Excerpt from The Profound and Pretty Princess' Ultimate Guide to Cultivation, Captivation, Cuteness, and Carving Your Way to the Top, English Edition (the worst-selling guide in the history of Putijama)

On Acquiring and Absorbing Skills

Reminder: skill and spell are used interchangeably! This section only uses 'skill' for clarity purposes.

Rift-Dropped Skills – Shards

Rifts can drop either skill shards or skill discs. Shards are a single-use item, meaning only one person can absorb it before it disappears.

At most, skill shards last about two hours (or bells for you weirdos) once pulled from a rift but they often disintegrate far quicker. The recorded record minimum was 17.3 seconds post rift exit before the skill shard disintegrated. The team thought it was a good one too, a strong healing skill, and they had a buyer lined up only a hop, skip, and a jump away.

Since Tier 1-3 rifts very rarely drop shards, most teams up to Tier 3 don't carry a shard analyzer with them. Depending on the circumstance, most teams try to scan the shard with their spiritual sense to get an idea of what it might do and then choose who should absorb it while still in the rift.

Absorbing skill shards is incredibly easy. The cultivator simply presses the shard to their skin and reaches out with their magic core specifically, pushing enough mana in to activate the shard through the skin. It doesn't actually cast the skill but it ties the shard to the person. They absorb it over the next few minutes.

If the person doesn't have enough mana to activate the specific skill in the shard, bad things happen. At best, the shard is destroyed. But more often, the person's magic core cracks, crippling their ability to use mana, usually permanently, and causing lingering phantom pains. And about 20% of the time, it outright kills people.

HOWEVER, for some reason, trying to absorb the skill while still in the rift instance that dropped the shard leads to an 100% success rate, at least as reported. Even if the person doesn't have enough mana to cast the skill, they can still absorb it with no issues. Yet another reason many teams absorb any shards in the rift before exiting!

There are a few people in The Verdant Kingdom with an Innate Capability related to skill shard – or skill disc – stability. They are often paid to wait outside Tier 5 rifts that are not close to a city in the hopes any skill shard will last the few hour trip to be sold. The success rate is reported to be under 20%.

Stable Skill Shards

Extremely rarely, a rift will drop a 'stable skill shard'. Instead of the jagged, melted glass-like appearance of a normal shard, there is a solid encasing around it, almost like it's trapped in a clear glass bubble. A stable skill shard will last nearly a day outside the rift.

Stable skill shards are still nearly impossible to auction off because first, most buyers won't be anywhere near to actually purchase; and second, putting a stable skill shard through an analyzer breaks the casing, setting off the countdown clock to under two hours like a regular skill shard.

One auction, after the shard was identified as [Chain Lightning], the bidding went on for six minutes, reaching 450 gold. Unfortunately, no one noticed that the shard had already disintegrated.

In Zalano, one person had a known Innate Capability specific to analyzing stable skill shards without setting off the stable shard's disintegration timer. Unfortunately, she was murdered in anger when the Tier 4 team didn't like the answer she gave them: a bottom of Tier 1 [Tidy Up]. All but one of the five-person team were killed within a day while the last one, who sent a recording to authorities of herself trying to stop her team from murdering the poor woman, ran into a Tier 5 rift just before it cycled. No one is sure if she survived but she was never seen again.

Since then, no people have been publicly known to have a similar Innate Capability.

Rift-Dropped Skills – Skill Discs

Skill discs are similar to skill shards in that they have a ticking clock on them, it's just far longer. The vivid discs, typically bright blue or green compared to the more muted colors of shards, allow for multiple people to absorb the spell as well.

Most skill discs last about three days before disintegrating naturally. Before said disintegration, they can typically be used four to five times before they break down prematurely from usage/wear-and-tear.

An expert can usually determine the expected number of uses of a skill disc with decent accuracy. Most cities train up at least one person to be able to analyze skill discs with some degree of accuracy as some delvers will try to avoid cities that don't have one.

The record shortest time before a skill disc broke down was a bit under a day while the longest was just barely over four days.

The record number of uses for a skill disc was two on the low end, with the second use being an extremely underpowered version of the skill.

The highest recorded number of uses for a skill disc was twelve. Unfortunately, it was for the skill [Big Stretch], which makes people slightly more limber but forces them to groan loudly the entire time they use it; thus, it was considered more an oddity than a triumph.

As you might have guessed from above, the latter uses of a skill disc, unless the skill is absorbed in the rift, are weaker. No one is sure if that is because the skill disc continues to deteriorate in strength over time after it leaves a rift or if each usage weakens the disc itself. Most researchers say it's both. How much weaker is an absolute crap shoot, sometimes being essentially negligible between the first and fifth use that happened two days later or a reduction of over 50% of skill power by the third use.

To absorb the skill, it is similar to a skill shard other than it's instantaneous. There are also no recorded cases of someone absorbing a skill from a skill disc and it shattering their magic core, even if the required mana of the skill is far beyond their current pool.

Researchers are especially stumped on that one!

Store-Bought/Man-Made Skills

The way to actually acquire store-bought skills is, ya know, purchasing them. An elaborate heist might work but it's probably not a good idea!

Experts analyze the skill structures inside people's spirits and make knock-off versions or sometimes invent entirely new skills. That is usually done by analyzing enchantments on rift-dropped items to create new runes and combining them together through trial and error.

Skill purity is important when it comes to man-made skills as it will determine how much of your essence channels a skill blocks off. If you want more information on that, check out the section on Essence Channels!

But absorbing man-made skills is not a fun or even easy process. The user has to continually channel mana into the orb containing the skill, often for over an hour, to bring it into their spirit and have it properly connect to their mana channels.

Man-made skills have the same restrictions – you need to have enough mana to cast the skill to absorb it – but they essentially require you to have access to five times the amount of mana because of the cost to constantly channel mana into the man-made skill orb. Your own mana can be supplemented: most reputable skill sellers will have a way to provide you with external mana while you absorb the skill so you aren't stuck with only the weakest skills.

Always check that the mana boosters are in good working order before starting!

The door to the 'superior private skill market', actually called Gema's Grand Gems, was set in a small stairwell, the entrance below ground level. It was simple and black, not sticking out in the slightest, and looked nearly exactly like the alley door of a pizza place I worked at in college, just without the graffiti of genitals.

At the memory, I held down my longing for a good pizza as the tomatoes, at least in Velez, made for a more bitter and gloopy sauce than could be tolerated.

The general feeling of homesickness was coming less and less often but it still hit me from time to time.

Sasa was stopped at the door as he wasn't on the guest list.

I thought it might be a problem. But Inga Balodis, being the Mayor, had a Gema-approved bodyguard waiting inside the door. Sasa was more than appeased, a giant smile appearing on his face as he leapt back from the door.

The strange man decided to sit right down in the center of the alley in a meditation pose. Then, he started moving his head around and swearing.

He's playing an AAI game.

I chuckled as I headed down through the door after giving them the password: defenestration.

Hopefully that doesn't set the mood for the night.

My AAI winked out and I started to worry. I tried to explain the situation in my best Verdantese and the doorman understood my plight, bringing out a small tablet to tap away for a bit. Less than a minute later, my AAI-based communication returned.

I'd gotten much better with the language.

Just not that good.

They did block all messages – outbound, inbound, and between people inside the facility – and any and all recording. But that was to-be-expected of a secretive organization.

My new bodyguard, Tabita, a dour woman that looked ready to fall asleep, reacted quickly to intercept a man that tried to greet me from across the waiting room, her body blocking his wave like it was a deadly threat.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

While it was unnecessary, it was appreciated.

I looked around the small entrance room, a few leather chairs strewn about for those who had to wait to enter the larger facility – store? Laboratory? I have no idea what's waiting for me here – and noticed enchantments softly glowing on the gorgeous, dark wooden walls.

That was slightly unusual, at least per my limited knowledge, as most enchantments were as hidden as possible to prevent people from circumventing them; but here, it was likely a show of force as they almost certainly had more powerful enchantments that weren't so easy to spot.

Tabita took up residence at my side, hand on the sword at her hip that was slightly poking out of its sheath for a faster draw. She was at extreme attention despite her eyes looking like a six year old's half an hour before midnight on New Year's Eve, lids constantly threatening to fully close off her vision.

Shortly thereafter, an extremely pale woman began to glide towards me across the room, her arms outstretched like she wanted to give me the weakest hug imaginable. I didn't even notice her enter through the door, which surprised me.

Her skin looked like white marble, chalky with pale gray-white veins showing through, and her sunken eyes a chaotic mixture of red and black throughout, no white appearing anywhere in them.

In a word, she was spooky.

Like a banshee mixed with a vampire but dressed for prom, a slinky orange dress clashing horribly with her features and skin tone, she smiled with rather pointed teeth.

God, if I get eaten by some kind of undead instead of getting skills, I am going to haunt the shit out of Nina and Inga.

The woman, who I figured was likely the proprietor, Gema, stopped at my side, resting a willowy hand on my shoulder.

She spoke in an ethereal and rather weak voice, exactly as I expected. "Ah, ah, ah, you must be our special guest for the night. Yes, yes, yes, she told me about you. I thought you'd look, well, different. More impressive. The talk boy, the talk… Come, come, come, we'll see if you have any actual brains to go with the buns."

After she took a quick look at my backside, she gestured with her arm to follow her. I looked to Tabita who nodded, falling in closely behind me.

Can't tell if this is an act in general, a sales tactic, or just… someone that's a bit strange…

We exited through ornate double doors into a far more ostentatious hallway, easily wide enough for five people to walk abreast, richly carpeted in an ever-changing pattern of hues. I stopped and the colors around me subtly changed over time, flowing down the hallway.

To me, it seemed like they hired Selim Koval's decorator and then told them to take it all that much further. While the Pitola Adventurers Guild offices were ridiculous – and the head of the Guild's office that much more so – it paled in comparison.

There was an alcove seemingly every three paces with some kind of furniture or ornamentation. Every surface was covered in jewels, pelts, magical items, and enchantments.

Having a dagger that simply felt dangerous if you were near it as a random knickknack on a series of shelves with ten other objects that had similar power radiating off them was… a lot.

Still, it seemed like a show rather than anything else, to say 'we have enough wealth already so you'll take what we allow you to purchase'.

I've been through that type of sales pitch more than once. I guess let's see if she uses the angle I'm thinking. Man, I miss making small bets with coworkers on stupid guesses like this, need to start that up again.

We took a turn at a T-junction before entering a sitting room that could easily fit eight people. There were four chairs and two small sofas, all made of various leathers, as well as some cabinets and shelves along the walls.

While there weren't as many extravagant items as the hall, the wealth in the room still looked like it could buy at least a few mansions with plenty of change to spare.

After the quiet walk, Gema turned, pointing to a leather chair that looked like some kind of humanoid hide stitched together with fuzzy, muted pink fur on the arm rests. It was as macabre as it was opulent. The woman said, "Sit there, yes there, just there. I will be with you shortly. We shall see if you have a head for anything more than delving," she muttered, disappearing through a wall.

I examined the spot where she left to see if there was a trick but all I found was solid wood. Shrugging, I sat down in a different chair than she indicated, thinking.

That's probably how she entered earlier.

And yup, pretty sure it's the 'prove your worth' sales pitch.

When a seller can get the potential buyer to focus more on proving they are worthy to buy something, which on Earth was almost always something exceedingly expensive and rare, then the buyer is focused on making 'the right purchase' instead of deciding if they want to make a purchase at all.

I had seen it work but it was also pretty high risk because if you don't get the tone right, the potential buyer is basically going to think you're a dick.

Eh, I've had worse pitches, I'll let it ride.

Isekonsultant Tip to Thriving #68: When someone thinks they have an advantage over you in a negotiation but doesn't, it's often better to let them continue to believe that so they make other missteps, leaving you open to take advantage.

While it would likely be an annoying negotiation, I was still extremely excited to see what skills were on offer. My secondary interest was figuring out why the hell they operated by doing private rooms, but my guess was they'd reveal that soon.

A man knocked and entered through the door and bowed to me, then much more deeply to Tabita. My bodyguard inclined her head to me, indicating he was safe and this was expected.

In a deep, rich voice, the man said, "I understand you have not been to our fair establishment prior to this, correct? As such, I believe it is in your best interest, nay is a requirement, that you understand just how special our wares truly are. Skill creation is not overly difficult. But to make one worthy of the title 'Grand Gem'? That is a triumph worth celebrating!" He stomped his foot on the last word.

Over the next fifteen minutes, the Head of Skill Creation, Italo Curri, went into great detail about how they designed and refined their skills.

Most places where you could buy skills made multi-use orbs which meant many people could absorb the skill before the orb broke down. They typically lasted into the hundreds of customers if someone maintained the orbs well.

Gema's did that too. They had a vast catalog 'I could see once I was able to truly appreciate their brilliance'.

But where Gema's really shined was in researching and building new skills.

There was meticulous research, both inventing runes from scratch and acquiring rift-dropped items that had interesting enchantments to see if they had unique runes. However, trying to copy a rune from a rift-dropped item – instead of taking inspiration and pointers from it – rarely worked well.

I was genuinely curious at this point, despite it being a terribly long day, so I asked, "I can guess why, but it seems like the rift-dropped enchantment runes would be the most efficient. Why don't they work?"

Italo nodded gravely before cracking a huge smile. "That, my boy, is a great question. You see—"

Tabita cleared her throat loudly.

He startled, then gave her a small smile. "Ah, we can talk about that at a different time. There is much research I can share with you. The most succinct answer is 'we aren't sure.'"

I ignored my bodyguard, wanting to at least learn about enchantments and skill creation. If enchantments was something I could add to my business side of things, so many stories showed how lucrative it could be. And I might be able to power up my own team. "If you could forward me the research, I'd appreciate it."

Italo nodded. "I shall do that indeed."

Before letting him move on, I wanted to gauge his reaction. "My guess was rift-dropped runes are too intricate and any deviations mean they won't work. Something perfected with no redundancies means even the slightest slip and it fails. And/or that each rune is tied so deeply to the item, you need to pull out the item-specific pieces to have the core of the rune, though I guess that is taking inspiration, like you said."

He brightened and was about to say something before looking sheepishly at Tabita. "All good conjectures. Now, let us return to the lesson."

My biggest takeaway was how much skill creation was about balance. I thought back to the old project management adage of pick two: 'You can get something good, fast, or cheap, pick two'. Though, from my experience, I usually said pick one and a half on most projects.

The three main things to balance in skill creation were power, mana usage, and purity. The first two were relatively obvious: maximize the power and minimize how much mana it takes to use the skill. There were other concerns like activation time, cooldown, and the like, but they were all extremely hard to change much without ruining the skill.

But the third, purity, made me reflect on how skills generally hurt people's cultivation.

The entire point of a place like Gema's Grand Gems to customers was the skills were extremely well-made and optimized to prevent the issue most man-made spells had: they inherently made you weaker. Not when you absorbed the skill but, as man-made spells had flaws, they blocked off parts of the essence channels for your current Tier and that same part of your essence channels for any Tier after that.

A man-made skill meant leaving strength on the table. Essence meant power and man-made skills meant you could absorb less of it.

At Gema's, for an exorbitant price, the negative impact to a cultivator's combat capability was less.

If a skill was absorbed at the peak of a Tier, the impact wasn't much as essence channels were far wider the more essence you absorbed that Tier. It would still block off part of the essence channels, it was just the higher in a Tier someone was, the less each incremental bit of essence contributed to their strength.

It all reset on a Tier-up but I still couldn't understand the science of it.

Technically, someone at my sub-Tier of 1.5 should usually not absorb almost any man-made skill as it would block off a significant amount of power. A standard man-made skill blocked off 2% of someone's essence channels.

That meant, a skill absorbed at the bottom of a Tier would literally knock off 10% of the potential strength of someone like me and at Tier 1.5.

It was part of the reason I was specifically purchasing at Gema's: to obfuscate.

With my Innate Capability making it possible to absorb at least a few man-made skills each Tier without blocking off any part of my essence channels, I could likely get away with absorbing low-quality skills and not cause damage. But if I added four or five skills and there wasn't an impact on my strength while I was still mid Tier 1, people would know something was up.

Having multiple skills at Tier 1.5 despite having high-quality mentors would also make people wonder as it was generally a bad decision for those who had greater ambitions.

And while your sub-Tier was supposed to be private, strong people, or those with an Innate Capability related to strength sensing, could easily tell if they got anywhere close and had poor manners.

If people knew I bought at a place like Gema's, it would raise fewer flags that skills weren't hurting my cultivation.

Purity was the key differentiator of Gema's Grand Gems: they beat the competition by leaps and bounds on purity rating but were still able to compete on skill power and mana usage. It also meant the skills cost way more.

When I asked why they focused so hard on purity, Italo said, "If the skills are purer, they take up less of our customers' essence channels. Any harm to our venerable customers' cultivation is taken as a grave issue."

I saw through the bullshit to the most likely reason: the less one of their spells blocked off a customer's essence channels, the more room there was in said essence channels for more skills. It made actual sense for most of the rich – the more utility someone had, the more they might have something useful or to save their life in a specific moment – and they had the money to pay for it.

Gema's could sell each skill for far more and their customers were able to purchase more skills if their wallet could accommodate.

Still, it all felt a bit like a cheat, that the rich could just buy their way to power.

When I mentioned that, Tabita chimed in for the first time. Her voice was far higher and more girlish than I expected though her tone was gruff, "They say purity is crucial. And Gema's are the purest. Actual skill, not skills, is the true differentiator. The rich spread themselves thin. The powerful focus, focus on one or two skills. More skills means each is weaker."

It was an interesting thing for me to consider, especially if I needed to buy essence to power up the skills.

Should I go wide and try to get more skills or only focus on those that are a perfect fit?

We still hadn't tested if Steve could be an essence source or not. His Innate Capability made it sound like he could provide as much essence as we wanted without hurting his essence channels but I wasn't willing to do anything that might hurt him, especially until he was at least a bit higher in Tier 1, where tests would be safe.

I asked a bit more about purity. Instead of a typical man-made skill blocking off about 2% of a normal person's essence channels, Gema's typically blocked off around 1.5%, though a few blocked off as low as 0.5%.

However, that extreme purity was always for something like [Reduce Flatulence], where the standard spell was so overpowered, it didn't matter if they ramped the purity rating well past 100%. A small reduction in gas with a mana cost of 40 usually meant someone near the peak of Tier 1 could cast it at least five times and if they had any gas that could withstand that, they needed to seek medical help, not a spell.

I brought up my Innate Capability in my AAI again, making sure I wasn't about to make a mistake by absorbing a spell so early in Tier 1.5.

[Tier 1 Innate Capability: Significantly enhanced essence channels. You may absorb skills with lower cost. You may absorb up to five skills per Tier without any cost and additional skills will have a lower essence channel cost. Absorbing skills when higher within each Tier will allow for additional skills to be added for a lower cost.]

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