A big smile broke out on Rylan’s face as a by-now-familiar warm breeze came flying at him from a distant place.

  He closed his eyes and lowered his knife, unbothered by the mana inside it fizzling out while he tried to sense what exactly Ethereon was doing. However, the only interesting thing he managed to note before the breeze tapered off was that it seemed to head straight for the part of his spirit that housed his Skill.

  《Augmentation successful. Knife-Throwing has reached Rank 2,》Ethereon spoke once it was done.《100 Quintessence Credits have been added to your balance.》

  Rylan studied his new and improved Skill with interest. It felt more... solid, somehow. Stronger.

  “Ethereon, may I see my Knife-Throwing Window, please?”

  Knife-Throwing

  Rank 2

  Effects

  Blade guard

  Stable flight

  Forceful impact

  Augmentations

  Overcharge: 1.2 mana

  As expected, the Overcharge Augmentation was no longer greyed out, signifying that it was now completed. In fact, his Skill’s mana capacity appeared to have increased during the Rank-Up, and he could now charge his Skill up to a full 1.2 points of mana!

  Still, Rylan felt there had to be more to a Rank-Up than that, so he raised his boning knife again and tried actually using his Skill.

  The first thing he noticed was that activating it felt... different. Before it had been like lighting an oil lamp; a single pull of the plunger caused an ignition, and once the fire was lit, it was lit. Now it was more like the Thistlethorns’ oven; a steady activation that caused it to keep gathering heat until it reached the right temperature.

  Basically, by ‘activating’ the Skill for longer, it would now overcharge automatically. He didn’t have to manually draw mana from his pool to send towards his blade anymore!

  So that’s what an Augmentation is! It’s a new effect that’s actually made to be part of the Skill!

  Rylan stared in fascination as his blade filled with mana far faster than he’d ever managed. Moreover, the glow around it felt more stable, too. On a whim, he charged the Skill up to its new maximum, and let the knife fly.

  His boning knife hit the thick chitin... and kept going. It smashed right through the shell, splitting it in half then bored into the pile of mistweed and sand beneath.

  Rylan cringed upon seeing the carnage. It was a good thing the overcharge empowered all of his Skill’s effect, meaning it also offered additional protection for his blades.

  “Rylan, what happened?” Soren asked, taking a step back and lowering his reed. “Oh, that feeling just now... Did you Rank-Up Knife-Throwing?!”

  “I did!”

  “Nice! You did that pretty quick, too!”

  “Thanks,” Rylan said, before licking his lips. “Say... you wouldn’t happen to know how I can get to the third rank of Knife-Throwing, would you? Ethereon doesn’t specify what the next Augmentation is, yet.”

  Soren blinked. “Ehm, well, that’s up to you, actually.”

  “Come again?”

  “He said it’s up to you,” Tamina repeated helpfully as she walked over to the fog condenser.

  “I’m not following.”

  “Yeah, no, I’m getting that,” Soren said, taking a deep breath before he continued. “So, Ethereon rewards progress with a Skill with Rank-Ups. Every Rank-Up enhances the basic effects your Skill provides, but it also allows you to add a new effect, known as an Augmentation. In fact: doing something new with your Skill that Ethereon can turn into an Augmentation is exactly what it rewards with a Rank-Up. For example, adding the ability to overcharge your Skill with mana from your pool.”

  Rylan’s eyebrows shot up. “Wait, so Quinthar come up with these new effects themselves? And Ethereon just accepts and integrates them?”

  Tamina lowered the cup from her mouth and blew out a breath. “For the first couple of ranks, pretty much.”

  “It’s said that Ethereon’s standards for what constitutes a worthy Augmentation tend to increase as you progress,” Soren added. “That’s part of what makes Quinthar with Rank 10 Skills so scary; you’re never sure what exactly they’re capable of, but you know it’s probably something crazy.”

  Right, the maximum rank of a Skill is 10... I guess that means you can add nine Augmentation at most. Or at the very least, Ethereon won’t help you add more.

  Rylan hesitated for a moment. “Could you tell me what Augmentations your Skills have?”

  Tamina replied with a dry look.

  “Right, Contract.”

  “I’ll tell you mine!” Soren said. “So, first of all, Dancing, like most movement Skills, can be activated continuously. That means my Overcharge Augmentation works a little differently, and is instead focused on allowing me to increase my continuous mana output. Doing so increases my Skill’s effects and, more importantly, facilitates my other Augmentations. Like the one that brought my Skill up to Rank 3: my Quickstep Augmentation, which allows me to use mana to push myself to move faster with a specific pattern of steps.”

  Rylan nodded; he’d seen Soren use that a couple of times by now.

  “And more recently,” Soren continued, “the Twirling Leap Augmentation that allowed me to attain Rank 4. It essentially allows me to spin up momentum, then convert that into a massive jump!”

  Soren apparently felt a demonstration was in order as he started to pirouette, gaining speed with every rotation, before he suddenly launched into a physics-defying leap.

  Rylan watched with wide eyes as his friend twirled past, and out of the spiral shell that served as their shelter.

  The effect was ruined a little when Soren had to jog back, but it was still impressive.

  “Creative,” Tamina remarked as she handed the condenser over to Rylan. “You were still spinning in the air though. Didn’t you say you converted that motion into your jump?”

  “I can convert all of it to jump further,” Soren said, scratching his head with a sigh. “However, it becomes pretty hard to aim my jump when I do. I’m still working on it.”

  So that twirl he did off the whale’s rib actually was necessary for his Skill!

  Rylan frowned. “It seems like you’re using your Augmentations to mimic the effects of other Skills, like Running and Jumping. Is that on purpose?”

  “It is,” Soren confirmed. “While you could theoretically get all the Skills you like, Ethereon will not soon reward you with a Skill too similar to one you already have. And to be honest, I have better things to do than collect movement Skills; with a bit of work, Dancing should be able to fulfil all my needs in that regard. I imagine it’s the same with Tamina for Footwork.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  To Rylan’s surprise, Tamina actually nodded. “Footwork suits my needs perfectly as a front-line fighter. I imagine it’s actually what Soren was attempting to get as well, when he received Dancing instead.”

  “Yeah,” Soren said with an exaggerated sigh. “It was. I suppose Ethereon felt I was just too graceful for such a lowly—ow!”

  Soren rubbed his shoulder, mock-glaring at Tamina, who just waved her fist threateningly once more.

  Rylan bit his lip to refrain from smiling.

  “Regarding Miss Tammi here,” Soren said. “I’m pretty sure that—aside from the obligatory Overcharge—she has some kind of Shieldbash Augmentation at the very least, as her backhand with it packs quite a punch. That’s an easy guess though, to be honest, because it’s pretty much a classic. I bet she has at least one more, though. Care to share, Thar Tammi?”

  Tamina met his challenging gaze, her face blank. “Say Soren, would you perhaps prefer it if I just stayed in the back during combat and encouraged you guys with words from now on?”

  “Ehm, no?”

  “Then maybe you should stop asking questions.”

  Soren winced a little. “Right, sorry. We probably shouldn’t mess around with the limitations of your Contract.”

  Rylan was about to comment on the way the mana had extended past the edges of her shield when she blocked the fire from the armadon Malequint for him, but thought better of it. It does sound like something that might not be part of the base Skill...

  “So what are some classics for Knife-Throwing?” Rylan asked, leaning forward. “Other than Overcharge, I mean. Maybe something like... making really long-distance throws, with multiple full spins?”

  Soren scratched his head. “Well, that would depend on how you do it. I mean, you could probably learn to make such throws without using your Skill at all. Now, while some physical motion is clearly necessary for most Skills, and Ethereon does seem to register it to some degree, Skills generally don’t directly affect how you move your muscles. As far as I know, they only affect mana. So if you wanted to add this as a new effect, it would have to be something like mana pushing the blade to fly out of your hand faster. Just throwing your knife differently wouldn’t be enough, unless it involves using your mana in a new way as well.”

  “Right, that makes sense,” Rylan muttered.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much about Knife-Throwing Skill Augmentations,” Soren added apologetically.

  Tamina grunted. “I don’t know anything for Knife-Throwing specifically, but for ranged Skills in general, learning how to adjust the trajectory of the projectile after it’s been fired—or thrown—is pretty standard.”

  Rylan perked up. That definitely sounded like a worthwhile Augmentation.

  “You should probably start small though,” Tamina cautioned. “Trajectory adjustment is supposed to be pretty difficult. I would advise starting with something like adjusting the rotation mid-flight for your next Rank-Up, then continue from there.”

  Rylan bit his lip. “That does sound pretty useful, but I kind of want to work towards another Skill, first.”

  She cocked her head, crossing her arms over her chest. “Are you sure? I’m not saying you can’t, or that it wouldn’t be great if you got one, it’s just... the odds of you succeeding at that in a short frame of time are a lot slimmer.”

  Rylan frowned. “Well... didn’t you say that what I needed most was a way to move faster? I feel like my Knife-Throwing can already do a decent bit of damage now...”

  “He’s got a point,” Soren said, already back to focusing on his reed. “That last throw had quite some force behind it. He’s probably got the most offensive power out of the three of us right now.”

  Rylan blinked. Strange as that idea sounded to him, it made a kind of sense, as he was the only one with a weapon Skill. In fact, he’d been the one taking down their lunch and dinner most of the time, as his knives lent themselves well to hunting the swifter prey down in the cloudsea.

  If Tamina thought it was a strange idea, her face certainly didn’t show it. “Fine,” she said. “You’ll probably end up working on both getting a new Skill and ranking up your first one at the same time in the future, and the principles are quite similar anyway, so it doesn’t matter all that much. But before I instruct you, you should go ahead and buy the next tier of your Mana Shell.”

  Rylan hesitated, briefly wondering if he’d not rather save up for a better Mana Core. Then again, who am I going to sell mana to on the bottom of the cloudsea?

  “Fine,” he said, giving up on his dreams of making easy money with a sigh. “Ethereon, please give me the next tier of Mana Shell.”

  《Quintessence Structure upgrade requested. Deducting 100 Quintessence Credits. Commencing Mana Shell upgrade to second tier in three, two, one...》

  Rylan once more closed his eyes, and tried to sense what the warm breeze of what he suspected was Quintessence did inside of his spirit. The process was too rapid to really follow, however, and he could only just about sense the spot in his spirit where the energy had been deposited. I guess that’s the structure that controls my Mana Shell, then.

  《Quintessence Structure upgrade successful.》

  By the time he opened his eyes, his hard-earned credits had evaporated, his Mana Shell could hold up to two points of mana, and Tamina was standing right in front of him. “You got it?”

  He nodded morosely.

  “All right, then. Have a seat, I’ll first need to explain some stuff.”

  Rylan immediately sank down and perked up his ears, his financial woes all but forgotten.

  A drop of cold water—either sweat or condensation, Rylan wasn’t sure—dripped from a lock of his hair onto his nose. He ignored it, keeping his focus firmly on his right leg where it lay propped up on his left. Or, more precisely, on the thin stream of mana he was slowly trying to push down his right leg, through the bottom of his foot, and into the sole of his leather boot.

  It was not going very well.

  Without a Skill to accept and guide it, his mana didn’t seem to want to enter his boot in the slightest, and moreover, tended to merge into his Mana Shell as soon as it left his skin. Of course, as the field protecting him was already filled to capacity, that just led to it dispersing on into the air.

  And learning how to manually fill the relevant tool—or body part—with mana from one’s pool was only the first step. The second and much harder step, was to try to apply the mana to help with what he was doing.

  Rylan just hoped he would actually get to that step at some point this evening.

  The idea of the method Tamina had laid out was essentially to mimic the use of a Skill through manual mana manipulation. Supposedly, it had a much better success rate for acquiring new Skills than the dry practice he’d been doing before. But of course, it was only available to Quinthar, as it required access to mana in the first place.

  Part of him had been surprised that her Contract allowed her to lay out a Quinthar training method in such detail, but he supposed it had to be rather common knowledge amongst Quinthar, to the point that the Talons simply didn’t bother trying to restrict it.

  Rylan’s heart skipped a beat as the barest glimmer of light lit up around the edge of his leather boot.

  He carefully tried to get to his feet, so he could attempt to apply the gathered mana into pushing off from the ground, as Running required, but before he was halfway through standing up, the glow flickered out as he lost control of the mana, and it dispersed from his boot.

  Rylan sank back down with a groan, glancing over at where Soren and Tamina were making slow slashing motions with their glowing weapons.

  They were preparing for the third and hardest step, which was to actually use the pseudo-Skill in action. Preferably real action, not just a friendly spar.

  Steeling his determination, he switched to his left leg, and once more started to push the thin flow of mana coming from his Mana Core towards it.

  Switching legs from time to time was important. He wanted Running after all, not Hopping.

  Like Shucking, that probably wasn’t an actual Skill, but Rylan wasn’t about to risk it. Either way, he still had a long way to go, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try his hardest.

  Despite his conviction, however, he only lasted for about another hour before he started to flag, feeling mentally—or perhaps spiritually—exhausted.

  It was getting late anyway, and Tamina soon told them to get some sleep as she took first watch as usual. Rylan had expected the excitement of the evening to keep him up for a bit, but in reality, he was gone the second his head hit the pile of clothes that formed his makeshift pillow.

  Rylan swam through the fog with his pod, clicking and trilling happily as they chased some tasty fogfish. His powerful tail propelled him ever forward, until his hunger was sated. Then he played with his finned companions, especially the small ones.

  At one point, a buoyhead shark approached them, but Rylan drew on the well of power inside of him and let out a terrible sound that caused the predator to vibrate until it spun around and rushed off, blood dripping from its eyes and mouth.

  Then he felt something. A prickling up his spine, that called to him, beckoning. On a whim, he followed it, chasing down the elusive sensation, his pod faithfully trailing in his wake.

  Slowly, as he sped past rocks and shells, corals and kelp, the prickling became stronger.

  Finally, after what felt like a long time, he approached an area of brightly lit fog, that he instinctively knew he shouldn’t enter, and slowed down. The prickling grew stronger still, until it manifested into a voice.

  “Please... Come... Help...”

  Rylan woke with a start, sitting up abruptly, cold sweat beading on his brow and tingles running up his spine. Already, the clarity of his dream was fading, but one image remained, burnt into his brain.

  A symbol, made up of a hexagon surrounding a flame. The same symbol he’d seen about two weeks ago, on the cover of a book about the Hermean Empire.

  What truly disconcerted him, however, was that, as he sat there in the dark, a gentle tingle ran up his spine. It was a soft prickling sensation, almost ephemeral, like a faint whisper that he could only barely hear and never quite understand, and yet seemed to hold some kind of message...

  His brows drew together as he found himself instinctively turning his head to the right, looking for some distant point and... seeing nothing but the inside of the spiral shell.

  Despite that, he somehow knew that there was something in that exact direction, far beyond that thin wall. And that something, whatever it was, was calling out to him, asking him to come and help.

  What the fog is going on?!

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