After the basin was finished filling, I stepped away from it, leaving it in the shade of an oak tree on the edge of what was now the training field. I didn’t know what the most efficient way to train these magic skills would be, so I decided to experiment with the control to try and determine a solid method to train. Activating craftsman’s trance, I felt my awareness of the world around me become blurry, and once again I could very easily visualize my abilities. First and foremost, I decided that I would work on Aerokinesis. It has proved time and again to be one of the more useful abilities that I possess, and it has excellent synergy with both mobility and defense. If I was focusing on physical attacks to do the most damage, the movement would certainly be helpful.

Now that I had wings, I could finally appreciate just how useful they were. My flight was still the same as before the rank up, simply granting me the ability to levitate at will and move around. However, with the addition of my wings, I could treat them as sails, pushing myself to even greater speeds than I previously thought possible. I was curious how fast I could reach but would need a speedometer to test it, so that would be tabled for a bit later.

In my focused awareness, I started to ponder my abilities, and where they fit in compared to other races. From what I could understand, because lesser storm paraelementals are supposed to be clouds of vapor, they could move at incredible speeds through the air. I, however, missed out on that ability during my first rank because I had a human form. Storm paraelementals generally didn’t have weight nullification because they simply did not weigh anything at all. They flew constantly until they became high ranked. That meant I was playing catch up to most elementals when I started working on my flying ability. Obviously, I wasn’t sad about being humanoid, but it made how my abilities functioned more of an exception than a rule. I was certainly not a typical storm paraelemental, and I imagine that most storm paraelementals wouldn’t be able to gain a human form and become warriors or scions until significantly further up the ranks, giving me a distinct advantage. If there was ever a cheat skill that I had received, being humanoid from rank 1 was it.

Furthermore, the fact that I had a corporeal form at this rank was ridiculously powerful. The main disadvantage of elementals is that they have no form at all, and though it allowed them to move around with impunity, it also came with its problems. Though they were immune to physical damage, they were in turn hyper-susceptible to magic damage as it dissipated their forms.

For me though, I could simply take magic damage and physical damage just like any other person. At the same time I still benefited from the natural elemental resistances and basic physical resistances that my race provided. From the starting line, I had an advantage over most monsters of my type, but it just took me a while to figure it out. The most interesting thing of all was probably my storm resistance skill.

At level one, I already had the intermediate version of this skill. I knew the damage numbers didn’t quite add up from day one. I started at level 12, as it seems like new resistances start at the level of your constitution skill and I had managed to increase the level three more times. That meant that even if I had a zero in constitution, I would have started from the baseline with -20% damage from FOUR different magical sources, and that was freaking bonkers. They weren’t even uncommon sources, either! Considering the name of the skill, I can only imagine that there exists a Storm Resistance skill, followed by Intermediate Storm Resistance, which is probably followed by Advanced Storm Resistance. That certainly explained the missing 20% in my calculations.

That left me thinking. I had some pretty intense resistances from the first level, was already increasing physical stats, and was gaining strength in physical combat. At that same time, I had decent magic skills, combined with relatively even stats across the board. Where did that leave me? What I needed for my character archetype was a viable solo build that would allow me to do lots of exploration of dungeons and ruins, but also allowed me to be able to fight in a group when I needed to.

Not being able to contribute to the fight against the gems was quite infuriating. Luckily my warrior’s instincts had been sated in my fight with Donny right beforehand, so I was able to control myself, and it didn’t bug me enough to notice at the time. That being said, looking back on the encounters left me feeling incredibly unsatisfied. I knew that there was no way I could compare to the amount of damage Cindy and Taylor could do in an area, and I also knew that the others needed the kills more than I did, but logic wasn’t dictating this emotion. Those the motel and the warehouse fights left me annoyed, but not too badly.

The final fight at the junkyard is a different story though. In that encounter, I actually tried to contribute but was dangerously outclassed. Even looking back on my encounter with the bandit leader fills me with shame. I have no delusions thinking I would have won the fight against the bandit leader, but I also regret not trying at all. I know I needed to leave before Cindy could drop the AOE. I know that it was better to just let the wolves take care of it. I know that I made all the right decisions.

But really, that didn’t matter. What mattered to me right now was that I was forced to run away when the only thing that I wanted to do was to stand and fight. I needed to overcome that barrier in strength. I needed desperately to find my place, and work on a build that would suit someone with abilities as well-rounded as mine. I also needed to try and find a way to increase max stats without the level rank ups. It was rather annoying to me that I couldn’t put the vast majority of the stat points where I wanted them to go. I needed to increase strength, agility, and dexterity as high as I could get them, and I needed to find a way to do it without relying on level ups, though that was a problem for a bit later.

Right now, I needed to work on Aerokinesis. Emptying my mind of errant thoughts, I started to move in the motions of Beginner Art of the Blizzard, and as I did, I used Aerokinesis to surround the space about my body with controlled air. I used it to push my hands along delivering extremely rapid strikes, throw my body around imaginary foes allowing me to reposition with extreme speed, and push out from my claws cleaving the air like scythes. I continued my dance until I was completely out of mana.

Once I was depleted of energy, I checked my watch. Only 7 minutes had passed since I started my deadly dance. I could sense the alert in my mind telling me that I had leveled up a skill but decided to forgo examining that until the end of the day. Today, I would do things the old-fashioned way. Increasing my skills through intuition and personal reflection.

Throwing off my sundress, I was left wearing only a sports bra and running shorts. Shoes didn’t work for me anymore because of my claws, so I was going barefoot whenever I didn’t have my armored boots on. Kangor high heels were not the most practical of footwear, so I decided that for training, it was better to keep things comfortable, at least for now. I would have to find some better shoes later, though with the stat increases on the boots, it was going to be difficult to do.

I jumped into the tin feeding trough with a splash, sending a bit of the water over the sides. Though I looked more human, I was still very much an elemental, as my skin had no pores or hair to keep water stuck. Droplets still just slid off of me like I was a waxed car. The water was still cool from the pipes, and the rising temperature in the air hadn’t managed to make it uncomfortable just quite yet. Definitely my favorite thing about this rank up was my regained sense of temperature awareness. Before, everything just felt like room temperature, but now, I could experience the chill of cold water or the warmth of a sunbeam. It was strange that I hadn’t noticed before, but I’d imagine that many kinds of sensory deprivation like that would be hard to pin down once you were affected by them.

Closing my eyes, I activated Beginner Chaos Body Strengthening. This skill was based on Chinese cultivation novels and stories, so actual meditation and self-reflection seemed the best routes for improving this skill. I was incapable of using my different magic skills simultaneously, as when I tried, the meditation immediately cut off.

Regaining my focus, I began to try and learn the technique. Similar to my other arts granted by my class, this skill was more of an internal instruction book than free knowledge. The method required the cycling of internal energies. According to the skill, because I was a monster, my internal energy was a dense type of magic energy called Aether. The internal knowledge expanded as I attempted to focus on it, educating me a bit on how the world worked, and what this technique would do.

According to my new information, different races had different internal energies. For example, magic races absorbed mana from the atmosphere, containing it within themselves. They were incapable of producing their own mana, but of course, they would never notice the difference, and the outcome of both of our abilities were the same, being the production of magic effects.

Beastkin were very similar to monsters, in that they had their own internal store of Aether production. The difference was that most beastkin were incapable of outputting that Aether, leaving it to run rampant within themselves. This granted them incredibly powerful self-buffs and naturally strong bodies.

Lastly, supers also had their own internal stores of energy as well. The difference was their energy was like a self-sustaining battery. It existed always and would seldom grow in strength throughout their lives. However, what would change is their ability to channel that internal strength, and the methods by which that strength was absorbed into their bodies. At the maximum skill level, the super would be able to infuse their whole body with their energy and would have incredible amounts of flexibility in their abilities.

Now back to monsters, we had a slight problem. Monsters were capable of both creating Aether, and output it as mana, making them like their own batteries. This meant that monsters were incredibly hardy, and were difficult to kill because they could empower themselves without relying on changing environments. Where a magic race elf might be incredibly powerful in a forest, on a mountain they would be weak. Conversely, a dragon would be the exact same strength in both places, and if they could choose their encounters, they could play off of this fact. The problem was that this also made them weak. They were far weaker than magic races while they were in their element, weaker than beastkin in physical ability, and weaker than supers in pure energy output. The only advantage they naturally had was in their ability to exist without external magical resources, but that was not a great advantage in a world were generalists die while specialists succeed.

This would lead one to wonder what the point of being a monster race was. If your race was naturally weaker than the other races, why bother being a monster race at all? The strength of monster races, then, must be something else entirely.

There were, in fact, two advantages that monster races had over the other races. The first relied on the monster’s natural ability to produce Aether and exude excess Aether in the form of mana. Monsters have an extremely powerful ability to control that natural Aether they output, and those take the form of unique magic powers. These abilities are completely natural and instinctual and require almost no conscious thought on the part of the monster to use them. It was similar to having the ability to auto-cast spells around you, and for a reduced cost than what a magic race would need, no less.

The second major boon that monsters had was due to their ability to be almost entirely self-sustaining. A human has a severely limited lifespan. A beastkin does as well. Magic races might be able to live a bit longer, but that also varied wildly depending on the race. Monsters, on the other hand, quickly became almost immortal after a certain rank. There would come a time when monsters would produce far more Aether than their bodies naturally consumed, and this would allow them to just exist, forever, often without the need for food or water. Eternity was a long time to improve skills and abilities. While they would not technically live forever, they could still potentially have lifespans well into thousands of years long.

Back to the skill, the Chaos Body Strengthening Technique took advantage of that natural monster Aether production. When the Aether was produced and exuded as mana, most of it would bleed off into the atmosphere filling the area around them. By circulating a portion of that excess right back into themselves, this technique allowed the monster to both increase their regeneration, and slowly increase the amount of internal Aether. This would help to passively increase Agility and Strength in particular. The best part was when that internal Aether reached critical mass, it should grant an unassigned stat point. I was sure there were techniques out there that would give the user more points, and perhaps much faster, but having the ability to choose where my extra stats were going was super handy. Cycling the skill moved Aether about the body in chaotic ripples and bursts, giving the skill its name.

This was a technique that only monster races could perform. Other races had similar abilities to allow them to increase stats, but none were as effective and efficient as those that the monster races could use. I would be able to farm stat increases for all stats, while other races were stuck improving only one or two stats at a time.

All of this information gave me an idea. I started to think about what skills I would try and gain in the future. First, though, I needed to max out my magic skills, and then max out my Beginner Art of the Blizzard and the Lightning so I wouldn’t lose them by changing class. The class change would help to cement where I wanted to take my status page. A big part of my challenge was trying to look past where I wanted my skills to be in the next week or month, and think about what I wanted them to look like in a year or two, and what I needed to do to accomplish that. The benefit of being a monster was that I could look at things in incredibly long term goals, but that was much easier said than done for a former human.

I decided to hazard a glance at my current regen stats to see what my time between training cycles was looking like.

Alright, so if I get back 532.8/hour, that would mean I’d need… about… 20 minutes or so for a full recharge? That wasn’t too bad. It was time to finally start the grind again.

I began to start the circuit, first working on my Aerokinesis and Beginner Art of the Blizzard, then work on Beginner Chaos Body Strengthening. Using Craftsman’s Trance, I quickly lost myself in my work, and before long I was both starving and parched with thirst. The water in the tin basin had long since become hot, and the sun was already past its apex. Looking at my watch, it was now 3 pm, and I was ready to take a break and grab some food. I had gone through a total of ten magic then body strengthening rotations, and I could see visible progress in my skills.

Perhaps the biggest change was in the quality and quantity of my wind control. It didn’t feel like I could use it as an effective weapon just yet, but I could intuitively use it to fuel my movements, increasing my speed to insane levels.

My whole body was sore as well. It wasn’t fatigued muscles like you get when you work out a bunch, and I wasn’t sure if my strange muscles even worked that way anymore. It felt almost like growing pains, like a slight ache across my whole body. It was a decidedly unpleasant feeling. I also had reached my Aether threshold twice during my practice, so I expected to have a couple of unassigned stat points when I checked my status.

I flew up the fire escape, climbing into the house through the window like always. Moving to the kitchen and having some leftovers for lunch, I decided to finally check out the skill up alerts to check on my progress.

That was excellent progress. It seems like Chaos Body Strengthening grants me two agility for every one strength and one unassigned stat point. That cemented my next goal in my mind. The increase in Beginner Art of the Blizzard primarily focused on moving the body with increased efficiency, and it began to tackle basic dodging techniques.

By far though, the most interesting was the changes to my Aerokinesis skill. The 20ft sphere of perception seemed a bit inaccurate, and I felt like I could stretch outside of it a bit or reduce the observed area at will. It made me think that some of the measurements on the skill page were more approximations than actual values set in stone. That meshed well with the idea that most of the abilities on the skill page were representations of physical changes, not some kind of magical abilities. That meant that all of the strength the skill page represented was my strength, and the skill page was just a clever means to track personal progress. I’d imagine that even without the skill page, I could continue using my body strengthening techniques and combat skills. I would just need to learn them from an outside source.

That, in itself, was a rather terrifying idea. It meant that whatever enacted these changes didn’t do it using the skill page. It physically changed every being on the entire planet, then changed the planet itself. The skill page was just the entity observing the creatures that it changed, and showing that to the user. How powerful a being was it that caused all of this to happen? And why would it do this? Someday, I would have to get my answers.

My overall progress was very good, and I now had a means to actually ‘build’ my ‘character’ to make it more effective in different situations. It would be a long week spent increasing my skills though, that was for sure. I finished my food listening to the construction in the building next door and prepared to get back to the grind. I had already taken the first step in squashing my weakness, but I had a long way to go.