The next day was spent packing as many calories as I could while I laid on the couch at the outpost and during the ride back to the archives. The brothers had dropped me off in bed with a giant selection of foods and a promise to check up on me the next day. I once again had no idea what I would have done without them. Our chance first meeting was turning into one of the most important events of my life.

  I had just finished my second roast chicken when I decided my core had enough energy to unlock Sling, and while I likely had enough for Lesser Regeneration as well, there was no sense in wasting the mana until I had my bones into the proper places before I turned it on. I put four of my pending skill points into it as well, bringing it up to five ranks. Immediately, I felt some relief as a meshwork of mana formed around both of my legs, with a much stronger presence on my right one. The pain was in no way gone, but it felt like the bones were no longer grinding against each other for the moment. A new System message popped into my view.

  My jaw almost dropped as I read that. Only nine days to repair the level of damage my ankle had suffered was something amazing. I knew this wouldn’t do much for the bursa tears, but that was what regeneration would be for. It seemed I also had a few new completed and uncompleted quests. I clicked into the menu to see just what I had done.

  Each one of the completed quests had given me five skill ranks, as well as enough experience to push me to level thirty-five, which in turn boosted my available skill ranks again by another two per level gained. This had created a bit of a feedback loop as I was reasonably sure I could now complete the rest of the skill quests I had available and further adding skill points and experience. I quickly started clicking through things, dumping my available skills into Inner Vitality and Sling as rapidly as I could and checking new quests as they appeared to see just how far this loop could take me.

  I was able to easily finish off all the new quests besides the third-tier mana skill by increasing my Sling and Inner Vitality skills, which in turn unlocked three more quests and pushed me up to level thirty-nine.

  I invested more skill points into Sling only to find I wasn’t able to go beyond twenty-five, locking me out of reaching any further quest completions at the moment. At least with these, the System informed me how to increase my ranks further. Every rank increase on the mana orb itself allowed an increase to the skill cap by five points for the corresponding tier. It did the same for every tier below the corresponding tier, with an added effect of an extra one above per tier below. For example, once I hit rank two on the Life Orb, it would increase my skill cap by six points for tier one, and once I hit rank three, it would increase the same tier by seven points. This meant it was always easier to max out lower-level mana skills than it was higher ones.

  I invested the rest of my skill points into bumping Soul-Core Bonding up to twenty-five and Inner Vitality up to Seven. I was reasonably sure that the Soul-Core Bonding skill would help rank up my mana orbs faster, so that was a priority if I wanted to push my healing. The good news was even with the maximum I was stuck at for the moment, my bone repair time had dropped to seven days. That was a lot of progress for thirty minutes of brain work.

  I spent the next hour chowing down on more food and relaxing my body as much as I could. I still hadn’t put anything into Pain Management as I only had enough skill points left to max out Lesser Regeneration, and that seemed the way I should go. Pain Management would be most useful in the middle of combat in keeping myself focused, I reasoned.

  Checking my core reserves before I progressed any further, I was glad to see I was back up to about half, and the drain from Sling wasn’t as impactful as I had worried it would be. So, I unlocked Lesser Regeneration and put all my remaining skill points into it. I had no idea if I was hurting my growth long-term in doing this, but it was something I had to do. I felt a strange sensation spread across my body, almost like a million tiny fingers touching me. It lasted about ten minutes, and I was glad when it was over. The initial feeling had worried me that that was how it would feel forever and I wasn’t sure I could stay sane with that feeling.

  My bone repair time was now down to two days, and my Inner Vitality was showing that all my issues were now being worked on, and assuming no further damage I would be in prime health again in about six months. I wasn’t even sure what that would feel like anymore, as it had been so long since my twenties, and I had gotten used to various parts of my body creaking as I moved. Sure, I woke up with a little back pain every morning, but that was a sign of age. Now, I’d have to get used to the idea of that meaning that something was really wrong instead of being a thing I took a couple of pain pills for and ignored.

  How far did this go, was my lifespan increased as well? I knew Sanquar was incredibly old, but for all I knew, that was also his average lifespan. Wait, had he always had the bird form, or was that part of his banishment? I realized as I thought these new questions that I really knew nothing about the man who had sent me here. Pryte and Elody had both given me stories, but with so much time having passed, who knew how much was true? Elody herself said she hadn’t been alive at the time. I needed to know about the history of the Arena Spiral, and since I still had a couple of days of recovery ahead of me, that was just what I would spend them reading.

  While that was a great plan for tomorrow, today, I was still stuck in bed, and my brain wasn’t nearly ready to shut off for some more sleep. I began looking through the new mana skills that I could see but hadn’t yet unlocked. Sling had a line that combined with Medical Telemetry to a new skill that I couldn’t see yet. I followed the second line instead and looked at the locked orb.

  That was certainly something else I’d want to put points in as soon as I could. I imagine the more powerful the monsters became, the more that was bound to be needed. I moved over to Lesser Regeneration and checked both of its new nodes.

  Both of these were useful in their own ways. As it was, the use of my Lesser Regeneration had to be turned off every couple of hours to make sure Sling didn’t run out of mana. Using the first, I could likely get to a point where I never had to shut it off. The second also meant if I wanted to I could focus only on the worst parts first. Based on the wording, I had a feeling it would slow down the healing of my whole body in the long run, but in times where I immediately needed a hand to work again, it could be a life-saving skill.

  Core Projection had two nodes to check, and I went through those next.

  These both seemed like great skills if I wanted to pursue any crafting, and that was likely the case if I decided to further improve on my core system, which I would like to, given the chance. So, these were both high on my list of future investments. I moved on to Soul-Core Bonding and the three nodes that branched off of it.

  The first two were more or less something I had expected to see from this orb. Mutation, on the other hand, I didn’t know what to make of. There was no further description of what exactly a mutation would be, and I wasn’t sure that was something I wanted to try without knowing just what I was getting myself into. While I liked the brothers a lot, I certainly didn’t want a second Dave head arguing with me about all our decisions. Now, if this was just something like mutating parts of my genetics to give me an extra finger or even webbed toes that helped me swim faster, that was something I could get behind, but this would require a lot more study before I risked any points being placed into it.

  I yawned loudly; my mind had finally caught up to what my body felt. Hopefully, I really did heal as fast as my skills claimed I would. I wanted to find more dungeons as soon as possible. The more levels I could pack in, the better.

  The negatives of aging are now symptoms belonging only to the poor. Those most capable of escaping their beginnings can soon find themselves in a world of immortals, where age is but a costume worn to convince others of their years of built-up wisdom. Often, though, the offered wisdom is just another disguise for something else. The gatherings of truly ancient beings have started to grate on me. Is this all we chose to live for?

  The Last Recorded Words of Zhrole

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