Jason lays back on his bedsheet and considers the System message. He can right away think of a few things he would want to sell his skill for. The question is which would get him the best power boost. About the only certain thing is that he doesn’t want money for it. That will flow in as he gets royalties from it. The upfront sale of Blast Punch however is worth more elsewhere. After a few more minutes of thought he whispers, “System, can you list common things that they sell skills for?”

Specific examples are private. However, below is a list of options though amounts vary depending on how the System evaluates your skill.

• Gold pieces
• Raw resources (ore, herbs, ect)
• Extra stats
• Training in other skills
• Equipment

Jason glances over the list and thinks to himself, ‘Courtney is going to hurt me if she finds out I had the choice to get another skill and turned it down. Besides, the rest of the options aren’t exactly tempting right now. Equipment would be nice but yeah.’ “System, I would like a skill. How would I go about choosing one and training in it?”

The System then explains many things in a nice long box of text. What it comes down to though is he can either wait until he finds someone with an equivalent skill to learn or get trained in a dream. While the dream method removed any time limit on learning the skill, there were a couple downsides. First among them was if he chooses to learn that way it reduces the quality of skills him can learn. This wasn’t going to stop him from using it though. In fact, the biggest downside for him was it would compete with his cultivation at night. For the moment though with his split shift for night watch it would be easy enough to deal with.

Then he pulls up the list of skills he can learn in his dreams. The best way to describe the list is information overload. Especially as skills like his clutter it up. While the System does only pick up skills with some appreciable difference it stacks up over time. The skills you learn in person will be much more limited but here is every possible skill since the beginning of time in this world.

Specifically, this world as well. Jason figures he must have missed it in the long explanation but at the top of the list it specifies the skills are only from the current world. With the mess this list currently is he can only imagine how bad it would be if it covered all of everything. After all, despite how much time had passed since the players joined in, those players known to have left the main world can be counted on one hand. Of course that is only the known players. Big guilds and corporations likely had people out there but non-disclosure agreements had a lot more oomph behind them when made in-game.

Random thoughts aside Jason gets down to reducing the list. First up was to remove any option that did not fully use his trade value. That cut down on the page count to under a hundred. At a hundred skills a page this was still obscene numbers of skills to go through so he continues.

Next because of Courtney’s desire for him to increase his combat tricks he cut out any non-attack skill. This did not do that good of a job at removing skills, only taking out five pages. On one hand, that is a lot of skills removed. On the other, out of just shy of a hundred pages this doesn’t do much.

After Jason thinks on it some more he facepalms. He had missed the most obvious restriction. With this restriction the list drops to only ten pages. How he forgot to remove skills that used mana or qi escapes him but what can you do. Now though it becomes harder. A thousand skills is still too many to dredge through. He considered removing any skill that didn’t use energy but that didn’t feel right to him. Regular martial arts are an important foundation you can build on.

Jason passes some more time before giving up. He had wanted to keep around weapon based skills but at the moment he only has some throwing daggers. With that in mind he removed any skill that used weapons besides said daggers. Down to one page now he glances over what is left.

A large variety is what was left. With the removal of classic magic and qi powered martial arts being the likely source of this. For now that glance was able to point out a few more things to remove. In quick succession he removes skills dealing with extreme range attacks, poison skills, and anything that doesn’t do damage. This reduces the list to a good forty options. Not that he wasn’t interested in artillery but that was outside of his current situation. Though thinking over it again he also removes any skills that require expensive components. Another ten skills knocked off the list but Jason knows how the human mind works. If at all possible, he would like to reduce it down to seven skills so he can keep them all in mind at once. Only then will he be able to figure it out.

Five skills gone after he removes fist based skills, he already has one of those. Three gone as Jason vetoes biting, six removed for the below the belt style attacks, and just two for headbutt shenanigans. He is now almost to his goal. Halve the list and he is there. Removing any skill that uses an actual item knocks five off and now Jason is stuck. He could be fine with nine skills but that doesn’t feel right. It was to the point in fact he could likely remove two by hand but at this point he has gotten stubborn about it. Almost time for bed when he removes another with the restriction of team-based skills. Then as he is falling asleep, he knocks two skills off, getting him below his desired 7 skills. However, he didn’t really want any skills that would cause a massive amount of blood splatter when used anyway.

Akhier

Thank you for reading! Next two chapters free on my Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/dragonheartednovels ), five chapters beyond that for only a dollar, and many more for five dollars (two chapters release a week at this tier).