It was time to finally look at his new [Solidity] Skill. He didn’t think it would be particularly different as it kept the exact functionality while simply being strengthened with [Connection], but it was still good to get a read on his Skills. Actually, he should probably look over all his Skills to see if any descriptions changed, but he’d start with Solidity.
[Solidity - Level 100 - Fortitude Affinity - Passive
Soul, Mind, and Body walk parallel paths, yet are interconnected impossibly. When one is thrown out of balance of the others, the knots that tie them together seem to be impossibly thin, far too fragile for such paramount facets of one's life. By strengthening these bonds, you repair the rifts found between them.
Creates a bond between your Mind, Body, and Soul that draws them towards one another.
Level 100 evolution: Creates perpetual synchrony between the Mind and Body portions of the Soul. Malleability of all three increase with each successive level]
Surprisingly, there actually was a solid difference to consider: the function of the Skill had changed. Dei didn’t think about it before, but the Skill was originally to just strengthen the connection between his Mind, Body and Soul, with each level increasing the strength of that connection. Now that it was effectively set in stone, it didn’t need to be strengthened anymore, so what purpose did the Skill serve?
Simple, it changed gears completely. Now, it made each more malleable. He didn’t see an immediate function to this, but he could imagine one- doing stuff like what Gargeth did, in splitting his body apart into smaller bodies. Sure, he couldn’t separate his Projection from his Body anymore, but his mind could still split. This would likely help him manipulate his physical body into different shapes or help his mind adjust for when he got the hang of shapeshifting- he wouldn’t face a dissonance again like he had when his body first started growing.
Now that he thought about it, did Gargeth use a Racial Ability similar to [Fluid Shape] to create that mini-Gargeth, and supplement it with a Skill? Now that he was the same Race as Gargeth, they probably shared most Racial Abilities too, even if they might vary slightly because Gargeth was always a Union while Dei turned into one from a human. It was odd to imagine that he was the same creature as a massive ball of limbs and flesh, but he just didn’t think too hard about it.
With the main Skill out of the way, Dei decided to go down the list of Skills on his Interface, checking their description then the limits of their abilities if he could.
First was Pandora’s Box, and there was no change to the Skill description. To test the limits of it, he’d need to overfill it once more- but he’d just used a large portion of Soul mana and-
Pandora’s Box (Sealed) (273) (10520/10920)
Yea, he’d need to wait for the Soul mana to refill before doing anything. Dei didn’t want to take up more space with his other affinities because Soul was a very useful affinity, and he’d probably need more in the future.
Ever since he got his Concentration evolution for the box, he’d just been squishing the mana together more in order to avoid the agony that was training Pandora’s Box, but he supposed it was time to once more train it. A level three hundred Skill evolution… Dei was hopeful for it being a game-changer in his powerset. If he chose another Concentration evolution, he’d actually be able to form his own strings of [Connection] as well.
Next on the list was [Call for Help] but that wasn’t something he could test the limits of, and its description hadn’t changed. Same for [Good Samaritan]- couldn’t test the limits and no change in description.
[Meaningful] had no change, but he tried to push its limits once more now. It was an odd Skill in that leveling it up did literally nothing. He couldn’t add more to the messages and it wasn’t more efficient. The only way to make it better was to use higher concentrations of mana. Because of that, there was no real change to it at all.
[Pandora’s Box (Unleashed)] was still an enigma to him. He’d never used it again, not since the first time but… perhaps it was time to change that. When he was first stranded, he decided to leave the Skill alone because there was nothing he could really do with it, and didn’t know what he’d want from it. Now, with [Solidity], he had some experience in both locating and altering the Skills attached to his soul. It might be time to take another look into the Skill responsible for protecting him in his journey across the Void.
Closing his eyes once more, he tried to find where [(Unleashed)] had anchored itself to him. Because of Soulspeak, he had an instinctive understanding of where everything was if he wanted to.
Quickly, he was brought to a particular memory, one where everything was black and there was absolutely no sensation, it was his memory of the Void.
This felt different from when he was following [Connection] deeper into his soul. Before, that felt like he was diving into the abyss of his soul, while this memory felt very shallow. Connection crossed a conceptual Void present within his soul, but [(Unleashed)] had simply the surface memory of time within the Void, very different.
It felt almost like this memory was incomplete. He couldn’t see what his soul was sensing in the moment, only what his normal mundane senses perceived- ie, nothing, because they didn’t exist at the time.
This was probably for the best though. If the place where his Skill attached to his Soul was somewhere within the conceptual Void in his soul, it would be literally unreachable to him.
Now, the next question was: what, exactly, was this Skill? It was clear that the system had no fucking clue based on its description.
[Pandora’s Box (Unleashed) - Level 2 - Wrath Affinity
To attempt to contain the world's sin is a sin in and of itself, pure hubris. Sin is unavoidable, and nobody can be truly perfect. But maybe, just maybe, can we find hope at the bottom of the box, can someone harness their sin into a more useful endeavor.
Allows for one to release the Wrath Mana contained within [Pandora’s Box (Sealed)] in a specific way]
It had no information on what it did. Dei first assumed this was because the Skill never fully formed, breaking halfway through because of the situation in which it was created. Now, he realized it might be because the System didn’t know, not necessarily because it didn’t do anything. There was only one real way to find out- looking for himself.
Drawing closer to the conceptual anchor point of the Skill, Dei saw how the Skill manifested itself. All Skills manifested visually in his soul somehow, probably to help him process what he was looking at for [(Unleashed)], it took the shape of a broken locket necklace.
It looked to be made of polished silver gold. The locket itself wasn’t a heart, as many were, but an oval with an ornate pattern on the front, depicting an intricate music box- one that looked close to the representation of [Pandora’s Box (Sealed)], albeit much more decorated.
He said it was broken because cracks ran along its entire structure, from the chains to the closed locket; jagged cracks stained its beautiful surface. They were not normal cracks either, but more enunciated by the shadows within them. It was like the gold broke away to reveal pure darkness within- perhaps representing the Void.
He didn’t know what to make of it. Did this mean that the Void had broken the Skill in some way? Or that it worked with the Skill to add a function he didn’t know? Was the Skill broken in general, but not by the Void, and it revealed that the interior was not made of gold, but gold-plated Void? Or was it, perhaps, completely unrelated to the Void and Dei was overthinking it?
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He simply didn’t know. Bringing his view closer to the locket, he studied the cracks more thoroughly. The darkness within the cracks was more encompassing, more absolute than the darkness surrounding the locket itself. Because the surrounding darkness was a simple representation of lacking sensory organs, Dei had to assume that this darkness did represent the Void.
Next, he tried to understand what it did. He was pretty sure the locket could be opened, but he wasn’t sure if that’s something he wanted to do. It was literally the representation of releasing all sin into the world, he wanted to be sure that nothing bad would happen before that.
Or was it the representation of hope, after all sin was already released? Very curious…
Either way, he tried deciphering its function. His mind existed within a world of concepts right now, simply giving visual cues to everything he looked at to help him process it better. If he could take a step back, then perhaps he could find more information.
He remembered when he took Snap mana in his body and studied it, finding its purpose. Perhaps he could do the same thing now, studying its general conceptual structure to find out what it did?
Mentally poking at it, he couldn’t find a way to study it any more than visually, but that didn’t make sense. This was only a manifestation of the power, the locket wasn’t real, so there had to be other things about it.
Perhaps it was his approach? Right now, Dei saw his entire inner world as a free-roaming view, sort of like a camera moving around a scene to show different parts, or a drone flying around the world, recording what it saw. If the locket had a manifestation, perhaps he needed one too to get a better sense of it.
Dei generally split his mind into different parts to both train and stay aware of his surroundings. Now, he tried to pull it all together into this one spot, willing his body to appear in this darkness.
At once, his view shifted. Looking down, he saw his Praerel leather clothing over his actual body, and his pale hands covered in the scars of his Wrath mana as well as the lines of Connection. He was here.
It felt like he floated through water, a thick fluid he could swim in surrounding him. He suppressed the urge to hold his breath though, as he could still breathe here; his vision was not impaired either. It felt like he was in water, but he simply floated in darkness.
Resisting the urge to look around as he knew it would only scare him, Dei reached out and gently took the locket in hand, pulling it towards him.
Surprisingly, he actually did feel something different, a tingling sensation on his skin where he touched the locket. When it was closer to his chest, the feeling intensified, and Dei closed his hands around it completely, gently pressing his palms to the small golden object.
Closing his eyes, he focused on the tingling, trying to discern what it was doing.
It wasn’t painful… it spoke of something, because there was something deeper to it. The feeling crawled up his arm, like pins and needles. Or… static. It reminded him of something else.
When he first came over to this world, he lost control of the Skills he had because he needed to receive the approval of Wrath and Kindness, getting them to recognize him as the owners. Before he earned their recognition, Dei had to reach through a wall of static into the memory of them before he’d earned the right to take advantage of said Skills.
He realized now that he’d never actually challenged Wrath on [Pandora’s Box (Unleashed)], but he’d still earned recognition. After fighting Wrath in [Growing Pains] he was still granted access to [(Unleashed)], so he never thought to actually find the anchor point of the Skill and challenge it. Was there some residual contention in the Skill? Did Dei need to fight Wrath once more to earn the right to use the Skill?
That didn’t feel correct. He’d already earned the right. Not to mention, Dei saw no wall of static guarding this memory or representation. He knew that this Skill was his, but there was something to the static nonetheless.
He still felt it crawling up his body as it now reached his shoulders, and he decided to do something else. He leaned into it.
He felt the static accelerate its path along his body, encompassing him completely. When it reached his ears, he heard the deafening noise of static he remembered as a child. A noise that drowned out everything else in his mind.
His eyes only saw the shifting pixelated black and white, and his skin felt only pins and needles.
Just as quickly as it appeared though, the static receded, and Dei was… in the exact same spot he was before, nothing changed except a few notifications that opened themselves up to him.
[Claim for Ownership made to Skill: [Pandora’s Box (Unleashed)] by Affinity: Void]
[Claim for Ownership: DENIED]
[Void Requesting Conceptual Communication with Dei Grrata]
[Request: DENIED]
[Void Appealing Contract]
[Appeal: DENIED]
His eyes widened. Void had attempted to potentially claim the Skill as its own, but the System rejected the claim. Dei had no idea that was even an option, and now wondered why.
For one, how did Void even have a leg to stand on? Surely, it wouldn’t just try and claim one of Dei’s Skills as its own just because?
Did this mean that the cracks in the locket legitimately represented that Void played a part in the creation of the Skill? That would make [Pandora’s Box (Unleashed)] a Confluence Skill, not a Wrath Skill, but it seemed that the System was having none of it.
Perhaps Void played only a small part in the creation of the Skill. Dei remembered something slightly after his conversation with Gargeth, the Body Melder, when he was absorbing Spirit mana- the mana granted him knowledge that seemed to imply it was possible to form a Skill for affinities you didn’t have, which supported the idea that this was perhaps a Confluence Skill. Still, if it was, the System was not letting Void play a role in his connection to the Skill.
He didn’t necessarily have to wonder though, he could ask Aloran.
Putting the locket back where he found it, Dei slowly dissipated his body and brought his view back to the general shape of his soul, before moving outwards and opening his eyes again to the Garden.
“Hey Aloran, this involves my training so I’m gonna ask you: what does it mean if an affinity tries to claim ownership of one of my Skills, but the System denies them access?”
“What?! What? What are you talking about?!”
‘Ok so it’s probably not normal, and I should have at least given a preamble to this.’
Starting from the beginning, Dei repeated all the events that happened, but that led to Aloran asking Dei when he’d challenged Wrath for ownership of his Skills. So Dei had to go back even further in describing his experiences when he first came to this world in that he needed to challenge the affinities for… some reason.
Looking back, Dei was actually able to use the Skills, even before he’d been recognized by the affinities. He hurt from using [Growing Pains] long before he’d ever challenged Wrath to the Skill, and he vividly remembered that the reason he’d challenged Wrath at all was because he was running out of time to fix his Skill before he was born. If he’d been born without fixing the Skill, he wouldn’t have been able to move, and would have most likely been dubbed paralyzed at birth- something he didn’t know how his parents would have reacted to.
In order to accelerate the process, he’d gone straight to where the Wrath Skill was attached to his soul to fix it himself, challenging Wrath in the process. When he defeated Wrath, his Skill stopped hurting to use.
To sum it up: Before fighting Wrath, he could use the Skill, but it hurt. After fighting Wrath, he could use the Skill and it didn’t hurt. Simple.
Unless, of course, he considered that he’d been able to use [Pandora’s Box (Contained)] at the time without it hurting, BUT, it hurt to grow the box. Even after he was recognized by Kindness, it still hurt to grow the box.
He wanted to sigh because there didn’t seem to be any sort of standard formatting or benefit to repairing the Skills. For Wrath, being recognized meant it didn’t hurt to use its Skills. For Kindness, being recognized meant… nothing? He could use the Skills either way… but he also didn’t earn a reward either.
Perhaps that's where the difference lay. If Kindness had given him a hard time, it likely wouldn’t have hurt to level up his Pandora’s Box, because he’d already “paid the piper” so to speak. Without putting any effort in, he had to pay the tithe in blood and pain.
‘If that’s true, is it going to ALWAYS hurt to level my Box, or will it stop now that the Skill is repaired? I wasn’t conscious during the last bout of level ups, but now that it’s been fully fixed… perhaps I’ve undergone my trial? Perhaps I’ve earned the right to not hurt during Pandora’s Box level ups? Fuck I hope so.’
Telling Aloran his story had given Dei some real insights into the process of earning recognition from different affinities, but he also saw the value in listening to the God’s experience with affinities, so he still wanted his advice.
“It seems to me…” Aloran started slowly “That you’ve already challenged a few affinities using your Rights.”
