Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 559
🕑 Added 2024-02-13 23:49:25 +0000 UTCDefense. One of the biggest Issues I had facing me. My Impact was a little higher than most, but I was still substantially weaker than the majority without some kind of buff because my stats were so evenly distributed. I had quite a few defensive skills like Mountain Stance that would do the job, but I always ended up stacking a bunch of them together to stick out attacks.
As I’d seen with Belial and Mephistopheles, my forms presented an amazing chance to combine and refine my abilities. They created a method to tap into multiple powerful abilities without having to trigger them one at a time.
More than that, though, this particular session presented a method for me learn more about the concept of Skill creation, and to refine my own slightly. The better the job I did the less strain the Skill would place on me, and it might give me the insight to reconfigure some of my older ones to make them more efficient.
I doubted I’d ever reach the point my ancestor was at, where I created Skills so perfect they became more than the sum of their parts, but I was sure that refining the ones I had would make everything easier for me in the long run, and even in the short term it couldn’t hurt.
The question then became, how was I supposed to see a Skill? The first step to making them more functional would be learning to observe the functions to begin with.
Before doing anything else, I sat down and crossed my legs, trying to think over all my experience with Skills. Randall grumbled, but I just waved him off. “Go nap or something, this is going to take a while.” He snorted, but turned and laid down in a big pile of bear and metal, beginning to snore almost immediately.
Once the big baby was distracted, I closed my eyes to review all my Skill experiences. I’d altered Skills before many times, I’d now created a new Skill from repetition with my Dust Construction Mastery, I’d used other people’s Skills, and I could store them. I’d probably had more experience with Skills than anyone I could name, but I’d never SEEN a Skill. Not in the way I needed to.
Frowning, I reached up and took my crown off my head. The metal and gem were both heavily enchanted with my own Skills, so if I could identify the enchantments, then use the Skills and compare the two, it would give me a much better idea of what I was looking for.
I started with the gem. I knew my forms better than anything. Comparing the naturally occurring rune Sonia used to my own experience with creating Belial should at least give me a place to start. Staring at the Venomblood Amethyst, I triggered Eye of Revelation, staring deep into the crystalline structure.
It took me a minute of scanning. I could see the runes here or there that had been added during creation, but I knew without even checking they weren’t what I was looking for. It took me a minute to realize that I was looking too close, when I unfocused I could see the delicate construct made up of all the runes, a naturally occurring (seemingly) shape that was hard to track and even harder to puzzle out. As I stared, I triggered Belial, and used Piece of Mind so I could have one of my parallels study the rune while the other studied the Skill itself.
The gem began to glow in my hands, and I felt a harmonizing effect between the Skill and the crown. The runes all lit with an unnatural green glow, the shimmer making it easier to see the master rune from the Skill.
Staring into the blaze, I could see the curls and jagged cuts of the rune, and in spotting it, I was able to slowly identify each portion. Sharp teeth from Touch of Tears, solid lines from Stone Limb, and complex swirls from Consecration of Flames. Despite fitting together, it all looked kind of…unfinished. The flow of the rune was functional, but inefficient. These three skill just barely fit together, and I could see warping between the sections where the rune was bunched up like there were bad welding spots.
Putting the crown back on, I meditated on the runes I’d seen, on the subsections and how they fit together. As I sat, I started searching within myself, trying to find a way to see the rune fragments inside my head without having any external help.
It took me about an hour, but I finally figured out that if I tried to trigger a Skill, then caught it with my soul and wrapped it up to stop it from activating, I could preserve it in a way that let me observe. It took me a few tries before I perfected the process, and I needed Piece of Mind to do it, because it took all my concentration to hold the skill immobilized and I needed a second parallel to study it.
Once that was done, I went through all my skills one by one, draining myself with the consistent use of both Piece of Mind and extremely precise soul manipulation (that same cramp from using my soul delicately came back) after studying the runes and referencing the way they fit together as fragments in the combination skills I had I came to a few conclusions.
Conclusion one: most skills could fit together, but the more skills you combined the more difficult it was. Conclusion two: even if the skills DID work, the order in which you arranged them was still important. Conclusion three: my plan to use F-ranked stored attacks in my construction WAS possible, but it would require some serious delicacy.
Even my Sapphire soul was going to be hard pressed to complete the form I was thinking of doing, and I’d need at least two parallels of Piece of Mind on top of my normal brain to pull it off. Luckily, I hadn’t pushed TOO hard with all my scrutinizing, the ache was more from fine manipulation than overwork.
I realized looking at it that I’d been using my soul in the least efficient way possible when I made Dust Construction. The Skill wasn’t bad, but it was dinged up hard. Lots of welded points. I’d made the fragments from captured pieces of Pit of Despair without meaning to and smashed them together with my soul until they started working. It was disturbing to look at, but since it was so low level on construction I was able to smooth it out.
That was another thing I hadn’t known. As Skills rank up, they change, much like the soul, they became firmer and more difficult to alter. Combination was still possible, but harder. The soul improved too, so it almost evened out, but there was a serious benefit to making your Skills at low levels and ranking them up, as the process smoothed out some of the rough edges.
Inhaling slowly, I focused on myself, on my soul, and began the complex process of attempting my first TRUE Skill construction. I started with Stone Limb. As I’d seen before, it had thick sturdy lines, and I was under the impression it would be a good base.
The central shape without any additions was basically a triangle, which seemed like a good start. Pulling off that, I expanded the rune, stone limb altering to cover more of my body, thick lines branching off each fact of the triangle. On each of those, I put one of the stored density shift attacks I had, stringing them together to create a shell of fractal patterns around the stable center, each instance reinforcing the rest of them to creat the solid enhancement I wanted.
Finally, I came to the last part. Where the first two Skills intertwined, the last one was its own separate segment onto which they had to be placed. A five sided rhombus burned itself into my sight from Mountain Stance, and with extreme delicacy, I set the fractal triangle inside it, shifting until it clicked into place in a way I couldn’t explain.
The lines began to shift and move, thinning in some places and thickening in others as my extreme familiarity with the Skills in question allowed me to push form up to my current level of understanding. Intermediate, basically. Unlike my other forms, which were kind of just macros for using a bunch of skills at once, this one became a singular cohesive whole.
What that meant I had no idea aside from that looking at it I could tell it was demonstrably higher quality than the others. I’d have to rework them later to get them up to the same level.
I stood, stretching slowly as I worked out the kinks in my muscles. That had been rough. Three separate parallels working at once, juggling so many different concepts. It was absurd, and looking at my new Skill, I could see I had barely scratched the surface. My efficiency would have been improved quite a bit over other forms, but it wasn’t perfect.
Confirming that was simple, all I had to do was isolate my wish ability and look on the masterpiece my ancestor had wrought. It was…beautiful. There were so many different elements, all woven together into a sprawling tapestry of complexity and perfection.
While ranking up would smooth out the edges of a Skill, they didn’t automatically work. You needed to make something stable enough to actually create a Skill to begin with. I was still shocked I’d managed with my Dust Construction. I’d gotten absurdly lucky and only my freakishly strong soul had allowed it to work.
The wish power though…it contained dozens of skills. Maybe hundreds. I could see tiny fragments of so many types it made me dizzy. Imagining constructing a Skill like that made me want to vomit. Holding that many fragments together with my soul while slotting them in exactly the right places. It would require a mental fortitude I couldn’t imagine to do it without Piece of Mind, and even with it that was far beyond me.
Strolling over, I took my place across from Randall, not wanting to think about it anymore. “Wake up you big lazy ox!” I called over to the bear. He opened an eye, grumbled a bit, then rose to his feet, shaking himself off to prepare. After we set ourselves, he charged.
Planting my staff for stability, I bent my knees, and then I activated my new form. “Goetia staff art third form.” I intoned. “Mornax.” The legend of the minotaur demon known for his invincibility had spoken to me for the defensive form, and as I felt myself shift, I knew it had been a perfect fit.
My body became stone, not just any stone, the densest stone possible. Mountain Stance multiplied my defense by three, and the triple stacked density shift combined with Stone Limb set the starting bar pretty high. I was probably ten times more durable than normal E-ranked stone with my Impact.
The charging bear, armor glowing green as he channeled his power into it to increase his momentum and strength, smashed head first into me as I stood, waiting to take the attack….and bounced right the fuck off. I didn’t even feel it, though the stone cracked a bit from the armor.
Of course, Mountain Stance being part of Mornax meant I couldn’t really move in this form. I could bully it into staying together for a slow step or two, but the soul weight multiplied dramatically. Either way, if I didn’t move my feet, I barely felt any drain from this form. I’d accomplished my goal.
My soul was exhausted, but tomorrow I could start work on reforming my other stances, figuring out what to add or tweak to make them more stable and easier to use. By this time four months from now, I’d be going into battle a completely different person. Those stone lions better watch out.
Comments
Kevin McGuire
So when is he going to make a skill to binde demons to his will?
Malcolm Tent
Not at this point. He's learning how to make Skills out of fragments ATM, though that's definitely possible down the line.
Dylan Alexander
Skill creation yes! This means that any skills/abilities he gets from wishes even if temporary, he can find a way to copy them so he can keep them himself right?
Captdeth
15s
