Chương 11: Mastery

Walking toward Liam, Alex was still half-stuck in the conversation he'd just had with his dad, the words sitting heavier than he wanted to admit, the promise he'd made still echoing somewhere in the back of his head. On the way, he passed Ace's twins chasing each other through the grass near one of the tents, shrieking with laughter, still completely untouched by any of this.

Apparently the system needed a person to hit some baseline of maturity before it would even let them awaken, which Alex figured was at least one small mercy buried in all of this mess. He found Liam practically vibrating with energy the second he spotted him.

"Yo! Where have you been, man? I wanted to show you something."

"Hey. Just been practicing, nothing much," Alex said, though even he could hear how distracted he sounded.

"Well, check this out." Liam triggered Mana Bolt, except the bolt that left his hand was noticeably smaller than usual, barely the size of a marble, but glowing far more intensely than anything Alex had seen him cast before. Alex had assumed Liam was just messing around with the skill's normal parameters. He hadn't expected him to actually be able to do this.

"Oh, and I also got a new skill. Doesn't work like the others. Not totally sure what it actually is yet, but it's pretty cool." [Mana Manipulation (Novice)] Alex went still. A skill that didn't fall under the Common tier system at all, something entirely new. The idea alone was enough to leave him momentarily speechless. He pulled up his own skill list out of habit while Liam kept talking, and found something equally unexpected sitting there.

[Polearm Mastery (Novice)] He had no idea when he'd actually earned that, probably somewhere in the middle of the dungeon fight, but it slotted into the exact same category Liam had just described.

"I got one too, actually. Polearm Mastery, Novice."

"Oh, let's see it." Alex pulled his spear out, not entirely sure what he was supposed to do with it on command, but his body seemed to know before his head caught up. He settled into a stance that simply felt right and ran through a short series of movements with the spear, fluid in a way that genuinely surprised him. Liam tilted his head, watching.

"Hm. Is that actually the skill, though? I feel like anybody could probably do that with enough practice on a spear." Alex froze for a second. That landed harder than it should have. But the more he thought about it, the more he had to admit Liam wasn't wrong, his spear work had improved fast, sure, but there wasn't anything obviously magical about it the way Liam's shrunken, glowing Mana Bolt clearly was. He let the comment go and redirected.

"All right, fair. So what's yours actually do, then, since you're so curious about mine?" That got Liam moving again immediately.

"Oh, right, watch this." Mana surged out of him, condensing into a noticeably bigger sphere than his usual bolt, and he hurled it at the ground a short distance away. Boom. A small, concentrated explosion erupted where it landed, kicking up dirt and a shockwave that Alex felt even from several feet back. If that had hit a person dead on, it would have done serious damage. Liam looked thrilled and visibly drained at the same time, swaying slightly on his feet once the adrenaline started fading.

"Okay, so here's what I've figured out so far. Mana Manipulation lets me shape mana into basically whatever I want, which sounds amazing, but the actual power output is really inefficient compared to a real skill. Like, making that same explosion with Mana Bolt versus doing it through pure manipulation costs drastically more mana the manipulation way.

It's almost like skills are carved directly into how we cast, some kind of shortcut our minds already know, while manipulation just lets me do whatever I want but clumsily. Oh, and the best part, when I stack manipulation on top of an actual skill, I get to mess with the details while still keeping most of the skill's normal efficiency. I think I can push that further with more practice, but I'm honestly still figuring it out. Isn't this insane, though?

Also, because of manipulation, I can cast Mana Shield on someone else now, just way weaker than when I use it on myself. Trying to strengthen that part specifically, but it's been rough going." This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Alex absorbed all of it, fascinated despite the information overload.

"Liam, that might be the coolest thing I've heard all week. I wonder what else manipulation could apply to, mana isn't the only thing in this world, right? Can you walk me through how you actually got the skill?"

"Honestly, I don't really know how to explain it. I just kept using mana and messing with it, and eventually it clicked. That's about all I did. None of the other mages got it yet either, so maybe it's not guaranteed, but I'd guess you've got a shot if you keep experimenting." Alex spent a while after that trying to force it, running Power Strike through different variations, adjusting output, pushing mana in ways that felt deliberately wrong just to see what happened. Nothing.

No new notification, no flicker of progress on his status. He asked Liam for more guidance, but Liam, helpful as he clearly wanted to be, didn't have much more to offer beyond what he'd already said. Alex spent the rest of the day chasing it anyway between regular training, and once the light started fading, he found his way out under the same strange moon as the night before, joining whatever family members had wandered out to look at the sky again.

A few people mentioned, almost in passing, that simple training without any kills attached could still earn levels, just much more slowly than actual combat. Someone had apparently proven it the hard way already. Alex turned that over for a minute and decided it explained itself well enough, useful in theory, but with monsters around actively handing out essence at a faster rate, training alone felt like the long way to the same destination.

He woke the next morning with the sun barely cresting the horizon, ready for whatever the day had planned. First thing, before anything else, he checked his status.

Name: Alex Morningstar Age: 21 Level: 3 Race: Human (H) Class: Warrior Strength: 22 Dexterity: 14 Constitution: 16 Perception: 9 Intelligence: 11 Wisdom: 11 Skills: Identify (Common), Power Strike (Common), Reinforce Body (Common), Manipulation / Polearm Mastery (Novice) Body Cultivation: None Mana Cultivation: None Bloodline: None Alex stared at the numbers longer than he probably needed to.

The physical gains from fighting and training had clearly outpaced everything else by a wide margin, which didn't surprise him much given how he'd spent the last two days. What did sting a little was how far behind his magical stats sat in comparison, barely nudged compared to the leap in Strength and Dexterity. He flexed his hand once, watching his own forearm, and felt the difference even in something as small as that, tendons sitting tighter under the skin than he remembered from yesterday.

He figured the Intelligence and Wisdom gap was something worth correcting eventually, just not today. Still, the raw numbers were hard not to be impressed by. His Strength alone sat close to double what it had been before any of this started, and it wasn't just the number either, his whole body felt different now, denser and more responsive in a way no amount of gym time had ever quite managed.

Back home, a jump like that would have taken years of dedicated programming, careful progressive overload, half a dozen plateaus broken through sheer stubbornness. Here, it had taken two days and a willingness to nearly get himself killed twice. Looking at Polearm Mastery again, he found himself a little puzzled by the name. Not Spear Mastery, not Hammer Mastery, despite the fact that he'd spent days swinging a hammer and a days with a spear.

But holding the spear, something about it just fit, an affinity he couldn't fully explain. Even so, some part of him suspected the spear wasn't quite it either. He wanted something longer. Something with a wider blade. He couldn't put a precise shape to what he was picturing, just a feeling that the spear was a step in the right direction and not the final answer. The shield, on the other hand, he'd never really warmed to.

It kept him alive, he knew that, he probably should keep using one no matter what his gut said. But he didn't enjoy carrying it, and that dislike hadn't faded the longer he'd used it. So he made a decision that he already knew was going to earn him another lecture: he was going to find a proper two-handed polearm, spend points he hadn't fully earned back yet, and deal with the inevitable conversation with his dad about it later. Smh. One problem at a time. He pulled up the weapon shop and started scrolling.

Long-handled axes, a bo staff, dozens of variations on the basic polearm theme, most of them blending together after the first ten or so. None of them caught his attention until he found it: a glaive, black-shafted with minimal ornamentation along the wood, eight feet of length, sleek in a way that made the rest of the catalog look clumsy by comparison.

The blade curved out from the haft in one smooth, deliberate arc, wide enough to do real damage, light enough in the listing's stated weight that it didn't look like it would sacrifice speed for that reach. Something about it landed the same way a perfect lift felt right the second the bar left the ground, the kind of click that didn't need explaining. Alex knew immediately he had to have it. Before finalizing the purchase, a prompt asked him to choose an enhancement. Sharpness. Durability. Bleed. Reduced Weight.

Increased Weight. He thought it through for a second and picked Sharpness, then handed over a hundred tutorial points without much hesitation, leaving himself a thin cushion of ten remaining. The weapon materialized in his hands a moment later, and the second its weight settled into his grip, his Polearm Mastery skill suddenly made a lot more sense. He could feel it, some quiet thread of connection running between himself and the glaive that the spear had only hinted at.

Running through a few practice movements left him grinning despite himself, finding something that felt less like equipment and more like an actual extension of his own body. He already couldn't picture going back to anything else, even though he'd owned this thing for all of two minutes. Whatever came next, he was more than ready to see what it could actually do in a real fight.