Chương 37: Breakthrough, Meditation

"Why did you help her?" It had been bothering me for weeks. I also tried to spread out my questions so my tutors wouldn't get annoyed. We were finishing up our weekly training session for Soul Sense.

"Who?" Healer Castelle asked.

"Bowmaster Erika."

"There are countless people like her. Adventurers who couldn't keep up with the pressure of the dungeon. All reach that point one day, even your mother. Their bodies aren't fast enough. Their skills aren't enough."

"But she is risking her life!"

"Like you do every day, with your stubbornness. I give warnings. I am not anyone's guardian. If people want to be idiots, that is their choice. I just let them know ahead of time."

"Why did your skill last longer than Stabilize Soul?"

"Because it is targeting her body, not her soul. A person's soul is highly resistant, so since your Mana comes from there, it breaks down my skill much more quickly. Also, my level is much higher in Stabilize Injury. I used it much more back in the day."

"Oh, do you think she will be okay?"

"Most likely. Someone who can make it to the 9 th layer can easily handle the first two layers of the dungeon. She has the experience to know what she is doing, so she doesn't get killed along with her granddaughter." I wasn't so sure.

"What were the skills you needed to learn for Stabilize Injury?"

"Always more questions, ah, the joys of youth. If you are interested in healing, then go to the Five Star Institute of Healing. I won't teach anyone half-baked skills outside of the Institute. And before you ask, it is for safety reasons. You learn a couple of skills, and then you think you can treat injuries. Then, when someone is dying in your hands, and your skills fail, you will blame me."

"I wouldn't."

"You would. It is human nature. It is one of the many things covered at the Five Star Institute of Healing. If you truly desire to become a Healer or learn healing-focused skills, then go there. However, Healing has limits. Far more limited than you can imagine. Strength would have been a better path for me. To shield and protect, not to treat foolishness. But I made my choices long ago." He got up and left, clearly done with the conversation.

I was truly curious about what had happened to him, but I was too scared to ask. It would be like reopening an old wound. I wasn't so insensitive as to let my curiosity get the better of me, no matter how much I wanted to know. Getting up, I left our practice room and made my way back to my apartment. I got changed for the night and sat on a cushion to practice Meditation before going to sleep. Just another skill I was squeezing into my packed days of skill leveling.

With all the tutors my father had been getting, each one spent around a week training me before being replaced by another tutor the following week. There were morning and afternoon training sessions. Evenings were spent with Damian or once a week with Healer Castelle. The schedule was incredibly demanding, but it was exactly what I wanted. I felt like I was rapidly improving in multiple areas. I definitely preferred fighting skills if I had to pick which type of skills I preferred.

Book learning was a struggle, and the Eldarin Runes were worse than the Eldarin Script. They had to be incredibly precise in both their construction and several other factors. Damian had tested out my creations, but they had all performed incredibly poorly. He had been offering advice on what I should correct and try to fix for the following runes I made, but it was exhausting to understand the complex rules that governed them and to put those rules into practice. For example, a fire rune didn't mean fire.

It was the concept of fire bringing warmth, heat, and burning. The rune itself looked like three different letters mashed together, with flowing lines of varying thickness. No fundamental runic language existed, or at least no one had created or discovered one yet. The symbols were incredibly complex, with the order of each line being drawn being important. There were countless variations that one could apply to runes.

So, while it made it easy to adjust the fire rune to provide more heat rather than burning, the actual symbology was incredibly complex. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. When one channeled Mana into the rune to activate it, instead of a heat source, they might receive a blast of fire on their face. That was what made it incredibly slow going. It wasn't just learning the runes, but everything about them.

And that hadn't even gotten into their interactions with each other. I could see their power and imagine how useful they would become in the future. But for now, runes were a massive headache to learn, even with my Mind stat. Everything had come easily before. Sure, it might have been boring, but Eldarin Runes was the first mental challenge I had ever faced. The complexity of the runic language was immense.

Focusing on my Meditation, it was an essential foundational skill to help increase the regeneration of Mana later on, once the skill progressed to higher tiers. Similar to Sense Mana, it was key for me to develop the necessary higher-tier skills and be able to level them more quickly. While I was at a bottleneck, I had experienced many bottlenecks with tier 1 skills. It wasn't something that was overly concerning to me anymore. I would break through when I broke through.

Trying to force a breakthrough would only slow down my efforts to get past the bottleneck in my skills. Keeping my breathing steady, I let my mind focus on nothingness. Meditation was about clearing one's mind. The best and most efficient way to practice this skill was to concentrate on blackness, the void, or nothingness. My breathing was deep and slow to help my body relax more easily, which was also why I practiced this skill before going to sleep. My mind drifted to intrusive thoughts.

Why wasn't there a sleep skill? Or a movement skill? Or a thinking skill? I knew they probably fell into tier 0, but if running used Mana to a small extent, why couldn't other skills? I put those thoughts to the side and focused on nothingness. With each breath, I let go of everything that was trying to weigh me down and distract me. I needed to focus on this moment. That was when it all came together, as the distracting thoughts left, allowing me to focus on absolute nothingness.

My understanding of the Meditation skill deepened, and this knowledge was imprinted onto my soul as I broke through the bottleneck. In the future, it would be easier for me to clear my mind and enter this higher state of Meditation. But leveling up would become more difficult as I had to find other ways to improve the skill. Unlike mental or physical skills, Meditation was incredibly self-reflective and depended much more on the person using the skill.

Each person approached it slightly differently, even if there were standard training methods. Most of my training was solitary, like this. While others might try to help, I had to understand and learn. Just repeating something over and over wouldn't help me gain many skills. Constantly overcoming personal challenges, pushing my skills, and focusing on what I was doing were key to improving. I did not know how other people could handle improving at a slower speed.

I would have gone mad with frustration if I weren't improving so quickly. With each improvement locking into place as one of my skills leveled up, I felt a sense of satisfaction. I had gotten better at sensing these improvements in levels. During Meditation, it was self-evident when I broke through. My Soul Sense also twinged slightly when I got the level. The skill imprinted the knowledge on my soul. Like a colored glass window, it altered the color of the light that went through it.

The metaphors used to describe how skills and stats worked could sometimes become overly convoluted. But it was a good starting point for visualizing and understanding what exactly was happening. To most people, this knowledge was not that important. While nice to know, it didn't help them. Given how quickly I was progressing, I needed to know everything I could to avoid mistakes in the future. While I hadn't crossed Meldor's Threshold, and specific skills were leveling up because of this, it was still perilous.

I wanted to understand the risks before being put in such a position again. Letting out another breath, I slowly got up and stretched a bit. I then walked over to my bed. It was time for sleep. I had pushed longer in Meditation than I usually would. Although I didn't like wasting time sleeping, my mind needed to be well-rested to learn quickly. Tutor Damian had told me off for staying up late in the past when I had unlocked my status. It would only hurt me in the long run.

Getting proper sleep and then putting in time to work on my skills during the day was the fastest way to improve. Like everything else he claimed about skill advancement, he had said the College of Advancement had done a study confirming this. It was nice to break through a bottleneck today. That meant today had been a good day for practicing my skills. While I had already broken through several, it felt like another small milestone on the path to becoming stronger.

And it was something I could mentally track, unlike my exact level. The minor improvements to a skill didn't always correspond to a level upgrade, but the breakthrough on a skill was more obvious, allowing me to pick up on this event. With how things were going, I had probably gotten the skill System Sense, and Healer Castelle would be livid. Although I hadn't been trying to get the skill on purpose, I knew about it and its usefulness.

I hadn't checked my reserves constantly or tried to sense them, but sensing skill levels was second nature and something I couldn't easily stop myself from doing. Even if I got another skill, I should be fine. I had probably increased my Mind stat. And if I crossed Meldor's Threshold, and my soul collapsed, then that would be it. I would not put my life on the line foolishly, but I couldn't be afraid either. That was what going into the dungeon had taught me.

If one wanted the power to rise to a legend, one had to be prepared for one's life being at risk. While it might not have been the lesson that Squire Jessica had tried to teach me, it was the one I had come away with. I would never become stronger than my mother without taking risks.