Lone: The Wanderer

Book 3: Chapter 17: Skill Options and Choices

'So no need to teleport them to our safe house in the Farwinds?' Lone asked Soph after having received her update on Prince Keining's movements.

He was only a few streets away from the nearest guild branch and if Soph gave the signal, a few unfortunate things would come to pass. Unfortunate for the city and its ruler, not for Lone and his friends. He was really hoping he hadn't misjudged the prince of this city.

'Yup, no need! The X-ranker trailing you decided not to listen in on your conversation when she noticed I was staring at her. Turns out she's another of Prince Keining's kids. He has so many! They have the teens on surveillance but have no plans to actually interfere with their daily lives,' Soph relayed.

Lone had expected as much the moment he learned it was possible to sense MP in others. He silently thanked Soph's absurd Luck for no harm coming to his sister and her friends as a result of the kidnapping incident half a year ago. He was also thankful that they hadn't been blindsided by this later down the line.

It could have been disastrous were an enemy to learn of Soph's Teleportation via whatever skill it was that allowed a person to sense another person's MP. Lone could think of dozens of ways to exploit that, let alone what some thousands-year-old monster was capable of. Thankfully, perhaps due to her Luck, nothing bad had come of it in this scenario.

Now that they knew it was possible to detect, they could prepare for that in the future. Speaking of which, Lone entered the guild hall which Breena and Soph were in. He gave Soph a warm hug and patted Breena on the shoulder.

"I'll be back soon, maybe in a couple of hours. Gotta go do gold-silver plate stuff," he said, clearly alluding to the credit slate.

Breena was a smart girl so even though she wasn't at least a silver plate yet like Soph was, she still knew about the guild's mysterious 'skill list' so she, along with Soph, nodded.

Lone quickly made his way up to the guild's second floor, getting many nods and respectful greetings along the way. The gold-silver plate wrapped around his neck let him see the entrance to the third floor so he didn't waste any time.

On his way up to the fourth floor, Lone marvelled at the enchantments he didn't understand which hid the entrances to the stairways. They truly were marvellous to his untrained eyes.

Not only did they hide the stairways but they also hid the people entering them, making them incredibly hard to notice. Even with Soph's Mana Sensing and Lone's Enhanced Vision, it took effort from both of them to see the enchantments.

Sadly, Soph still wasn't able to see the entirety of the guild's floors. She could only see the silver plate floor and the entrance to the gold-silver plate floor. Lone was certain space magic was at work in some way. Perhaps it was weaved into the enchantments. He didn't know but he was excited to eventually find out.

It didn't take too long for a credit slate to open up so he happily approached an unoccupied one and allowed the artefact to take a drop of his blood.

Adventurer identified as Lone Immortus, gold-silver plate adventurer, nicknamed Immortus the Immortal. You currently have 37,320 credits. Would you like to record your skills?

Using his finger as a pen, Lone replied 'yes'. A few moments passed before the words on the credit slate shifted to tell him to detail which of his skills he would like to record. Of course, he made sure not to record his unique skills or his Primal skills. He did, however, record his possession of Steamforging Mastery.

Enough time had passed since his trial and he was now free of the Farwinds so even were something shady to go on in the background with his skill information, it would be hard for it to affect him now since he was no longer within the jurisdiction of the Dwarven Greater Council.

It took a while, but Lone recorded his new skills; Water Gaol, Thorny Itch, Oxygen Ignition, Gentle Glow, Force Flight, Earth Spear, Corrosive Stream, Oppressive Gaze, Sight Magic Resistance, Poison Magic Resistance, Piercing Resistance, Nature Magic Resistance, Drowning Resistance, Force Magic Resistance, Quarterstaff Mastery, Longsword Mastery, Heavy Bow Mastery, and finally, Estoc Mastery.

With that done, he then recorded all of the new levels and rank-ups for his already registered skills. It had taken Lone over an hour to register the 18 new skills, 51 skill level-ups for already registered skills, and the trio of skill rank-ups for also already registered skills. The time spent was certainly worth it, however.

You now have 68,800 credits. Would you like to request skill information? If so, please describe what you wish to be able to do and the database shall be checked to see if there are any skills within your credit limit that you can purchase information on. If not, would you like to continue recording skills?

Without hesitating Lone used his finger to request a list of skills that would allow a person to detect the MP of others. He didn't expect anything nearly as powerful as Soph's Mana Sensing but now that he knew such skills existed, he had to get one himself.

13 skills that you can afford match your requirements. Would you like for them to be listed? Please note each listed skill incurs a charge of 1 credit.

'13? That's more than I expected,' Lone thought before he narrowed the search down to passive skills only.

3 skills that you can afford match your requirements. Would you like for them to be listed? Please note each listed skill incurs a charge of 1 credit.

'I'll take that, sure. Let's see what we're working with.'

You have been charged 3 credits. You now have 68,797 credits. Below are the listed skills and the price required to learn everything the guild knows about them.

Magic Power Sensitivity

[3,000 credits for full information]

Sensory Field

[5,000 credits for full information]

Magical Domain

[25,000 credits for full information]

'Well fuck me if they don't all sound powerful. Expensive too,' Lone noted as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'Magic Power Sensitivity sounds a lot like Mana Sensing just from its name. Don't need that if that's the case. It's probably significantly inferior to Soph's skill since it won't be unique and it's the cheapest of the three.'

It was common knowledge among adventurers with a silver plate or above that the more expensive a skill's information, the harder it was to learn and typically the more useful or more powerful it was too.

Lone reckoned that if Blood Clone didn't take centuries or millennia to develop into a useful skill for normal people, then its information wouldn't have been priced at only 2,000 credits.

'Heh, 'only'. Not like everyone has a vault of skills they can constantly expand and improve to keep the flow of credits coming in,' Lone chuckled.

'So it's between Sensory Field and Magical Domain. The former sounds like it can detect more than just MP. Does it maybe let the host sense all things in a certain radius? If so, that's probably just another weaker Mana Sensing. It's expensive as fuck, but it seems like Magical Domain is the only logical option long-term. The name implies control too. What kind of control, I have no idea. If it lets the host fuck with other people's magic somehow...' His decision had been made.

Lone could always earn more credits so he wrote on the slate that he wished to buy all of the information related to the passive skill Magical Domain.

All known information about the skill Magical Domain shall be displayed. You now have 43,797 credits.

Skill name: Magical Domain

Skill type: Passive

Skill rarity: 12 adventurers have registered this skill.

Highest recorded mastery: Expert Level 6.

Skill effects: Creates a domain (an unchangeable and unremovable area that grants control over the domain subject to the host) of a magical nature around the host. Note that the created domain only grants power over the magic affinities the host has. Adding new affinities can be done though it is extremely difficult. See recorded additional effects for more details.

Skill cost: None as the skill is passive.

Recorded additional effects:

1. The ability to add more affinities to the domain. Unlock method: Obtain a new affinity yourself either via training, treasures, herbs, etc, and then try to infuse the freeform magic of the new affinity into the domain (the shortest recorded duration of a successful attempt was 15 years, 11 months, and 24 days).

2. The ability to sense things be they people, creatures, monsters, items, etc, that have an affinity shared by the magical domain at a distance further than that of the domain itself (three times the size of the domain at advanced rank, four times at expert rank, assumedly five times at master rank). Unlock method: Get the skill to advanced rank.

Known methods to acquire the skill:

1. Submerge yourself into the core of a Mana Well and remain there while trying to establish your domain. This method has killed thousands of hopefuls. We advise you to avoid doing this if you do not desperately need the skill. You must submerge yourself for at least 300 days but the exact time can vary based on the amount of affinities you have and how focused you are on establishing the domain. Do note that the mana well will become a part of you so you must find an unused mana well and protect it as if it were your own life should you succeed. If the mana well is destroyed, you will also die.

2. Graft yourself onto a Magical Leyline, becoming a part of it. Once grafted successfully, you must learn how the leyline functions and essentially become a leyline yourself. Before losing sentience, you must then undo the graft, regaining your sense of self and letting go of the rampant desire to serve the world as one of its many magical leylines. This method has never gotten past the grafting stage successfully for anyone that is not at least an X-ranker. The shortest successful attempt with this method was 3,430 years, 8 months, and 15 days.

The bit about the highest recorded mastery was an expanded piece of functionality for the credit slate only present to gold-silver plate adventurers and above which is why Lone hadn't seen it back when he was looking up information about a passive defence system and a way to have a perfect memory.

Lone left the artefact and found a seat. He needed to think and standing about like a lemon occupying one of the credit slates for longer than he already had wouldn't help him in any way.

'No wonder the info was so expensive. It's powerful and incredibly hard to learn. I may just be the first-ever gold-silver plate to be able to afford this knowledge and pay for it, haha,' he chuckled internally.

He leaned into his chair and hung his head back before sighing.

'That second method to earn the skill is out. No way am I grafting myself to something for thousands of years. Even if Growth Accelerator would cut that time down by a lot, it's unreasonably long. The first seems doable. Minimum time of a little under a year. I bet I can bring that down to a month, maybe less. Gotta find a Mana Well first. What even is a Mana Well? Gotta research them, find one, see if I can store one in my Dimensional Storage to keep it safe, and only then can I try to earn the skill,' Lone concluded.

He sat there and kept to himself for a bit, even if doing so earned him a couple of curious side glances. Lone was, after all, the man who had scratched this city's ruler in a fair fight.

He ignored all of that and eventually got up. 'Well, it isn't a priority with Soph by my side. A skill to harden my muscles, however, and ideally a passive one...'

Lone got back in line to access a credit slate for the final time before his intended journey to the Crimson Foxkin Clan.

As he waited, a thought crossed his mind. 'I wonder if Soph and Breena found an interesting quest for us to do during our travels? Fingers crossed for something a little more spicey than a delivery mission.'