After scanning over all his information, he got ready for another round of questioning Aloran.
“Hey, Aloran” he spoke aloud, as he was still unsure how to even address him using [Meaningful].
“Hm?” Aloran responded, having not returned to his eternal slumber.
“Would you mind if I asked a few more questions? Some of them pertain to my Skills.”
Aloran made a shrugging noise. “Truthfully, I am not adamant about guiding you towards power through either training or knowledge. That is your path to decide. If you think knowing more will help, then ask. If not, then train. I do not mind either way.”
Dei nodded. “Alright, in that case, do you know anything about creating Convergences? When I left your cave, I went to a point where I fought a strong monster and found that I’d accidentally made a Wrath Convergence. Is it useful in any way? Could I do something with either the zone or the anchor?”
“In order for a Convergence to form, three criteria must be met. First is an extremely dense amount of that particular mana in the area. The second is for a being to showcase a charged example of the affinity. And the third is for there to be an obviously significant object for the affinity to latch onto, becoming the Anchor.”
Dense mana was obvious, and the Anchor was easily understandable, but the second point made him wonder. “What do you mean about a charged example?”
“Well, in the case of your Wrath affinity, you must’ve felt very Wrathful in that situation. More than that, you probably felt nothing but Wrath. In that moment, your entire being was dedicated to becoming a vessel for the affinity, allowing it to latch onto something in the physical world. That being said, this doesn’t happen every time the criteria are met, and it’s been found that there’s quite literally no way to artificially form a Convergence. Affinities seem to detect the authenticity of the situation and won’t form one if it’s fake.”
‘Simple enough to understand’ “In that case, is there any use for the Anchor?”
“There’s always a use for Anchors” Aloran responded, chuckling. “But for you in particular, probably not as much as other Wrath users. That Wrath Convergence represents concepts which you’re already familiar with, because they stem from you. You need different examples to understand Wrath better and to strengthen your connection to it. Do you know what the Anchors effect was?”
Dei shook his head. “The Lorpee’s supposedly used the mana to augment their abilities, but Identifying it provided nothing on its function.”
“Not unsurprising. Anchors represent affinities in their purest forms, and affinities do not want to ever be understood fully. If it augmented the Lorpee’s abilities though, I would guess that follows the same principle, probably giving the user a sort of ‘Focus’ to channel their abilities. Say you used a Soul Skill on something by focusing your mana through that particular Anchor: If you did, the Anchor would probably add damage to the attack in some way, though how it does so would remain to be seen.”
“I don’t think I’m going back there,” he told Aloran, “I sort of owe the Lorpee’s. I’ll let them keep the Anchor.”
“Hmm, very well,” he said neutrally.
Thinking up his next question, he asked “I told you before that I've become a Union rather than a Human, I remember you telling me a little about how it would put me in a new weight class, but I'd appreciate a more in-depth explanation about how and what that means for me.”
“Ah, I assumed you'd researched a bit about spirits in general, did you truly know nothing of how they worked before turning yourself into one?” he said in bewilderment.
‘Yea maybe my track record of asking first isn’t the best’ he thought, remembering his dealing with Void. ‘There’s no way I’m telling him I did that. I’m still getting some details on contracts later though.’
“I probably should have asked more, but I’d already received enough information on it before from another Union that told me of the process, and it seemed like a good move. It helped mitigate a lot of my weaknesses and gave me some incredibly useful Racial abilities, so it worked out all around, but I more want to know of the complications that come from using [Connection] as the thing that anchors me. I just feel like, socially for spirits, it'll be a bit more complicated than them either killing me or running away, like a third option of at least getting some respect out of the deal.”
“Hmm… Respect is not the right word, but you’ll get a few hanger-ons. There are some scavenger spirits that will follow you around and try to consume any residual spirit or soul mana you let off. It could even be beneficial to you, as such creatures endear themselves to whatever beast they follow around as a defense mechanism to convince it not to kill them.”
Dei thought back to earth, and how remora’s were a kind of fish that attached themselves to sharks, eating the parasites on the shark so they both benefitted. The remora received food, and the shark was cleaned.
He really hoped they didn’t try to clean him… but that didn’t seem to be the direction of the relationship. Still, it would be mutually beneficial.
“But!” Aloran said, drawing his attention again, “Just because you won’t always be attacked by other spirits, doesn’t mean you'll have a good time. Many of the weaker combat-based spirits will still flee at the sight of you, while those who believe themselves stronger and do attack will try and absorb pieces of you, as Fendrascora said.”
“Pieces? They won’t just try to kill me?” he asked, confused.
“Eh, if you seem to be barely weaker than them, they’ll kill you, but if they’re overwhelmingly stronger, they’ll wait for you to heal up and keep taking bites, like milking a cow. Why kill the cow when you can make more just slowly selling the milk over time? If they devour you in one go, they might get a boost but it won’t be as large as if they’d devoured several times the mass of your body over the course of weeks, months, or years.”
Dei shivered at the terrifying thought, but realized he’d seen this phenomena already. Way back when he’d been attacked by that spirit devouring frog, it’d taken a large chunk out of him then let him run away, probably because the frog was an overwhelmingly powerful opponent to him at the time.
“So it’s objectively a good thing, yes? Strong enemies will be hesitant to kill me, weak enemies won’t waste my time. The only ones who I’ll fight are those around my level or a bit stronger.”
“Yes, but this only applies to spirits. Also, remember, you will now most likely struggle to find enemies willing to fight you that you will stand equal to. Any spirits that fight you now will be confident in defeating you, so keep that in mind.”
That did seem like it might be a problem, but he’d just have to start picking fights more.
That fully answered his questions about his new Union differences, but the talk about spirits reminded him of another question. “By the way, what’s the difference between higher or lower affinities? Spirit comes from Soul, but does that mean that Soul is better than Spirit?”
“You speak of Parent and Derivative affinities. One is not better or worse than the other, they simply have different costs and functions. The progression of affinities in general is a bit complicated, so let's start with something simple and familiar to you- the Wrath affinity tree.
“First we ask ‘What is Wrath in a few words?’ and many answer as ‘A controlled emotional response of anger directed at a specific object, person, or idea.’ Now, Wrath can be broken down into two derivative affinities- Rage and Rules. Rage grants significantly more power in exchange for removing the ‘controlled’ part of it. Rage users lose their minds when it activates, but they gain a lot more fighting prowess.
“On the other end of Wrath, Rules users hold no anger for their enemies, but they fight according to specific rules- they gain power when fighting in the rules and when enemies break those rules. You have to play their game, or they get a large boost. The rules must also be winnable by the opposing party, but only technically.
“So, would you say that either of these are better or worse than Wrath?” Aloran asked.
He shook his head. “I can see where this is going- Both derivative affinities are better in certain situations, but Wrath is a more general affinity than both. It has more versatility, but less direct power.”
“Indeed, that sums up all affinities. Parent affinities are more general but less directly powerful, and child affinities become more niche as you go down. One of the parent affinities to Wrath is the Vice affinity, which can exhibit qualities of all other Vices but not as quickly as any one. Above Vice is Sapience, and so on.”
“Wait, you said that Vice is one of the Parent affinities? Are there more than one?” he asked, confused.
Aloran laughed. “Sadly, yes. That’s what I meant when I said it gets a bit complicated- just as there are multiple ways for affinities to go down the tree, there are multiple ways to go up as well. Wrath can either move upwards into the Vice affinity, or it can move upwards into the Authority affinity.”
“What determines how an affinity changes, whether it goes up or down? And which one it goes into?”
Aloran laughed. “You do. You have Soul because you’re more introverted, but if you suddenly underwent a traumatic event that led to you turning into something of a people pleaser, it might change into something like the Lust affinity.”
This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
“Why Lust?” he thought, confused.
“Ah Lust isn’t as direct in its naming sense as others. It is dedicated to controlling people and their behaviors, such as enhancing your charisma with others.”
“I see… So if I experience a personality shift, will my affinities change?”
“Yes, and they can change in other ways. If you absorb certain treasures or allow yourself to be warped by certain convergences”
“I see… say, you mentioned that the Vice affinity can exhibit qualities of the individual vices themselves, could I take advantage of the Rules affinity using my Wrath? That is to say, fight according to certain rules and gain a boost when others don't play along?”
“You already do to a degree, that’s what the Rules of Wrath are. But if you wanted to add more niche ones that wouldn’t necessarily end in you becoming enraged, you could. It might just be a little difficult.”
He nodded. That wasn’t something he intended to do as it seemed like his regular Rules already protected him, but it was another potential ability in his toolset he might be able to take advantage of.
“How about merging affinities, is that possible?”
“Sort of, but not really. If you have a personality type that matches Rage and Rules distinctly separate from each other, you’ll form a connection to both. If you have a personality type that would allow for them to connect with one another, you’ll never form them at all- instead, skipping the middleman and going straight to Wrath.
If you want to alter one into a parent affinity though, such as Rage into Wrath, you’d have to use outside help- such as the treasures or Convergences previously listed. In that case though, you would keep Rules as one of your affinities rather than merge them at all. Using outside help to change your affinities will result in a personality shift though.”
“How about Null mana? Is there a Null affinity?”
“Null mana?” Aloran asked, incredulously. “Where did you get Null mana?”
“My body-rebuilding Skill uses the affinity Concentration rather than mana. When all the Concentration is gone, I have Null mana.”
“How would you even… make a Skill like that?”
“At the time, I really didn’t want any of my mana to escape from my mana-holding Skill so I found a way to weaken the mana itself.”
“How would you stop mana from draining out of your mana storage Skill?! That’s a fundamental part of every storage Skill!”
‘Ohhh yea I forgot that the System told me my Skill is something of a freakish mutated version of how they’re supposed to be. Didn’t it say they are only supposed to hold onto mana for a short period of time? Like a day or so? I can’t remember…’
It was clear that he wasn’t going to get an answer to his question unless he answered Alorans, so he started from the beginning.
“Back in my other world, fighting was heavily discouraged. As you know, Wrath mana tends to make you pretty mad and encourage you to fight, but I really didn’t want to, so I formed a Skill that let me store the mana. I don’t think it was a perfect storage at first, but because I just… never let out any of the mana, and pushed everything into suppressing my Wrath mana, my storage Skill apparently became outlandishly sturdy. Now, I can hold the mana permanently, hence why I always have enough affinity mana on hand to draw concentration from.”
Aloran went completely silent at that, clearly stunned for several seconds. It wasn’t hard to understand why.
It was clear to Dei that there were ways to work out Skills outside the Systems help, and his [Pandora’s Box (Sealed)] was clearly an extreme example of one. It’d somehow completely surpassed the bounds of any other System Skill he’d run into, without any assistance at all.
“Dei… do you have any idea of the potential of such a Skill?” he whispered in a low voice.
“I, uh, I thought I did, but now I’m not so sure.”
“Dei. The biggest limiter of storage Skills is that people struggle to get more mana in them, preventing the Skill from leveling up. If that’s not an issue for you, you can endlessly store more mana in yours. You can endlessly level up your storage Skill… you could have a level five hundred Skill before your next Class evolution! Do you know how much that would put you head and shoulders above all others at your level? Each successive Skill evolution becomes more powerful than the last. What level is it right now?”
“Two hundred and seventy three.”
“And just over a year old,” he said breathlessly. “Slaughterers really are something, huh? I wonder if all the others have this same level of power. No matter, I want to ask what evolutions you chose for it, but you do not have to answer. I would simply like to give pointers on what sort of build it is going to become.”
“I don’t mind, any guidance would help. My first evolution I chose something called ‘Sectioning’ that would let me split my storage into smaller pieces, making it easier to create Null mana and release smaller quantities without opening the entire Skill. The next evolution I chose Concentration., getting six-times Concentration.” ‘Though I already did have six-times concentrate, so it’s thirty six now. I’m keeping that one to myself.’
“I see. If you don’t know, early evolutions will affect all the future ones. Concentration is always available at the second evolution and beyond for storage abilities, but Sectioning will most likely become a gateway to pre-prepared effects, or diverse storage. In other words, future evolutions will let you use Sectioning to force more mana through Skills faster, and maybe gain the ability to begin storing physical stuff as well. While I can’t be sure, I’m reasonably confident that Sectioning is dedicated to people with more powerful storage Skills, like yours, who might not need the full size of their Storage at any given moment. Either way, I highly suggest relying on this Skill more- it’s something unique to you, that others will have no way of predicting. IF you level it more.”
Dei grimaced at the thought. Leveling it up was pure agony, but such was the cost of power. At least this time, he had a Meditation pain suppression Skill to help him get through it. If it was as grand as Aloran said, it would be worth it.
He decided to stop compressing any more Wrath, Kindness, and Fortitude mana. He’d level up the Skill before long.
“Okay that’s interesting and all, but what about my original question, is there a Null affinity?”
Aloran sighed, probably still interested in talking about the Skill, but Dei clearly wanted to move on. “No, there isn’t. Null mana is the absolute absence of mana, it’s the opposite to MP. MP is a single point of mana containing every single affinity. Null contains none. I suppose you could consider mana as a combination of pure energy carrying information. The affinity of it is information, while the energy is the mana itself. Null mana takes away most of the information, leaving only energy.”
“I see… and what information is left? If it takes away all the other affinities?”
“Hmm, tell me Dei, when you went to that Wrath Convergence in the Lorpee cave, what kind of mana was there?”
“Wrath mana?”
“Yes but what kind of Wrath mana?”
“It was… my Wrath mana?”
“Exactly. Take away the Wrath, and what are you left with?”
“My mana? So Null mana is the mana unique to that person?”
“Yep, Null mana carries information about you, without any link to a particular affinity. This also means there’s some nuance to it, as the stronger you are, the stronger the Null mana will be. I’m sure you’ve noticed that Null mana rejects other mana’s, correct?” getting a nod from Dei. “Have you also seen that, after a while, it reverts back to affinity mana if not kept in a vacuum?”
He thought back to his fight against the Smiler. The Null mana would reject its Soul mana, for a time, but eventually, it turned into wild Soul mana and his shield of Null would break down.
Again, he nodded.
“Now, Null mana upgrades along with you because the little information it contains has to do with your Rights. The more Rights you have, the harder it is for other mana to break down your Null mana. As you grow in power, more and more creatures will use this mana type because it becomes better as you grow, but for now, your Null mana is quite powerful. It pulls others into a battle of Rights, which you will almost always win considering everything you’ve done in the world so far.
“Of course, it’s not quite so simple to say that it’s impossible to breach. It would be better to say that Null mana has its own HP, and how much HP it has is dictated by how many rights you have, and it takes damage from either existing or under the direct assault of other mana. It’s going to be a good trump card, but you must remember that Null mana simply does not last long outside the vacuum of your storage Skill, so save it. Use it sparingly, build up as much as you can, then throw an absolute wrench into any fight you're losing. Ah! One last thing about it: when you go into the spirit realm, you can use Null mana to tear apart spirits easily. Good to know if you’re ever cornered or swarmed and want everything within a few hundred feet dead.”
Dei wanted to start rubbing his grubby hands together. Now that he knew both what Null mana was, and how useful it would be against mana-based life forms, he saw many ways to easily gain levels if he wanted to.
He was still drawing concentration from his Fortitude and rebuilding his body. When that was done, he’d have another eight hundred and fifty Null mana, and what could he use this for? A lot.
Probably surviving whoever was hunting him, but that, in turn, would let him do a lot more. By continuing to live.
His thirty minutes were almost up, so he only had a few more questions, and there was one thing Aloran had said that struck his curiosity.
“You mentioned that MP had one point of every affinity type, you also mentioned that new affinities would appear every few millennia. I don’t think they’re just appearing, I believe the System is limiting which can interact with the people within its domain. Do you think MP would hold a singular point of mana of every affinity, even those outside of its domain? Do you know of any affinities that exist outside the System?”
“I… Dei, I won’t lie to you here, I have no idea. Again, I truly did not even know there were universes outside the System until you told me. I thought it just existed everywhere. I’ve gone to other universes, and there’s always been a System. To think it wouldn’t always be like that… the idea isn’t even entertained in the scientific world. Sure, there are theories and the like about what it would look like if the System didn’t exist, but nobody takes it seriously. We have an entire fantasy genre about magic without the System, that’s how outlandish and interesting it sounds. I wish you luck in finding the answer to such a question though.”
Dei shrugged, it wasn’t an unexpected answer but he still wished he could’ve known.
“Alright final question. What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue.”
“Ok” he responded, then stood up and stretched. This wouldn’t be the last bout of questions he asked at all, but he still couldn’t sit around and talk.
He’d just finished studying [Pandora’s Box (Unleashed)], it was time to move on to his next Skill for study: [Growing Rage]
