B3 CHAPTER 316: SANCTUARY, PT. 4

Kaius tuned out the world around him and slid into his soul space a moment before he accepted his new skills. Even if he’d seen the System weave a new class skill seven times before, it was no less of a fascinating sight.

His metaphysical centre was largely similar to the last time he had checked on it, but there were changes. The burning conflagration that was his soul burned just that much brighter, and the woven net of sigils and power conduits of his class surrounding it was just a little bit more solid. The clouds of energy that hovered at the edge of his soul space — his resources — had grown too.

The changes were to be expected — a natural result of his increasing class levels.

His skills had changed too — ten platinum shards that orbited horizontally around his soul, and seven golden ones that encircled it vertically. Those had grown denser, more full of energy and strength as he had levelled his skills.

Above it all, a trio of pillars hung — two were ignited, crackling with discovered Truths of the world and himself. They, unfortunately, had not changed. His final pillar still waited dark and quiet. He didn’t pay it any mind — Animus would come in time.

His focus was better directed towards the shards of gold. Much like his general skills, they rotated around his soul with an even amount of space between them. Excluding, of course, the gap — a space that waited to be filled.

Most of it would be filled today.

Kaius confirmed his skill choices, and the System reached out to him.

Much like it had seven times in the past, an energy he had no name for flooded his soul space. Kaius grinned as he watched, basking in the sheer power that radiated off the threads of energy that slipped towards his soul. It felt like a thread being woven through his veins — unimaginably uncomfortable, and slightly painful.

He was certain it could have felt far worse. For all of its deific ability, the System was not crushing his defences, instead the invading power slipped through effortlessly. Any discomfort he felt was due to the simple presence of so potent a force within his soul.

The threads reached in, tugging on his soul as they teased out some of his essence before concentrating on the gap in his class skills. Two more golden shards began to condense moments later.

Kaius watched it all with rapt fascination. Ever since he’d ignited his Aspects, he’d been suspicious that the energy that had appeared during that process might be related to whatever the System used to forge classes and their skills.

Unfortunately, he did not have the insight or ability to even dream of peeling back the System's secrets — even if he had a century to study both forces as he wished, he still doubted he would have gotten anywhere. Considering the System only took a few seconds to create the skills? He’d learnt nothing — even with his Intelligence stretching what he could do in that time.

He frowned as the System finished its work — it was still suspicious, no doubt about it. Thankfully he had a class evolution on the horizon, so he could grill his Class Guide as much as he wanted.

When the energy had fully retreated from his soul space, his latest skills pulsed, and Kaius was hit with a wave of impressions, instincts and knowledge that left him reeling. Mercurial Reversal came first.

How to flood his body with Stamina to parry swiftly, and infuse it into his blade where it would leech the physical strength of his opponent’s attacks. How he could push his will upon that stolen force and compress it at the tip of his blade.

Much like its name suggested, Mercurial Reversal was a precocious skill. Each impression and half-remembered vision was tinged with a vindictive glee — a joy at turning an enemy's own strength against them.

Runeblade Hymnfocus followed quickly behind. It broke the mould of what he had come to expect — a confusing blend of spell and ability. He knew immediately that it was something he would need to practice to use correctly. The skill would help, but infusing his blade with a cast spell was going to be no simple feat.

While it would bolster his connection to his blade, he

would have to be the one who directed the freshly cast spell into the infusion — something that would require focus and time, and a whole lot of Will.

It was a grey area that he had little practice in, and one that made him frown. It was different…and made him consider all the other oddities that he had started to notice with class Skills.

Something about them didn’t make sense.

Sure, it was possible to influence a skill with Will, or to take the reins and make use of your Resources with only knowledge, practice, and deep understanding. It was still rare though — the skill shards did most of the heavy lifting.

You would feed them with a resource, and it would guide you through directing your power to achieve the intended result. For Stamina skills, that was limited to abilities originating from the body or an object you were physically touching. Mana, in comparison, could fuel skills that originated away from the body, or persisted without further input — like his Zone of Discombobulation.

But in both cases, the skill itself did most of the heavy lifting, outside of attempts to bend it with Will.

Spellcasting was the only exception he could think of, but even then it was…weird.

Glyph-binding and freecasting stood out cleanly. Where Health and Stamina were energies that were uniquely keyed to the being who produced them, the mana produced by a soul was just…pure. It was everywhere.

Both casting styles relied on the fact that mana obeyed fundamental laws that were only loosely understood. When forced into certain shapes and forms, the energy would create an effect — and spells involved weaving those shapes externally. Those shapes took time to weave — hence channeling or lengthy inscriptions

Neither of them were guided by skills. When he inscribed, it was all him. His Skills might grant him the knowledge of new inscriptions, and bolster the strength and power of his inscriptions, and they even bolstered his control over mana — but they didn’t inscribe them automatically.

If that was it, it would have been simple. Spells involved direct weaving of mana to create an effect. Simple! Except they didn’t always work like that.

Sorcery stood out like a lone tree in the middle of the field. Much like the other pillars of spellcasting, it involved weaving mana to create an effect. Except it was automatic. The Skill did all the work — the mana still needed to be channeled and woven externally, but it was guided and directed the whole time. At least, that is what he understood — he would need to ask Ianmus to get a better understanding of the subtleties.

As much as he would have loved to simply set sorcery aside as an anomaly that didn’t count as ‘true’ spellcasting, it had all of the other hallmarks. It progressed differently from ‘normal’ Skills — abilities — and involved projecting and manipulating mana externally. Even his glyphs were like that. He might inscribe them from within his body, but the actual spell casting occurred within his glyph, not his mana pathways.

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Sorcery skills, much like his own glyphs, went broad instead of deep. When his new Mercurial Reversal grew to the second tier it could develop in any number of ways — it might, for example, develop the ability to unerringly target his targets' vulnerabilities. What it wouldn’t do is give him a new ability to deliver a dazing punch with a separate stamina cost.

Ianmus’s Sunbeam would, just like his glyphs did. They would earn new spells that would be radically different from each other, and would have their own costs.

Spells and abilities had their own positives, of course. A third tier sorcery skill would likely offer some immensely strong spell, with an equally high cost — but the cheap and fast option of a first tier spell backed by third tier power would still exist. A third tier ability however, would be more power efficient, and could be used instantaneously compared to a spell of the same tier — but there would be no cheaper first tier variant available.

So sorcery was definitely spell casting. Even if it was automatic like an ability.

That confusing juxtaposition was something he could begrudgingly handle — but free casting didn’t even have direct class skills!

Why? He had no bloody clue — he doubted anyone did. Sure, there was metamagic, but they weren’t spells — they were bloody abilities. They influenced mana internally to alter the effects of spells, and it happened automatically, and they were available for glyphbinding, free casting, and sorcery.

Then there was the fact that sorcery and free casting used magic in a way that looked awfully similar — woven threads, and a whole lot of focused intent.

And that his own glyphbinding skills provided spells in a similar way to sorcery skills.

The system had outright told him that he would need a focused class to develop glyph-binding himself without the system’s aid. A research class, at least partially.

Was that really all that different? They knew for a fact that there were three pillars…but the sigils that Ianmus were working on looked awfully distinct from sorcery and glyph binding.

The thought jolted through him. He needed to talk to Ianmus, now.

Kaius snapped open his eyes, finding his team meditating much like he had just been. Restless with the curiosity that was boiling over in his mind, he shifted forwards and nudged their mage on his shoulder.

Ianmus jolted, scrambling for his staff in shock, only to relax when he saw Kaius.

“Sorry to startle you — I just got stuck thinking about some of the inconsistencies with Skills, and I had to ask you something.”

Ianmus’s eyes brightened. Thankfully, the rest of their team wasn’t disturbed by the noise, Immersed as they were in digesting their new Skills.

“Oh? That’s been gnawing at me too — ask away.”

“Free casters — what sort of classes do they normally have? If they don’t have any direct casting Skills, they must get something else, right?”

“Ah.” Ianmus grinned wide, his avarice and hunger for knowledge palpable. “I see you have stumbled upon the question that has kept me up at night for the last month. Most of them are researchers — almost all pick up a sorcery skill or two to serve as both examples to study and for easy use. The few who take on a more combat focused role like me tend to take a few more sorceries and switch out research focused abilities for metamagics.”

Kaius stared at the man. That sounded almost exactly like what the system had suggested would be a good option for him if he decided to go with a pure glyphbinding class.

His silence only seemed to energise the mage.

“Do you want to know what else

is fascinating? Not only is ‘free casting’ lacking in any direct class skills, there doesn’t even seem to be a type bonus for it! Plenty of classes reference it — mine does, but if you take a step back they never refer to it as a wholly separate entity.”

Rotten roots, he’d been right.

“They might be the same thing.” Kaius shook his head, staring up at the ceiling. “It still feels off — even if it's all sorcery, why are the skills so hands off compared to my own? It’s not like I can feed my Skills with Mana and have inscriptions appear without being involved further.”

“They aren't all like that. Completely automatic, that is.”

Kaius snapped back to his friend, who gave him another grin.

“It’s common to see, but only because most mages only have Common classes. The more a mage has mastered the fundamentals of free-casting — weaving mana — the higher rarity classes and skills they obtain, and generally the less hand holding they get from sorcerous Skills. My skills teach me the weaves, and bolster my spells' effectiveness, but I'm still creating them myself — albeit with assistance.”

He paused, digesting the mage's words. At the very least, if free casting was a part of sorcery, than Ianmus’s new sigils might be a pillar in their own right.

“What do you think?” Kaius asked.

“I think that free casting might just be a facet of spell-casting as a whole. Regardless if my sigils end up being a pillar, if you had the knowledge to design new glyphs and spells on the fly, and used your mana manipulation to inscribe them, isn’t that also free casting?”

Kaius nodded slowly, before he leaned back and sighed. Something still felt off — it was all well and good to have their understanding of magic shaken up. Afterall, they’d only learned that there were at least three pillars of magic from the phrasing of his Honour — they’d just assumed the others included free casting because of how it was defined on Vaastivar.

It felt like the System was prodding them — encouraging people to take manual control of their Skills and to influence them with their Will and intent. It wasn’t just spells either — his Hymnfocus was proof that not all abilities were automatically controlled. At the very least, it was the only reason he could think of for Skills to come with an innate understanding of how they worked, even the ones that were completely automatic. He just didn’t know why. There wasn’t a penalty if you didn’t — you used a skill and it grew, and when you evolved your class the skills might evolve with it. But if your bloody skills completely changed then fully understanding how skills functioned was a waste of bloody effort!

Ianmus cocked his head, frowning with concern. “We have discovered that everything certain about magic might be wrong, and that I might be able to discover a new pillar for myself — yet you are glum. What’s wrong, my friend?”

He winced. “Sorry — I am happy for you, truly, and I’m excited about the possibilities. It’s just that I’m worried. A few too many things are starting to look like System is putting an awful lot of weight on something that isn’t actually necessary for skills to develop and progress.”

“So?”

“Who's to say it will stay that way forever? Plenty changed when I moved the integration forwards a stage; I doubt the next time will be any less of a shake up.”

“Well then, we best get practicing so we have a head start then, shouldn’t we?”

Kaius looked over; he hadn’t realised that Porkchop had been listening — Kenva was too, nodding along to Porkchop’s words.

It was a fair enough point — at the very least, they weren’t completely helpless. Rieker would listen to his suspicions. Besides, he doubted the system would just outright remove its assistance — that would be a complete slaughter.

Porkchop rose to his feet and ambled to the centre of the safe room.

“Come, if we’re going to be here for a day or two, we may as well get a feel for these Skills.”