Class [Eldritch Mage] advanced to level 2
Class level increased intelligence by 1
Class [Eldritch Mage] advanced to level 3
Class [Eldritch Mage] advanced to level 4
Class level increased intelligence by 1
Class level increased strength by 1
Class level increased dexterity by 1
Class level increased endurance by 1

I sat back in the former portal room, pondering my skill choices, and appreciating the massively increased stat bonuses that rank three brought. My new total of twenty-four soul points after cashing in my quest would have seemed like a ridiculous count yesterday, but now it was only enough for three new skills. Or eight new rank three spells, I suppose, but the shop didn't have that many.

Skills available for purchase:
0 points: [Weapon Style: One-Handed] [Weapon Style: Two-Handed] [Weapon Style: Shield] [Weapon Style: Dual Wielding]
3 points: [Detach] [Redistribute] [Shelter] [Superimpose]
8 points: [Expert Mana Finesse] [Expert Mana Control] [Mana Sight] [Profound Mana Pool] [Profound Stamina Pool] [Rapid Mana Regeneration] [Rapid Stamina Regeneration]

The skills were reasonable, if numerous, being straight upgrades of things I already had. Those spells though... They were... eldritch.

[Detach] - Separate or reabsorb a portion of yourself from your true body while maintaining a link. Higher levels permit maintenance of additional links. (Rank 3)
[Redistribute] - A separated portion of yourself becomes your new true body. Higher levels improve speed of transference. (Rank 3)
[Shelter] - Hide a portion of yourself in a detached pocket space. Higher levels increase the proportion that may be hidden. (Rank 3)
[Superimpose] - Overlay additional portions of yourself with your true body to boost your abilities. Higher levels increase cohesion. (Rank 3)

The descriptions were... not great. From what I could tell without experimentation, between [Detach] and [Redistribute] I likely had teleportation. A weakened form, in that it required me to leave bits of myself wherever I might want to teleport to, but a strengthened one in that it wasn't true teleportation, and thus might well lack the usual restrictions. For example, I bet I could teleport in and out of a dungeon with it. Maybe even a boss chamber. I would also bet it wouldn't work with my bracelet, alas, which would be a pain if I ever wanted to go travelling with companions.

[Shelter] sounded like it would let me phase body parts out of existence, making me very hard to hit, and maybe even hide my detached body parts so that I didn't have to worry about them getting squished while my 'true body' was elsewhere. [Superimpose] would hopefully be something to boost my physical stats. Possibly even my mental ones, if I could overlay my brain, although trying that out would likely get me a [Self-Destructive] evolution.

In all, it could have been worse. It's not like [Spatial High Mage] would have let me teleport to places I'd never been before, so having to leave chunks of me behind wasn't that onerous a disadvantage. I suppose it depended how many I could create at once, and how well I could hide them.

I certainly needed all the spells, which left enough points for one of the new skills. I wanted the three mana usage skills prior to the pool enhancements, but as to which one to go for first, I wasn't really sure. Finesse would be another boost to my magical staying power, but my mana capacity was quite frankly already ridiculous, so that priority was lower. It would also improve my mana control, but not by as much as the actual rank three control skill.

Control seemed like a better option. Recharging myself, recharging my glove, using my glove without electrocuting myself and active scanning would all be improved. In particular, I was hopeful it would aid in my ability to do them all at the same time, especially if it would increase my lightning range while actively scanning. It would also improve my soul affinity attack, which I would greatly appreciate if I ran into more of those... corrupted remnants, Erryn had called them. Being able to one-shot them without injuring everyone else in the vicinity would be handy.

I couldn't see the control skill allowing me to wield my staff's weight enchantment with improved fidelity given how responsive it already was, but perhaps I could push it further. On top of that, I might be able to make mana reinforced steel at a dungeon level I could actually get to without needing babysitting. For a moment I'd regretted not trying to force more mana into my staff while we were on floor fifty, but on consideration, I was glad I hadn't. I didn't know what it would do to the enchantments, and with all the corrupted mana floating around, it might have changed into something weird instead of what I expected.

[Mana Sight] might let me see things that [Mana Perception] couldn't, like the goblin assassins or hidden traps, but there was no guarantee of that. Better senses were always a plus, but with the lack of specific, well-defined advantages, I couldn't get too excited about it.

After that bit of careful consideration, [Expert Mana Control] was the one to come out on top.

ding
New skill acquired: [Detach]
New skill acquired: [Redistribute]
New skill acquired: [Shelter]
New skill acquired: [Superimpose]
New skill acquired: [Expert Mana Control]
Skill [Greater Mana Control] consumed by superior skill [Expert Mana Control]
Skill [Expert Mana Control] advanced to level 3

That cut my soul point supply down to four. It was going to be a long while before I ran out of skills to buy again. I'd need to exercise [Researcher] again at some point, but right now it was time to try out my new spells. Starting from the beginning, I activated [Detach], carefully feeling out the skill. It seemed to want some sort of target, so I pointed it at my left hand.

My hand fell off.

I almost managed to hold in my scream, emitting a choked noise that nonetheless attracted the attention of everyone nearby. The skill had merely done precisely what its description stated, and no more or less, so I had no reason to be shocked. It was just... it was hard to adequately prepare for something like that!

I heard a couple of gasps around me, followed by a shout of "we need a healer over here!"

"It's fine!" I shouted back. "It's just a new skill I was experimenting with. That was supposed to happen."

The fact that my health was still full, I was in no pain and could still move my severed hand, offered reassurance that it was, indeed, supposed to do that. The 'cut' wasn't bleeding, or even properly visible, cloaked in a shimmering haze that lit up brightly to my [Mana Perception]. My armour had moved with it, which was kind of interesting, and I hoped it would reattach once I was done. It was something like a permanently active miniature portal. I experimented with walking my hand around myself a few times, managing to get it to stand upright on my fingers.

"Whatever sort of skill is that?" asked the young lady who'd shouted for a healer. She looked like some sort of knight in her shiny plate mail, and was staring with some mix of horror and fascination.

"Body and space complex affinity," I answered. "That's a spell called [Detach], which does pretty much what its name suggests."

I tried to undo it, to no effect. I had to pick my detached hand and hold it in the correct place, and then the skill would turn off. My gauntlet was indeed still in a single piece afterwards. That was kinda cool. Freaky, but still cool, not to mention useful. Was there a limit to how far away something could be from my skin before it lost that effect? Or was it anything the System recognised as clothing or armour?

There was an extra dimension to the spell too, another switch I could push, but one that made me a little nervous. It seemed to actually trigger [Danger Sense], which was not a great sign. I gave that a miss for now; I had the other spells to try. Although, if [Danger Sense] was going to react to me doing stupid things, it was very likely to become one of my favourite skills.

I split my hand back off, then activated [Redistribute], watching as the portal worked its way up my arm and wondering what it would do when it hit anything important. How would my brain work when half of it was in a different location than the other? Then again, what was the difference between me stepping through a portal, and the portal moving through me? And this was a proper skill, not me messing around with unstructured soul affinity or trying to control lightning crystals, so surely it was safe...

The first problem was that as the weight of my arm transferred, I could no longer hold up the detached hand on its fingers, and it fell over. The second was that in a normal sitting or standing position, arms are up in the air, not on the floor, and my feet were among the last bits to transfer over. I ended up in an incredibly uncomfortable crumpled heap. Looks like another disadvantage of this compared to teleportation was that ideally I'd want to be comfortably lying down before starting.

Yet another disadvantage was that I didn't want to leave hands around the place. I needed my hands! What was I supposed to be doing? Using small internal bits of flesh? An occasional toe? But how would [Superimpose] work if I could only have one of everything at a time? There must be a different way of using these spells. I was reminded again of that extra switch, which presumably had something to do with it. I detached my left hand again, prepared to experiment.

Then I stopped, reattached it, and took off my gauntlet, glad that this new home-made armour wasn't in one piece like my old kit, and I could remove a single gauntlet without needing to strip. Then I detached the tip of my little finger instead of my whole hand. See, I can learn!

I pushed the switch, and the link between me and my small amount of finger twisted. It was no longer a simple portal, but now some sort of link spread throughout the whole volume. Which meant blood vessels and other such important things were no longer directly connected. Blood ran from my severed finger, my health dropped by a few points, and it stung. Yup, glad I didn't do that to my whole hand. Now I could use a healer.

With my healing boosts, my wounded finger quickly scabbed, but it was still a concern. How was I supposed to make good use of this without hiring a full-time healer to follow me around? Oddly, the severed fingertip wasn't bleeding, and not just because it was too small to contain much blood. In fact, if I poked it, I could still feel it. It was still very much me, which was a very strange experience.

Again, with a name like [Eldritch Mage], what did I expect? Let's just accept it and move on.

I gave [Superimpose] a go, but it wouldn't activate. Maybe once my finger healed, I'd be able to boost its tip, which I doubted would have any useful effect. [Shelter] would activate on the separated fingertip, or on my real fingers, but the area of effect was so small I couldn't even shift my whole hand. Again, armour went with it, which was handy. Or would be handy, if I could ever shift enough of myself to actually dodge an attack. It had the potential to be incredible at higher levels, or if I could learn to move the phased bit of myself along with an attack, so that I was only shifting the small amount of flesh around a blade.

[Redistribute] wouldn't activate on the fingertip either. The reaction felt the same as [Superimpose]; it wanted to be linked to my real fingertip, but since that was currently missing, it couldn't. Again, once my finger healed, I felt like that would change. That solved my problem of running out of body parts to leave around, at least.

My next discovery was that at level one, the maximum number of links was one. I couldn't reattach my severed fingertip either. To use [Detach] again, I had to completely sever the connection, a kinda third stage to [Detach], which didn't do any further health damage, but did briefly sting.

If I was going to use [Redistribute] seriously, it would be useful to see where I was teleporting to beforehand, particularly if I was going to do something stupid like teleport into a dungeon, but I didn't feel like plucking an eye out and waiting for that to heal. So, question; when I use [Mana Perception], what am I seeing with? Can I at least view the mana around one of my detached bits?

It turned out that I could. The range was massively limited, but increased the larger the detached portion was. Even with just another fingertip, I could 'see' far enough to know it was safe. Just to see what would happen, I did try the first stage of [Detach] on an eye, and found I could indeed continue to see through it. Whether it would continue to work after the second stage was not something I was willing to find out right now.

Overall, it was an interesting set of spells. They would be useful both in and out of combat, at least with a few more levels under my belt. The biggest problem was that I was going to need a [Life High Mage] to regenerate whole limbs if I intended to make full use of [Superimpose]... I was bad enough at accidentally injuring myself already, but now I seem to have ended up with an entire class based around the concept. Once again, I had the subtle feeling that the System was mocking me.