While the idea of getting struck by lightning was concerning, I was also much sturdier than even the average monster at my level, and I would be even more impressive by the time I got around to finishing the task. Now that I thought about it, surviving the blizzard might be far more difficult to accomplish between the two. I had no cold resistance, but it did have resistance to lighting, after all. As the thoughts drifted through my head, I gently fell asleep, excited to continue my training tomorrow.

The morning came early, and I woke still a bit sleepy. I sat up, just in time to see a painting on the wall swing closed, followed by the soft sound of a bolt locking. Perhaps I had just found a tunnel used by the mysterious caretaker. Clearly, it didn’t wish to be disturbed, or it would have made itself known long before. It was probably another sentient spider similar to the shopkeep on the ninth floor, and now that I understood these monsters experienced time differently than myself, it might have had a unique personality develop by now. If it didn’t mess with me, I had no problem with it, and it had been nothing but kind to me, giving me a nice sheet, blanket, and pillow to sleep with. Unless approached, I would respect its privacy.

Today was going to be an interesting one. Unless my math was off, it was currently Friday, which meant that Luna would be rolling out the patch with the quest system, as well as my suggestion for a current passive abilities page for inactive skills. What’s more, today I would be trying my best to finish off Cryokinesis. Depending on the result that brought, I would then try and max out Beginner Chaos Body Strengthening to extend the parameters of my abilities, then I would try and work a bit on Storm Command. Now that I had gotten into the swing of things, I was more than ready to take on some more training.

I had gotten my fill of combat and my instincts were sated, for now, so I planned to keep working on improving my skills as long as I could. No matter what, though, on the next dungeon reset, my training would end. First up, Cryokinesis.

It was still a strange ability, not exactly focused on the magical aspects, unlike the other kinesis abilities I started with. All the power did is reduce the temperature of things I focused on, and for now, that had the most compatibility with water, thereby creating ice. I had no desire to limit myself to that only, though, so now it was time to experiment.

From my practice, I figured out that I could reduce the temperature of water to below freezing in only a couple of seconds. As the level of the skill increased, the rate of temperature reduction did not change. Instead, the amount of material I could manipulate changed. My idea was that only by focusing on freezing water, I was limiting myself, and the confines of the ability. I could freeze anything within a radius of five feet from my body, and that distance hadn’t changed either. What I wanted to try and do was drastically reduce the temperature of the air around me in a perfect dome, creating a wall of supercooled air. The idea was that anything too small would immediately freeze upon entering the zone, once again punishing monsters that decided to come too close.

My first few attempts met with absolute disaster, the concentration required to sustain the dome far more than I could provide. After a couple of hours, and two trips back to the spring to refill mana, I finally figured out what to do. I had been focusing on a cooling zone around me, but that wasn’t how the skill worked. It focused on objects, things, not spaces. This time, I focused on the oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide in the air, in a small cube on the edge of my range.

I heard a crackling noise as the base of the cube touching the ground began to precipitate frozen oxygen and carbon dioxide collecting with ice, small wisps of vapor rising off it due to the temperature differential. Experimentally, I moved the cube along the ground, drawing a wispy line of ice in a crescent around me.

Now that that was sorted, I just needed to make it bigger. The problem was, when the cube increased in size, the amount of concentration needed to sustain the ability increased as well. After several more hours of training, followed by a brief lunch break, I was able to figure out that I had a maximum ‘freeze zone’ forming a wall about a foot thick, and three feet wide. It was enough to protect my front, but not enough to do much else. When focus was active, though, I did once manage to pull off a complete semicircle, but it was only a couple inches thick, and only around a foot high.

It was in a fit of inspiration that I discovered the next step for the skill. After the zone had been active for around thirty seconds, the space within was so cold that water froze instantly upon entry. What it let me do was rapidly create blocks of ice to hide behind, or even create icicle projectiles in far larger sizes than I was previously capable of, and in more interesting shapes as well. I started to incorporate a hexagonal internal structure in the ice and a sharper arrowhead style tip, which should increase their lethality several times over. It was more of a supplementary ability than anything else, but it had far-reaching possibilities that turned the skill from a weak power into something truly terrifying.

After experimenting with the zone for the rest of the afternoon and extending it to the absolute limit of my mentality and mana, I felt the skill reach it’s threshold and heard the alert ding in my mind.

Whelp, I guess I would be going back into that black space tonight. I hoped that Norr would be there again to keep it from being agonizingly painful, but I couldn’t quite remember what she said about it. If my memory served me right, she said she would help out whenever I went back into the space, but my memories were rarely correct.

I let out a sigh.

“It’s fine, me. Realizing you have a problem is the first step of fixing it, right?”

It would be a long time until any change for my forgetfulness was realized, though. I was shaken from my internal monologue when I heard another ding and received yet another alert.

I smiled after reading the message. Luna really was the best. All of the systems she enables are helpful and considerate, doing a good job reducing how complicated everything is. I went ahead and pulled up the menus, starting with the Passives.

Oh, nice. All of the skills that just had 1/1 for their level got added to the list, helping to declutter the skill table. I couldn’t complain about the change. I could imagine when I got into the high tiers it would become ridiculous to manage the skill sheet, so this was a very welcome addition.

Next, I pulled up the quest menu.

Wow, this thing was handy. Considering how easily I forget things, having them all laid out in one place made it far simpler for me to understand. I had forgotten that Zald owed me some armor, and I was salivating at the idea of a fully custom set of equipment.

Good work, Luna. I really like the changes. The systems look excellent.

Thanks, Vic. I’m glad you like them. Your suggestion was really good. If you can think of anything else that might be helpful, be sure to let me know.

I will. Is there any reason you only let people give quests around obelisks?

There are several reasons for that. Obelisks are there to try and condense humanity in an attempt to help your chances of survival. This will bolster that by placing questing services, like your adventurer’s guild, close to obelisks, therefore, bringing even more people together.

Wouldn’t it be more dangerous if people are close together, though? That means that a single monster outbreak could wipe out an entire community!

That’s true, but it also means the strongest people in the area are likely close enough to do something about it when the outbreak happens. The outbreaks are inevitable, and unless we give strong people a reason they must go back to town, they will spend all of their time out in the wilderness training

I can’t argue with that.

Luna posed a powerful argument, that strong people were more likely to return to towns if there were good quest rewards and things to do there. Regardless, it was time for the next step of my training plan, possibly the most tedious and longest of them all; Beginner Chaos Body Strengthening. For this one, I would be doing my training while luxuriating in the hot spring. If I was going to be spending all of my time just sitting around, I might as well do it in warm bliss, right?

I moved into the bath area, throwing off all of my clothes when I got there. I still marveled when the light armor immediately fell away from my body. It was crazy to me that my underwear was more difficult to safely remove than leather pants. I hopped into the warm bath, feeling the magical sensation of the water working my stress and soreness away.

Taking full advantage of focus I started working through the rotations of the Chaos Body Strengthening Technique. After all this time, the aether to mana conversion and the internal circuit that the skill used were second nature, so I fell into using the skill with practiced ease. The high percentage proficiency increase that focus, which was now level 36, granted allowed me to rapidly work the skill, and my increased mana pool and increased mana production made it that much faster.

After the first day of practice, I managed to get Body Strengthening to level 34, and had received two more skill increases, bringing my strength up by 2 and my agility up by 4, as well as granting two more unassigned points. I immediately put them into dexterity, which was seriously falling behind agility. I had 200 more stamina than I could recover in an hour of rest, and I wanted to try and bolster that deficiency somehow. The number of status increases was starting to diminish using the skill, the technique no longer able to fortify a body as strong as mine currently was. Reaching the end and moving on to a new technique was something I desperately needed to do. My long-term plan was to get as close to rank-up as possible by conquering this dungeon, then max out a second class with a second group of class skills. I had no idea what that new class would be, but I was excited to see my choices when they finally came.

But alas, it was time to sleep yet again. My 26^th day as a monster came and went quickly, but I knew that tonight things would hopefully be a bit more interesting. As I laid down on my cot, my heart beat quickly thinking about what I was going to go through. According to Luna, I was already attuned to water, but this skill would attune me with the aether stream of order, the combination of the two making ice. I was already attuned to chaos, so the effect this could have on me was rather daunting. After a while, sleep took me.

--------------------- --

I once again found myself in a strange place. Where before I was flying, now I was climbing a mountain of snow and ice. My hands froze to the stone beneath me whenever I reached for a new handhold, and my feet slipped on ice-covered rocks. The snow blasted through the air, blinding me and stinging my skin like it was a swarm of bees. I was doing all I could to make headway, but as I reached for the next handhold in the line, my fingers slipped and I was thrown off the mountain by the wind, my agile wings and light frame working against me. The ground below rushed up to meet me, and just as I was about to impact the ice-hardened earth, I was plunged into darkness.

Before me was the black expanse, now familiar, but just as trippy as it always has been. The large rope I now recognized as the collection of aether streams loomed in the distance. With an irregularly slow shearing motion, a smaller stream broke off of the rope. Before they had rocketed through the space separating us, but this one moved at a snail’s pace. It seemed almost reluctant as it traveled through the ink sea.

After it broke through the first wall, I felt a strange feeling of pure disgust. The idea that it might touch me was repugnant, and while I understood that it could help me in the end, it was a deeply unpleasant thought. It crept forward slowly after that, gaining a bit of speed until it reached the next barrier. This one it didn’t shatter so much as oozed through, causing even more repulsion. I was having second thoughts about this, but I decided to grit my teeth and bear it, so I closed my eyes. It slunk through the rest of the barriers, and I felt rather than saw it happen as after each one was passed, I became more and more uncomfortable.

When it finally got within ten feet, I began to feel genuine fear and anger, my mind going into fight or flight response, desperately trying to get away from the oncoming danger.

When it was a few inches away, I blacked out completely.

I awoke with my body and flesh sinking into a pool of liquid pain. It started from all of the crystals connecting to my internal mana pathways and was steadily creeping deeper into my flesh, following the roads traced out with my body strengthening technique. It was far too intense for me to even let out a scream, and when the paths finally met in my chest, everything faded to black, and I was lost in a place outside of time and distance.

Falc0n

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