Chương 8

It reminded him of a university gymnasium—the biggest, highest-tech university gymnasium he'd ever seen. He was standing at the entrance to a vast hall. Its walls, ceiling, and floor were all pure-white. A giant D. A. Logo was emblazoned on the back wall, with the number '3' next to it— Training Hall 3. Beneath the logo, spread throughout the hall, were 32 v-Dueling stations placed side-by-side. The stations were 60-by-90-feet rectangles, raised on plinths.

They didn't need to be used for v-Dueling, he knew—and with a cursory inspection he could see dueling was only taking place on a handful of the stations in use. The closest duel to him seemed to have just concluded. About sixty feet away northwest, he saw the letters— 1-0, WINNER—Shion044 above the station. And beside it— Station resetting, standby.

Shion044, a username, it was safe to assume, seemed to be the dark-haired, young man in silver and gold armor with a glaive and shield strapped to his back, sitting on a steel bench in the walkways that separated the stations. A warrior-type? He was drinking what seemed at first to be a bright-blue energy-drink, but which displayed a notification when Alex focused on it, fascinated. Mana Potion [Common] A potion of fair quality, suitable for consumption by F-ranked Awakened. Restores a fair quantity of mana.

The young man paused, glanced at him, and he glanced away slightly awkwardly. So this is the training hall? The place seemed to only be a third filled; there seemed to be something like twenty or thirty people there, with plenty of empty stations. But it was brimming with the sounds of training, even brighter now than in the entrance hallway.

Steel on steel—in the distance he saw a lightly armored woman wielding a spear surging with extremely sharp-looking air-aspect mana, pressing what seemed to be a simulated training dummy—a faceless, all-white, clearly simulated figure wielding a sword edged translucent light-blue light. A few stations away, a mage thrust his staff with a cry. A series of spiraling water-spears surged out, striking a line of white blocks and cracking them; percentages flickered up on the surfaces of the blocks— damage indicators?

The mage pursed his lips at them and re-summoned his water-spears. To Alex's right, a few stations down, he saw a group of five, four guys and a girl, at a single station. Two were watching next to the station, while two were in the station itself facing each other, grinning a little stupidly. A spearman and a mage; this station seemed much more playful than the others.

"Wait, chill, chill, chill," said one—the mage—still laughing, dancing away as the spear-wielder closed in, the speartip lit up with fast-moving sapphire-blue light.

"This isn't fair, how come you get to instantly be good at your thing?" The mage thrust out his staff, and a blob of bright pale-blue mana—the color of pure mana, Alex had recently learned—flew out, and missed the spear-wielder by a dozen feet, and instantly vanished, to his friends' amusement.

"It's harder than it looks!" cried the mage.

"I swear, guys—" They're new to this, Alex realized with a start. Like me, all of them. He smiled. I guess it's nice knowing I'm not the only one. Almost everyone in the hall, come to think of it at least as far as he could see, seemed pretty young. About as old as he was, maybe early-mid twenties. A few seemed even younger, actually. And these were just the closest stations to him. Everywhere he looked, he wanted to just stare, as rude as it'd be. Giant floating blobs of water-magic—walls of pure-magic?

—scatterings of lightning-magic, swirling shards of ice-magic, tufts of fire-magic—it was all on display as he scanned the hall. He saw Skills flying out of bows, and wands, and staffs, and halberds and swords—there was a guy at the back-left corner with what seemed to be pistols utilizing force-mana. There were folks dueling friends, solo folks practicing against simulated opponents, folks v-dueling, practicing Skills against what seemed to be glorified heavy-bags.

He just started walking his way in, glancing here and there, trying not to stare. He passed another v-Duel, this one active—the station was wrapped in translucent purple light, and two usernames hovered above the station, with a vs. between them. He didn't find the soundscape at all jarring; he liked it, counterintuitively. It made him feel like he was all a part of this. Which he would be. Any of these free stations should do, right? He quickly settled on one three rows in, in the front-right corner of the hall.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. He stepped up to the steel pillar beside the station. It was a rectangular prism about five feet tall, and its top face was scribed with unknown script—the same script that was on his Class Card. He pressed his hand to the top face. Would you like to claim Station #17? Yes. A menu popped up. The menu was titled— training implements.

And within, presented in a grid, was the choice to materialize any of the simulated things he'd seen around the room, and more. The choices were split into sections, including'live simulation'— this seemed to include the faceless bots he'd seen—' standard training implements,' and'v-Dueling.'' Standard training implements' was a section that took some scrolling to get through, but he already knew what he wanted to start with.

He tapped,'summon standard sword,' and a sword instantly materialized in the middle of the station. He walked in and grasped it. About three feet of plain, gleaming steel. It was surprisingly light. He could swear he'd read a while ago that swords were historically very heavy—or maybe that was the impression he got from Game of Thrones, or something, but as he maneuvered around, testing its weight, then trying a few swings, wielding it felt quite simple, fluid.

He hadn't changed at all physically—he hadn't Leveled up yet. He was pretty sure he'd just had a misconception about how swords worked. Anyway. He slashed the air a few times, and he could instantly get the smiles on those other newbies' faces. God, this feels nice. And I still haven't actually used true magic yet. Okay—he was using a Utility Skill, which was a passive Skill, which meant it reserved a little mana pool—it technically used a minuscule amount of mana every second. But it's not… He raised a hand.

Mana Shield. It was there. He sensed the mana swirling around his soulspace slightly decrease. And there, floating a few feet away—a slightly curved, thin circle of glass-like, light-blue mana. It was about the size of a physical shield, and it gleamed slightly in the omnidirectional light. He walked up to it, pressed a finger to it—it felt solid, like glass. It didn't refract light like glass as far as he could tell. He slashed it lightly with his own sword, which bounced off with a shower of sparks.

The shield itself was untouched. Okay, he thought. That is cool as hell. Mana Shield, he thought again. He placed it off a few feet to the right—he just wanted to admire his handiwork, two mana shields side-by-side. But the shield on the left instantly winked out. A second, identical shield appeared to its right. He paused. I suppose I don't get refunded the mana for that first one. … You can have multiple shields.

He glanced to his left—he was seeing it, right now; a mage was currently fighting two simulated fighters at once, and blocking attacks from both simultaneously. That mage's shields also seemed to cover significantly more surface area. The density of the shields, now that Alex was really paying attention, also seemed slightly different. As was its color. Is it because it's structurally different, even? It was clearly the same Skill, but it'd already been slightly modified in several ways.

I'm sure if you put my Shield's skill structure and his side-by-side—the raw pattern—it'd look like 95%+ the same. It just has a few supports. Speaking of, actually— He checked his Skill description. Mana Shield [Common] Constructs a circular shield out of Pure-affinity mana at the user's desired location. It was exactly the same. Okay, that's not surprising. He'd been hoping to get his first support, which was also the most basic support that every Skill had—'proficiency level.'

Once he made even a little bit of progress advancing his Mana Shield a new line of description should show up, indicating his new skill level. In Skill parlance, achieving basic mastery of a Skill was called ' unboxing' it, and by all accounts it didn't take all that long. Mana Shield. Mana Shield. Mana Shield. Curious, he tried it for the next minute. He checked his description, which was still exactly the same. He felt slightly confused. Mana Shield is a Pure-type Skill. And…

I'm supposed to be essentially one of the most insane humans on the planet, talent-wise, at this specific affinity. Which means I should be able to progress this Skill pretty fast. So why…? There were a few potential possibilities in his mind. Also a thought he didn't want to contemplate— Surely the machine didn't make some kind of mistake? And then, Okay. Let's just think about this logically. I've been here like five minutes.

By 'it doesn't take all that long to 'unbox a Skill,' it probably means, like, on the order of days or weeks. I've literally just gotten magic, and I'm already acting this entitled. He smiled, shaking his head. Did being 'talented' instantly go to my head…? Like this could be a scenario where if I told an expert I was thinking this five minutes into trying a Skill, they'd face-palm. Let's stop being silly. A pause. … Mana Shield. Mana Shield.

Six consecutive Mana Shields had actually taken up a not insubstantial portion of his mana pool, about a third; I'm actually done now, he told himself, trying not to smile. Seriously. I'm not going to burn all my mana on one Skill of one type. It wasn't even really about the proficiency level. It was just plain fun to cast a Skill, and see an actual, cool-looking thing materialize wherever you wanted, at will. He could probably entertain himself for hours casting this thing at thin air.

Also, it wasn't like it was totally useless; he was starting to familiarize himself with his own Skill. Its makeup, its look, a sense of its nature—the 'Skill' acted like his Utility Skill, in that he couldn't really articulate why or how he knew how to make the Skill. He'd realized after a little research that almost all Skills could be reduced to sheer Mana Manipulation. And if you possessed the requisite understanding and control, you could reproduce almost any Skill from first principles.

It was just that it'd take a very long time to study, and understand, and also fine-tune his Mana Manipulation to cast a shield as effortlessly as what he was doing now. And since Skill structures in shards were refined and mana-perfect, you'd never be able to get quite as efficient and effective a Skill out of pure Manipulation. It'd also take a lot more time and mental effort to cast. Which meant bespoke Skill Shards were very useful.

But the issue with a Skill Shard was while its knowledge was ingrained into your soul, it wasn't conscious knowledge; you didn't know what you knew. Which meant it'd be quite useful to— Mana Shield. … Am I six years old? He glanced around, and happened to make eye contact with a mage. The very same newbie mage he'd seen trying to fend off that spearman, from earlier; he and his friends were glancing over. They seemed amused, in pretty much the same way he'd been earlier, at them. Which also amused him.

I guess it's full circle. He gave them a wave, and the mage gave him a thumbs-up. I should try out something else, he decided, turning away. Maybe one of those dueling bots? I should definitely at least try hitting static targets first. And try out a few of my other capabilities, actually. He drew his sword. Let's see what I can make of this 'Mana Manipulation,' shall we?