"It was too much to hope for, right?" I muttered as I looked at the pile of swords in front of , each representing a different mixture of dungeon material and Wisdom-forging.
None of them ca close to being satisfactory. No matter how much I pulled, neither decay nor fla material ca close to supporting Radiant Fla efficiently.
"Maybe it would have been better if I failed spectacularly," I said as I examined the results of my tinkering, enhancing the thod of 'stretching' the concept until the outline roughly fit Radiant Fla, but was too weak to support its conceptual weight.
Had I failed spectacularly, I could have stopped the experint and focused on forging them directly. Unfortunately, I was in limbo, with a decision to make.
Focus on forging the orthodox way provided by the skill, or continue with another experint.
Working under a strict ti limit was never fun, especially with a potential result dangling in front of . I believed that I could once again hack the skill properly, if only I had rely a month during which I was allowed to work without interruptions.
"Unfortunately, at this point, it's no different than a hopeless, fanciful dream," I said. Sohow, I had managed to make enough enemies to turn the idea of a break into an impossibility, which once again forced to consider alternative paths.
The paths that I would have angrily refused if Terry or another of my students ca to ask for my permission to pursue, claiming that it was too risky.
"It should be enough to keep alive, right?" I muttered as I summoned a particular part of my status screen, feeling tense.
[Health 4380/4380]
The source of my tenseness had to do with the nature of fla and decay I had been working on. Solitarily, stretching them to approximate Radiant Fla had been a wasteful effort, but only because they were coming from different directions. While Radiant Fla was not sothing that was at the axis of the two concepts, it was still close enough that mixing the two had a promising potential. The fire carried certain wild energy, while decay could be approximated until it reflected the piercing concept buried in the skill sowhat.
Or, so I hoped. Playing with the concepts … or the Quintessence, as my skills liked to call them, was not an exact science.
At least, not yet. Maybe it would change in the future once I could identify the working principles, just like the progress I had made with shape manipulation.
"Let's begin with sothing simple," I said as I used so ground-up, weakened material, mixing them together before I used my mana to lt it together inside a tal box, similar to how I did with singular materials under the guidance of my skill.
The results were … not what I had hoped for.
"At least I found a decent way to make explosions," I said, but a few more attempts in the box showed that even that was not the case. The explosion was intense, but not predictable, neither in terms of timing nor impact.
An unstable weapon was a terrible weapon.
Still, that didn't prevent from running a hundred different experints in quick succession, taking note of the observations to get a hint of a pattern.
There was none that I could detect. And, even if there were any, it clearly required a much more elaborate setup than what I was utilizing.
"It's a tricky situation," I said as I closed my eyes, reviewing the details of the experint in my mind, and searching for patterns. Then, I opened my eyes to plot so of the variables on paper.
Stolen story; please report.
Even with near-perfect recall, working on paper helped. Sotis, it was easier to see the relationships between different variables once they were plotted appropriately. Once I finished drawing sothing around fifty different graphs, I tapped the pile of paper.
"The problem is with the fire part," I said, which had been supported by not only the amount of lizard parts I had introduced, but also the plotting pattern. It was not a shocking revelation, as my relative expertise on decay was obvious, but every data point counted.
"It looks like I'm doing it," I said as I moved away from the workbench with a beast claw in hand, and sat down. I was reasonably confident that I wouldn't hurt myself too much, but that didn't change the fact that the last ti I poked around this blindly, I almost killed myself.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and imagined a singular fla with the exclusion of everything else … which was sothing I achieved surprisingly smoothly. I always had problems focusing, with my thoughts running in the background.
Maybe it was the benefit of Wisdom, or a side benefit of the ditation skill, but I was able to achieve an uninterrupted focus. I let myself subrge into that small, flickering fla, solidifying the image before reaching inward —
And spat out blood, one that slled suspiciously charred.
[-281 Health]
"Well, the damage is not as bad as I had feared," I muttered. rely less than a tenth, nowhere near killing myself. This ant, officially, the experint was less suicidal than the idea of facing the combined might of two cities at war.
Though, it still hurt horribly.
"It's like saying swimming with sharks without a cage is safer than skydiving without a parachute," I mocked myself and bit into a nutrient bar, waiting for my Health to recover before I repeated the experint.
[-195 Health]
"This ti, it hurt less," I said, before I started a pattern of spitting out blood and eating as I tried to figure out the fla equivalent of ditation. With Wisdom there to help keep track, I could confidently say that it would take less than a hundred tries.
rely eighty-seven painful attempts later, I was able to maintain a constant image of the fla in my mind and use it to draw mana toward . The speed at which I was able to do so was slow, even weaker than my common ditation skill back when I had first upgraded my class.
But, I didn't care about such trivial details. The aim wasn't to create an alternative thod that could sohow rival a Mythic skill directly, but to deepen my understanding of fire.
Once I was confident that I wouldn't kill myself at the smallest mistake, I started to imagine a bigger fire. A forge, one that was hot enough to lt iron, putting the weight of my Wisdom behind it. With that, the speed of absorption increased significantly, with no accidents.
More importantly, it felt more natural. "Could it be about my class," I muttered. It was sothing I didn't think about when I had started my experints, but it made sense. The classes ca with a lot of subliminal social context … maybe Blacksmith classes also ca with the idea of a forge.
"If true, this has so incredible implications," I said while I thought about the team of Blacksmiths that worked for . None of them were able to upgrade their skills above Uncommon. But, if what I was experiencing wasn't exclusive to the Smith of Decay class — which might as well be — that promised an alternative path.
"And, it might help the Farrs as well," I said. If that could be used to improve their Common ditation skill safely.
"Too bad I can't use the image of a forge for my real experint," I said, as everything until now was just a way to confirm the viability of my path.
It was inevitable. While I thought of the concept behind the lizard's fla to be just like ordinary fla, it was anything but that. The impact was the sa, but not the root. It was more similar to the heat of bubbling lava, restless and violent rather than a controlled fire.
One that I understood only on the surface, which affected my attempts to manipulate and transform it.
I touched the claw, using my Observe to get a better sense of the fla concept hidden behind the claw. I had used Observe on the claws many tis, but this ti, assisted by my sowhat successful attempts to create my own fla-based ditation, I could see the difference.
Yes, the fla hidden in the claws was wild and uncontrolled, but it was not purely a destructive force … just like how the ocean waves were not destructive to the fish. It fueled the life of the lizards, fed them, and strengthened them.
Just like the link between the insects and decay, the link was a fundantal part of their very being. I touched many other claws, their varying strengths giving a stronger impression, until the image in my head was clear.
I closed my eyes once again, imagining a flat rock, one with a thin, growing crack, slowly revealing a thin line of lava, bubbling with energy. Slowly, mana started to drift toward —
[-940 Health]
"Damn, that hurt," I gasped the mont my control slipped, the concept far more violent than the earlier fla.
Still, despite the pain, I was confident that I was on the right path.
Once again, I created the image in my mind.
[-750 Health]
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