Jason took half a day to figure out the combination of Desolate Traversal's traction assist and powered grip. Not because it was hard to combine, but because he didn't settle for the first solution that came his way. After all, the difference between the two was that assist used sub-point amounts of Energy while grip could only increase the traction.

The obvious answer was to make grip an extension of the assist, but that would be akin to taking a volume control and adding an eleven to it. A fun gimmick that in the end is too limiting for Jason. Grip could be more than just more traction and he kept stretching it until the System agreed with him.

Behind it all, the idea was simple enough. Instead of just ramming more power into the traction side of things to amp it up till he stuck to things, Jason instead focused on being able to input more Energy into traction assist no matter what he was doing. This was not easy, but he worked his way through it.

At first adding Energy just increased traction by a massive amount, then after some work it could go in the opposite direction, and finally he was left with neutral traction. You wouldn't think that would be so important. After all, being able to walk on the ground as if it was the ground lacks a certain oomph.

Still, Jason pushed through and managed to master that use as well. This was partly so the two effects perfectly matched, but mostly because of something others might have missed. He isn't the only one who would be trying to change such things. There are more than enough magical effects that try to make a surface so slippery you can't walk on it and sure, if the enemy literally conjures up an oil slick, not much can be done about that.

If, however, the enemy only used magic to make the surface slippery, sticky, or whatever. Well, then Jason would be able to walk on along as if nothing happened. This includes if they use something where the effect is magic based so even a bottle of magical glue wouldn't be able to stop him.

Satisfied, Jason looks to the final piece of the puzzle, distanceless step. While it was connected to the other two effects, it was even more active of an effect than grip despite being more passive on his end. Despite that though, it only took him another three days to have this last piece fall into place and boy did it cause a shake up. There were System messages everywhere.

Messages he promptly ignored to get a feel for what he could now do because the three effects had really been limiting what Jason could do with the skill. While with the changes he wasn't quite able to walk on air yet, many things were boosted. Whether it was being able to enhance his jump distance with Energy or run on water and walls without any effort. Jason had suddenly gained so much.

This obviously meant the System was going to do a bit of balancing. Jason expected it after feeling the improvements, but still kept from looking while he got used to his new movement options. Soon enough though there wasn't much else he could do but check and boy howdy, the System must have worked hard on figuring things out.

{Detected merging of skill effects...

Traction Assist merged with Powered Grip to form Controlled Traction Assist

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Controlled Traction Assist merged with Distanceless Step to form Energy Movement

Low Effect Skill detected...

Attempting to balance effects

Single effect unable to be broken up

New effect generated - Water Walking

Duplicate effect detected and merged with Energy Movement

New effect generated - Powered Jump

Duplicate effect detected and merged with Energy Movement

...}

That spam went on for a bit as the System had tried a large number of effects and yet kept finding that Energy Movement encompassed them all.

{Unable to balance low effect skill

Attempting to turn effect into new skill

New skill Energy Movement created with unique rarity

Generating effects for Energy Movement

Traction Control, Distanceless Step, Powered Jump, Water Walking, Wall Walking...}

And once again the System was off to the races as it tried to figure out the limits of the skill.

{Unable to find limits of Energy Movement

Renaming skill to Freeform Energy Movement

Unable to balance Freeform Energy Movement

Searching for ways to limit Freeform Energy Movement

Synergy detected between Freeform Energy Movement and Energetic Body Reinforcement

Adding sub-skill (unique) effect to Energetic Body Reinforcement

Moving Freeform Energy Movement to sub-skill (unique) effect

Energetic Body Reinforcement judge as capable of limiting Freeform Energy Movement}

{Energetic Body Reinforcement

Accepting only purity of body and mind you have given up past concepts of self for the uncertainty of truth.

Apprentice Level 9 - 99.99%

Rarity: Truth

Type: Passive, Cultivation

Effects:

Filtering Cycle - Gain only 10% of absorbed energies but they are extremely pure

Purity of energy - Because of the purity of your energy higher levels have a lower scaling on what is needed to level up and the energy does more

Self Contained - Growth comes from within, forsaking outside bonuses in exchange for personal control. Stat bonuses from Equipment negated up to total Energy times 2.

Energized Flesh - Can hit incorporeal things for 41% of normal damage with body

Material Body (Wood) - With time your body can become like living metal or hard like a diamond

Untainted Core - No longer is your body that of a normal mortal as your heart has stopped but you haven't. Your body doesn't attempt to mimic internals so status effects like broken bones heal twice as fast because you don't have any

Sub-Skill Acquisition (Unique) - Allows one to gain sub-skills

Freeform Energy Movement [Apprentice+] - Allows use of Energy to move}

Jason was less than pleased with this change. By making his movement skill a sub-skill of his cultivation technique, it was limited to the same rank. While it did appear that adding it boosted his cultivation to the apprentice rank bottleneck, his movement skill had been at said bottleneck and Jason had been hoping to use this to push it through and into journeyman rank.

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