Chris
We traveled for over a week at the pace we set and we were making... decent ti? It was hard to track. The only landmarks we could go off of were rivers and hills and none of us were expert cartographers.
It was easy to confuse one bend of the river with another on the map or one hill with another. Not that there were a lot of hills we were traveling over in Eastern Indiana. Still, we knew the general area we were in and that was enough.
It wasn't like we had a deadline we had to get there by and had to keep to a strict tiline.
Most took this ti to decompress after a long and trying tutorial. Our camp arrangent at night made our tents within earshot of one another and it wasn't hard to pick up on sniffling or silent sobbing.
Those with higher perception had it worse and could hear... other activities.
With everyone reuniting and families coming back together, couples found ways to spend their ti.
Both were things that were heard but not talked about. Personally, I felt it was a good gauge of the atmosphere and symbolized what people were going through. While grief was like a heavy fog sticking around us as we traveled, so happier notes played from within.
The fog would clear eventually. Little candles of happiness and joy burning it away one smile at a ti. Marching forward one step at a ti.
So in our caravan lost everyone. There was one woman who lost both parents, all her siblings, and her significant other. She was nearly catatonic when she ca back to realize all of them were gone.
I couldn't imagine it.
I was working through my own issues during this ti and it was... going. I didn't know how else to describe it other than going. Every ti I felt like I was ahead, all it took was rubbing my finger on the ring I now wore to bring back down.
Other than that, the journey was uneventful. It felt like a mixture of hiking and camping mostly. Only I had to pull a massive cart full of weights, but other than that it felt... oddly normal.
One thing that popped up while traveling was an unexpected problem, and I couldn't figure out if it was a good or bad problem to have.
I was getting antsy.
My body was ready for a fight and twitched at the smallest of sounds or perceived movents. This was the longest I had gone without a fight and it was wrecking my nerves. The tutorial conditioned into the regular intervals of the waves and it was jarring to get used to going without the coming fights.
Plus, a part of wanted a fight. That was another thing I wasn't sure was good or not.
A downside of not being hand-delivered a training regin every 3 days was I had to find it elsewhere. We weren't in a high mana area which ant the beasts weren't high enough level to be a challenge.
It wasn't even training to go after those. Going from fighting endless waves of monsters to only fighting one felt like a joke. It was barely enough ti to build up steam and feel like I was in battle before the thing was dead.
And that was trying to prolong the fight.
Without any other options, personal training was my last resort. Which was sothing I hadn't done a lot of during the tutorial.
Gabriel helped get into it, though, and made the whole thing a lot easier. He had been training this way throughout the tutorial and guided through the process.
"I would train my skills throughout the day and then go into the dungeon to test things or to solidify my understanding, not what you were doing. It sounds like you leaped head first into the fire and prayed you ca out alive." He said after hearing what I did to upgrade my skills or train.
Now, while I said I didn't train by myself a lot, that didn't an I never did it. When I first got [Ice Manipulation(Un)] it was a main staple of my ti to train the skill.
Temperature battles with Rachel were another way to train it. She was also big into the mana sense training and tried to beat it into every chance she got. She was so much better at it than which made it hard to get enthusiastic about it.
Still, having another person with an Ice Law led to so interesting training, for both Gabriel and .
Rachel and I would fight over temperature using our respective affinities, and while that was similar to what I was doing now, it was still different. Temperature was a by-product of utilizing my affinity, it wasn't the main part. Cold was a huge part of it, but Ice would always be its heart.
She and I fought over the effects of what our affinity had on the environnt, but Gabriel and I fought over the Ice itself. Both grasping and battling over control of our elent.
It reminded sowhat of when the Wind Chamber got so powerful that the Winds fought for control over the Ice I was holding.
It was like having two drivers of the sa car fighting to go different directions at different speeds and it worked wonders for my control.
One of the biggest things I gained out of training with my brother so far wasn't even my increasing control, but sothing different entirely.
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I still rembered a few days ago when I ca to him for help the first ti.
"You need help training?" He said incredulously, "But you're already stronger than , what could I help you with?"
"Most of my training ca in the form of combat and that isn't really an option anymore. We won't hit our first dungeon for another week and I don't want to sit around doing nothing during our breaks." I said.
So of our mbers weren't as high level or didn't have as high endurance as the rest, making us stop more frequently for breaks and the like. als were another that we stopped for or when we hit an area that had things for us to harvest.
Food was the reason we had to stop most often and harvesting it took a while, but there were a few other things we picked up on the way. With the dominating Wood and Plant mana of the forests, Mitchell and Brayden both located a few trees that stood out from the rest for harvesting. They usually made those into the axles of the carriages because of their increased strength and mana content.
While I could help them with that, most everyone else spent ti doing other things during our downti. I dabbled in the travel forge that Vinny cobbled together but that wasn't really the best use of my ti.
Vinny did the best he could with what he had, but it was a pain to do anything in. Even simple nails were frustrating to get through let alone higher grade equipnt. He was making adjustnts and working with Brayden when he had the ti but it was a slow process. Brayden's ti was mostly spent fixing the carts or spare parts to help him create a better travel forge.
Others, Gabriel and a vast majority of the combat-focused mbers, spent it training.
Everyone knew the brief respite we had been granted wouldn't last forever and we would eventually be called to battle again. The only question was how long until that happened.
Which was the main reason I found myself asking Gabriel for help. He trained in such a different way than and I felt it would be beneficial to see what he had to say.
"Alright, I guess I can show you what I usually do," He said nodding with conviction, "Let's start by creating so Ice!"
I followed his direction and fed so mana into [Desolate Blizzard(R)]. While the skill had upgraded, it still held the functions it used to. Just like [Icy Bastion(R)] could still be used like [Ice Wall(C)], [Desolate Blizzard(R)] could create Ice like [Hail(C)].
The skill took my mana and began to drop shards of ice in the area I selected but it didn't even last a second before Gabriel was waving off.
"No, no, no, not like that!" He said trying to get to cancel the skill.
I looked at him puzzled, "What do you an? You said create so Ice, I was creating Ice."
"Yes, I said to create Ice but not through a skill! That's cheating!" He said animatedly, waiving his hands at the conjured ice falling from the sky.
That made thoroughly confused, "What do you an cheating? That's how I've always done it, I can't just conjure it from thin air." I said sarcastically.
Now it was his turn to be confused and he cocked his head to the side, "What do you an you can't? Wasn't that one of the first skills you learned?"
It took a second to comprehend what he said and I frowned, "No, I assu you don't an my literal first skill and you an first Ice skill, but no, it was [Ice Wall]," I answered, rembering back to the first Ice-related skill I received. It wasn't even from my class or anything, it was one I bought from the store. It was kind of ironic.
"Not a literal [Skill], I an personal skill," He said emphasizing one over the other but saying the sa thing.
"I don't understand the difference,"
"One you just shove mana into for the effect to happen, the other you personally conjure without the crutch of a skill. There's a big difference. Creating Ice without the aid of a skill was one of the first things I learned how to do." He started to get worked up over it so I just nodded along.
I did manage to sneak in a question before his rant got too far and was one I thought was strongly relevant, "But what's the point? Why learn how to do it without the skill if the skill already does it?"
He looked physically attacked when I said this. "Anyone can get an Ice-creating skill and just magic up so ice, it takes true skill to make it from personal ability. I'm not sure and haven't tested it enough, but I think it's designed to be that way. There are a bunch of reasons to do it without the skill. With enough practice, you could be faster at it, creating it quicker than sending mana through the skills and having it make ice.
"What if you aren't able to use the skill? I haven't seen anyone with the ability to block skill usage but with how big the world is, that might be a thing. I know certain enchantnts can block skill usage which makes believe people could have that ability.
"The Ice is also stronger if you make it personally! Well, not at first but that doesn't count. Have you noticed that the strength of the ice used depends on the rarity of the skill when you let the skill make it," He asked and waited for to answer expectantly.
That part was true and sothing I had noticed. Almost all the ice I used for battle ca from [Hail(C)], which was a common skill at the ti. It worked fine for my purposes and if I needed sothing stronger, I empowered it with my Law or Spirit.
But I did notice that [Icy Bastion(R)], or its less upgraded version [Ice Fortress(Un)], created stronger ice. Plus, [Frost Armor(R)] also created stronger ice than [Hail(C)].
I noticed it most when using [Shatter(Un)] on different pieces of ice. [Shatter(Un)] seed to work better and explode more violently on stronger ice which made the skill more effective when used in conjunction with [Icy Bastion(R)] and [Frost Armor(R)].
Before Gabriel ran out of patience, I nodded to his implied question.
"If you create it yourself, you don't have to worry about that. Plus, if you train the ability enough you can even make better ice than your skills. I think this System has a lot of different things like that, where it does things for you but you can also do it without its help."
He had been kicking that idea around ever since our information exchange. He and my mother weren't as free with tutorial points as we had been and weren't able to buy as much information from the store. We knew, from an alien lecture, that you could 'level' manually. Increasing in level without the aid of the System and you could evolve without it as well.
Ever since, Gabriel championed his theory that doing things manually, or at least learning to do it manually, should be a priority. Not everything, and certainly not right now, but starting with smaller things would help people build up to the bigger, more important ones.
So would have to learn the skill. If they didn't have the needed requirents they would have to either do it themselves or live out their remaining lifespan forever barred from the next rank.
Starting with creating ice using personal ability instead of a [Skill] seed like a good first step.
I wasn't sure if I would ever level manually or anything like that, but he made good points about needing to create Ice on my own.
"Alright, how do I do it?" I asked.
Gabriel got excited before calming himself into a more lecturely tone, "First, let's go back to the basics."
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