Chapter 54: Skill Bubble
Tyler stared at the empty space above his hands. The sheer realization that he could extract skills directly from monster components left him completely frozen.
He recalled the immense kinetic force of a slime activating its *Bash* skill. It was on a completely different level compared to when the creature simply threw its gelatinous weight around unactivated. He remembered the heavy, wet mass launching through the air, entirely missing him, only to violently slam into a thick tree trunk. The sheer impact had shuddered through the solid wood, shaking the high branches as if the trunk were on the verge of snapping in two. And the higher-level slimes generated even greater concussive force.
"This is amazing," he whispered, sliding his bare palm across the cold, flat top of the steel hammerhead.
A sudden theory took shape in his mind. He willed the heavy hammer back into his inventory and clamped his hand tightly over his mouth.
*I mean, it all kind of makes sense when I think about it. It looks like... the Assimilation skill found enough dormant mana engrams to draw out the skill. Those mana engrams being the monster's dark mana found within the core. It's definitely possible.*
He summoned the hammer, letting the dense weight drop back into his grip. *I need to test something.*
He blinked hard. A faint blue glow instantly illuminated his eyes. The dark room flooded with the dense, drifting currents of colored mana. He focused his glowing eyes intensely on the steel weapon. Across the polished metal surface, tiny blue particles clung tightly, glowing faintly like small, trapped stars.
His eyes narrowed to sharp slits. *This just looks like ordinary mana. I thought I could see the actual mana engrams.* He turned the heavy weapon over, inspecting every inch of the long shaft and rectangular head for any visual difference.
He let out a long sigh, and the hammer dissolved back into his inventory. *I don't even know what these things would look like, even if I saw them.*
He looked around the small inn room. The air was thick with glowing particles floating aimlessly like heavy dust motes. The static, vibrating clusters of dark mana were scattered sparsely, drastically outnumbered by the rich, flowing currents of blue, white, and red particles.
He let his weight fall backward onto the mattress. *This is all mana, but why is it all in different colors? Are there different kinds of mana for different classes?*
He scratched at his scalp, his brow pulling down in deep thought. Another idea clicked into place. He extended his open hand toward the ceiling, staring up at the glowing clouds.
*Let me try Mana Absorption.*
He mentally activated the skill. Instantly, a deep, pulling sensation opened across the skin of his arms, his mana orifices flaring to life, acting like tiny vacuums drawing inward.
His eyes stretched wide. The scattered, multi-colored particles in the air suddenly shifted their trajectories. They curved through the empty space, pulling rapidly toward his forearms. All of them, red, blue, white, and dark, dragged seamlessly toward his skin.
"Wow," he breathed. A quiet chuckle escaped his throat.
He realized, in that exact moment, that he was likely the only person alive who could physically see this process. Everyone in the world knew how to draw mana, but they operated completely blind. Only he was watching the pure mechanics of the world unfold.
He rolled his shoulder, cupping his extended hand. The glowing streams of particles altered their path, pooling directly into his open palm.
*My mana is completely full, so I'm not really trying to absorb it. I just wanted to see if I could physically draw it toward me using the skill, and it works.*
He squeezed his eyes shut, pushing the skill to its absolute limit. He homed in on the exact network of mana veins and orifices mapped beneath the skin of his palm. He poured all his mental focus into that single extremity until the rest of his body went entirely numb, leaving only the heightened, buzzing sensation localized in his hand.
He slowly parted his eyelids. His breath hitched sharply.
Hovering just millimeters above his skin was a tight, swirling sphere of concentrated mana. A dense mix of colors rotated wildly in the center of his palm.
He bent his elbow, bringing his cupped hand right up to his glowing blue eyes. The particles were vibrating violently while simultaneously spinning in a rapid orbit. The harder he focused, the more his visual field seemed to magnify. The individual glowing specks weren't perfect spheres; they were slightly elongated, distinctly oval-shaped. The pure mana and the dark mana chased each other in a continuous, heavy rotation.
He understood exactly how he was shaping it. He wasn't using all the orifices in his palm at once. He was rhythmically opening and closing specific ones in a tight, continuous circle, like rapidly stirring a spoon inside a cup of water. It forced the particles into a contained vortex.
*This looks incredible,* he thought.
His heavy fascination broke into a sudden, deep frown. A single dark mana particle and a bright pure mana particle veered off their orbital path. They slammed directly into each other.
The exact millisecond they collided, a sharp, crackling spark of electricity ignited. The spark chained instantly, webbing through the compressed sphere of colored mana in a blinding network of raw electrical currents.
Before Tyler's muscles could even twitch to react, the sphere detonated. A sharp, percussive crack echoed in the quiet room. The concussive pressure of the miniature explosion slapped hard against his face, violently blowing his hair backward as the mana completely vanished into thin air.
"Whoa... what the hell just happened?" he muttered, his eyes wide with lingering shock. The faint, sharp scent of scorched air hung in the room. "It suddenly exploded."
He stared at the empty space above his hand, rapidly trying to process the violent flash. *The dark mana and the pure mana clashed, and it caused a chain reaction. It's almost like... they don't mix at all.*
He slowly closed his empty fingers into a fist, resting his hand on his thigh. *Which is strange, because I have both types of mana inside me. Is it different because it's contained inside my body?* He paused, his brow pulling down in deep concentration.
*I can't really make sense of it. It looked like the second the dark mana and the pure mana made contact, it caused a violent reaction. But at the same time, James said that when people eat monster meat, they gain dark mana. And those people obviously have pure mana naturally inside them. So in a way, they become like me, but slightly different because they use monster skills and emit a deadly aura.*
He leaned forward, resting his elbows heavily on his knees and pressing his chin against his steepled fingers. His glowing blue eyes tracked the ambient mana floating in the room.
The dark particles behaved entirely differently from the pure mana. The pure particles maintained a constant, fluid motion, dancing and drifting through the air like light dust motes. The dark mana, however, either vibrated statically in place or moved with a heavy, sluggish crawl.
Suddenly, he noticed a clear interaction. A small particle of dark mana drifted forward. Directly in its path floated a bright blue particle of pure mana. Just before they could touch, the dark particle sharply veered far to the left, aggressively altering its trajectory to create distance.
Tyler frowned. *They are literally avoiding the pure mana. Almost as if they're conscious.*
"Like they're aware," he muttered out loud, his spine straightening. *What do I do with this? I mean, it seems like if I draw in ambient dark mana and pure mana and force them to mix outside my body, it causes a violent explosion.*
He tried to think of a practical way to weaponize the reaction, but his mind just kept returning to the volatile spark detonating mere inches from his face. His eyebrows shot up as a new idea hit him.
*Wait. Since the mana is already mixed within my body, I can just expel my own energy and see what it actually looks like, right? I mean, even when I push my mana into my surroundings or my weapons, it doesn't explode. I need to know why.*
He opened his palm, focusing on his core, and actively pushed his internal mana outward. Doubt crept into his mind, despite the different feeling inside his body since absorbing the cores, he couldn't actually see the dark particles within his own veins like he could on the monsters.
A cluster of distinct, silver-gray particles seeped from his skin, hovering directly above his palm. His eyes narrowed. He pulled his hand closer to his face to inspect them.
Unlike the perfectly oval pure mana, these silver-gray specks had no fixed shape whatsoever. They continuously warped and rippled, stretching into ovals, ballooning into spheres, and momentarily spiking outward. They wobbled chaotically, carrying the fluid, unstable property of heavy water.
*Huh,* Tyler thought. *It's completely different from the others.*
He watched closely as his silver-gray particles interacted with the ambient room. One of his wobbly particles drifted directly toward a static speck of dark mana. Instead of colliding or repelling, the silver-gray blob completely enveloped the dark particle, absorbing it instantly.
Tyler bobbed his head backward slightly, keeping his intense focus locked on the reaction. A split second later, the same silver-gray speck drew in a blue particle of pure mana, effortlessly swallowing it whole.
His expelled mana was doing this across the board, actively consuming both types of energy in the air. Yet, visually, the silver-gray blobs remained exactly the same. They did not increase in mass or alter their erratic, shapeless forms.
*What's going on? My particles are acting unnatural. They're drawing all kinds of mana toward them and just eating it.*
He watched his energy consume dozens of ambient particles. *They aren't avoiding each other at all anymore. It's almost as if the ambient mana is actively drawn to mine. Either they're moving toward my particles, or my particles are creating a vacuum. But either way, there's absolutely no rejection.*
A reckless, dangerous urge gripped him. *I have to test this.*
His eyes narrowed as he focused all his mental weight on his outstretched hand. Replicating his previous experiment, he rapidly opened and closed the mana orifices in his palm in a tight, sequential circle, forcing the expelled energy into a rapid spin.
The silver-gray particles locked into a violent vortex, dragging the surrounding ambient dark and pure mana directly into the eye of the storm. The collision rate was staggering. His expelled mana consumed the ambient particles at an exponential speed.
In the blink of an eye, the swarm of chaotic, silver-gray specks violently compressed. They merged together, forming a single, solid, shapeless bubble of heavy, liquid-like energy floating directly above his skin.
Without warning, Tyler's arm jerked downward. He clamped his teeth together, the muscles in his forearm bulging as he fought the sudden, crushing physical weight.
*Whoa!* he thought, his heart spiking. It felt like he was holding up a solid cannonball, yet his palm was touching absolutely empty air. A massive, localized gravitational pressure bored heavily down onto his hand.
*Why is it suddenly so heavy?*
The shock broke his concentration. His Mana Sight instantly deactivated. His eyes widened drastically. Stripped of the glowing blue filter, the dense, dark-gray liquid floating above his palm did not vanish. It remained perfectly visible in the dim moonlight. The energy had completely materialized into a physical substance.
*I can actually see it without the skill. But where the hell do I even put this thing? I feel like if I drop it, it's going to shatter the floorboards.*
A massive system panel flared into existence right in front of his face:[CONGRATULATIONS! THE USER HAS ACHIEVED THE IMPOSSIBLE. A NEW ALCHEMICAL INGREDIENT HAS BEEN CREATED. THE LIQUID CAN BE MIXED WITH ANY METAL, GRANTING AN 80% CHANCE TO DRAW A SKILL DURING CRAFTING. WOULD THE USER LIKE TO MIX THE INGREDIENT USING ALCHEMY?]
"Yes," Tyler groaned out loud, his arm shaking from the intense pressure.
The heavy, dark liquid instantly vanished from his palm. The crushing weight evaporated. His arm dropped dead to his side, smacking against the mattress. He let his upper body collapse backward, hitting the bed flat on his spine. The wooden frame groaned under his sudden weight.
A secondary panel immediately popped up in his vision: [CHOOSE A METAL].
A grid displayed his available raw materials. He dragged in a deep breath. *I choose steel.*
The panel dissolved. He slowly pushed himself back into a sitting position, staring at his empty hands. *I actually created a completely new ingredient?* He let out a long, shaky exhale.
[PROCESS COMPLETE]
*Wow. So what I just did... I actually created an ingredient that massively increases my chances of getting a skill on a weapon. Did that liquid contain a hyper-concentrated amount of mana engrams? I need to check it out. I wanted to craft another weapon anyway.*
"System, craft Katana."
The interface shifted:[CRAFTING]. The loading bar began its slow, steady crawl across the screen.
Tyler rubbed his sore forearm. *That liquid was incredibly heavy. To think that my own mana could physically condense like that.* He reactivated his Mana Sight, sweeping his glowing gaze across the room to check his remaining expelled particles. The few silver-gray specks left behind were floating normally again. They hadn't grown in size and were no longer aggressively absorbing the ambient air.
*Huh. It's actually not doing anything anymore. Does it have a specific capacity it can absorb? Maybe by spinning it like I did earlier, I literally forced my particles to over-consume, compressing them into that physical liquid.*
[CRAFTING SUCCESSFUL]
Tyler held out his hands. The weapon materialized with a heavy, satisfying weight across his palms. The long, slightly curved silver blade of the katana gleamed flawlessly in the moonlight. He inspected the grip; it was tightly wrapped in high-quality brown leather.
His eyes narrowed in thought. *Did the system use my Hexhorn hide for the leather wrap? It wasn't explicitly in the recipe requirements.*
He ran his thumb gently across the flat spine of the weapon, feeling the cold, dense steel. Carefully, he turned the blade over and barely rested his fingertip against the razor-thin edge. He instantly pulled his hand back. The steel bit deeply into his callouses on contact. If he had applied even a fraction of force, it would have sliced him to the bone. It was terrifyingly sharp.
A glowing notification chimed in front of him:
[CONGRATULATIONS. THE USER HAS CRAFTED THEIR FIFTH ELITE-GRADE WEAPON. +2 EXTRA POINTS]
*An elite weapon,* Tyler thought, his eyebrows rising high. Driven by anticipation, he focused on the katana, bringing up the localized status bar:
[ATK: 100 - 150]
[AGI: 10]
"Whoa," he muttered, staring at the raw numbers. "That is a massive attack power. It even boosts my agility by ten points." He gripped the leather hilt tightly, raising the long blade with a single hand. *This thing could literally one-shot me, and I'd be dead.*
[ENOUGH MANA ENGRAMS HAVE BEEN DETECTED TO DRAW OUT A SKILL. WOULD YOU LIKE TO DRAW A SKILL?]
Tyler's face split into a wide grin. *Right. That heavy liquid.*
"Yeah," he said aloud.
The katana vanished securely into his inventory. After a few agonizingly slow seconds of processing, the crafting menu cleared. Tyler immediately summoned the sword back into his grip. A new line of text hovered directly beneath the weapon's stats:
[SKILL: RETURN - A PASSIVE SKILL THAT ALLOWS THE USER TO INSTANTLY CALL THE SWORD BACK TO THEIR HAND AS LONG AS IT IS WITHIN A 200-METER RADIUS.]
*Call back the sword?* Tyler's brow furrowed in slight confusion. *And it's a passive skill.*
He opened his grip, letting the katana fall. Before the heavy steel could even strike the wooden floorboards, a distinct, buzzing vibration sparked in the center of his empty palm. The falling sword abruptly halted mid-air, reversed its momentum, and snapped violently upward. The leather hilt slammed heavily right back into his waiting hand.
"Wow," he whispered, a thrill of adrenaline shooting through his chest. "This is awesome. But I thought I could only use skills while I was physically holding the weapon?"
A small panel flared to clarify:
[ONCE THE USER EQUIPS THE SWORD, A MANA ENGRAM LINK IS CREATED, ALLOWING THE USER TO PULL THE SWORD BACK EVEN AT A FAR DISTANCE.]
"A link, huh?"
Tyler quickly activated his Mana Sight and opened his hand, dropping the sword a second time. The moment he willed the blade to *Return*, a glowing, silver-gray string of pure energy materialized in the air. It extended directly from his palm, sinking deeply into the falling steel. The tether snapped taut, instantly yanking the heavy blade perfectly back into his grip.