24. A: Truth of The Starry Sky

With my thinking speed increasing, and the mental pressure reaching sky-high levels, I wonder if my brain will be fried.

Though for sure I don’t want that, but sadly from what I have read, it seems that turning off skills is not possible, or at least, no method to do so, as mentioned in the manual.

“But, it seems that I should remember this if I were to try acquiring a new skill next time. To not blindly acquire skills, as it may put me in disadvantages, if I am not careful with my actions”

But for now, instead of turning the skill off, my best action would be to simply get rid of the ma-...

-Conditions have been met.-

You have acquired skill: Thoughts Acceleration Lv1.-

-Trix,... or not.

Somehow, it seems I have acquired a new skill, and contrary to my worries, it seems that my processing speed has become stable, with no increase, or decrease, and at the same time, the pressure from the matrix has disappeared or at least became bearable.

“Fuuh.”

Sighing from relief, I glance at it again. A starry sky of unknown words, with weird movements happening occasionally. Otherwise known as The Skill Matrix.

“To think, I could die just like that. How scary, the matrix is.”

But jokes aside. With my head clear, I try to analyze what I am seeing.

To my left, right, front and back, there are pages after pages of unreadable words. Each one is unrecognizable, so it’s hard to know its name, meaning, or use. But in one way or another, I know how much skill point it will cost.

“though it’s more of a feeling than a specific number. And the same is happening with my skill point’s amount.”

Instead of having a recognizable numerical value, I have a hard-to-describe feeling of knowing its amount just by instinct.

“it’s something like somehow knowing that I need just a little more points for this skill, or I have more than enough skill points for those two skills together, but the amounts of my points are too little for acquiring that skill there, and stuff like this.”

It’s like that, you know? when you see a water tank and can guess how much water is there, and if you can fill a certain number of bottles by using that water, but even if you can guess correctly, it will still be impossible to answer exactly how many liters of water are there. You can predict, you can estimate, but it’s not guaranteed to be exactly right. It’s that kind of feeling.

“but still, there are really a lot of skills here.”

Looking around, interested in this new experience, I touch a random word.

-skill: Knife Arts -

“knife arts is it, but as it is just a name, I don’t think my analyze will get anything of it. But what is this? arts? wasn’t mastery supposed to be here ?”

Looking thoughtful, I start to remember the skills I had, they all had mastery but here it’s say art, so is it a different type of skill?

“well, I better check another one.”

Thinking so, I decided on touching another word. And when doing so, it became a recognizable word.

- Extra Skill: communication-

“oh, so this one is an extra skill, while the other is just the word ‘skill’, so maybe it’s an original skill? but again, it doesn’t help me to understand, with only this difference. Also, my skills were all mastery skills, but that skill was .....”

Wait ? that skill was what again?

“weird, I can’t remember. What skill was it again? it was ‘skill: something’ right? but I can’t remember it”

This is not normal, my memory should be good, and it’s not normal to forget it this fast. Also, I was able to remember it just before I looked at the other one, so I .....

Hmm, what was the other one’s name again ? ‘extra skill’ what ...

“no way, did I forget its name too? but how can that be ?”

Feeling doubtful of my situation, I check the skill’s name again, but then it appears normally, as once again ‘Extra Skill: Communication’, and I remember reading this name, but at the same time I still can’t remember the other skill’s name.

“so if I can remember it just by seeing it again, would I forget its name this time too, if I were to stop seeing it ?”

To get an answer to this important question, I made a test. I turned my face to the side, removing the skill name from my vision, and just like that,...

“I forgot it. Simply by looking away, you will forget the skill’s name ? is not this too much ?”

Now trying to remember, I can remember everything I thought, but all the leads to the skill’s name, its ability, or even type were forgotten. The only thing that I still remember is that it was an extra skill and that it is this one here, while for the first I can still remember that it was an original skill, that made me question something about the mastery skills, but not exactly what I questioned.

“it’s really crazy.”

To think I would forget everything about the skills simply by not having visual contact for a single moment, and not one skill or two, I tried it with multiple skills, but to no result.

“It seems really impossible to remember a skill’s information. But maybe, yeah, maybe if I do that, it may succeed.”

Thinking so, I move to the supplies that I had gotten when starting the game, and search for an item.

Nothing special, just a normal pen, and a notebook.

“if remembering is not working, could writing be the way ?”

Thinking so, I search for the first skill, I saw, and check its name.

“knife art. Yes, this is the one.”

Keeping my eyes on the skill, I write its name on a page in the notebook, while also filming everything I do and say, using the camera option from the menu, to record it in real-time.

After finishing my writing, I check the page for the name, but...

“.......”

Well, ...... this was unexpected.

What was writing on the page was a series of unknown and weird symbols.

Trying to read them, has proved to be useless. And trying to recognize them had the same result.

But even so, the worst of all wasn’t the symbols, but my video recording.

Looking at the video in the UI menu in front of me, I stayed silent. Though yes, the video was the one I filmed, the content wasn’t what I expected.

Watching it, I can see myself speaking, but the moment I say the skill name, no sane word gets out of my mouth, but instead of the name. it is some weird noise, made of multiple sounds that are heard, spoken by my own voice somehow as if at that moment in time, I was able to understand the symbol’s meaning completely.