[Since the Fall: 1/1/810 - 18:56:28]

  After his talk with Aloran, he’d gone to sleep and woken up late. It was now time to alter the four Skills he had at an evolutionary threshold, and he’d been planning out how. [Pandora’s Box (Sealed)] was one he needed all the information he could have on, so he actually decided to go over the options and see if he could draw inspiration for what direction he should take it.

  [Diverging paths for evolution open:

  Separated

  Enchanting

  Focused

  Mitotic]

  Separated allowed him to break the box into multiple smaller ones so they wouldn’t be close to one another. It did almost nothing except finally let him separate the Wrath Curse from regular Wrath mana. He didn’t think it was worth it, so he disregarded it.

  Enchanting would let him use mana to enhance objects. He’d rather use the mana on himself, so he again threw it out.

  Focused allowed him to concentrate his mana further by using the Sectioning upgrade as lenses, but it wouldn’t stay in the box, which was an issue. He’d have to use the concentrated mana immediately as it was focused then fired out of the Skill.

  Mitotic let his box produce its own mana, so if he could get a sample of mana then he could designate the box to produce it. It would allow him to create mana from types he didn’t actually have, but was limited to one affinity at a time.

  Overall, they were cool, but not what he was looking for. Since he was going to manually evolve his Skill, he decided to open his mind a bit more and asked himself what he wanted from it. Of course, the first thing that came to mind was a way to produce more strings of [Connection], because it was a massive hassle to rearrange the parts in his soul to use it. In order to do this he would make use of the music box-esque shape of it, adding a crank to the side. Spinning the crank would pull the mana together into a string-like material as though it were a spinning wheel, concentrating it down further.

  It seemed like every possible way to Concentrate mana got weirder as the mana became stronger, with its own caveats each time. First, it was a mandatory process. Then, he had to manually crush it down by sectioning it into walls and compressing it. Now, he had to either shoot it through a lens or spin it like fabric, neither of which were guaranteed for Dei to even have the ability to store them.

  For [Good Samaritan], he struggled to imagine what it would even do. He knew he wanted to give it the ability to break tracking marks, but how?

  [Connection], as a Skill, was chock-full of concepts he couldn’t understand. Dei’s new idea for the Skill was to take advantage of something he was sure the Skill hid somewhere- a Leviathans danger, consciousness, or something of the sort. He would make it so [Good Samaritan] could summon tiny Leviathans using [Connection], sending them out to hunt down anything in his soul that didn’t belong. That was the plan, and he’d stick to it unless it was proven impossible.

  [Growing Rage] was easy. He’d work [Connection] into the Skill so it would slowly rebuild him with more Leviathan-based concepts in mind, turning him from a Union into a Reaper, as he wanted in the long term.

  That left [Identify of the Stout Protector], which he had an idea for. It was very good at piercing spiritual defenses, but all it did was gather information. Dei wanted to try tying a rope of Connection to the back of its Wrath Identify’s needle, forming a link between Dei and the target. If he succeeded he would be able to push spells through the link, directly past the soul’s natural defenses.

  Dei truly did not want to go on some massive endeavor of rearranging Connection over and over, so he decided that the first Skill to change would be [Pandora’s Box]. When he did that, he’d produce more of [Connection], and use the new lengths to redo his Skills.

  Looking inward, he plotted the path Connection would take, finding one of the winding paths that came close to [Pandora’s Box] and studying what memories he’d have to remove from it. When he felt he was mentally ready, he told the others what he was doing and let Fendrascora slip back into the Great River.

  Aloran said that it would be fine for him to do the changes right outside his cave because Aloran would be unharmed by anything the Leviathans could do, as they were clearly unable to see him. His divinity would protect everyone, so there was no need to keep a distance.

  Dei wouldn’t rush the process, but any time he went outside the cave, his pursuers would be able to get a bead on his general location again. Aloran said that they still traveled closer, even when they couldn’t see Dei’s location, because they could still remember what direction he was in, though they did slow down significantly so as not to overshoot.

  After this next excursion, Aloran guessed they would get close enough to pierce the concealment slightly and begin making their way to him. In a month or two, his hiding would be useless.

  Keeping that in mind, Dei finally pushed his way out of Aloran’s Garden, not even going five feet before sitting on the ground and beginning the process of separating some [Connection] out of his memories to use. He had to split his mind in half, dedicating one mind to keeping his body under control while the other quickly finished the process. He still spasmed violently, same as last time, but Meditation helped him keep his mind from wallowing in the horrible sensation.

  When he had enough, he dragged Connection closer to [Pandora’s Box (Sealed)]. To work it into his storage Skill, he’d need to somehow tie the middle part in, then allow the Skill to continue on through his soul, because it still needed to weave up and onto the surface. The only way to turn this Skill into an end piece would be to break the string in half, which he felt would be a very bad idea.

  He’d prepared for this to work though, so Dei quickly edited the manifestation of his Skill.

  He wasn’t changing its function at all just yet, so the Skill simply reshaped itself. It was easy to do, because all he was adding was a small turning crank on the side- something a music box should’ve had in the first place anyway. With the manifestation of the hand crank, Dei continued to modify the inside appearance of the Skill so it contained a cylinder and small metal pins to play music, though the cylinder had no bumps for the pins to play.

  Taking connection, he pushed it into the crank and out the other side so it looked like [Connection] went in through the crank, twist around the central cylinder, then go out through a hole in the other side.

  Now it was looking much more music-inclined, but Dei still needed to make it function, so he went into the box and frayed [Connection] slightly. He didn’t want to break the Skill, but he took two incredibly fine fibers and linked them into the Soul mana of his Pandora’s Box.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  His goal was for the Soul mana to rush into Connection, which would then twist around the cylinder and slowly tie the two paths of Soul into one another, concentrating them down further.

  He tried to impress his intent on both the Skills he was using, and felt [Connection] respond slightly. Like most Skills, it had a lot of innate information contained within. He found that it was different though, because the Skill was borderline alive, so he just prayed it was feeling generous enough today to help him out.

  When he finalized the changes, he wasted no time in testing out the new upgrade.

  Dei had preemptively compressed the Soul mana down into twenty five times concentration, so if it worked, the Skill should turn it into fifty times concentration, just barely enough to create more Connection for him to work with.

  When he fed this mana into the Connection upgrade, two surprises reared their heads.

  First, Dei realized that he’d forgotten how his own Skill worked. He needed to use smaller sections if he wanted to use a smaller quantity, and he’d just linked Connection with all his remaining Soul mana. The result was that the Skill drew it all in, and he was immediately bottomed out of Soul mana.

  The second unexpected result was probably a product of all his music-box imagery he’d been using. Dei’s hope for the Skill was that it would spin around and slowly merge, turning into a string he could use. What happened instead was that he saw [Connection] change shape, smoothing itself out around the cylinder before small bumps began to appear, retexturing it.

  He was confused for only a second before it began to spin itself, and play. The pins made their quiet tinkling sound for a few seconds, but the metallic twang slowly shifted into other instruments than should be physically possible.

  Instead of sounding like a music box, it began to play a haunting melody that sounded like it’d come from a gramophone. There was a loud background static, but the tune was still beautiful, and he saw as hyper-concentrated Soul mana began to emanate from the box.

  ‘HA! It may not be the solid rope I was hoping for, but that’s fifty times concentration mana right there! It worked, and I don’t have to use it immediately. I can clearly grab hold of it and store it in my body, though for some reason it will not enter Pandora’s Box. Hm, problems for later.’

  It took time, perhaps thirty seconds, but the Skill slowly but surely created fifty-times concentrated Soul affinity mana.

  Previously, he had over eleven hundred Soul mana. Now that it was concentrated down from so much, he had only one hundred and thirty seven.

  When the Skill was done converting the Soul mana, the song finally stopped playing. That was an odd weakness he’d have to account for, because he just sort of… emanated music for while the Skill did its thing. If there were any monsters around, they would have heard him.

  Ignoring that for a moment, he quickly pushed all of it into his [Connection] Skill, one that’d sat completely unchanged since he’d first gotten it from Soul.

  Finally, finally, he received a beautiful, blessed notification.

  [Skill Leveled Up: Connection (1) -> (8)]

  He even allowed himself the luxury of looking at the opened Skill window.

  [Connection - Level 8 - Soul Affinity

  A rumbling echo of the deep, feel as it flows through your body and out, connecting you to the world. The pulse journeys through all, taking and giving. The web connects all, pulling and pushing.

  Gives the ability to form the strings of the Connection spell

  Cost: 1 mana point with 50 times Soul Concentration per inch of Connection]

  With one hundred and thirty seven mana poured into it, the Skill produced just over eleven feet of [Connection].

  It was incredible. He had new Connection to work with, that he could break apart as he pleased without having to worry about major soul damage or a Leviathan smiting him!.

  Still, he didn’t dilly dally, moving on to the next Skill he’d need to evolve, [Good Samaritan].

  The Skill manifested itself in his soul as a weird freaky little voodoo doll thing made of straw, which he was still a bit unsure of what it represented. For some reason, in his head though, the manifestation made sense.

  Using his new just-over-eleven feet of [Connection], Dei sheared off the excess length, leaving him with a perfect eleven feet. Using the sheared off string, Dei tied a knot around the neck of the doll. It seemed to do something, but not enough.

  Instead, Dei sheared off two more feet of Connection, tying it around each of the strings holding the doll together. Before, the doll was held by mundane plant fiber. Now, it was held by glowing white fishing line.

  When he finished replacing the last of the mundane plant fiber, the doll seemed to absorb the glow of Connection. The concentrated spell dimmed, but the doll as a whole now emanated an eerie white light.

  He didn’t need to activate the Skill in order to test it, because he’d honestly never turned it off. Now, he was receiving some sort of feedback from the Skill that he was pretty sure told him where to locate the marks in his soul, but he’d have to check later, because it was time to move on.

  [Growing Rage]- again, super easy. He went to the room with the Skill and looked around for some way to use Connection, seeing all the workout equipment. It was all representative of what the Skill did, so if he could work [Connection] into the equipment, he was sure it would begin to permeate the concepts the Skill was using to rebuild his body.

  He was tempted to replace the jump ropes with all the [Connection] he had left, but doubted it would leave enough slack for his last Skill evolution. He’d keep it simple for now, but Dei thought Growing Rage had the most potential, and would require the most strings of Connection. If he could work the Leviathan Skill into all the equipment, it would probably turn him into a Reaper much faster.

  For now, he settled on just a small piece getting replaced- the chain that held up his punching bag.

  Mentally he cut off around two more feet, then reshaped it into an ethereal glowing chain. Deleting the existing one, he replaced it and felt the meanings the Skill would focus on suddenly shift.

  Seven feet of Connection left, he moved on to the last evolving Skill: [Identify of the Stout Protector]

  It existed as a pair of floating eyes above the red forest he’d created them. The right eye, his ruby colored one, glowed with Wrath, while his left eye, the amethyst, was tinted slightly pink to show his Kindness. The white sclera of the floating eyes released the typical ghostly glow of Soul.

  For this Skill, he needed to link Connection with the needle of Wrath, so he mentally expanded the ruby eye to look at its inner mechanism.

  There wasn’t actually anything in the eye, but his mind quickly conjured what he was looking for, a needle floating just behind the lens of his pupil. The change he put in place was simple, as he took the remaining seven feet of [Connection], linking the needle with the back of his eye. Now, instead of the needle being sent free-flying, it would stay linked to him so long as [Connection] didn’t snap, which he hoped it never would.

  All the Skills done, he made a quick test of Identify, looking down the tunnel and firing his needle. Again, it went flying, but instead of going very far, it stopped dead seven feet away and dissipated.

  Quickly making his way over to a patch of moss nearby, he hit it with a Wrath Identify, and the Skill didn’t immediately disappear. He found that he was able to pump more MP into it to continuously disrupt its spiritual defenses rather than just a short burst.

  When he tried channeling Wrath mana into it, the function changed completely. It didn’t simply disrupt the defenses, but actually started ripping through the moss. He tried cutting it off quickly, but it only took a second for the moss to inflate, then pop like a firecracker.

  He grimaced, feeling slightly bad for killing it unnecessarily but like… it was moss. True, plants could be sentient in this world, but his one wasn’t, so he just quickly made his way back to the cave and slinked to safety

  All things considered, his experiments were going well. The Skills weren’t turning out to be exactly what he hoped for, but their functions were close enough that he wasn’t really disappointed.