It must have been an hour of fighting, their exchanges had increased from a few swings by Cass before Marco hit her hard to a few exchanges of them both, Dodge keeping her out of the way of his worst hits for quite a while longer before he finally pinned her.

Her Stamina was dropping, but was still in a reasonable place. Marco did not look winded in the slightest.

"Better," he nodded as she rolled her shoulder. He'd hit that spot again. How he could hit the back of her shoulder while standing in front of her… Well, she knew how he was doing it—she'd only seen him do it a dozen times now—but it still seemed like it shouldn't be possible.

Staff Mastery has increased to level 17.

"I got a level," she commented.

"I bet," he said. "That last exchange was much better."

"You still hit me in the sore spot," Cass complained.

"Guard it better if you don't want'a be hit there."

She glowered at him.

He chuckled. "But it looked like you were on the cusp of a new level for a while. You might be close to the next one too."

"Already?" Cass asked.

He shook his head. "It's more like, you had the needed experience, you've just been waiting for the right catalyst to make the next level."

"Is that how that works?" Cass asked.

He shrugged. "It's a theory. It's the one I like."

Cass glanced at Salos.

He yawned from his perch on the yard's fence. It's a theory. Not one I put much stock in.

How do you think skill levels work then? Cass asked.

Levels represent progress toward mastery of a skill. They increase with your understanding, widening the horizons that you can understand. There is no such thing as 'stockpiling' experience for a future breakthrough. Sometimes, practice is enough to raise a skill level. Sometimes, study or introspection is enough. Sometimes, novel application. These are not separate categories that all need to be advanced to gain a level.

"It's about more than just 'stockpiling' experience," Marco continued, unaware Salos had dismissed his theory with almost those same words. "I've always seen the most improvement after being pushed. Sometimes while I'm bein' pushed, but always after the fact. When I've had some time to sit down and sort out all the things crisis made me try.

"You've had plenty of crisis. Now's the time to sit down with it and see what you can learn. Look at it from other directions. Get other voices. Find a catalyst to build the next level around."

Salos looked away. Well. When he puts it like that, I can hardly argue. You are good at organizing your thoughts in a crisis, but most don't have the mental Resolve or Alacrity to do so like you do. Even you would likely find more to learn from if you reflect properly now.

"So, with that in mind, is there anything else you want to work on?" Marco asked.

Cass looked over her skills list, setting aside her lowest leveled skills.

Poison Resistance - 3

Trap Detection - 5

Foraging - 7

Herbal Concocting - 8

Arctic Shroud - 9

Jothi Language Comprehension - 10

Beacon of Hearth and Home - 12

Confounding Mists - 11

Most were her non-combat skills, which was unsurprising given how her life had been going since she'd gotten them. Some of them seemed hopelessly low.

Salos, what do I do about Poison Resistance? She asked, sharing its level with him.

How did you get a resistance skill? Salos asked.

Cass sent him a mental shrug. Ate a bad berry?

Usually, only newborns surviving deadly statuses get resistances, he said. Wait. Maybe the system assumed you were a newborn given you'd only been in the Fractured Skies a few days?

Can newborns get skills? Cass asked. She was pretty sure someone had said children under nine didn't have system access.

Generally, only resistances, Salos said. And only if they really might have died without it. You should be wary of any organization whose members regularly have resistance skills. Only the most psychotic purposefully and systematically hurt children.

Cass grimaced.

So, do I just leave Poison Resistance as it is? Cass asked, focusing back on her original question.

Eh, leave it alone for now. You still have plenty of space for skills, so there is no reason to have it removed yet. But if it's still under the First Step when you get to the Ascent, you should definitely remove it.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

You can remove skills? Cass asked.

Sure, Salos said. It's unpleasant. Like something grating against your soul. And it's worse the higher the skill level and worse again if you have Concepts applied to it, but yes, you can remove any skill. Usually, you need a specialist to do it for you. It is hardly something you just wake up one morning and do to yourself. Most temples have someone who can do it. I've heard of private clinics doing it too.

That made sense. It seemed like it would be too easy for children to pick up all sorts of strange skills and ruin their futures otherwise.

She chose not to float the idea of purposefully poisoning herself to farm levels with the skill. She didn't want Salos to agree it was a good idea.

Setting that aside, Marco was still waiting for her answer. With her Alacrity, her conversation with Salos had only been a second or two, but even so, the silence was stretching on too long.

She only had two combat skills that were lagging behind:

Confounding Mists, which she found difficult to use in practice because of its high cost and the disruption it caused to her allies, and Arctic Shroud, which was brand new and potentially had the same problem.

"Can I try a new skill?" Cass asked.

This isn't exactly private, Salos grumbled but didn't stop her.

"Oh, did you get something new?" Marco asked. "Let's see it."

Cass nodded and activated Arctic Shroud at the lowest Focus cost.

The air cooled and turned, freezing and swirling in a circle around her about three yards wide. Objectively, Cass could tell it was cold. The skill did not make her immune to its effects. It wanted to sap even her own Stamina, if it could.

But the cold didn't bother her in the slightest. It was no more notable than the fact that the yard was a little dark. All thanks to her trait:

Body of Storms

[The slyphid are spirits born of Aether and Storms, not yet set in their path. Their bodies are flesh coalesced from their overflowing potential and desire to be a part of this physical realm.

Your desires resonate with Storms.

Fly on the wind. Dance through the cold and the heat. Play in lightning and sing with thunder.

- Increased affinity with Storms]

The cold didn't bother her because her spirit body had decided that kind of physical reality was unimportant. She wondered where the line was for cold. Lightning couldn't stun her but could still burn through her body. Would her tissue still eventually break apart if exposed to too great of cold for too long? It was an unpleasant experiment, but she should probably run it sooner than later.

Maybe not in front of Marco, though. She didn't want someone who cared about her to see her attempting to freeze her arm off.

Marco shivered as he got closer. "That's frigid. How much control do you got?"

"I can increase the size," Cass said. She knew that much instinctively. She tossed the skill handful more Focus and the diameter increased a little less than half a yard. Hm. She'd expected it to increase more than that.

She doubled the Focus cost. The diameter increased by a full yard.

She doubled it again. The diameter increased another yard.

Focus: 609/657

Significantly diminishing returns then. She did not want to fill a large open space with this effect. Not unless she was prepared to spend a lot of Focus all at once.

"Anything else?" Marco asked.

Cass shrugged. "Probably?"

He nodded. "Looks like a defensive skill. Should synergize nicely with that Dodge of yours. The cold does bad things to my reaction time, and I don't know anyone who handles it much better."

All in line with what her skill said it would do.

"Can you carve out pockets for people to stand near you?" he asked.

Cass focused on a spot in front of her and willed the cold to part there. She could feel the skill ignoring her intent. But it was just cold air, wasn't it? And it wasn't that far from her.

She reached out with Elemental Manipulation and grabbed a section of air, forcing it to still and warm. The air kept trying to rejoin the flurry. The flurry kept stealing the warmth from the pocket.

Focus: 589/657

It cost a chunk of Focus, and it was an additional cost per second, but she could maintain the warm pocket. They stood there admiring the skill and her pocket of warmth for a few minutes.

And then Marco stabbed her.

"Ah!" Cass dropped Elemental Manipulation, and with it the warm pocket dissolved like sugar. "What was that for?"

He nodded. "That looked like it needed a lot of your attention to pull off."

"Well, yeah," Cass huffed.

"Then it isn't a good solution," he said.

Cass scowled, but he wasn't wrong. Just because she could do it didn't mean it was a good idea.

"But I see the ice domain hasn't dropped."

Arctic Shroud continued to swirl around her, unconcerned that none of her attention was on it.

"Passive skills are nice, like that. How long can you run it?" he asked.

"At its lowest range, assuming I'm not doing anything else?" Cass did some mental math. She had 657 Focus. At 18 per minute, that would be consumed in "About 36 and a half minutes?"

That was a solid length of time, though it would be less in practical application while she used other skills left and right.

She glanced at her Focus. Given that they'd been talking about this for about five minutes since she'd last checked, she expected it to be about 475.

Focus: 549/657

Oh, that didn't match. Had they not been standing here that long?

"No, wait." She hadn't factored in her staff, which discounted storm skills. She should knock a third of the cost off, making it more like 12 per minute. That made it more like, "54 or 55 minutes? Almost an hour?"

So, she should have about 529 Focus left.

Except that still didn't match. "Huh."

"Something wrong?" Marco asked.

"I have more Focus than I expected," Cass said.

"What's your Focus regeneration?" Marco asked. Cass must have made a face, because he laughed. "You don't know your regen rate?"

"Should I?" Cass asked.

"You really don't?" His laughing stopped. He glanced at Salos.

Salos just shook his head. "Most people recover between 20% to 40% of their Focus in an hour." For you, that would be about 2 to 4 per minute. You have that lantern from the duchess too, which wouldn't surprise me if you get another point or two per minute from that.

So anywhere from 2 to 6 points per minute? Cass asked.

He nodded. You should assume in combat that will be closer to 2 per minute than 6, as the more shaken you are mentally, the slower Focus recovers. But that should still stretch out the use of that skill by another 15% to 20%.

"Regardless, an hour isn't bad," Marco said, with a cough. "If a fight's going that long, something is going wrong. You should be able to keep it running in most encounters so long as you ration your other skills appropriately."

Cass nodded.

"If you just got that, it's probably too early to expect a new level from it, unless you already have ideas on pushing it," Marco said.

Cass hadn't expected to, but the skill reminded her of an idea she'd had back in Uvana. When she had first tested the capabilities of Elemental Manipulation and Stealth, she had hypothesized that if she could create a gusting storm around her, Stealth could hide her in it much more effectively. At the time, she hadn't been able to control enough air in a big enough area to make the idea work.

But this was exactly the kind of smokescreen she had imagined then.

She flicked Stealth on.

Marco's eyes unfocused on her as her winds pulled her presence apart and scattered her on the wind.

"Oh, that's a good trick," Marco said. And then stabbed the dead center of her ice storm.

"Oof," Cass grunted, falling on her butt and dropping Stealth. "What was that for?"

"Demonstrating why that won't work," Marco said. "At least, not like that."

Cass scowled.

"It would be a better trick once you can use that skill while fighting. If they lose sight of your staff, they won't know what direction you're swinging. If they lose sight of you while swinging at you, you can slip around them easier.

"But if you're standing in the middle of the room, hoping another mage won't blow you up, you're better off going without the shroud. Not unless you can do two things." He lifted a finger as he spoke. "One: Expand the storming area to be significantly bigger than the enemy's attacks. Two:" he lifted a second finger. "Make it so the storm isn't centered on you."

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