Chương 45: Chapter Forty-Five: Am I a Failure?

"Dude did you get brain damage or something?" Looking away from my notifications, I find the others still staring at me.

"What're you talking about? I already said I'm fine." I answer Wade while dismissing the screen in front of me.

"I feel like I shouldn't have to explain why I'm asking…" The blonde boy says while continuing to treat me like I'm an idiot.

"You were just bleeding out of, like, every hole in your face. Also, you didn't even explain why, and now you just have some freak ass grin on your face. It's a shame too. You were actually starting to look kind of normal with your hair growing out and the fact you weigh more than a kindergartner now."

"First of all, kick rocks. Secondly, I'm smiling because I just got a free five levels in <Polarize>."

"WHAT?!" This time, it isn't Wade, but rather Nikki looking at me like I have brain damage.

"What do you mean what? The early levels always go by quickly with skills. I already said this one was low leveled to start with." I am about to keep lecturing the younger girl, but as I look to the others for support, I notice that the other two are similarly appalled.

"What do you mean what do I mean?! You just gained five levels at one time. Five. Levels. I've never even leveled up any of my skills more than twice in a day!" Nikki practically shouts in affront.

"Yeah, it's a lot at once, I guess. It was pretty overdue anyway, and the first five levels you get in a skill are the quickest like I said."

"Who the hell told you that?" Wade asks.

"No one. Have you guys not learned that from leveling your skills yet? It's basic pattern recognition. Anything over level 5 is harder, and everything after level 10 takes another leap in difficulty in my experience. I assume the same is true for each five-level threshold. Have you guys had a different experience?" The room falls silent and I suddenly feel like I have said too much. Have the others not realized this much about the skill leveling system yet?

For once, I finally don't understand the look on any of their faces. Wade's eyes are practically bugging out, and his mouth is sucked in like he just bit into a lemon or something sour. Kathryn is just staring at the floor, and her lips form a tight line while she continues to say nothing. Nikki's eyes feel like they are burning a hole in my soul, and her normally pale skin has become even more so.

"Um, am I missing something? Were you all told something different about how skills develop?" Everyone continues to exercise their right to remain silent, and I find myself feeling completely exposed. Are they all privy to some other piece of the puzzle that I am missing? Am I the one in the wrong? Oh crap, that has to be it!

"Maybe I'm wrong or something. I mean, we are all new to this entire thing, right? It's common to make mistakes without the proper information provided. I just thought the five-level thing was true. <Polarize> was just like all of my other skills in that aspect so I assumed it was the case for all skills." I try backpedaling to see if I can remedy the situation, but for some reason, my response makes their expressions even harder to read. Am I seriously that stupid to them?

How much information am I missing that they won't even bother to tell me what's wrong? I know I needed Kathryn to explain polarization to me, but how is that my fault? I wasn't even able to finish middle school! The only lessons I learned after I was taken into medical care were from things the doctors would say, or the documentaries that were on the TV sometimes. Man, I really wish I had better social skills. Situations like this always make me think the worst and turn my thoughts into pure, anxiety driven crap.

Can't they just take pity on me and te-"You have a skill over level 10?" Wade suddenly asks.

"Uh, yeah. Give me some credit, man. It would be pretty sad if I didn't have at least one of my skills at level 10 by now." I say, immediately getting defensive in response to his sudden question. He doesn't respond for another moment, but I still don't understand where he is going with the question." You said: 'At least one'? Just how many skills do you have over level 10 then?" I do a quick check of my skills in my Status.

Skills: Emit [Lvl 15] Polarize [Lvl 5] Fixation [Lvl 11] Mana Control [Lvl 13] Infuse [Lvl 10] Mana Construct [Lvl 4]"Four. Well, technically one of those is at level 10 so I guess it doesn't count as 'over'."

"Huh?"

"Eh?"

"What?"

"…" The three of them bombard me with some measure of a question as if what I said is completely ridiculous to them. Jesus Christ…. Am I so far behind them that my progress is that laughable?

"Just to confirm, you have four skills at or over level 10. Meaning that you at least have five skills in total since <Polarize> hasn't gotten that far, right?" Wade clarifies.

"Yes…"

"And you haven't gotten your class yet?"

"…No." Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"How is that even fucking possible?" He asks with a far off look in his eyes like he isn't even actually looking at me. I am about to defend my lack of progress using the tried-and-true method of playing the fact I was hospitalized for five years, but before I can, I hear Nikki and Kathryn mumbling to themselves.

"I only have four… and one of them came from my goddamn class…" Nikki says quietly while pulling at her hair furiously.

"He got five levels just from me giving him some basic information about polarization? I don't even know if half of what I said was right!" Kathryn exclaims to herself while staring unbelievably at the wooden floorboards.

"Somebody just tell me what the hell is going on!" I practically beg while I watch the others go into similar states of psychosis. At this point, nothing makes sense to me at all. I feel like there is some huge context I am missing to cause such dire reactions. Finally, Wade seems to get ahold of himself, and he grabs both of my shoulders and stares at me intently.

"Sebastian. I only have five skills right now, with one of them being given to me by my class. Besides that, I only have one skill over level 10, and none of my other skills are close to it, much less 'easy' to get past the first five levels like you were talking about. What in the ever-living shit was your trainer teaching you this entire time?"

After several minutes of attempting to get myself on the same page as the others, everyone finally calms down enough to get seated on a nearby bunk to have a candid conversation about the elephant in the room. Instead of dancing around the topic of our abilities, the others are surprisingly more than happy to tell me about their skills and training experiences now.

It would seem that all reservations about sharing too much are dropped entirely Apparently, Nikki started with <Current> and <Process> as her first two skills. In combination with this, I remember how Garf described her build as AGI focused, so her overall fighting style relies on quick movement using <Current>, while she abuses her <Process> skill to force her mind to keep up with the enhanced speed while improving her reaction times as well.

Overall, her skills have insane synergy and I could imagine all sorts of interesting things to try if I had her skills. Wade, on the other hand, also has really good skills. He already told me about <Emulate> and <Search>, which allow him to copy aspects of another's appearance to a certain extent, and then find basically anything he wants to. I didn't know the specifics before though, as he just let me know what they were called rather than what they did.

I imagine these skills will be insanely powerful once leveled properly, as I could easily see him developing a skillset in which he can copy anyone's appearance down to the most minute detail, while also letting him find anything he is looking for. He would be like the ultimate scout or hunter. Finally, Kathryn has <Terraform> and <Prod>. One lets her control the earth beneath her to form walls, projectiles, and basically anything she can think of as the skill levels.

<Prod>, which I thought might be similar to <Search>, is actually an analysis type of skill from what I can gather. Instead of finding things like <Search>, the skill allows her to detect weaknesses in things. For example, if she focuses hard enough, weak points on monsters will appear, and if she does the same with inanimate objects, she can detect where the most fragile points are on it.

Theoretically then, I believe that if she levels these two skills enough, she could instantly target every single weak point on a monster while bombarding them with attacks from the ground to punish every weakness revealed. Her starting skills might just be the scariest I've heard of yet. And then there is me. I started with a skill that lets me fart out radiation- so it doesn't kill me first -and another skill that was basically a glorified pair of shades until about five minutes ago. How is that fair?

And how the hell are they so bad at using their own skills?

"So, you guys have these insane starting skills yet barely any of you have them to level 10 yet?" The three of them nod awkwardly while having the decency to look embarrassed.

"What were you doing with your trainers this entire time? Did you all not focus on your skills at all?"

"Er, I mean we practiced with our skills the entire time we were fighting monsters to level up. Also, Bertrum would make Nikki and I do skill exercises for a few hours every day."

"That's basically the same for me as well, except that Lady Hylin made me do more self-study rather than teaching me herself. Benny and Sandra got more lessons than I did." Kathryn finishes.

"But you all received training for your skills specifically, right? You know the more you achieve before your class selection, the better options you get, right?" All of them nod once again, and I am left even more confused. Before I can question why their trainers didn't focus on skill progression more, Nikki speaks up.

"I don't know what your trainer told you, but Bertrum said that after we have one skill hit level 10, that would be good enough to get a pretty good starting class. After we did that, he focused on more practical stuff like how to fight monsters and stuff. That's pretty much what we needed the most, as well as sheer levels to fight the wave. I hear the monsters in the wave can be even higher than level 100!" Hmmm… something isn't adding up here still.

I understand that the other trainers might have had a different approach to preparing their charges for the wave, but why do all of their regiments sound the same? Why did Master Lirin have such a unique training approach? I thought it was already explained well enough through the matter of class options and how your achievements affect them. From what I'm hearing now though, the other trainers already knew about this too but didn't bother focusing on it beyond getting one of the others' skills to level 10.

The timelines also seem strange too. I spent a good amount of my first few days just attempting to get the radiation filtration technique up and running to allow me to use mana freely with <Mana Control>. That netted me a few levels in <Emit>, sure, but nowhere near as many as the others should have gotten in the same amount of time if they were getting targeted lessons from their trainers like they described.

"I guess the difference could kind of make sense. Master Lirin might just have been that much better at teaching skill progression techniques than your trainers since his specialization is related to it a bit. Also, my skills compared to some of yours sound pretty lame, so maybe if skill rarity is a thing, that could have something to do with it as well? These could explain the differences in level gap.

I'm still not sure why Master Lirin was so focused on me leveling my skills if they don't matter as much as you guys say towards your class." I muse while attempting to explain the situation in a way that makes sense for everyone present. Wade picks up on what I am getting at, and continues to explain away our differences.

"Your skill levels still have an effect on your class options, but I don't think it's as big of an effect as your trainer told you. Think about it, this is our first class, right? This one shouldn't be that important in the grand scheme of things. Your next class upgrade is going to be way better regardless, since you will have found the way you want to steer your overall build by then.

Plus, learning skills after you get your first class would help with this even more, since you know roughly what type you should want to try and learn for the sake of matching your class. I think your trainer was just a bit of a maniac, man. Didn't you tell us before that he was teaching you random facts about like milk pasteurization or something?" Wade's words strike a cord in my head, and doubt begins to linger in my mind. Master Lirin really was a freak show after all.

What my old friend is saying makes sense, and the others seem to agree too. I don't know why the warlock was so hyper focused on my skills, but it would seem that his efforts might just get me killed in the end after all.

"Wait a second. I don't think your trainer was that crazy, Sebastian." Kathryn speaks up suddenly.

"Why do you say that?" I wonder.

"I mean, you just leveled up <Polarize> five times by yourself, without any guidance from him." She says while whirling her hands in the air to show how wild the concept is to her.

"You literally just took a basic lesson on polarization that I told you about what the skill might do and turned it into a working process in only a few minutes. Do you think that maybe, this 'Master Lirin', might have thought you would benefit more from developing your skills rather than getting levels like the rest of us? He might have stretched the truth about the class thing to make you focus on your skills too."

"Uh-""Are you like a genius or something, Sebastian?"