Chapter 344 - Skills and Deals

A/N: Hey, y'all! Hope you're doing well. I got sick this week and still haven't fully recovered. So, I lost most of the chapter I writing I

A/N: Hey, y'all! Hope you're doing well. I got sick this week and still haven't fully recovered. So, I lost most of the chapter I writing I

A/N: Hey, y'all! Hope you're doing well. I got sick this week and still haven't fully recovered. So, I lost most of the chapter I writing I got ahead last week :(
Still, today I'm feeling better than yesterday, so it's not all bad :)

2.95k chappy

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Kai strode among the rows of bookshelves, slowing his steps just enough to avoid the glares from the wandering librarians. The numbers on the plaques showed he should be in the right section. His gaze darted over the students around the tables and into the enclosed reading rooms beyond. 

Even the smell of old paper and soft lights couldn’t settle his urgency—he couldn’t be late.

It should be around—

Finally, Kai spotted the figure he had been looking for. 

Valela sat at a small table cornered between two shelves, appearing the exact opposite of him: calm, collected, with a handle on her academic career. She was reading a book, her lips slightly parted, murmuring to herself. The library enchantments turned her words into a background buzz.

“Sorry, I’m late,” Kai spoke upon crossing the runes beneath the floorboards. He purposefully slowed to not seem too frazzled as he took a seat. “Did you wait long?”

“I didn’t.” Valela closed the thick tome. “You’re on time. I arrived early.” Her face scrunched up as she studied him. "Have you not slept? I know how great it feels to increase your attributes, but a higher Constitution isn’t a substitute for rest.”

“I’m fine. I had stuff to do to stay ahead of my courses. It’ll get easier once I pass the first weeks,” Kai said as casually as he could, though his words couldn’t erase the dark circles under his eyes. “I’ll catch up on sleep next weekend.” 

Seeing her frown deepen, she remembered he had said the same thing last week. “I won’t tell you to take things easier,” she said. “Raelion won’t wait for anyone during the first year. But you can ask for help.”

“You are helping,” Kai motioned to the textbooks and papers he was taking out of his bag. “We’re here to pick up my new skills.”

“And to work on our status plans,” she raised a hand, leaning toward the bag beside her chair to grab a pink leather notebook with a happy octopus on the cover. “I’ve a list of points to discuss with you. I’d like to get your perspective.” 

Kai smiled as she intently leafed through the notes, knowing it was for his sake. “I won’t say my ideas are worthless, but how much can I contribute? Two weeks ago, I didn’t know people studied status planning. You’re way ahead of me.” 

“That’s…” Valela pursed her lips. “It’s not a competition. What’s wrong if I help a little more now? I’ve passed most basic courses in the first semester. I can help you prepare for the exams.”

“But you don’t need to.” Since he had escaped from the Sanctuary, she had helped him several times—he couldn’t keep caving in and relying on her. 

“I can handle the classes.” Kai forced more conviction into his tone. “I knew it’d be harder enrolling during the Winter Intake.” Many warned him, though he had underestimated how much. “You have your other courses to worry about. I don’t want to take more of your time.” 

“You aren’t taking anything, I'm offering,” Valela countered with a stubborn look. “Let me at least lend you my notes. That costs me nothing. Lys said they’re the best she has seen. Even if she exaggerates, she has stopped accepting them from anyone else, so they must be good.” 

Great, I’m in the same boat as Lys now..l

Kai chewed the inside of his cheek. His mind raced to search for a reason to refuse without finding any—except his pride. Could he really afford to refuse? Even if he managed, his results wouldn’t be as good. “Okay, thank you. I’ll find a way to repay you.”

You win some, you lose some. 

Valela let slip a pleased smile before smoothing her expression. “You’re making this a bigger deal than it is. Many students get tutoring. And remember, we signed a contract in Higharbor. I’m officially sponsoring you, and I haven’t provided a lot.”

“That was an excuse…” He lowered his tone. “To build my identity, and how I met you. It was also about Alchemy, which I’ve not done much.”

“It was a contract of general intent.” Valela waved off his objections with a hand. “You’ve already proven a worthwhile investment by enrolling in Raelion.” She raised her chin and flipped through her notes as if reviewing a business plan. “I plan to get my money’s worth.” 

Despite knowing she was playing it up as a distraction, Kai couldn't help chuckling at her act. “Are you now?” He raised an eyebrow in challenge.

“Of course,” she said—deadpan serious. “You can help me practice mana exercises. We’ll have more practical classes after the spring trials. And this is only in the short term. Proper sponsors know they’ll recoup the costs over years and decades.” She glanced at him and shut her pink notebook in one hand. “I’m looking to gain several times my investment.” 

Kai stood back, his face a mask of theatrical shock, his arms raised defensively. “Damn, such cutthroat terms. I knew I should have read the small print before signing." He couldn’t curb his playful smirk. “I should probably take advantage of my sponsor before I’m ruthlessly exploited.” 

Their contract wasn’t nearly detailed enough to guarantee any returns, but she had a point about looking at the long term. Reaching Yellow at their age, they could easily live for a couple of centuries. If he wanted to repay any favor, he’d better focus on growing stronger and graduating from the academy. 

Hmm… was I being the stubborn one? 

They bantered a little longer about exploited talents and evil plans. Valela cracked up halfway through and took a minute to stop laughing. 

“We should…. get started,” she said. “You need to choose your skills. I assume you made a list. ” 

“I did.” Kai reached into his bag for the papers of pros and cons he spent the night compiling. “I focused on paired skill paths since I plan to free two slots.” Synergistic abilities could influence each other's evolutions, though they’d also level slower if they overlapped too much.

Valela nodded. “That’s a good idea. I would have suggested the same. Can I see the skills you’re considering?” Her gaze followed him as he slowly took out more written sheets. “How many do you have?”

“Uhm…” Kai rubbed his neck before surrendering the papers. “I narrowed it down to sixteen pairs last night… but some skills repeat in different combinations. So, there are only twenty-four unique skills really.”

Her eyebrows rose as she read. “Yes, you’ve been very… thorough with your pros and cons,” she took out an enchanted pen. “Mhmm… we should cut Eidetic Memory, Cognitive Leap, Script Savant and…” 

“Wait!” Kai took a moment to react as she started crossing names off his painstakingly drafted list. “Those are some of the best ones.” He vainly reached over the tables to stop her. 

Valela leaned out of his reach as she sharply drew line after line. “Those are only good if you learn the Yellow variants. You noted that yourself. It’s already hard to get Orange study and memorization skills. I’ve never heard of someone getting them first at Yellow without long experience and supporting abilities.”

“Hard doesn’t mean impossible.” Kai abandoned his attempts to get the paper. His writing would still be legible beneath a single line. “I only selected Yellow skills when the books clearly explained how to get them.”

“And did they not list the other requirements? Or the time they’ll take?” 

“I… uh, most said practice and experience were the most important factors.” 

Valela stopped her ruthless cuts to meet his gaze. “Mat, I know how it feels seeing the endless shelves of skill tomes in the library. It’s the same for every commoner who enrolls at Realion and even some patricians. They’re overwhelmed by the skills available and their potential benefits. They end up reaching for too much and are still trying to acquire the perfect skill set when they fail their first year.

“I’m not saying you can’t learn them. If anyone I know can defy expectations, that’s you. But it’s also a matter of how long it’ll take you. Even in the best case possible, these Yellow skills will need months to learn at a minimum. Some people take years, and others never get them. Can you afford to wait that long?” 

Kai opened his mouth but didn’t speak. He couldn’t afford to wait weeks, let alone months. 

She's right. Perfect’s the enemy of good. 

A slightly less ideal pick beat failing to pass the basic courses. He threw a mournful look at his dream list. At least getting them at Orange would give him more control over their evolutions. 

“Keep cutting. And thank you.” The words came out with a resigned sigh.

“Happy to help,” Valela smiled, brandishing her pen like the Grim Reaper. “We should cut Perfect Recall and Arcane Cognition. Insight skills are too unreliable to get. Also, Peerless Learner and…”

Kai winced at each name. “You don’t have to read them out loud.” 

“Maybe not, but it’s so fun seeing the face you make.” Her straight expression only lasted a few seconds before she giggled. “I— I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. It’s just… you look exactly like Hobbes when he’s grumpy.” 

“I don’t.” Kai crossed his arms and looked away—stoic and silent. He took a fresh paper to redraw the list. “How many did you manage to cut anyway?”

“Almost done. We have…” She checked the four sheets. “…eight pairs of skill paths that you should be able to learn in a week or two. Though I’m not familiar with all of them.” 

“No, that’s already very helpful.” 

They discussed the remaining options. None was easy to cut. He couldn’t delay choosing, but he also didn’t want to rush into a bad decision that would accompany him for years—if not a lifetime. 

He definitely wanted a memory skill in the first slot. Quick Recall or Memory Lock were the more typical options, whereas Focused Reading was a more niche approach. It would enable him to consume books more quickly and remember anything he read, though it would be less helpful during lectures. 

There isn’t anything I really hate. 

Despite their pros and cons, he could make any of them work. It’d probably matter more how fast he could level them. A higher skill could bridge its downsides, especially once he reached the first specializations.

That doesn’t really help me decide…

Kai shifted his attention to the second half of the pair—learning skills. A good synergy could make two weaker abilities stronger than the individual parts; the issue was that every pair already sounded great on paper. Any suboptimal couple had already been discarded. Relying on books without personal experience, neither he nor Valela could say if any skills were significantly better than the others. 

His eyes run over the six remaining options. 

Diligent Student was a common choice. What it lacked in power, it made up for in width, covering every aspect of academy life. On the downside, it would lose a lot of value when he left Raelion, rendering it a temporary skill unless he discovered a useful evolution.

That’s years down the line. And it has good synergy with four memory skills…

He couldn’t remove it from the short list and moved on to Swift Learner—another popular skill to pick up new subjects. It wouldn’t be the strongest till the lv50 specialization, but it had some neat evolutions at Yellow that would turn it into a meta ability, applying it to make other skills level faster. 

Alternatively, he could select a mental skill for his second slot, such as Keen Concentration, Mental Fortitude or Quiet Resolve. Instead of directly enhancing his learning ability, they would help him stay focused on tasks and ignore distractions—be it casting spells in battle or following a boring lecture. 

They were an unorthodox choice for a student, but they could accompany him long after he graduated. 

Kai scrubbed a hand through his hair, staring down at the remaining five pairs on the paper. “I don’t know… Should I look at how many slots they take at Green?” He murmured, shaking his head. “No, I don’t even know what evolution I’ll pick at Yellow, or if I’ll keep them that long…” 

After wracking their brains, Valela had returned to reading her book while he deliberated. Her mouth curved with a hint of amusement that still maintained plausible deniability. “If you’re happy with any of them. You could just pick one.”

“You mean, leave it up to chance?” His strangled voice perfectly showed his opinion on the matter. There must be a better option among them. He just couldn’t see it yet. “I just have to decide. Uhm… which one do you have? How have you not told me?” 

Skills were a personal matter, but they had long gotten over sharing snippets.

“That’s because I’m not a good example. I picked up Reading and Learning when I was six years old. Still at Red. Even without perfect evolutions, I get most of their utility from their level.”

“Hmm, you’re just making me more curious.” Kai peered at her, trying to imagine how she had looked at that age. Cute and uptight. They’d first met a couple years later. “C’mon, I’ll show one of my skills for each of yours. I’ll even let you pick.” 

“Alright, one of yours for each of mine. If you really want to know.” She closed her book and grabbed a piece of paper with a small smile, using her arm to block his view as she wrote. And wrote.

She’s writing a lot. 

It took a minute before she turned the sheet toward him, showing way more information than he had expected.

• Name: Valela Hightide 

• Race: Human ★ – 380,577 / 500,000 XP

• Profession: Frozen Reflection lv 6 – 850 / 28,000 XP

General Skills:

• Impeccable Poise (lv61) 

• Mana Shaping (lv41)

• Mana Sense - Advanced (lv40)

• Ice Magic - Advanced (lv34)

• Swift Comprehension (lv30)

• True Tongue Speaker (lv22)

• Wand Casting - Expert (lv19)

• Voracious Reader (lv13)

• Light Magic - Advanced (lv8)

• Repeated Casting (lv6)

• Analytical Watch (lv4)

• Social Intuition (lv4)

• Smooth Diplomat (lv2)

• Immaculate Memory (lv92) 

• Essence Channeling (lv74) 

• Adaptive Strategist (lv62) 

• Runes (lv55) 

• Keen Hearing (lv63)

• Graceful Dancing (lv50)

• Eloquent Speaker (lv48)

• Merian Etiquette (lv47)

“That’s all of them.” Kai looked up at her, stating the obvious. This time, he didn’t need to feign his surprise. That was a lot of information to share with someone.

It’s quite the lineup. 

Valela blushed slightly before firmly holding his gaze. “You said you’d show me one of yours for each of mine. Now, you have all of them.” 

Touche…

He really should have worded it better. Not that he would complain. “What about your grade and profession?" 

“They aren’t a secret for anyone close to me.” She chewed her lip. “Like, Nalia and Lou already know. Lys too. She pestered to share it among us. But you don’t have to tell me anything unless you want to,” she hurriedly added. 

“No, a deal is a deal. It’s only fair.” Kai glanced over his shoulder for any librarians. He used a mix of Fire and Water to burn the paper without smoke and stored the ashes in his ring. “Give me a moment.” 

A thought made his status hang in the air. He checked on his latest levels. Using Shadow Magic to ensure Valela didn’t peek as he wrote, he folded the paper before passing it over the table.

• Name: Matthew Reece Veernon 

• Race: Human ★★ – 3,382 > 7,682 / 800,000 XP

• Profession: Favored Mystic of the Isles (lv3) –  1,988 / 22,000 XP

General Skills: 

• Hallowed Intuition (lv88)

• Mana Observer (lv53>54) 

• Body Augmentation (lv46) 

• Mana Weaving (lv40>41) 

• Mana Analyst (lv40>41) 

• Mana Engraving (lv23) 

• Water Magic – Advanced (lv34) 

• Split Mind (lv33>34) 

• Arcane Enchanting (lv13) 

• Elemental Swordsman (lv14) 

• Hobbes (lv29>30) 

• Runic Scholar (lv11) 

• Nature Magic – Advanced (lv12) 

• Space Magic – Advanced (lv13) 

• Herbalism (lv4) 

• Alchemy (lv94) 

• Blessed Swimmer (lv73) 

• Earth Magic (lv58)

• Shadow Magic (lv57>58) 

• Advanced Hunting (lv40) 

• Treasure Sense (lv40)

Her nervousness faded and her eyes widened as she went over the list. 

That was so worth it. 

Kai etched in his mind every line of her parted lips—it was important to start working on his memory skills. “So, what do you think?” He asked, leafing through the sheets of pros and cons on learning abilities to hide his interest. 

“They’re quite… impressive.” Her brows knitted together. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Hallow—”

“Not here,” Kai glanced at the quiet library. He didn’t trust the academy wards enough to discuss his status out loud. “We can talk about it another time. I still need to switch two of those skills.” He waved the sheets in his hand. “Did you get any other ideas for a memory skill?”  

Velala absently nodded. “Yes, I…” Her gaze focused as she passed the folded paper with his general skills back to him. “You could ask a professor for advice. They know more than we, and they’re used to answering these kinds of questions.”

“Uhm… that’s actually a great idea!” Kai took out a pocket watch to check the hour. If he remembered correctly, one of Professor Thornwyn’s lectures would end in ten minutes. “Do you mind if I leave first. I want to catch Jolene before her next lesson.”

“Wait!” Valela whispered. “What about your professions? And who’s Jolene?”

“Just the professor. Sorry, I really gotta hurry. We can talk next time.” Kai smiled as he grabbed his things and stood up. “Thank you again for the help. I’ll catch you up later.” 
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A/N: Hope you enjoyed Val's skills. It took a ton to decide them. Keep in mind her status can still be subject to changes and tweaking.

YELLOW TIER:

Greetings! How are y’all doing? It was a lot of fun reading your comments in the character poll. I had many more plans for polls and stuff I wanted to do, but life—or better work—had other ideas. I know it must be an absolute shocker, but I underestimated how much work it would be to edit book 3 XD. 

I’ll ramble about the editing below for those who are interested, but first the important news. I sent in the manuscript for book 3 to my publisher for the first round of line edits about half an hour ago! :) There are still a few things to do, but 80% of it is not my work. You can’t imagine how glad I am to be finally done. And how excited to show you the final version. There were so many great scenes I had forgotten about and/or rewrote. It’ll probably take a couple months for the book to be out. I’ll tell you as soon as I’ve got a date!

Okay, that’s the important news. Now, for the philosopher and general snoops who want to know more about what I’ve been up to, and what to expect when they’ll read the edited book 3. Buckle up! Here’s the brief summary of my past few weeks. 

So… It turned out book 3 was actually 96 chapters (89 after my edits). I don’t know why I was convinced it was 93; guess it had been a while since I scrolled all the way down the doc, but anyway… the process of editing it can be divided into thirds-ish of the book. 

• The first third of chapters was the roughest to get through. It goes from when Kai leaves Sylspring for Higharbor after the pirate raid to when he travels with Lou, Flynn, Ana and the twins to a Vastaire site and fights the sea serpent. The chapters here took about 4-7 hours to edit each on average. I had basically to rewrite them entirely and/or fuse them together to fix the pace. This is probably the third where you’ll see the biggest changes. Mostly, I’ve just rewritten what was already there, but there are also a couple of short new scenes, and much of the dialogue has been tweaked (cause it was cringe). Because yeah, third 1 was also the one where I thought the most times: ‘oh yeah, here I was really stretched thin and had no idea what I was doing.’ And ‘Sweet gods above! This line is so cringe. I want to dig myself a hole.’ 

Anyway, that was by far the longest and hardest section to edit. 

• The second third of chapters was… better. It goes from when Kai returns to Higharbor from the trip to when the Republic knocks on his door and ‘recruits’ him to investigate the beast accidents linked to the Vastaire. My writing definitely got better. This was also the slowest third of the book, where I’ve fused more chapters. They took about 2-4 hours to edit each. Again, there were a few paragraphs that had no place being there and much to rewrite, but the prose sequence was mostly solid. Book 3 in general had less fluff to cut than I thought (it went from 260k words to ~240k words in the end—counting the few thousand words that I’ve probably added).

• Finally, we reach the third-third of chapters, also known as the last third, the blessed third, and the ‘Oh, yeah. I’ve-finally-learned-to-write-half-decently-third. Like the name hints, this was the best and most solid section. It included all the actual investigation of the Vastaire after the Republic forcibly recruits Kai, till he gets trapped in the Hidden Realm with totally-not-a-megalomaniac, fairy god of high opinions, Zervathi. I liked this third quite a lot; chapters took ~2 hours each (probably because I was also half fried by this point). My edits were mostly rewriting awkward descriptions and tightening the action scenes. Not much else to say.  

Thus ends our journey through waaaay too many hours of editing (~180 just the last 3 weeks). After this, my publisher’s ‘editor’ will fix the typos I’ve surely added while rewriting scenes and my brother proofread the manuscript once. Aside from looking at the stuff they point out, my work is almost done, and I’m so glad for it. Can’t wait to show you the final version of book 3: Elydes - Whispers of the Isles

This is it, folk. I’ll see you on Friday with, hopefully, a fresh brain and a shiny new chapter Drew out