Tristan

[Sage of All, Archmage of History Lv. 83 -> Sage of All, Archmage of History Lv. 86]

[Skill Boost obtained]

[Skill gained: Unshackled Knowledge]

[Skill Boost obtained]

World Boss battles continued to be an excellent source of Levels, but for the first time, I could be truly happy about it without even the tiniest twinge of guilt.

While there had been casualties, and even fatalities, they had been few and far between, the result of stones and globs of lava landing in unfortunate places, or people being knocked off somewhere high during one of the many, many earthquakes the snake had caused.

The tactics had worked.

And that spoke well of how this would go in the future … or so was the hope.

So, new Skill.

Unshackled Knowledge

The limits on the possible gains of your learning are removed.

No longer will you reach the pinnacle of what can be learned given sufficient time or usage of appropriate Skills. Instead, once you hit the point where you can no longer possibly improve, your abilities will extend into the realm of the supernatural, instead, gaining new and profoundly magical effects.

I could feel a grin stretch so wide my face was starting to hurt … I hurriedly turned to look behind me, making sure Mia wasn't there.

Sneaking up on me with a bucket of ice water while I was "oogling" my newest abilities was the exact sort of thing my "darling sister" would do.

Especially after I'd done it to her three weeks ago.

There was nothing there, thankfully, but my sister being who she was, I still felt the need to check.

This Skill was quite something.

Exceeding the human limits of a field, any field, was impossibly difficult, let alone achievable in time to change anything for the current fight.

Except I also had [Focussed Approach], which had, quite obviously, been designed to work with [Unshackled Knowledge].

And once I had enough "spare" training and knowledge to reach the point where [Unshackled Knowledge] worked … well, I'd say "sky's the limit" but it wasn't, because there, quite literally, was no limit.

I might not know what exactly the System meant by "new and profound effects," but I could guess.

This was some cultivator-type shit.

The actual power level would differ, but this could potentially reach downright absurd heights.

And I knew exactly what I'd use this for. But there was some stuff I needed to do before then.

First, I upgraded [Focussed Approach], as it was the thing that let me get any use at all out of [Unshackled Knowledge] in the first place.

Alone, the latter was useless.

Combined, they were godlike.

So that was where I put the first Boost.

Furthermore, when using this Skill to learn something you have absolutely no proficiency in, you will retain the basics even beyond the end of the effect.

I mean … it's not what I expected, and I wasn't sure there were too many fields in which the bonus would still apply, considering how rapacious my learning of new skills had been, but it was still an excellent boost. Not to mention that, now, there would not be a single field of study beyond my reach.

The second Boost obviously went towards [Unshackled Knowledge].

The threshold for gaining supernatural abilities is reduced, allowing you to step into the magical before reaching the peak of human ability.

Hm. Once again, not what I expected, but still more than perfect, for two reasons.

Firstly, if I started getting "powers" earlier, then the peak I could reach would be higher.

And secondly, I'd still get "powers" even if I wasn't in a position to fully stretch my abilities into the realm of the supernatural.

With a plan prepared and joy in my heart, I marched down to the throne room, where a certain emperor was doubtlessly still hard at work, to ask for a whole lot of stuff.

***

Two days later, I was standing in yet another warehouse, though you wouldn't be able to tell that based on its appearance.

It looked more like some mad designer had mashed together a modern machine shop, an industrial revolution era factory, and half a dozen medieval workshops in a drunken frenzy, and then, the morning after, suffering from the mother of all hangovers, tried to streamline things with the customary grace and efficiency of those crippled by the aftereffects of excessive alcohol consumption.

And if I was honest with myself, that was kinda what had actually happened.

Granted, I had been "drunk" on excitement and anticipation, rather than booze, but the end result was still very much the same.

A mess.

A servicable mess, a working mess, but a mess nonetheless.

"Let me guess, there are bear traps hidden between the machines? Or one of those Saw Movie contraptions?"

I sighed. Leave it to my sister to make that joke the instant she was inside.

"Or are you going more for the 'whaler with hygiene issues' look?" she asked, gesturing at the mess of monster parts covering two of the walls, stacked on top of each other like firewood.

You know, it's weird how World Boss parts were both incredibly, impossibly valuable … and simultaneously borderline worthless.

The monsters were, quite simply, so massive that the materials they provided were seemingly limitless, the materials bought with blood, sweat, and tears now available in such quantities that no one would be able to use them up in even a hundred years.

Not to mention that there was not a single person available who could work with them, we'd looked.

Weyland, the legendary blacksmith from Dietrich's time, had been lost to the mists of time and almost certainly died of old age at some point.

The dwarves of the Alps had also vanished, leaving behind nothing but half-collapsed tunnels and empty rooms, abandoned and in ruins when he'd searched for them during a calm moment, months ago.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Hell, Merlin had even taken the top of Mount Etna to look inside and check if Hephestus' workshop was there, the way the myths had said.

Fionn had suggested searching for the Isle of Shadow in the hopes of finding Scathach, the rectoress of the school there, who had also forged Gae Bolg from the ones of the sea monster Curruid.

She should have been able to do wondrous things with the materials here, but the isle seemed to have been erased from existence at some point. Or maybe it was even harder to find in the modern day than it had been in the Fianna's age.

Magic and smithing were both arts that existed in modern day.

Magic smithing, on the other hand? That was a lost art.

But if I used [Knowledge Trade] to gather as much knowledge, skill, and muscle memory related to crafting in general to form the basis of my efforts, while also using [Burgeoning Omniglot] to learn as much of as many languages as possible, just to have more to temporarily "sacrifice" to [Focussed Aproach], boosting my abilities in any given craft to the utmost … past human limits. Or at least getting myself close enough to trigger [Unshackled Knowledge].

And boom, magic smith for the day.

That was where Mia came in. Because I would be gaining magical knowledge that I'd lose once it was deactivated, I would cheat to keep it, using [Knowledge Trade] to grant her whatever knowledge I could, then trading it back to myself after [Focussed Approach] had ended, leaving me with a great knowledge base than before, and making the next time I did this that much better.

Over and over, until we fought Leviathan, eighteen days from now.

Dietrich was also busily searching for other things that were suitable for crafting, namely, mythical metals such as adamant, orichalcum, or electrum. He was yet to find anything, though.

Well, he'd found electrum, but it had been the modern alloy by that name, a combination of silver and gold, rather than the mythical material often used by the Greek god of blacksmiths.

Though I, personally, had had a few extra tricks up my sleeves, namely, being dragged through any areas known for crafting by various ancients while using [Magical Traditions] to vacuum up everything that could be learned.

But even so, it had gotten me nowhere near where I needed it to be in order to do anything. Not on its own.

I triggered [Focussed Approach] once more, banishing everything I did not need moving forward.

Which basically boiled down to everything I'd learned to do since the System had dropped.

Magic.

A dozen languages I was fluent in, and dozens more I could muddle through with.

Swordsmanship, limited but still impressive by my previous standards.

Administration, leadership, and tactics.

First aid, wilderness survival, mining, logging, agriculture, architecture, trauma surgery, every surgery specialization related to trauma surgery, navigation, engineering, horseback riding and archery, logistics, botany …

The list was long. Too long to really itemize.

So I simply grasped all my magically acquired knowledge and stuffed it into the metaphorical lockbox at the heart of my Skill, and my mind bloomed.

Was I suddenly the equal of Weyland?

No.

But I was a hell of a lot closer than anyone else in this day and age.

I took a slow step towards the wall of monster parts, barely even aware of my surroundings, my mental energy fully devoured by the daydreams of what I could make with all those wonderful, wonderful things.

"Tristan, what about …"

I heard Mia, but I didn't perceive what she'd said, her words merely another part of the background, of the part of a world I was not paying attention to, a …

Her hand fell heavily onto my shoulder, startling me, doubly so when she spun me around until we were face to face.

"I know this is cool, but you need to use [Knowledge Trade] if you want me to help," she said.

Yeah, I couldn't ignore that.

I thought about it for a couple of seconds, almost gave her the knowledge she needed to have to act as an assistant, but I caught myself at the very last second, instead grabbing the things I would need to know later on, and shoved it all her way, taking the proffered knowledge on her end without checking what she was trading back, then turned back towards the materials and took a step.

And another.

It was as though a mountain was building itself before my very eyes, an impossible vast breadth of possibility peeling itself out of the fog of history with every new thing I spotted, with every new idea that gave me, with every foreign piece of knowledge that announced its existence in the deepest recesses of my mind …

Slowly, I reached out towards a bone shard that had once been a part of Typhon's skull, and pulled it down onto the floor, turning and dragging it towards the machines.

With every step, my world seemed to twist again, the material and the machinery seeming real, present, in stark relief even with my head remaining in the clouds … yet at the same time, everything I wasn't using seemed to fade away further …

For the briefest moment, I realized how bizarre this was, how strange, the fugue state threatening to drown me, and then I let go of that last anchor of sanity, and cast myself into whatever waited ahead …

***

I rubbed my forehead in a vain attempt to get rid of the headache that had been plaguing me for the last hour and gave no signs of going away.

What the hell had I been thinking?

Sure, I'd managed to "sneak out" some of the magically acquired knowledge that should have been temporary, but as for the knowledge itself … could I have possibly picked anything even remotely more useless than that entire fucking mess?

Rather than a properly structured collection of knowlege and skills I could use to create something useful, I'd sent Mia an exclectic collection of nonsense, which collectively I could get some use out of, but it was the equivalent of trying to cook a cake only from the shopping someone else had written, the closest thing to "proper ammounts" available being that you couldn't possibly need more than what you were supposed to buy.

Theoretically possible … but it would be a mess and inevitably require a metric ton of experimentation.

Blech.

Maybe when I took the next crack at things, I could fill in the gaps … try to, at any rate, but I doubted it.

I'd come out of the fuge with a slight headache at around midnight, but then made the mistake of immediately using [Knowledge Trade] with Mia, and what had happened?

The same exact thing had happened that always happened when I gained magic knowledge via that Skill. A monster headache.

But despite the mess "Operating trick the System" had been, I'd still found myself with three pieces of gear after I'd "woken up."

The first was a bow made from Apophis' bone, with woven sinew originating from both Typhon and Cipactli serving as the string, complete with a quiver full off arrows, the shafts made from regular, mundane ironwood, but the heads consisted of razor-sharp tooth fragments stemming from all three World Bosses, while the feathers were once again mundane, though I wasn't sure which bird they'd once belonged to.

Looking at it, I could perceive at least some of what it would do when wielded.

For starters, it was going to require a truly ludicrous amount of strength to use, more than I had, which was why I'd had Mia try it … at which point we'd found out that the bow had come with a supernatural air-based enhancement that accelerated it beyond anything either of us had expected.

Also, that was when a part of the Untersberg's security had been revealed, after the arrow had torn straight through the wall and deep into the mountain beneath, thereby "breaching the perimeter" and setting off half a dozen alarms.

The only reason that hadn't ended with everyone awake and angry was that both of us had the permissions to squelch those very same alarms before they could really get going.

All in all, a very impressive weapon. I couldn't tell exactly what I'd been thinking when making it, but the intention was pretty obvious; this was going to go to Genghis Khan eventually, either for him to use himself or give to a favored subordinate.

The second, meanwhile, was a sword made from multiple interwoven tooth fragments and strips of bone that I'd managed to temporarily render flexible somehow, lethal tips pointing backwards, allowing the weapon to be easily stabbed into an enemy while utterly savaging them on the way out. As for slashing attacks, it would be more of a savage, tearing attack than a smooth cut, but it had made sense to me at the time. Apparently.

That one was for Miller; despite several lifetimes of melee weapon experience, he didn't actually have a proper sword capable of standing up to the rigors of "modern" combat, but this blade should, at the very least, come close to reaching the requirements.

And thirdly was armor, I only recognized as being for myself due to it being my exact size.

It was made almost entirely from Typhon materials, and even without using my knowledge of magic to scan things, I was pretty darn certain that it was going to help me channel [Century Storm].

So … did it?

A quick scan revealed that it was, in fact, exactly that. A set of armor meant to let me practically meld with the storm I so loved calling down on my own head. Oh, and it was also my first proper set of armor, one I was unlikely to be able to recreate via [Modern Makeover].

I grinned and pulled everything into my storage, then began to walk to my room for some proper rest, letting my mind drift.

Although I did have a whole laundry list of cool stuff here, would it actually be enough to move the needle on the next World Boss battle and beyon- … an icy hand seemed to seize my heart in a steely grasp suddenly.

For the briefest of moments, I thought I was having a heart attack. But it turned out I was wrong. Oh, so very wrong. And the reality of the situation somehow managed to be worse.

[Catastrophe Sense], while powerful beyond belief, having granted the information that had made the successes in the World Boss battles even possible, was also a Skill I utterly despised.

When the Skill forewarned of a catastrophe, it did so in a way that left me feeling as though it had already come, hitting me over the head with sadness, depression, grief, forcing me to feel out the origin by tracing back the source of the existential dread that attempted to crush me.

And this time, the effect was worse than it had ever been, impossible to trace, to nail down to any one location, any one source, an overwhelming sensation of onrushing doom.

And it was going to hit everything, everywhere, everyone.

When the System's challenges ended, we would be in for the fight of our lives … and that battle was on the far side of combat against the biblical Leviathan.

… Fuck.

With a sigh, I rose to my feet and trapsied down to the throne room where I expected to find, as per usual, Charlemagne working, even at one in the morning.

At this point, I was going to get a reputation as a doomsayer …

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