Chapter 1052 - Bombshells

According to many scholars in Paths, Legacy skills likely made up the majority of all skills in the entire multiverse. From huge divine factions having an untold number who walked Paths entirely made up of Legacy skills to a master with a single disciple to pass down aspects of his Path. It wasn’t odd for someone from the Holy Church or an assassin trained by the Court of Shadows to have more than ninety percent of all their skills be Legacy skills.

The skills were rarely – if ever – only from a single individual, though. As a way to combat the negative aspects of someone only inheriting the Path of a single other individual, Legacies from entire Pantheons were instead given, allowing those capable to pick and choose from all the different Legacies, ultimately forging their own Path.

A good example of this could even be seen with the Order of the Malefic Viper. Nearly every alchemist had Palate of the Malefic Viper, with many also wanting at least a few more due to the synergistic effects of the Malefic Viper Legacy skills, but they rarely ever had more than a few. Instead, they had teachers and masters who helped them get other skills, which they mixed with the ones from the Primordial as well as the skills they had formed themselves – a practice the Order actively promoted.

Jake was a bit of an odd example for this as the majority of his Profession skills were related to the Malefic Viper, but that was because he was in a situation where his Patron and the guy who usually gave him advice and taught him was the same person. Not that it had particular negatives as Jake wasn’t merely walking the same Path of the Malefic Viper, was simply using his Patron’s Path to support his own.

Either way, the point was that there was no need to avoid Legacy skills as long as the Paths you learned from didn’t end up entirely overshadowing yours.

Besides, even if one wanted to, they were impossible to avoid...

Especially if the Legacy skill in question was one you had no idea was even a Legacy skill in the first place. Even more so when it was a skill where it made no sense at all that it was a Legacy skill in the first place. At least not from Jake’s point of view.

Back in his Soulspace, he had to take an extra few moments to read that first portion of the book properly to ensure he hadn’t misunderstood the bombshell of knowledge that he was pretty confident would send shockwaves through the multiverse if ever spread.

After double, triple, and quattuordecuple-checking that he hadn’t misunderstood anything, all Jake could do was lean back and mutter to himself.

“Bloody hell...”

Now, If Jake had learned that a skill such as One Step Mile was the Legacy skill of the First Sage, he would have totally believed it. If he was told that one of his alchemy skills, even one of the more basic ones, was actually a Legacy skill, Jake could also readily accept that. Shit, even a skill like Legacy of Man could make some sense as it was about passing down Records and knowledge. Then again, in some ways, one could say Legacy of Man was already one as the First Sage had been human. It was still possible that the original Origin had been the First Sage, though...

However, nothing could have prepared him for the skill it actually was. A skill so innocuous that Jake had never even considered it could be a Legacy skill for even a moment. A skill Jake had with him nearly from the very beginning:

Meditate.

It was a skill Jake had automatically gained upon evolving to E-grade... and a skill that the vast, vast majority of people in E-grade or above possessed throughout the multiverse. From enlightened to monsters, Meditate was known as a basic skill that anyone had. All it really required was for one to be sapient, and you would get it.

And now Jake was staring at a book saying that this was a Legacy skill of the First Sage.

No, not that a variant of Meditate was his Legacy skill. The very concept behind Meditate was bound to the Records and Legacy of the First Sage. Any variants across the multiverse were merely outcrops of what the old man had created, branching off or attempting to build upon what the First Sage had made. All of this while Jake suspected no one had the slightest clue it was a Legacy skill in the first place, much less that its Origin was some old human who died while in C-grade.

Jake also finally understood why the First Sage said Jake should consider keeping this to himself, even from Villy. The old man had also said directly that it was Forbidden Knowledge, meaning that it wasn’t even as if Jake could talk about it with anyone else. However, this only left Jake questioning things more.

Why was it Forbidden Knowledge in the first place? And if it was... why did the system allow the First Sage to tell Jake at all? Villy knowing Forbidden Knowledge made perfect sense as his Bloodline allowed him to remember, but Jake wasn’t like that. All his Bloodline could do was Jake vaguely feel that he had maybe forgotten something, but that’s about it. Yet with the First Sage, it seemed to not bother hiding anything.

Did he do something, maybe? Jake wondered. It didn’t feel like the First Sage had done some weird stuff to allow Jake to know, but needless to say, there was no realistic way to find out. It was also possible that the First Sage was simply aware of the secrets he was allowed to tell Jake, thus having avoided any forbidden topics during their conversation. He did mention a few times that he couldn’t share some things, so that interpretation made a lot of sense, even if it didn’t explain why Jake was allowed to learn what he learned.

It could also be because of the way I’m learning it, Jake also wondered. An explanation that made more sense. Path of the Heretic-Chosen was effectively the system deciding what Jake was allowed to see, and it had allowed him to see the First Sage. Even if the old man had used nineteen Transcendent skills or something dumb like that to set up their meeting, it was ultimately the system that allowed it all to take place.

The more he thought about it, the more certain Jake felt that the reason he was allowed to learn all this was due to the method he used to first hear of the First Sage. His Path in relation to Villy was that of a Heretic-Chosen, someone who viewed himself as an equal to his Patron, and what was more equal than sharing huge secrets? It felt like a flimsy explanation, but clearly, the entire route to Jake eventually meeting the First Sage had started from the Malefic Viper, and the system had even pre-ordained their meeting the day Jake received his boots from the Tutorial Challenge Dungeon.

Shaking his head, Jake turned his attention back toward the tome in front of him. While this meeting with the First Sage had given Jake some answers, it had left him with far more questions. All for later, as for now, he wanted to at least get a rudimentary understanding of how exactly Meditate could be a Legacy skill.

All the basic common rarity version of Meditate did was increase resource regeneration while cutting off all senses from the outside world. Jake had initially compared it to sleeping but later learned it was capable of a lot more – oh, and not as good as sleeping, at least not for Jake. He used the skill all the time to concentrate, courtesy of his Serene Soul Meditation skill that helped calm his mind while in meditation.

Jake theorized that the basic version of Meditate was indeed just one aspect of the Legacy skill boiled down to its basics. One concept focused to its extreme. A concept that was already pretty damn powerful in the first place.

Reading a bit more in the book, the first chapter did touch on how Meditate worked. Jake had assumed it worked due to system-fuckery, and after having read the explanation, all he could do was nod and agree with himself that whatever the fuck the First Sage had done was pretty much the same shit as system-fuckery. At least if Jake wanted to comprehend the actual underlying concepts and not just get a surface-level understanding.

Anyhow, according to the book, Meditate essentially just stimulated the connection between the concepts that allowed resource pools to passively regenerate – fundamental law controlled and directed by the system - and the resource pools in question, resulting in increased regeneration. The “cost” for this was that the layer of the soul allowing external perception had to be entirely focused on enabling this effect to take place.

However, the First Sage made clear that despite it seeming like a cost, it was, in fact, just a secondary beneficial effect in his book as it allowed one to focus more on the inner world, be that through the movement of energies within the body – the Soulshape – or even the Soulspace for those capable of connecting to that.

Jake read these explanations in the book put on plain text, as he couldn’t help but also question the format of information delivery. Many of the books Jake usually read were mostly glorified audiobooks for any sections of heavy writing, though there were also many instances of it being written normally. Even In those cases, the text tended to be super fucking small, or the pages seemingly expanded when one looked at them, but the book left by the First Sage wasn’t like that.

Instead, it was like the writing in the average book Jake could have found back before the system. Well, besides this one being handwritten, even if the writing was so perfect it could have been a machine with the font also consistent throughout. Jake wondered if this choice of format was due to the First Sage’s past as a normal pre-system human. As a librarian, he would have no doubt read plenty of books, if not perhaps written a few throughout his many years working the job.

Not to say the book was normal in other ways. Just the pages with normal writing on them. There was still plenty of magical bullshit going on with it, especially when one considered that the book was effectively just a representation of Records.

Continuing to read a bit further, Jake was in the zone, trying to really take everything in and internalize whatever he learned. Admittedly, none of it was very useful quite yet if Jake wanted to upgrade his Meditate skill, but Jake wasn’t worried in the slightest as he knew all this was simply laying the foundation for when he would eventually begin to delve deeper into the skill and the ways it could be upgraded.

He also began to understand why the First Sage had left this book to him. Meditate was a skill all about connecting with your inner self and, in concert, one’s soul. It was a skill about regeneration and healing. One of reflection and growth. A truly multi-faceted skill that gave one the ability to understand oneself better, and through that understanding, power could be uncovered.

That’s when Jake remembered something else. He remembered one of his talks with Villy about the Dao Sect and how they apparently had a Meditate skill part of their Legacy that allowed one to gain experience simply by meditating. He also remembered the Sword Saint, who had a meditation skill that allowed him to gain experience when he was doing an odd sword dance... once more just making him realize he had much more to understand about Meditate.

Jake continued reading a little more until he had to stop. He wasn’t in the right mindset to be reading the book right now, as whenever he learned something new, he couldn’t help but be taken aback at just how far the First Sage’s influence had truly spread.

The First Sage was overpowered as fuck. Of that, there was no doubt. He also knew that the old man had left a lot of Records with Villy, who later became a Primordial, his Legacy forever part of the Malefic Viper’s. However, he couldn’t even begin to comprehend the sheer scope of things with these new revelations.

It really was everyone who had Meditate. The system gave it out as a basic skill upon evolution. Didn’t that mean nearly everyone unknowingly carried Records related to the First Sage? That everyone had part of his Legacy? Just how many Records was that? How the hell had he managed to create a skill the system later decided to make this universal?

Closing the book, Jake shook his head. It all felt like too much, and he felt pretty damn confident there were way more shocking revelations just waiting for him. On the one hand, he felt that he could really have done without all this knowledge, but on the other hand, he was incredibly grateful for the First Sage to have left this book to him. To have left a fragment of his own Records... even if the old man probably did have some motive behind it that Jake just wasn’t smart enough to understand. Then again, he didn’t feel confident anyone would be smart enough to outmaneuver that absolute monster.

With the book out of the way, Jake was faced with his next challenge... talking to Villy. He considering doing something else first, but he really shouldn’t delay his discussion with the Primordial more than necessary.

He still had to decide what he wanted to talk about and what he didn’t want to talk about. The biggest topic Jake was split on was obviously the book and the bombshell regarding the Meditate skill, but there were also many other smaller things Jake was doubtful about.

Jake ended up taking a few minutes within his Soulspace to reflect before he decided to just go with the flow on things. He didn’t like keeping secrets from Villy unless he had a good reason to, so Jake also chose to mention the things about Meditate.

Opening his eyes in the real world, Jake gave the eels in the pond a smile and a nod as he stood up and went back into the lodge and down to the lab. Down there, he got things ready before he reached out to the Primordial, and from how quick the answer came, it was pretty obvious the god had been waiting.

The connection was formed, and Villy was the first to speak.

“You met him, huh?”

“Yeah,” Jake spoke out loud with a nod, having already set down a sound isolation barrier, and the small ritual he had made allowed the Viper to hear him speak. He had done it like this partly to know if the system would somehow stop him from physically talking if he wanted to say certain things. He didn’t know if that was a thing, but it was interesting to test.

“That does explain the upgrade to Sagacity. I noticed it immediately when I felt a drain from the drop of blood within you as if the Records were being rapidly extracted, and I don’t know anyone but him who would be capable of triggering something like that. Well, outside of you doing it yourself,” the Malefic Viper spoke.

Jake was silent for a moment, really feeling unsure of how he wanted to approach this entire conversation. “He is definitely the most overpowered individual I’ve ever come across. But... you don’t question that he was even able to directly help me during the vision?”

It wasn’t as if how the visions during Path of the Heretic-Chosen worked was a secret, and the way this vision had gone was entirely different from anything before.

“No, no, not really. I’ve long stopped being surprised about what the First Sage was capable of,” the snake god said with a nostalgic tone.

Jake had originally wanted to save the entire Meditate topic for later, but he felt that the setup was too good, so he decided to just drive right into it.

“Hey... listen, the upgrade to Sagacity wasn’t all this vision gave me,” Jake began.

“I figured as much. Even from here, I feel the lingering Records of the First Sage upon you. He left you with something, didn’t he?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah, a book within my Soulspace. He left a fragment of Records behind as a final act before the vision ended, and it’s this Record Fragment I want to talk about. More specifically, what it’s all about...”

Without further ado, Jake explained what he’d just learned mere minutes earlier. He didn’t get very long before he dropped the bombshell regarding the Meditate skill. After he did, he allowed the Primordial time to speak.

Villy was silent for a few moments, long enough for Jake to question if the god had even heard him or if Jake had somehow gotten censored. However, just before Jake spoke up again. The Viper started laughing. Jake was taken aback as he’d never heard Villy laugh like that before. It was loud and unrestrained, and it took the god a bit before he finally calmed down.

Only to drop a knowledge bombshell of his own.

“So... so it wasn’t just Identify.”