Chapter 116 - Skill Selection

[Tutorial Closure: 05:46:00]

Mike opened the five skill options in the training yard with his pool at zero and six companions waiting for him to make the choice carefully.

The private interface belonged to him alone. Helena, Arin, Marina, Vex, and Ryan saw nothing until Mike selected the summary field and projected a copy into the prepared circle. Lumi watched the copy appear, all six tails resting on the packed earth behind her.

At the yard's center, Arin had braced hardwood, stone, and scrap iron into one ugly target. Marina waited beyond the scorched grass, Ryan marked the line no one should cross, and Helena emptied the approaches. One safe answer already waited for whatever Mike chose.

Mike shared the complete offer.

[Level 35 Skill Selection]

[Candidate 1: Arc Lash]
Rank: F
Rarity: Rare
Type: Active
Effect: Forms a controllable lightning tether for disarming, tripping, binding, or pulling at short-to-medium range.

[Candidate 2: Shock Javelin]
Rank: F
Rarity: Uncommon
Type: Active
Effect: Creates a dense thrown lightning spear with high penetration. The impact point remains briefly charged as a conductor.

[Candidate 3: Surge Drive]
Rank: F
Rarity: Epic
Type: Active
Effect: Strength, Agility, and Arcane Power increase by 30% while active.
Cost: Mana and Stamina costs of active skills increase by 50%.
After Deactivation: all attributes reduced by 10% for half the active duration.

[Candidate 4: Mirror Switch]
Rank: F
Rarity: Epic
Type: Active
Effect: Exchange positions with the Doppelganger within the skill's valid range.
Requirement: Chaotic Doppelganger active.

[Candidate 5: Stormplate Array]
Rank: F
Rarity: Epic
Type: Active
Effect: Creates adaptive lightning plates around the body and nearby space. Plates intercept impacts and stabilize lightning channels while maintained.
Cost: high sustained Mana and reduced movement efficiency.

Vex read it once. "Rescue line, stolen weapons, ruined footing. It gives you a way to interfere without becoming the center of every problem."

"It also gives him a way to pull the problem into his face," Arin said.

Mike saw both versions. Arc Lash filled the distance between his fists and Skyhammer Bolt. It could strip a shield aside, catch an ally, or break a formation without committing a large attack. Chaos would strengthen the lash and make Elemental Drift dangerous around anyone he intended to rescue.

The option offered control, but demanded restraint at exactly the moment he usually wanted decisive force.

Its future was easy to imagine. Longer reach, more tethers, stronger bindings: every improvement would let Mike shape a battlefield without destroying it. That was a real gap in his build. Yet a tether was also a promise to remain connected. Against anything strong enough to drag him, poison the lightning, or follow the line back to his hands, control could become mutual. He would be choosing a skill whose finest use required his power to stop exactly where another body began.

Vex's attention moved to the second option.

Ryan focused on the final sentence. "It lets you place a path at range. A wall, tree, or armored target becomes part of the next strike."

Marina nodded. "And it is predictable enough to use near people if you fuel it with Mana."

The precision mattered. Shock Javelin could reach through cover where Skyhammer's called strike lacked a clean target point, and the temporary conductor would formalize tricks Mike had built from chains, inlays, and bad ideas. It also overlapped with tools he already had. Thunderfall Sphere broke groups. Skyhammer Bolt reached far. Stormstrike turned any object he touched into a conductor.

Javelin made one job cleaner without changing the scale of what he could attempt.

Its lower rarity did not make it weak. A spear that penetrated now and prepared the following attack could become a brutal opening language. Mana would preserve its predictability around allies; Chaos could replace that fuel when penetration mattered more than a clean aftermath. But the choice would spend a rare milestone on reliability. Mike respected reliability. He was less certain he needed the System to give him another version of something his current skills and control could already approximate.

The third option made his pulse lift.

Helena read the cost before the benefit a second time. "This creates an assault window and a vulnerable window. Both need a plan."

"The first gets him through a threat before attrition wins," Arin said. "The second means somebody else owns the line when it ends."

Marina looked at Mike rather than the copy. "It rewards cutting the activation early. That is either excellent for you or a personal insult."

"Both can be true."

Surge Drive multiplied the three attributes that defined his preferred finish. Agility put him in position. Strength made contact matter. Arcane Power turned the storm from damage into an ending. The cost punished every extra movement and every attack used while active. For an eligible attack with Chaos replacing Mana, Chaotic Conduit would charge correspondingly more Health.

Power now. Debt immediately after.

Mike understood that language.

The skill also scaled with every future point placed into its three chosen attributes. It would not become obsolete merely because his next enemy had thicker armor. The danger was equally durable: the more power Mike learned to pour into the active window, the more ruinous a delayed cutoff and the following universal weakness would become. Surge Drive would amplify his build and his worst instinct at the same time.

The fourth option offered a different kind of survival.

Vex smiled without humor. "That is an escape, an ambush, and a terrible habit waiting to happen."

Ryan traced two points in the dirt. "Its value depends on placement before the emergency. If the Doppelganger is somewhere useful, the switch is exceptional. If it is expiring, restrained, or making its own commitment, Mike inherits that state."

Marina studied the exchange condition. "It could make you accept risks because you believe consequences have another address."

Mike did not dismiss the concern. Mirror Switch could steal him from a binding, put him behind a commander, or trade a doomed location for a prepared anchor. It would also make his survival depend on treating a semi-independent copy of himself as a disposable doorway.

The power was real. So was the direction it encouraged.

Mirror Switch would scale through cunning rather than raw output. No increase in enemy armor could invalidate the value of occupying the wrong side of it. It also left most of Mike's defining advantages untouched: Arcane Power did not improve an exchange, and Chaos offered no obvious benefit to a movement skill that dealt no damage. Worse, the requirement made every use compete with whatever the Doppelganger was already doing. An extra body could attack, deceive, or hold ground. Turning it into a waiting doorway might waste the very independence that made it powerful.

He considered the final summary.

Arin stepped closer to the copy. "That is the safest immediate gain. It covers mistakes and gives you movable protection."

"It also competes with the Mantle and bracers for a problem they already help solve," Ryan said. "The channel stabilization is valuable. The sustained cost is not."

Mike imagined taking the Ossuary with Stormplate Array. Spears would have found fewer openings. Aethran's tether might have needed to cross more controlled surfaces. Grave Tax still would have eaten Stamina, the distributed Engine still would have surrounded him, and every minute of defense would have prolonged the fight the dungeon wanted.

Stormplate Array improved endurance inside attrition.

Surge Drive offered a way to refuse attrition.

The plates could grow with his lightning and perhaps turn channel stability into the freedom to spend more power safely. That temptation was not trivial after Aethran. But a sustained Mana drain would remain a sustained Mana drain, and reduced movement attacked the part of Mike's defense he trusted most. Stormplate would teach him to endure the center of a killing field. His class had taught him to choose where the center formed.

Mike closed the projected copies without dismissing them. Five names remained in a plain row.

Arc Lash gave him the broadest new control, but every rescue made its Chaos-fueled version a risk to the person on the other end. Shock Javelin offered cleaner penetration and a conductor placed at range; it also competed with Skyhammer Bolt, Thunderfall Sphere, and every improvised path he already knew how to create. Mirror Switch was the finest escape and ambush tool in the set, provided his Doppelganger still occupied the place he needed. A semi-independent copy could turn that condition from certainty into a wager. Stormplate Array answered his damaged channels and protected him when Arin could not, yet spent Mana to keep him inside the long fights that had nearly killed him.

Surge Drive did not add a new answer. It made his best answers arrive before the enemy could build a second phase around them.

The opportunity cost was just as clear. Choosing it meant refusing a rescue tether, a ranged conductor, an impossible exchange, and mobile armor. In return, Strength, Agility, and Arcane Power—the body, the arrival, and the storm—would all peak together. Chaotic Conduit would make the bargain harsher, not cheaper: whenever Chaos replaced Mana as an eligible attack's fuel, the passive would charge the skill's full increased Mana-equivalent cost directly to Health.

"Its failure is visible and scheduled," Helena said. "That helps only if you admit the schedule exists."

"You think I won't stop."

"I think you will see one percent of a skull still attached and redefine finished."

Arin rested one hand on the Ridgeforged Bulwark. "Then someone else owns the line when the Drive ends."

Marina pointed at the Aftershock sentence. "And you say when it ends. I will not discover that every attribute dropped because you became mysteriously worse at standing."

The drawback could become part of the fight instead of a private punishment. A spoken activation. A spoken cutoff. For half the time between them, Arin—or whoever stood nearby—would know Mike was slower, weaker, and easier to kill.

Mirror Switch could have saved him from a binding. Stormplate could have kept him in attrition. Surge Drive offered to deny the enemy time to make either necessary.

The Ossuary had taken first deaths and turned them into stronger second lives. Mike wanted the skill that reduced how many second answers an enemy received.

"Surge Drive," he said.

Helena held his gaze. "Failure condition?"

"I keep it active after the finish is certain. Costs rise for no gain, then Aftershock arrives while the threat still lives."

"Answer?"

"Declared target. Declared cutoff. If I stop listening, Arin hits me with the Bulwark."

Arin's smile was immediate. "Accepted."

Marina sighed. "You made supervision far too rewarding for her."

Mike selected the skill.

[Skill Acquired: Surge Drive]

For one chosen interval, body, arrival, and storm will peak together; the debt waits at the far edge.

Surge Drive
Rank: F
Rarity: Epic
Type: Active

Strength, Agility, and Arcane Power: +30% while active
Active Mana and Stamina costs: +50%
Aftershock: -10% to all attributes for half the activation duration

The new path settled into his System framework without firing. A second pulse seemed to wait beneath his heartbeat, poised to seize muscle, motion, and storm together.

The layered target waited at the far end of the yard, braced deep enough that Arin had called it optimistic. She stood beyond its flank with the Ridgeforged Bulwark. Ryan held the iron binding in a field that would fold debris inward. Marina's green threads touched Mike's forearm without entering the storm channels. Vex and Lumi watched from opposite sides, while Helena held the authority to end the attempt.

One activation. One strike. One honest look at the debt.

"Drive," Mike said.

The waiting pulse opened.

His body did not feel lighter. The world felt late. Strength packed itself through bone and tendon until stillness became restraint. Agility narrowed the space between thought and motion. Arcane Power rose around his heartbeat, and the harmless sparks beneath his skin lengthened into white-blue claws.

Mike stormstepped.

The familiar skill demanded half again its ordinary Mana and Stamina. It also hurled him across the yard with enough speed that the target seemed to leap toward him. He planted one boot before the buried frame and opened Chaotic Conduit.

Stormstrike gave the attack its form and its single target. Chaos replaced Mana as the skill's fuel; Chaotic Conduit charged the enlarged Mana-equivalent demanded under Surge Drive directly to Health. Strength and Arcane Power peaked together behind Mike's fist.

He struck.

The sound arrived as one brutal crack. Hardwood collapsed around his knuckles. The stone core split from face to base. Scrap iron bowed inward under Ryan's grip, and white-blue lightning burst through every seam with violet darkness burning at its heart. Chain Return caught part of the discharge along the Crownshard Bracers and turned it into a razor instant of control. It returned no Health. It simply let Mike feel exactly how much more force remained in him.

Enough for another strike.

Nothing remained that required one.

Seven seconds had passed.

"Cut," he said, and released the Drive.

Aftershock took ten percent from everything at once.

The shattered post appeared to recede. His next breath weighed more. A step that should have settled cleanly dragged at the repaired thigh, and the same sparks that had clawed from his skin guttered close to it. He remained stronger than most people in Stormbreak. For three and a half seconds, that fact was almost the danger. His body felt capable while every familiar timing had become a lie.

Arin was already between him and the ruin, Bulwark raised. Vex turned outward. Ryan held the iron and stone motionless. Marina counted down with two fingers on his wrist. Lumi pressed against his calf and stayed there until the lost edge returned to the world.

"Clear," Marina said.

Mike flexed his hand. Sensation reached every finger. The old channel ache had brightened, but it had not spread.

Arin looked from the pulverized target to him. "One was enough."

"It was."

The admission mattered more than another shattered post. Surge Drive offered overwhelming seconds, then made every unnecessary second part of the price. Its increased costs had bitten exactly where promised: Mana and Stamina for Stormstep; for Stormstrike, Chaos replaced the inflated Mana fuel and Chaotic Conduit charged Health. Chain Return had refined the violence without refunding it.

Helena lowered her hand. "Seven seconds of advantage. Three and a half in which the rest of us keep the world from collecting you."

"A fair division."

"It will be when you keep saying cut."

Mike looked at the broken stone. The skill's discipline stood there in one image: finish, then stop.

One demonstration had answered them. Marina had rebuilt him for the choice ahead, and the broken target already showed what a needless second attempt would cost. Stormbreak used the remaining hours to prepare for Tutorial Closure while Mike's channels settled and the yard lost the smell of scorched wood.

[Tutorial Closure: 03:13:20]

The sky above Stormbreak remained ordinary gray. Cook smoke rose straight, packs waited by the yard, and the wall watch had found nothing moving toward them. Mike stood among Arin, Marina, Vex, Ryan, and Lumi with Surge Drive quiet beneath his heartbeat.

Broken Pattern was quiet for one clean heartbeat.

Only Tutorial Closure remained.