Jalin Buffkin had long dreamed about the day she would turn sixteen. She would finally be blessed with a boon and the ability to start leveling and learning skills. Both her mother and father were blessed with very rare boons. Her father’s boon allows choosing one of his skills that apply a buff to double the strength and increase the duration of the buff by five times for the next 24 hours. Mom’s boon is all her skill mana costs are reduced by half. What would she get? Would she be one blessed for the destiny of a Supreme Talent, someone with 100% affinity with at least one element?

  Jalin was filled with anticipation as she looked at the leather-bound Tabbed Tabulation of Skills Book that most every child is gifted on their 16th birthday. A silly tradition considering the book is accessible everywhere and it wouldn’t even be her first time perusing its pages to learn about the various skills, but it would be her first time as someone who could learn the skills it describes in detail. To her dismay, she had even followed the other tradition of thoroughly bathing the day of the big reveal. Somehow, cleanliness was supposed to improve one’s odds of a better boon. Maybe it was through the torture of being stuck in a frigid river, lightly freckled ivory skin covered in pungent lustoria vine sap while hacking away parts of herself, that rid her of any impurities that could result in a bad boon. She hoped the 10 minutes of washing her unruly shoulder-length deep reddish-orange colored hair and the dreaded shaving was worth it. For good measure she even brushed her teeth with mint and rubbed rosemary on her skin to cover up the stink of the sap with a pleasant smell.

  Well, time for her efforts to pay off! Huddled by her parents around their kitchen table and with hopes high, the time finally arrived as she felt an indescribable change inside herself; the best she could describe is she felt complete, whole, truly alive. The sensation beckoned. Looking within herself, she sensed what was commonly referred to as one’s spirit which housed her status; willing the information, she saw the effect of her boon.

  Boon:

  Your elemental affinities are reduced by 1% and you can only learn two skills in each tier (A, B, C, D, E, and F). Skill cast times, mana costs, and stamina costs are reduced by your affinity, rounded down.

  Well, like her parents, her boon was a very rare one as boons with bad effects are scarce. But what a bad effect! Looking at her affinities, she saw her dreams crushed.

  Affinities:

  Physical - 99% (100% minus 1%)

  Pair

  Air - 97% (98% minus 1%)

  Earth - 1% (2% minus 1%)

  Pair

  Fire – 35% (36% minus 1%)

  Water - 63% (64% minus 1%)

  Pair

  Dark - 11% (12% minus 1%)

  Light - 87% (88% minus 1%)

  Pair

  Energy - 0% (0% minus 1%)

  Space - 99% (100% minus 1%)

  Knowing the odds of getting a 100% affinity were a fraction of a percent, she would have been a one in who knows how many thousands talent, with not one, but two 100% affinities that would allow her the ability to learn S-rank skills in those elements. But no, why would her ‘boon’ allow that! To make matters worse, instead of being able to learn any number of skills that her affinities permit, she was stuck at two a tier. Two! Two, she can never change once learned! How would she ever be able to compete with someone wielding all the A-rank skills of an element and an army of lesser ranked ones, or even someone with just one S-rank skill?! Sure, her cast times and mana and stamina costs are reduced, but who cares when she was so limited. And forget experimenting. Others could always get more skills until they covered all their bases or created a build they were happy with. She would be forever haunted by any wrong choice she made.

  Unable to hold her frustration in, Jalin, with ice blue eyes brimming with tears, ran to her room as the dream of becoming a Supreme Talent was unfairly shattered. Sobbing into a pillow on her bed, she heard her parents come to check on her a few times before wishing a good night. The pillow drenched to the point of being disgusting, Jalin forcefully threw it against the wall. That helped. Allowing her sulking to relent, curiosity at how useful the beneficial portion of her boon could be took over.

  Thoughts of sleep discarded by a racing mind, Jalin left her room for the Skill Book before returning to consider the 12 esteemed skills that would be learned. Wanting to start by getting a fresh sense of skill strength that would never be hers, Jalin unfastened the book’s metal clasps to open it and look through the S-rank skills. She saw incredible abilities like Air skill Asphyxiation, Fire skill Summon Red Dragon, Light skill Resurrection, Space skill Mass Teleportation, and Water skill Blizzard. Each with enough power to turn a normal person into a walking calamity or miracle. After seeing the realm crushing force of S-rank skills, she vowed to reach equivalent strength with her hinderance of a boon or most assuredly die trying.

  Going over the knowledge she gained during the communal teachings her city provides to those less than three months from turning sixteen, she determined all she was taught about skills should nevertheless hold true. The inner workings of cast times and costs no longer apply, but the cooldowns do. Effect durations, healing, damage, and summoning for skills would remain unchanged too. So, she needed a plan for how best to exploit the cast time and cost reduction provided by her boon to bring her vow to fruition.

  Not wanting to spend hours going over every skill but also not wanting to miss the best choice for her very limited skill slots, Jalin decided the best approach would be to come up with a build by looking at the most powerful skills in the elements she can use. Considering her 100% affinities were undermined, learning S-rank skills is no longer a possibility. She, however, has at least an 80% affinity in four elements, Air, Light, Physical, and Space, which allows learning A-rank and below skills in those elements.

  With her plan always and still to become a slayer, those who fight monsters for a living, dying is a real possibility. But the awe they instill for their strength and heroism is always something she has coveted. Thus, as she continued to grow the longing for recognition and admiration that came with the title only grew with her.

  Wanting to pad her odds of survival, she looked at A-rank healing skills first. Light, Earth, and Fire were the elements with healing skills. With her 1% affinity for Earth, she couldn’t see herself choosing any of those skills. Her 35% Fire affinity would cap her at C-rank skills since a 50% affinity or higher is needed to learn skills in B-rank. So, Light, being at 87% affinity, is the way to go. Still wanting to see Earth and Fire skills for comparison, she went over all the healing skills. Starting with those she can’t use to gauge against what Light has to offer, Jalin flipped open the Earth tab, then the A-rank sub tab, the non-channeled sub-sub tab, and finally the healing sub-sub-sub tab. They don’t call it the Tabbed Tabulation of Skills Book for nothing. After looking through the non-channeled tab, Jalin moved to the channeled and internal channel tabs. She saw Earth heals are mainly direct heals based on maximum health; the great thing about direct healing is it’s better suited for regrowing lost or restoring unusable body parts. Based on maximum health seems better too, at least for later, since it will scale with leveling. Comparing the two A-rank Earth single individual heals, Infuse Life heals a target for 25% of their maximum health. The cast time is pretty short at 2-seconds with a 1-minute cooldown. Under the internal channel tab, she saw the Earth skill Regeneration that regenerates 10% of maximum health every 3 seconds. The skill even states that it can gradually regrow lost or restore unusable body parts without the normal over-healing required! That would be amazing but as the skill can only affect her it’s a non-option to her even if it wasn’t an Earth skill. After looking at Fire and Light heals, Fire skills being mostly heal over time and Light skills mostly area of effect heals, Jalin noticed her biggest issue, cooldowns. Realizing that without loads of skills to cycle through she needed a way to circumvent the long cooldowns of most skills, or she will be dead in the water then probably just plain dead, within seconds into a fight. The Quickness attribute could potentially help but it takes a lot of points for a mediocre result.

  Needing a better solution, Jalin looked through the skill book for an answer. Air appeared to be the element with cooldown reduction. Under the A-rank non-channeled, utility tabs, Jalin found a skill that resets the cooldowns of all other A-rank skills and divides half of the remaining cooldown time among all other non-A-rank skills. She can see the usefulness but not for her. B-rank had a skill that gives all allies, which includes herself, a buff that doubles how quickly cooldown time decreases; however, the buff had a short duration at 15 seconds and a 2-minute cooldown. It’s decent and being Air is great, but it marginally helps her cooldown issue. Going to C-rank, she found a skill that reduces all other cooldowns by 8 seconds with a 30-second cooldown. Better reduction of cooldowns, but the same issue in the end. Jalin saw nothing in D or E-ranks, but F-rank, in F-rank she found a glorious instant skill. Fan Skill reduces the cooldown of a single skill by one second with no cooldown. Having a 97% Air affinity would make a F-rank skill cost essentially nothing with her mana cost reduction from affinity. It is already instant cast, so no gain from her boon there, but that would allow her to spam the skill. It could be good if not for the hassle and small delay that comes with having to mentally cast it over and over. Still wondering if she can make it work, Jalin continued to trudge down the path to make an optimal build.

  Not wanting to use more straight casting to solve the dilemma of how to fix the inefficiency of spam casting, which is incessantly casting the same skill over and over, she inspected the internal channel skill tabs first. A sole internal channel could be active at a time but once cast the effect became passively maintained. A-rank and B-rank were lacking for her needs, but C-rank has the internal channel Space skill Multicasting which allowed casting the same skill on multiple targets and/or multiple times until you get the desired effect or have cast the predetermined amount wanted. It does double the mana cost and cooldown duration for each successive cast beyond the first if the skill would go on cooldown; otherwise, if there is no cooldown the mana cost for each cast remains unchanged. That would make her cooldown issue go away and not suffer a mana cost penalty since Fan Skill has no cooldown! It could even reduce the need for multi-targeting skills. The major downside is it would likely be her only internal channel since one can be active at a time. Not wanting to overlook the possibilities other internal channels could provide, Jalin read the remaining internal channel skills within her elements.

  The best ones she saw in A-rank were Air skill Flight, which yes, allows freaking flying, Light skill Light Conducting which grants unbreakable invisibility, Physical skill Enfeebling Aura that dramatically reduces hostiles physical strength, and Space skill Gravitational Field that increases gravity around you without affecting you. The best to her in B-rank were Air skill Thicken Air which reduces hostiles Quickness, Physical skill Optimize Attacks which increases your physical damage and has your attacks ignore a portion of physical defense, and Space skill Overwrite Reality which increases allies’ and decreases hostiles’ resistances. C-rank winners were Multicasting and Fire skill Life’s Embers which heals you for a portion of the damage you deal. With 20% affinity being the threshold for being able to use C-rank skills, her Fire affinity of 35% is enough. Even D-rank has viable options with the Air skill Wind-Infused Attacks which causes damaging attacks to have a chance to interrupt casting and the Physical skill Attribute Bump which increases your highest attribute. Even still there is E-rank Space skill Overlapping Defense which increases your resistances based of the number of allies near you. Okay, there are a lot of good ones, but the plan doesn’t work without Multicasting. Oh Flight, I never even met you yet already miss you.

  Going back to healing, she had always liked the idea of skills that heal over time, otherwise known as HOTs for short, but those come with a big downside. Healing over time is typically unable to restore limbs, non-channel HOTs are considered buffs, and an individual can only have two buffs of the same element at a time. Still drawn in by the idea of someone receiving continual healing, Jalin weighed available HOTs against the other A-rank healing skills in Light. Healing Beam is a channeled skill that heals 500 health per second, Mending Nova heals allies within 60-feet for 1,600 health, and Permeating Recovery heals allies in a 30-foot radius for 1% of their maximum health every 2 seconds for 4 minutes. Healing Beam is a solid nope; channeling requires continual focus which would limit her skill use and ruin the build she was planning. Permeating recovery has the longest cast time possible at 10-seconds, while Mending Nova’s cast time is 3-seconds. Mending Nova has a 3-minute cooldown while Permeating Recovery has a 4-minute cooldown. Considering she’ll be able to nullify cooldowns, the longer one is better as it should make the skill effect relatively stronger. Both are area of effect, or AOE for short, which would not be as beneficial as single target. The heal over time of Permeating Recovery could be devastating for a grievous wound while under continual attacks and its healing based on maximum health is worthless if a person doesn’t have at least a decent amount of maximum health. Its AOE is also far less than Mending Nova. Permeating Recovery’s saving grace is the maximum health-based healing should scale better as she becomes higher level. Being stuck with 12 skill slots, she needed what would be best later more than in the present. Plus, she desired to make a HOT work. Time to again trudge down the path of skill fixes.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  It didn’t take long to search through the A and B-rank utility tabs for her usable elements as there is nothing helpful. Under C-rank however, she found the Space skill Condense Effect which makes a targeted active heal over time or damage over time instantly apply all the remaining healing or damage and/or doubles the effect of an active buff or debuff but reduces the remaining duration by half. It does say it’s 20% as effective on damage and doesn’t work on channeled effects or effects with no duration, but what makes it stand out is the doubling effect can be done up to three times! The skill has a moderate 3-second cast time and 3-minute cooldown, but those are meaningless with her boon and Multicasting Fan Skill.

  Getting excited and full of ideas she reviewed buffs to find if there is a way to increase duration. Looking at her usable affinities left her empty handed as only Energy skills can extend durations and she was barred from using all skills of that element with her 0% affinity. Trying to rationale how to solve the issue she concludes that a duration lengthening type of skill would use a skill slot when she should be able to instantly recast a skill by Multicasting Fan Skill for minimal mana, so not helpful outside assisting buff management.

  Using Condense Effect as a springboard, Jalin started looking at buffs to make use of the strength multiplier at the cost of duration since her focus is recasting skills by nullifying cooldowns. She determined Physical skills are the best for attribute increases and that they take stamina instead of mana. Under A-rank, her top picks are Rouse Potential which increases all the target’s Attributes by 200 for 10 minutes with a 40-foot range, 10-second cast time, 3,000 Stamina cost, and 5-minute cooldown, and Mass Attribute Amplification which increases all allies’ attributes within a 60-foot radius by 150% for 10 minutes with Self for range, a 10-second cast time, 3,000 Stamina cost, and 10-minute cooldown. They are both awesome and combo well with each other, especially with the same buff duration; however, using both her A-rank slots on physical buffs is risky considering the spirit could hold a maximum of two buffs of the same element. Looking for something comparable but in a lesser slot to also keep her chosen A-rank heal slotted, Jalin found the B-rank skill Amplify Attributes which increases all of a target’s attributes by 100% for 6 minutes with a 40-foot range, 5-second cast time, 750 Stamina cost, and 5-minute cooldown. The loss of a 50% increase hurt but even with the loss, envisioning Multicasting Fan Skill to Condense Effect until the three doubling maximum is reached caused her to get giddy. That would be 1,600 for all attributes with Rouse Potential increased by 800% with Amplify Attributes. Amazing!

  It struck her that she can abuse attribute increasing buffs via a summon skill as that would give her more targets to buff. Knowing active summons were restricted to those from a single skill, due to something with muddling or dilution of an elemental connection, well, except for those with 100% affinities which can have two…stupid boon…Jalin looked for a summon skill with the highest amount of decent duration summons in her elements. A higher amount of summons further skews her attribute buffs, and a longer duration would help to alleviate some of her already daunting amount of skill management. A-rank is out since the selections for those slots are filled. There are some B-ranks with more than one summon but they are limited. Considering her cooldown reducing build would provide little value for a summon skill, she felt a non-summon skill would be better for her open B-rank slot. C-rank is out for the same reason as A-rank. Perusing D-rank, she noticed there were three usable summon skills. Of the three, one skill had multiple summons. As she read the description, her excitement grew. Dark skill Summon Gloom Wolves summons two wolves, and the wolves have a multiplier to any damage and speed increases they receive. Unfortunately, they lasted a measly 4 minutes and the skill has a 6-second cast time which will be annoying with her low Dark affinity. Unsure they are the right pick, she went back to reviewed the other two D-rank summons. Light has a Perception Wisp which is basically just good for scouting as it can’t attack. Fire has a Salamander that channels a 20-foot thin stream of fire. The starting damage is pathetic but doubles every 15 seconds as long as it stays on the same individual. Lasting 5-minutes, Jalin imagined how devastating that could be if it can stay on the same target. But who in their right mind would let something just keep damaging them unopposed? Even boosting the initial damage a good bit with buffs, it would take too long for non-stop unchallenged damaging to build any momentum. The wolves having an additional summon and a damage and speed multiplier are the better choice regardless of the 1-minute shorter duration.

  To keep track of her growing selections, Jalin grabbed a piece of rag paper, made from recycled cloth, and a quill and ink from her nightstand drawer. List written, she joyously reviewed her current picks:

  A-rank Permeating Recovery (Light), A-rank Rouse Potential (Physical), B-rank Amplify Attributes (Physical), C-rank Condense Effect (Space), C-rank Multicasting (Space), D-rank Gloom Wolves (Dark), and F-rank Fan Skill (Air).

  Already seven of her twelve skills slots would be used and both of her two A and C-rank slots filled. Frustrated with her dwindling open skill slots, she recentered herself to focus on how amazing the build is looking. Continuing to move forward, Jalin considered adding another utility skill prior to running out of slots. Her first thought went back to Flight, but that’s already out since it’s an A-rank internal channel which makes it doubly unusable with her current selections. Skipping to the B-ranks there is a situational invisibility and a teleport. The Space skill Blink is neat and one of the few skills with charges, which allows back-to-back uses, but only allowed for a short-range teleport that was mainly limited to herself. Similarly, the Light Skill Illusionary Double let only her turn invisible for 40 seconds and the invisibility breaks if she attacks or uses a skill. It does leave a double of herself behind, but the double can’t move or interact in any way. Finding no other invisibilities or teleports and subpar utility skills in the lower ranks, Jalin moved on to how else she could help her budding build.

  In an attempt to mitigate her number of skills restriction, she determined it would be best to find a skill that provides damage over time, also known as a DOT, with a debuff. She is curious about the effects of skills she can’t learn but decided to restrict her search to learnable skills. Lamenting over what she can never use and comparing it to what she can, would only serve to hamper her progress.

  Starting alphabetically, she noticed Air debuffs are mainly about slowing movement and lengthening skill cooldowns; it also has some skill cast interrupts. Those are good but she wanted a more debilitating debuff that can outright prevent performing any actions for a prolonged period, preferably at a lower rank too as she was hesitant to waste even a D-rank slot on the risk she was incorrect about how the Condense Effect skill works. To assuage her fear that she is wasting time or worse yet, a slot, Jalin decided to reread Condense Effect. The way it separated the effects of healing and damage over time from buffs and debuffs instilled her with confidence that the skill’s effect would allow her to dish out burst damage and magnify the effect of a debuff without inadvertently removing the debuff. Double the devastation with a single skill slot!

  Moving on to look at Dark skill debuffs, she determined those befuddle the mind and hinder mana usage. That can be useful but is still not right, at least up to D-rank where her 11% affinity for Dark restricts her. Well, there is Impair Sight which applies a debuff that blinds for 2.3 seconds with a 1-minute cooldown. That could be great, as those who can’t see can’t fight, but at 2.3 seconds she would spend most of her time keeping the debuff applied. Not to mention with her 11% affinity that the skill would cost her nearly the 100 base mana cost every time. Skipping Earth, Jalin moved on to Fire skills. Fire skills lean more toward damage and less about debuffing; what debuffs they have hamper skill potency. Not great at all in her mind, even if she wasn’t restricted to C-rank or lower for Fire skills. Lower damage with a better debuff is what she needed since the debuff strength will have a limit while the damage should be able to be applied again and again and again, especially with an element she has better affinity with than Fire. Speaking of affinity, next is Light, one of her four A-rank affinities. Light debuffs are about hampering senses and casting ranges. This can work as she can inhibit sight as well as other senses for more than a meager 2.3 seconds.

  Unable to stop herself she started at A-rank. There were two debuffs, Solar Flare and Tunnel Vision. Both were quite good as Solar Flare does substantial direct area of effect damage and removes physical senses while Tunnel Vision causes blindness when she isn’t in the person’s field of view; however, both are stronger than she needs, provide no damage over time, and of course she didn’t want to give up her A-rank attribute buff or heal. No debuffs were in B-rank. C-rank had one, Bedazzle Blood, which applies a debuff to an individual’s blood that has a chance to blind and damage. It’s neat but she has no idea how it would work with Condense Effect and both her C-rank slots are spoken for. Though, seeing a glowing vascular system would be something…No, no, need to keep searching. D-rank has Hinder Distance which reduces depth perception and skill range by 30% for 20 seconds with a 1-minute cooldown. That could be good but it’s so short lived and again, no damage over time. Looking through E-rank, Incessant Incandescence draws her attention. It places a debuff in the form of a small but hot light orb on an individual that reduces visual perception by 20% and deals damage over time, but the range is 30-feet and the damage is awful at 4 every 2 seconds. The amount of visual impairment is good and lasts long enough at 1.5-minutes; starting at a 20% reduction has got to be impactful after being triple condensed, likely not 160% but if it is…that damage though, so underwhelming. Still, it checked all her boxes, and the lackluster damage doesn’t mean much since Condense Effect is 20% as effective on condensing damage anyways. In addition to providing the basics of what she wanted it has another selling point, it also has utility. The skill can place a light orb on self or an ally to provide light with no debuff penalty and lasts until canceled but cooldown reduction is halted until cancelled. It was the perfect skill to test how a condensed damage with debuff combo worked and if it’s not great at least it will provide utility for the cost of a lowly E-rank slot. Happily, she added it to her selection list.

  Realizing that Condensed Effect should be even better with a HOT plus buff made her rethink Permeating Recovery. Jalin found what seemed like a good combo HOT with buff in B-rank that heals based on maximum health, which she wanted since it will scale better and being able to at least heal well was important. Reading it in full, Bolstering Radiance applies a buff that heals a target for 1% maximum health every 3 seconds and provides 40% damage reduction for 2.5 minutes. 40% damage reduction before condensed is amazing! Yet another skill she was curious to see how triple condensing will work since condensing skill effects wasn’t something taught in class. The cast time of 4.5-seconds and mana cost of 750 will be greatly reduced by her boon. Having a cooldown of 5-minutes which is longer than the buff duration works perfect for her. 2.5 minutes is a relatively short buff duration, but she should be able to make it work. She could spam heal by Multicasting Fan Skill to remove the cooldowns on Bolstering Radiance and Condense Effect, so not severely hampered by the loss in healing from a total of 120% maximum health for Permeating Recovery versus 50% for Bolstering Radiance. Seeing the actual numbers gave her more confidence. The greater than 100% total heal of Permeating Recovery is a loss in efficiency when condensed. Whereas the condensed 50% for Bolstering Radiance should be plenty considering it’s double the amount healed by Infuse Life which is an A-rank skill with a 1-minute cooldown. The heal should be sufficient and the large damage reduction the skill provides will mitigate having to spam heal and add a layer of protection for those with lower health. Feeling the skill is perfect, Jalin added it to her selection list.

  That opened back up an A-rank slot, but now both B-slots were taken. Deciding to keep one A-rank slot and B-rank slot open until she had some experience to better decide what would be best in the upper rank slots, she reconsidered Amplify Attributes. It was good, no doubt about that, but less so early on. Hoping to find a passable alternative, Jalin began searching the lower ranked Physical skills for attribute modifiers. She skimmed C-rank even though both of her slots are full. With nothing she can’t live without, Jalin moved on to D-rank. Surprising, there was a Physical skill, Unstable Power, that increases all of an individual’s attributes by 100%, the same amount as the B-rank Amplify Attributes. The major problems were its 30 second duration and once it wears off or is removed, “Destabilized” is applied which is an A-rank Physical debuff that decreases all attributes by 50% for 2 minutes or until the “Unstable Power” buff is reapplied. The duration is short, and the debuff is risky as it added another level to skills management but providing a 100% increase to all attributes at D-rank and her build being perfect to circumvent the negative skill effect made it an option she can’t pass on.

  Reviewing her current selection of skills, for when she can get ahold of the skill shards, she had:

  A-Rank - Rouse Potential (Physical)

  A-Rank - Open

  B-Rank - Bolstering Radiance (Light)

  B-Rank - Open

  C-Rank - Condense Effect (Space)

  C-Rank - Multicasting (Space)

  D-Rank - Unstable Power (Physical)

  D-Rank - Summon Gloom Wolves (Dark)

  E-Rank - Incessant Incandescence (Light)

  E-Rank - Open

  F-Rank - Fan Skill (Air)

  F-Rank - Open

  Down to four slots left available. Feeling drained after hours of combing through skills and working on her dream build, Jalin pulled back the covers of her bed to get some sleep before the soon approaching dawn arrived.