Chapter 650 New Skill [2]
Outside the base, Moon left the safe patrol perimeter and pushed into the outer regions where beast activity was heavier.
The Underground Bat scouted overhead. The parasite inside its brain kept it operating at a higher intelligence tier that had improved its scouting efficiency. It patrolled a wide radius above Moon's position, flagging any approaching beasts through the Curse connection before they came into visual range.
Moon activated Camouflage.
He walked forward and waited for the first test.
The first beast appeared within a few minutes.
A One-Star beast, moving through the underbrush at a leisurely tracking pace.
It walked past him at ten meters without looking up.
Moon watched it pass with a small, satisfied expression.
[Camouflage]
[Proficiency: 3%]
The proficiency ticked up. Not dramatically, but the increment was noticeable. Every successful use of the skill contributed to its refinement.
He continued into deeper territory.
The next few hours revolved around Moon walking through different beast territories, activating Camouflage, and observing which beasts noticed him and which didn't.
One-Star beasts never registered his presence. Two-Star beasts occasionally caught traces of him if he came within five meters, but usually dismissed the signals as background noise. His proficiency climbed steadily through repetition.
Then it plateaued like every other skill he had copied before.
[Camouflage]
[Proficiency: 15%]
Three One-Star beasts and one Two-Star beast passed him in a row, and the proficiency counter didn't budge. Moon paused at the edge of a small clearing and frowned.
'Repetition alone isn't going to carry me past this.'
He had hit this pattern before with other skills. The initial proficiency gains came from raw usage, but somewhere around the twenty percent mark, most skills started requiring deeper engagement to continue progressing.
Understanding the mechanism. Refining specific aspects and approaching the skill as a system that needs studying rather than as a button to press.
He sat down on a fallen log and closed his eyes with camouflage active.
'Let me actually think about how this works.'
He deactivated Camouflage.
Then he reactivated it slowly, paying careful attention to the changes as the skill engaged.
The first thing he noticed was the scent suppression. The skill didn't eliminate his smell. It masked it. His body was still producing the natural odors of a human fighter, but the Camouflage skill was creating a specific counter-signal that neutralized the smell before it drifted more than a few meters from his body.
The counter-signal drew from his mana and environment in order to blend in.
'If I can shape the counter-signal more precisely, I can make it more efficient. Less mana spent, same suppression.'
Moon did not waste time, and began to experiment.
He focused on his scent alone, adjusting the counter-signal's shape until it fit his body's specific chemical profile more precisely. The mana cost dropped noticeably, and his scent suppression felt more natural.
His proficiency ticked up. Once he felt satisfied with his scent suppression, he moved to the sound suppression next.
The skill was dampening his footsteps, his breathing, and the small noises his body produced when he moved.
After some testing, Moon figured out that the suppression was actually uniform. It was applying the same level of suppression to a loud step as to a quiet breath, which wasted mana on the quieter sounds while under-suppressing the louder ones.
Moon immediately began to adjust, shaping the sound suppression to respond more dynamically rather than statically.
Louder sounds received more suppression, whilst quieter sounds received less. Moon immediately felt the improvement in proficiency as his mana cost was reduced and his suppression became sharper.
Satisfied, moved to the mana signature suppression.
This was the most interesting one. His own aura was subtly leaking mana into the environment.
The Camouflage skill was creating a specific damping field around his body that tried to stop the leaking mana before it could propagate outward. But the damping field wasn't perfectly aligned with his personal aura, which made some of it leak out at times.
He adjusted the field's contours to match his aura's specific pattern.
Compared to the previous suppression, this was the most difficult to tackle, and it required great effort from Moon.
Fortunately, in the end, he managed to deal with it. Like the difficulty, the rewards were the greatest out of the bunch too.
His proficiency rose by the highest margin.
Finally, he addressed his visual presence.
The skill wasn't making him invisible. It was reducing the attention his silhouette drew from others perception.
Human and beast eyes catalogued shapes through pattern recognition before anything. Camouflage was subtly changing his outline in ways that made his shape harder to identify against the surrounding environment.
It made Moon easier to overlook.
He experimented with matching his outline more closely to whatever backdrop he was standing against.
When he stood in front of a tree, he shaped the visual suppression to align with the tree's specific coloration and texture patterns. When he moved through the underbrush, he shifted the suppression to match the specific chaos of leaves and small shadows.
His proficiency climbed rapidly through the exercise.
By the time he opened his eyes and stood back up, the counter had reached forty percent.
'Nice.'
The skill had opened up many doors. Now he understood it as a system rather than as a button. Every aspect could be refined independently and combined for compound efficiency.
Eager to test his new skill, and continue to improve his proficiency, Moon began pushing into more dangerous regions.
The Underground Bat flagged a Three-Star beast within ten minutes.
A large stag-shaped creature with silver antlers. It was clearly a beast with powerful perception in compared to the others he had encountered so far.
It was the perfect test target for Moon.
Moon activated Camouflage at its new refined state and began approaching slowly.
At fifty meters, the stag didn't react. Its head stayed lowered as it grazed on a patch of grass.
At thirty meters, there was still no reaction from the beast.