Previously

Lily glanced at the couch that had been cut in half.

"Guess you have," Arthur chuckled, a mixture of pride and amusement in his voice. “But I thought you said something about how your broom was unworthy to handle your aura or something?”

“That was back when my skill was in the novice rank,” Lily said, before smiling. “I. .  .Don’t you feel-”

“Overpowering now that we’ve broken through to the [Adept] rank for our skill?” Arthur cut in with a smile. “Of course. I mean, just a few hours ago, I didn’t know what or how to use my skill and now, I’m able to do things like this.”

With a snap of his fingers, and an enforcement of his will, light bent and transformed from a sword into a spear which started to spin around him, before Arthur grabbed onto it with a glow of his eyes. “It’s weird though. Don’t you think we might be progressing a little too fast?”

“If you’re asking whether there’s going to be consequences for this,” Lily glanced at the couch. “Well, we might need to replace the couch, but other than that, I don’t know. There’s really nothing, no updates on skills or what’s currently going on in the world.”

Arthur nodded. “I guess so. I’m just scared something bad might happen to us since after all, the nail that sticks out gets hammered first.”

“You and your proverbs,” Lily rolled her eyes. “My [Divine Wisdom] skill’s not really sensing anything wrong or off about our situation so at the very least, we’re not doing anything entirely wrong.”

“Talking about your [Divine Wisdom] skill, are you going to try and advance your [Divine Swordsmanship] skill if there even is a ‘next realm’, or are you going to advance your other skills into Adept rank?” Arthur asked.

Lily didn’t take too long deciding. “No. I’m going to keep on trying to advance my [Divine Swordsmanship] skill into the next rank, or at least try to. If I can cut couches with a broom, imagine what I can cut through at the next rank.”

“But for the other two, well, I’ve tested some things out while practicing the [Divine Swordsmanship] skill and apparently, my [Divine Wisdom] and [Battle Strategy] skill is slowly, but surely ranking up with it too.”

“. . .The hell? That’s so hax,” Arthur replied.

“Hehe,” Lily said. “Get good son.”

“Shut up,” Arthur rolled his eyes. “I don’t know why but for some reason, my [Crown] skill is being extremely difficult to work with. Watch.”

“[Crown].” Arthur intoned, and right before both of their eyes, something that could only be described as a halo of light beamed into existence, right above Arthur’s head, illuminating the entire place with a low dim.

“Pheww,” Arthur breathed out, opening his eyes, only to reveal that they were golden now.

“Your eyes,” Lily pointed out with a finger. “They’re-”

“Golden now? I know. Pretty cool right?” Arthur blinked stupidly at his little sister, showing off his golden orbs to which Lily only scoffed. “But seriously, when I’m in this state, I can feel my strength - not to the point of my stats being doubled - but I can feel, see, and well, generally, I feel. . .lighter.”

“And, the problem is. . .?” Lily said, her eyes locked onto the dim halo above Arthur’s head. “Ah, you can’t train it?”

Arthur nodded. “That’s right. I have literally no clue on how to advance, or even train this skill? All the description said was that it’s basically an enhancer-type skill, and that the brighter the crown, the stronger I would become. So, the question is, How the hell do I make my crown brighter?”

“Maybe we can plug it and see if that does something,” Lily teased, but saw the stoic look on her brother’s face. “Wait, did you actually try that?”

“Yeah, it didn’t work,” Arthur replied with a look of embarrassment on his face. “All it did was make me feel stupid.”

Lily tried to imagine her older brother sticking his head into a nearby power socket, and immediately, she wanted to laugh. But, for now, she decided to be serious and think.

“. . .Well, why don’t we leave it at that for now?” Lily started. “We have too little information to be thinking of a solution. I mean, we could stand here and cook up a solution but unfortunately, we don’t have all day, remember?”

“Right,” Arthur replied with a cheeky smile. “We don’t have all day.” In fact, he only had around 14 hours before the system did what it said, and gave the world an update, whatever that meant.

All he could do right now, just like Lily said, was to focus on what he could do, and to be the best at it. After all, if [Crown] was a bust, then all he had to do was to be so good at his other skills that he didn’t really need to depend on [Crown] anymore.

And with that, Arthur went back to experimenting with his [Light Manipulation] skill again. Right now, Arthur had succeeded in his ability to manipulate Light into different shapes and sizes, but anything too big, too small or too many and any of his Light Constructs would just poof out of existence. Now, he could focus on training that, but something inside told him that if he went with that, it would take him too long.

To test it, for the next five minutes, Arthur experimented with shaping the light into various forms, from swords to orbs, marveling at the versatility of his power. However, he quickly realized that the more objects he created, the less potent they became.

‘Too inefficient.’ So, what did he have to focus on? It was pretty easy for him to figure out. Since quantity was a no-go, all he had to do was to focus on quality.

Arthur took a glance at his little sister who seemed to have realized the same thing as he did, since instead of cutting and swinging her knife around like a maniac, she was more focused on each move of her body and how just changing her posture in a certain stance brought about different results for her Divine Swordsmanship.

So, this was what Arthur was going to do. Since he needed to focus on quality rather than quantity, something told him that it was going to take him a lot longer to advance into the next stage. Although, he seriously wanted to find out his and Lily’s rate of progress - whether they were slow or quick - since he couldn’t really find out about it right now, he just needed to focus on his work, not to mention since he had a deadline of about around 14 hours, or more precisely, around 13 and a half hours left before the world underwent evolution. Only God knows what would happen then - no pun intended.

But, as someone who had read multiple fantasy novels, and played multiple dungeon-themed games, he knew that since there were gods, it was only natural that there would be monsters. And, while he didn’t know what type of monsters would start spilling into the world after the evolution, he did know that he needed to be prepared - to be as strong as possible before then.

Arthur opened the palm of his hand, and focused on the empty space inside, before going through the basics of what he’d learned about manipulating light.

Hope you guys enjoyed it. Thought of adding more in scenery but didn't want to expose too much yet. 

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