CHAPTER 5:

THAT ONE CHAPTER USED TO EXPLAIN SKILLS THAT EVERYBODY HATE

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*Sighs* “What’s done is done, I guess...” I mulled. “Right, that aside, the more important matter right now is to figure out how exactly the minotaur died.” I looked at its neck, which was pierced by the knives. Did someone else throw them? I looked around, but found no indication that there was anyone else but me. 

Really, what’s the point of helping someone, if then you just leave without saying anything, not to mention asking for rewards? Are they trying to be the “mysterious hero”? Nah, there ain’t anyone stupid like that in real life. It’s ridiculous and dumb, even to the teenage boys who often daydream in class about being a hero, saving the world and their crush that they are too afraid to confess to. Right guys? :)

But then how did the knives get here, when no one threw them? The only thing I could think of was that I was the person that made them do that. Somehow. I picked the weapons up and took a closer look at them. There was nothing special about them, aside from the weird symbols carved on the blades. Twirling them around, I reassessed my actions earlier.

“Let’s see, so I threw them, but they just phased through the minotaur without leaving a scratch. Then I ran, and fell. As the minotaur was readying its axe, I thought if these things did what I intended them to, which was to stab it in the neck, then...”

Just as I said that, the knives yanked themselves from my palm, as if an invisible hand pulled them from mine. Then they flew straight at the dead minotaur’s neck and buried themselves in there, just like before.

I was stunned for a while, while my head was trying to connect the dots. Then it dawned on me. “Were they... moving according to my thoughts?” I tried putting my hand in front of me, then thought: Come to my palm. 

All of a sudden, both the knives that were in the monster’s neck, as well as the six that were holstered on my thigh flew right into my palm. “Whoa!” I panicked at the unexpected number of knives that came flying, as well as the possibility that they might stab my hand. However, they just went right through, and no wounds were made. The knives, after missing their destination, scattered randomly everywhere.

“...That didn’t go as planned. Well, they did move to my will, but... was it because I didn’t specify which one to go, so they all came? But how do I even do that?”

It was then that I remembered that each of them was numbered, and was probably in order to do just this. So I tried again, but with a slight alteration in the command: Knife number one, come to my palm.

This time, a single knife flew from the ground and landed in my palm. However, once it did it still went through my hand and dropped back on the floor. But when I picked it up, what I saw on the handle was indeed the number "1". So half of my objectives were completed.

“Nice. Now how to make it stay is the problem.” Third try. I added another line in the previous command: Knife number one, come to my palm, then materialize.

The knife sprung from the floor and flew through my hand, causing no damage. But then, at last, it dropped down into my palm, and stayed there. “Oh. Ohh...Ooohhh...!” It was only then that I realized how actually amazing these things were, how wrong I was to have criminally underrated them, and the sheer amount of possibilities they held in what they could do.

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After that revelation, I then spent the next hour excitedly playing around with the throwing knives like a kid with his new toy. However, that doesn’t mean it was fruitless ( though I could’ve used that time to find an escape), because by the end I had gotten perfectly familiar with them, and even learned some new tricks as well. 

For example, in order to use them I could think of a command like I did earlier, but more complex commands would require more thinking, and subsequently take more time. Moreover, I would have to talk to each knife one by one, adding even more time, and doing that in the middle of a battle isn’t exactly a good idea.

However, I didn’t need to do that. Instead, what I would do was to visualize an area in my head, and the positions of all eight knives within that virtual area. Then, whenever I wanted any of them to go anywhere, I could just imagine them to go there in my mind, and they would do exactly that. This way, I could control all of them at once without burdening myself. As for their behaviors, I found out that they have several properties:

1. Their effective range of control was about 100 meters, and their flight time was about 30 minutes. After that I would need to touch them again, or they would stop working completely. I guest that was because they operated on my magic power, and touching them would charge the knives. God, if only phones could be charged like that, we would've achieved world peace.

2. They could de-materialize and re-materialize at my command. In their intangible form, they were able to phase through anything, even the ground. However, they could switch state only if not in contact with anything (unless when they run out of power), so one of my idea, which was to make them turn ghost form, go into a monster’s head, and materialize in there to kill it immediately by wrecking its brain while ignoring any armor was unfortunately not viable. 

Of course, I could just wait till the knives run out of juice, but that would take too long. Also, if they move, I would have to keep telling the knives to move with them, which sounded like a chore.

3. They could be set to automatically move on a timer. For example, I could tell a knife to: After 60 seconds, fly to this location, and it would execute the command even without me paying it any more attention. As long as it was within their operation period, any unit of time could be set on each knife. This way, I could indirectly control them even outside their effective range. However, more complex commands like "track this target", "automatically attack this creature" and the likes weren't possible, sadly.

4. They couldn’t support much weight. At one moment I had a bright idea of jumping on a flying knife to make it carry me around, so I would look like one of those cultivator guys from chinese novels, flying around standing on their swords. I did just that, but instead of looking all cool and fancy, I fell face down on the ground with the knife, and hit my nose square in the hard stone ground.

Well , that about summed it up what I discovered in the last hour. There were some small tidbits I didn’t mention, but since this chapter is useless and nobody will read it anyway, I didn’t want to bother you more than this. Seriously, author, has there been any web novel where a chapter that is used just to explain skills is universally liked? What chapter are we even on? Five? Are you trying to drive potential readers away when there’s none to begin with, you dumbass?

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