Nothing is Impossible

Atlas settled into a routine over the next few days, training early in the morning before heading out after 3 or so hours and then doing tasks. His rain cloud was still up and running so he gained 50 silver every day without needing to do anything extra. After 5 days (6 including the first day.) He had amassed a large amount of wealth, 23 gold 61 silver and 90 copper. Today was moonday, the seventh day of the week, which was usually the day where everything calmed down and there was less work, from what he had heard.

He had also found out that just like earth weeks consisted of 7 days, but they were known differently. From his understanding the days were: Mageday, Towerday (The day he summoned the magic cloud), Warriorday, Archerday, Clericday, Soulday and Moonday (Today). Atlas had no idea why they were all named such strange names, but they weren't too difficult to memorize, so he went along with the norms for the world.

He stepped outside the guild, having a new purpose for today. It was still earlier in the morning, but he knew that every adventurer worth their salt got up at the crack of dawn to get tasks done and train. Only the more lazy adventurers slept in, or those who had injuries.

He hoped Zores wasn't one of those lazy adventurers. He walked over to the green house on the left (or the right facing the guild.) and knocked loudly on the door. He winced at the thought of Zores still sleeping and hoped that wasn't the case.

There was a crash inside and Zores opened the door. "Ah! Atlas! I'm sorry, I have somewhere to be right now but I could meet you at the guild training ground in," he hummed to himself and checked his watch. "An hour or two, three if it goes really bad."

Zores warped slightly, vanishing into thin air. "See you later then…" Atlas muttered into the now empty air, wondering if Zores would hear him or if he was already far gone.

Atlas spun on his heels, heading back to the guild and grabbing a few more pieces of bread and a slab of cooked meat from the bartender, making an impromptu sandwich and scarfing it down and washing it with a swig of milk. He had learned that the milk here came from golden cows, and it tasted amazing.

He made his way out back and watched the fights going on in the arena. Only two of them were occupied, and one of them had Lars facing off against a giant man wielding a huge axe. Lars looked to be winning and had the man on the back foot. He suddenly shone brilliantly and when his opponent was blinded, he loped off his head in a deadly chop, spraying blood everywhere. There was a green light that shone over the man and he was mended back together, good as new. They chatted for a couple minutes before heading their separate ways.

Lars left for a few minutes before coming back with another person, after fighting and winning against the new person, he proceeded to leave and come back with another person. How many people does he fight a day? Atlas wondered to himself.

Just when Atlas was wondering if he should join in on the action and have a couple fights, Zores appeared right next to him, with only a foot between them. Atlas yelped, falling sideways before catching himself on the seat next to him. He pushed himself back up and turned to face Zores, face flushing slightly in embarrassment.

Zores just smiled slightly. "Do I look that scary to you?"

Atlas rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "No! I just, uh, wasn't expecting you to appear out of thin air so suddenly." On second thought, maybe he should have expected that. It was how he had teleported away in the first place, so why would he not use it to teleport right beside Atlas?

Zores looked down at the arena, glancing over at Lars's ongoing match before glancing over at the two empty arenas, and back at Atlas. "Well then. Shall we begin your lesson?"

A notification popped in front of Atlas.

Someone at least 3 tiers higher than you is offering to give you a lesson. Will you accept? During the lesson, both you and the teacher will gain exp 1.5 times faster and your teacher will gain the normal exp plus a bonus depending on how much exp you gain.

Seeing no reason to say no, Atlas accepted.

Lesson has been accepted by both parties involved. Lesson time limit: 12 hours.

Atlas balked. Twelve hours? Just how much would he gain from this?

Zores teleported to one of the open arena's and looked back up at Atlas expectantly. Zores folded his arms and stared at Atlas. "To start with, if you want to gain the absolute most you can from this, I am going to need you to share your stat screen with me." Seeing Atlas distrustful look he hurried to explain himself. "I swear on my mana that I won't use it's contents to exploit you in any way, and I also swear to not share it with anyone else, no matter the reason."

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Atlas hesitated before sighing. "Okay, how do I send it to you?" he asked, giving in.

Zores waved his hand. "It's easy, just pull up your stat sheet and imagine sending it to me."

Atlas did so, getting another notification requiring him to confirm sending his stat sheet to Zores. After accepting, he watched as Zores eyes focused on the empty air in front of him.

"Hmm, your stat sheet is quite unique. It is definitely powerful, but you simply have far too many skills for you to handle in a cohesive battle style, which is most likely the reason for your low skill. The way I see it, you can do one of three things. The first option is to continue what you are doing, just amass skills and don't care what your skill number is, just overwhelming your opponents with tons of different- and powerful, skills. The second option is to keep all your skills, but use them to create different battle styles. For example, one style could be long range magic, another close combat, another debuffs, and so on and so forth. The third option is quite different. Start fusing your skills to get stronger and higher ranked skills that fit one complete battle style. With your path, this option is not exorbitantly expensive, otherwise I would not have seen fit to list it as an option. Skill fusion crystals are very expensive."

As Zores talked, Atlas listened with rapt attention. After a moment of thought he ruled out the first option. He was okay with his current level of power, but he also knew it was limiting him in some ways. "I don't want the first option, but I'm having trouble deciding between the second and third option, could you tell me the pros and cons of both?" He asked hopefully.

Zores nodded. "Certainly." He paused for a second, visibly gathering his thoughts. "I will start first with the second option. There is great benefit from having multiple battle styles. It lets you adapt quickly to any shift in a fight, allowing you to be very difficult to read and take down because you can quickly change how you fight. Now for the cons. It will take a large amount of training to understand the battle styles enough for it to be beneficial for you to change battle styles in a fight. Every Time you gain another battle style, it would put more strain on you. For this option to even be viable at all, you are going to need a mental enhancement skill that is passive, or at least lasts more than 4 seconds." Atlas understood that he was talking about Perfect Awareness, which with his 2,000 intelligence and Glimpse of Transcendence, lasted 4 seconds. That was a huge leap from its original 1 second, but it still wasn't very much.

"Option three will allow you to be fearsomely powerful, and it will make all of your skills deadly and strong, at the cost of flexibility. Your skills will be weeded down until you have about 8 to 12 skills max, halving your current amount of skills but making each one of them a force of nature. As for the cons, it is a lot simpler than option two, not letting you be as versatile but allowing for more brute strength. It will be easier to learn, but that does not mean it will be easy. If I were to have option two and three fight, I believe option three would always win, but option two would be more powerful when facing a threat that is also versatile, while option three would struggle more." Zores paused looking at Atlas. "The choice is up to you, they are both powerful, and both of them have weaknesses."

Atlas bit his lip, thinking hard. His first impulse was to pick option two, because it was the more real world applicable of the two, but after thinking harder, he realized that option three was probably the better choice. The main reason was that Atlas didn't know if he could juggle so much processing at one time, whereas option three was just a streamlined version of what he was now. Fighting internally he finally sighed and gave his answer. "I think option three is better for me."

Zores nodded. "I believe that one will be better for you as well, as much of your stat sheet revolves around your skills, whereas option two would require more action from your stats, which are high, but not high enough for it to be the greater option. You are probably in the top 1% stat wise, but top 0.001% skills wise for people your tier and level."

Atlas felt better about his choice when Zores put it like that.

Zores's eyes went out of focus briefly before regaining focus. "I just set a couple lesson goals, you can check them at any time. The system will give you a reward depending on how hard the goal is. If you don't reach them, I get a debuff for a couple hours, and the intensity of the debuff depends on how hard the goal was."

Atlas checked his lesson notification and saw that there were indeed a few goals listed, with varying levels of difficulty.

Goal One: Synergize down to at least 12 skills. Difficulty: Moderate. Reward: 10 levels in any skill.

Goal Two: Get Skill Rank up to S rank. Difficulty: Extreme. Reward: Upgrade Title under Legendary.

Goal Three: Get all Combat skills up to SSS or Z rank. Difficulty: Hard or Super Hard. Reward: New Title (Rare or Epic)

Atlas read over all the goals once more. They definitely seemed doable, but he didn't know if that was his own pride or if he really could do all of these things.

Zores spoke. "These tasks are difficult, but I believe you should be able to accomplish all of them." Atlas felt not a little relief at Zores telling him much of what he was thinking, calming him down significantly.

Zores began gathering mana, his power dimming a little bit. "Now, let's begin. We will start with duels so that I can get a sense of your current strategy and power level. I will be reduced down to when I was at the peak of tier three."

They faced off against each other, ramping up their power until they were both ready.

"Begin."