—

  Skills were more than just their levels and their initial descriptions. A simple Common [Double Stab] in the hands of a dragonslayer [Blademaster] could outperform a Rare skill from a mere third realm [Warrior].

  Epics and Legends… didn’t quite follow this line of thought.

  A third Realm using an Epic was more akin to a realm 0 adventurer using an artifact crafted by the Archmage Tyrant. They didn’t have control, didn’t know how the enchantments worked and didn’t have the capability to maximize the usage of such artifacts.

  Gamielle had been thinking that Ryan had just scratched the surface of his Epic. That he was still in his ‘pull the trigger and activate the skill phase’, that he was still learning how the skill went.

  She was both right and wrong. Right in the sense that Ryan still largely used his Epic like a blunt instrument. Wrong in the sense that he hadn’t been leveling his Epic. How was one supposed to tell the difference between someone getting better control of their Epic versus the Epic developing on its own?

  She couldn’t, it wasn’t a distinction she could make until now.

  Ryan’s aura was condensing and expanding wildly, both stretching out and putting pressure on his surroundings. Gamielle could see it now, a feedback aura in his Epic. It was doing something beyond the scope of what she’d expected.

  “What level is your Epic?”

  “Level 4.”

  “ You didn’t think that was appropriate to tell me?!”

  “How was I supposed to know that was going to be important? Aren’t skill levelups supposed to be a good thing?”

  Gamielle would strangle him later. Ryan’s lack of knowledge here wasn’t actually his fault. He pulled the flaring aura back, struggling to wrestle it back in. His control was good, a genius for a realm three adventurer. Unfortunately, the Epic

  There weren’t enough low realm adventurers walking around with leveling Epics for Ryan to understand how ridiculous that was. Gamielle turned to him.

  “Artigan, listen to me, I need you to tell me your skill name and description now.”

  To Ryan’s credit he didn’t hesitate.

  “[Unrelenting Aura of intimidation] (Epic, passive, active)

  ”

  There was bravery, then there were skills that actively pushed you to do crazier and crazier things. Ryan paused as he saw her look of horror.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “How are you even remotely alive? No, scratch that, how have you even maintained your sanity?”

  Ryan just shrugged. The casual demeanor now sent a shiver down Gamielle’s spine. How much had the skill warped him? , Gamielle should have demanded he tell her his skill immediately.

  No, her mother would have stopped her from doing anything.

  Ryan saw her worry. For some reason he was the one trying to reassure her.

  “At first I was told to follow plans I made from Earth. It made sense at the time, the Epic doesn’t impact me on Earth.”

  A shallow analysis by someone that probably got their Epic skill late in their realms. She knew who Barry was. It was likely the orc had received his Epic after realm five. That realm grade was fine at handling an Epic.

  Ryan had started with it at realm two.

  A skill that constantly rewarded recklessness would eventually condition the mind to act a certain way. You would be stuck on a never ending path of pushing forward and never taking a step back. A death sentence if it weren’t fixed. Gamielle just had to figure out a way to slow the progression of his Epic down.

  The descriptions of dimension wide bonuses… This was partly her fault, those damned videos.

  Ryan continued, he grabbed at a wild tendril of red aura and pulled it back, then he focused on it and it dispersed. Gamielle blinked at the increased level of control.

  He was calm, a little disturbed by her maybe, but he was actively pulling his red aura back with strands of light blue. It wasn’t just a brave front, the red aura started dissipating through his control.

  “Then I faced down Pinkie and realized this is who I am. If both worlds are destined to be doomed then I’d rather go down doing what I believe is right. Gamielle–”

  He met her eyes. Her mother had tried to shatter Ryan’s resolve so she could build him up from zero. Instead, Ryan had doubled down on it.

  “My mind has never been clearer. I might make mistakes but I don’t regret what I’ve done.”

  “Ah.”

  She saw it now, Ryan had found his own way to balance out his Epic. It wasn’t control. Nobody at his realm could force an Epic like that. Instead Ryan guided it, using his own beliefs as the pointer. As long as the Epic didn’t force him to deviate from his own beliefs he would embrace it wholly.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  A tenuous balance, but that sort of madness could explain why it had grown so much.

  Gamielle nodded at Ryan’s resolve and turned to Larix.

  “Larix, your diagnosis?”

  The prodigy of cultivation had stayed silent during the conversation. Simply observing the two. Larix had kept a healthy distance from Ryan but now he seemed to want to learn more about the crazy adventurer in front of him.

  “His aura has already burned through most of his channels in his right arm. There’s no realignment possible without drastic use of regeneration potions and a [Healer] that truly understands Trialist bodies. The rest of his body is fine, though it is rapidly progressing to specialize in aura use. The Trial System is likely to adapt his body into a hybrid aura and qi user. Throwing away mana channels entirely.”

  Ryan looked a little disappointed. Gamielle rolled her eyes.

  “It doesn’t mean you won’t be able to use magic, just that your body won’t have the same talent in magic as other adventurers. Don’t be greedy, magic isn’t something you should leave your options for. Not when you have too much to work with already.”

  A few different scenarios went through Gamielle’s mind in a second. There was a lot they could do. They could isolate the arm and let Ryan develop naturally. She could slow his progress down and observe his Epic… no he’d never agree to that.

  They could bring in a [Healer] and reset his entire advancement into the fourth realm. That was the safer bet.

  In the end the choice would have to be his. Gamielle sighed.

  “What do you want? Do you want the traditional path and leave your options open? Or do you want to risk it and see if we can go for a partial class mutation? There’s no guarantee it would work, and there’s a possibility you might end up with a complete class mutation. If it works you might end up with the best of both worlds, if it doesn’t… well, there’s the possibility of you becoming like Atellion. But then you won’t be able to solo the Trials anymore.”

  Ryan grinned at her.

  “Is that even a question?”

  –

  Gamielle and Larix went off to discuss their plans for his progression. It was such a silly question he wasn’t sure why she’d asked. He’d heard of mutated cases like Atellion the [Null Mage]. If he could isolate something like that to a single limb while keeping his other options open? Of course he would go for it.

  He did agree with her on the idea that a pure aura specialization was a terrible idea. Gamielle hadn’t even brought it up as an option because it was so bad. His Epic built up quicker when he was observed by many. If he hadn’t had time to build up his aura and he had to fight a singular opponent then he’d be too weak.

  Gamielle popped up in front of him and signalled with her head.

  “Alright, follow me. Try to disperse your aura as much as you can.”

  Ryan walked as Gamielle hovered. He saw her wave a hand and a bubble protruded from a distance. Probably invisibility.

  They traveled through the Obsidian Sect as Ryan stared in wonder at the elaborate buildings once more. Gamielle shooed away people that tried to get close.

  As she kept shooing them, some of the older people seemed to get the gist. They dragged away the others so that Gamielle was left alone. The sect members were still staring but they let her float on through.

  Did over nine thousand people truly know who Gamielle was? It sounded insane, especially since she hinted that many of the people here weren’t isolated to the sect.

  They walked through the courtyard and out of the more traditional looking houses.

  “These are classic eastern style buildings aren’t they? Did the Witch Tyrant build it like this?”

  He’d noticed how the Witch Tyrant’s statue was the most prominent amongst the Tyrants. It still seemed out of place considering the Tyrants had no love for their home nations.

  “Yes, the courtyard style buildings are called Siheyuan in Chinese but that isn’t why we built them. If you’d noticed, the traditional style buildings are newer than the apartment complexes.”

  “I thought that they were just maintained more. Then why did you build them?”

  Gamielle hummed, pondering on whether she should even answer the question.

  “Do you remember the eleventh Realm expansion?”

  “I remember, the one where nothing much happened? The Realm quest was stopping something or someone called Lu Baizhen?”

  Not all Realm expansions ended in disaster. Sometimes the monsters or the people from the new Sector were peaceful or gave up quickly. Nobody understood what had happened with eleventh expansion beyond the fact that the Tyrants had dealt with it quickly.

  “He was a cultivator,” Gamielle said, “we managed to sweep up the remains of Sector Eleven of most of the cultivation manuals it had and that was what helped propel the Obsidian Sect. We pay respect to that culture by at least holding some of their traditions.”

  Ryan stopped in surprise, he knew the name Lu Baizhen but he hadn’t heard of anything beyond what was known on the internet. What people did know was that there was a an attack that had split miles and miles of land.

  Then the quest had ended.

  “What really happened to him?”

  The internet was split on this. Some said that the Tyrants talked down Lu Baizhen and he still walked among them. Most said that Lu Baizhen refused to step down from the system quest and got killed by the Passive Tyrant instead.

  Gamielle made a disgusted face.

  “The Passive Tyrant picked a fight with him first. It escalated until it became a fight to the death. It was such a waste.”

  She muttered the words loudly for all the sect members to hear. There was a procession of people going ahead and clearing the way for her.

  “Do you or the Tyrants have a recording of the fight?”

  “I’m not recreating the fight just for your entertainment. You think I use my mana for such frivolous things?”

  She ignored his look. They’d stopped in front of another courtyard. Large traditional walls surrounded the courtyard, shimmering runes indicating some sort of defensive barrier. Likely to keep the attacks within.

  Gamielle narrowed her eyes as if peering through them.

  Ryan coughed.

  “What happened to the other cultivators in Sector Eleven?”

  “There weren’t any. Sector Eleven is too hostile for weaker cultivators or any sort of normal civilization. Lu Baizhen was alone, cultivating in a cave when the Trial System scooped him up and brought him along. His world was likely larger than The Realm by at least a magnitude.”

  Now that boggled the mind. The Realm was already nine times larger than the surface area of Earth, and Earth was mostly water too. The Realm wasn’t, Ryan tried to imagine a world that was an entire magnitude larger.

  He couldn’t, it really was an impossible thing to imagine.

  Gamielle started making some plucking motions in the air. Then there were a bunch of giggles and screams as three teens came flying out of the compound, hoisted by telekinetic magic. Ryan recognized Taris, the dwarven teen from earlier, along with two other humans. Taris was glaring at the other two.

  “I told you this was a bad idea.”

  Gamielle raised a finger.

  “If you thought it was a bad idea then you shouldn’t have done it, take some responsibility little Taris.”

  “I’m not little for my age! That’s speciest!”

  “Act like a child, get treated like a child.”

  The three children went flying into the hands of the adults that were keeping a respectful distance. Gamielle nodded at them as they grabbed the shrieking kids that knew they were in trouble.

  “Double duty on cleaning for a week, no, make it a month.”

  “Aw, no fair!”

  One of the other kids shouted but they were muffled as they were dragged away by the adults. Gamielle shook her head as they walked into the compound. The compound was a simple large square that was maybe half the size of a football field. It was split into four grounds, each with slightly different terrain. One of Emerald Grass, one of simple dirt, one with marble and another with just concrete.

  It was empty, save for Larix that was meditating in the middle..

  Gamielle appeared behind Larix as Ryan stepped closer. The cultivator was breathing in a rhythm. As Ryan got closer Larix opened his eyes.

  “Being able to utilize aura isn’t uncommon. What is rare is having a body that specializes in it. Often aura is a supportive force to qi or mana. The goal with yours is to make your arm work the other way round. Your aura will be the focus. Magical and physical skills will take a backseat. Some not being able to work at all with your arm. Those that do will be tinted in your aura. It can be a powerful path but it is a risky one. Aura is by far the most fickle of the three main energy systems. With yours you run the risk of being devoured by the very nature of the skill itself. If you screw up, the Trial system will force you down into a class of pure aura. Are you sure you wish to continue?”

  Ryan grinned. He really wondered why people kept asking him stupid questions.

  Patreon is 23 chapters ahead!