved faster. He still knew where the core was, so he was not worried in the slightest.
He opened their inventory. Without the bodies of the orcs, it was much neater. The bookshelf and ornaments they took from The Master were still in there, as were the armor and knuckle-blades they'd gotten from the orcs. Otherwise, it was empty. This left them with 13 slots to play with for now.
Even though he came for the hunt, he knew that experimentation was also deeply important to their continued development. The Skill System called this power Inventory, so it must have a stack capacity. They hadn't reached it with the astrum Errazorrus had been farming from the Astral Infection, which currently counted at 42 nuggets total. These mushrooms were numerous enough to make it possible that they would fill a slot, just so long as they only took the purple fungi.
Before he forgot the ability, he asked Fuzem to begin using Analyze on the fungi.
[Nightshade Mushroom - Common Fungus, Tin-Rank, Organism]
[Giant Nightshade Mushroom - Rare Fungus, Nickel-Rank, Organism]
[Mana-Saturated Nightshade Mushroom - Scarce Fungus, Tin-Rank, Organism]
[Twilight Sky Nightshade Mushroom - Rare Fungus, Tin-Rank, Organism]
[Nightshade Mycelium - Common Fungus, Tin-Rank, Organism]
[Ability: Analyze has reached Level 2! +1 Concentration to Perception]
[Ability: Analyze has reached Level 3! +1 Concentration to Perception]
After she had analyzed the whole patch of fungi, Analyze only leveled twice. It was slow, for now, at least. But now came the important part to him, grabbing a bunch of it.
Before he started, he asked Fuzem to keep analyzing the grass around them.
[Nightshade Grass - Common Plant, Tin-Rank, Organism]
Before she got too far, he also asked her to push any duplicate notifications aside. He didn't want to be distracted by system windows about grass, but wanted the ability to advance. He was hoping that eventually it would tell him how to advance Inventory.
Then he called on Azotreh to keep a normal eye on their surroundings. He didn't want to put the kid through too much strain after everything they'd been through.
He activated another neglected ability, Gelatinous Body.
[Ability Incompat- ERR: 6189931]
[Due to the nature of your current body, your ability: Gelatinous Body can still be activated for additional cost. Using a more compatible host will allow this ability to work without this restriction.]
Double the cost? What even was the cost of Gelatinous Body anyway? They'd figured out that Analyze used a small amount of Mana and Intuition to power itself. Too little for them to even notice its absence. But he didn't know the cost of Gelatinous Body.
He activated the ability after pulling Azotreh from guard duty to watch the status window. He was still trying to figure out a way to bring it out into the open so he could look at it without being vulnerable, but he hadn't figured that out yet, so he had to make Azotreh look in his stead.
Azotreh reported that the cost of Gelatinous Body was five units of Backbone every second it was active. That was probably more than he would have been okay with paying before, considering that Backbone was also drained through any physical activity, but they were also regenerating 30 units of it each second. He could keep it active, basically nonstop, even with its doubled cost, just as long as he didn't do much besides.
Errazorrus hadn't gone with the others. He knew that their titles did something when active, but not what. He also didn't even know how to activate the little symbols.
He'd figured out that the golden runes on the outside of their soul obelisk were their titles, listed in order. He could rearrange them at his will, but otherwise had no clue what to do with them.
First Eye of the Black Dragon didn't work on the core, and now he couldn't activate their titles. It was frustrating to face so many setbacks. He only had his own scattered memories from the dragon parts that had been fused into Azotreh's body. None of them were helpful either, since the couple that did have titles in them at all showed a Skill System window that said they could only use ten titles at a time. It was just a process of picking the titles you wanted and applying them. But that window simply didn't exist anywhere in the Skill System interface. He'd looked.
He punched the wall of the obelisk in frustration. He ground his teeth, shook his horned head, and took a deep breath. There had to be a way.
If a system of power could activate them, he could activate them. He knew that early on, Azotreh had activated one of his titles, but that was through instinct, and without this massive wall of symbols that he didn't even understand.
He stomped into the hall representing their Records of Existence power. It had records of everything they did and knew, apparently. He'd never really explored it, but it was pretty nice. Each wall had shelves, most of which were empty. Even so, he saw quite a few books on a couple of shelves. Books containing information on their abilities, skills, titles, and other concepts. They only described what they'd already figured out about those concepts, but it was better than nothing.
Instead of starting a fruitless search through the individual books looking for an answer he probably wouldn't find, he instead searched through Azotreh's memories. They were categorized strangely, based on time rather than events. It probably made sense to categorize memories based on when they happened, but it made searching through them more irritating.
Then he found it. Immediately after the attack of that monster, literal minutes after they got the Skill System, they instinctively activated their titles. There were only a couple at that time: Unkillable, Resistant, and Survivor. The list sucked and provided very little to help in his goal, but by rewatching the memories a couple of times and following the way Azotreh's instincts led them to activate the three titles, he eventually grasped something.
He groaned and slapped a hand to his own face. It was so obvious. He felt like a moron for not realizing it sooner. It was mana again.
He walked back outside and reached out to a random title. He then reached for their mana pool and pushed a stream of it into the symbol on the wall.
[You have activated Title: Skillful VI. All skills will advance 6% faster.]
Azotreh was momentarily distracted by the system window. Activating a title? They'd done that before, early on, too. But hadn't figured it out since. Seems like someone realized it. Then they simply returned to watching the forest around them with the puma's aura senses.
Using the puma's aura was strange, even when the puma itself was trying its best to help. It had a strange aspect to its aura. Azotreh had felt more than they felt they should be able to. Felt a breeze move past with the aura and fur. It was definitely weird, but they could barely feel auras about a month ago. Despite being tin-rank, the suppression of the facility wouldn't have let them sense anything. So this was all new territory anyway.
They would be happy to go see Atu and have her help train them, but not right now. They didn't know why, but right now, they didn't want to see Atu or Ruby. Well, maybe Ruby. But they didn't want to go back to the rabbit village, even if it meant missing out on aura training for now.
[Ability: Analyze has reached Level 5! +1 Concentration to Perception]
At least Fuzem was making more progress with Analyze. Apparently, analyzing every blade of grass and fallen leaf got them something. Maybe they should find another way to keep the ability active at all times. Even if the information it gave right now wasn't great, that would probably change, right?
[Ability: Gelatinous Body has reached Level 2! +1 Concentration to Agility]
Goodness, there was plenty going on. They felt a little worthless by watching the forest with their aura, but knew it was worth it. But then they had a thought.
What if I get the puma to watch while I help? They asked themselves before quickly offloading the task onto the puma's soul. It was still creepy to sit in a soul realm with a half-complete… whatever they were. Azotreh wasn't actually sure what they were within the soul.
Either way, they quickly began their own work. Asergia said they'd get rewarded if they got Mana Manipulation and Aura Manipulation to Apprentice-25. While Aura Manipulation was off the table since the puma was still using it for perception, Mana Manipulation was not.
Instead of aiming at the air around them, they focused on the body they were inhabiting. It had a lot of mana. In fact, it was almost all made of pure mana. There was a spot of something else in the throat, but since they couldn't manipulate it yet, and didn't even know what it was, they left it alone. They focused inward, at the core in the body's chest. It was spinning slightly, barely moving, but still spinning. Small amounts of mana were distributed through its body as that core spun. They could feel it.
They focused harder and began to use the same basic technique they'd used outside, inside. All it required was focus. Push and pull, like they were using their hands on a liquid wall. While most of it would just flow around, some would still get pushed. That's how Azotreh envisioned it, at least. So they pushed the mana inside the monster's body in a slightly different direction. Tugged a little bit more to the eyes for the analysis power.
They then pulled some from the eyes to focus on the claws. The puma had an innate power that increased the damage it inflicted when it used its claws. They felt the claws empower as Nicholas cut through another stem. Then they pulled the mana back and focused it into the muscles. They couldn't feel them directly, but could feel the mana in them. So they took the glob of energy they were pushing and pushed it into the muscle.
The muscle tensed a bit, but had a slight newfound strength. Azotreh kept pushing and pulling the mana through the body for over a minute before the Skill System emerged to tell them something.
[Skill: Mana Manipulation has advanced to Apprentice-4. +1 Depth to Mana]
[Mana Manipulation Technique Discovered: Kinetic Motion (C-0001)]
[Your specific use of Mana Manipulation has caused you to develop Skill: Internal Mana Manipulation (A-1).]
[Due to your previous actions and differences in use-cases, you have gained Skill: External Mana Manipulation (A-2)]
[Keep using your Technique to develop additional Mana Manipulation skills]
Azotreh pumped a fist, then paused and looked at themselves. They didn't know why they did that, but it felt right. So they did it again before submerging themselves back into the practice.
While Nicholas only paused for a moment when the word technique appeared, he was still stumped as he cut the base of another mushroom. Yet another kind of concept to keep track of. He sighed internally. He knew that this world would eat them for breakfast if they didn't have power. Hell, it had already eaten Azotreh once with that tribulation. Other than the rabbits, most of the powerful people they'd met were rather awful. Even so, he was still trying to figure out a way to stop adding unnecessary things to the expansive status sheet. It would be fine if he got mining, but apparently, because mining is different with different tools, he got one niche skill for mining with a hatchet.
He did assume that there was something he was missing. But he also wasn't willing to give up skills for no reason. Even if it decluttered their stat sheet, he wouldn't remove something possibly valuable. Not just possibly either.
He saw the status window when Mana Manipulation advanced. One depth to the Mana Poten. While it was their second highest poten in terms of depth after Intelligence, which they'd gotten tons of from languages, it was still good to have more of the resource.
Leveling skills granted poten depth, and abilities granted poten concentration, in addition to whatever actually leveling them did normally. So he wasn't going to give up skills they had, but the last time they'd gained too many skills, they had damaged their core.
But he wasn't a good example in that sense either.
[Skill: Harvest has advanced to A-2! +1 Depth to Dexterity]
[Skill: Harvest Mushroom has advanced to A-2! +1 Depth to Dexterity]
[Skill: Harvest Nightshade Mushroom has been acquired!]
[Skill: Foraging has been acquired!]
Four new skills, all from his desire to fill an inventory slot with fungi. Worse, those three skills had put them at more than 35 total, giving them Skillful VII. Luckily, the title only amplified skill growth by 7%, which would have been great if it didn't mean they were getting closer to their next limit.
According to Fuzem, she had about doubled the biomass of the Prime Avatar to stop the core from imploding or whatever it was going to do. Assuming that it scaled linearly rather than some other way, that meant that they had a max of 50 skills before they needed to increase their biomass again, and he wasn't sure if they could handle it.
Then again, he didn't know that they couldn't handle it either. Maybe they were strong enough to survive getting 50 skills, or even more. He didn't know.