"Heavenly tempest, rupturing sword slash!!" Kim yelled.
The heavenly tempest who sought to destroy the heavens prepared an attack. One strike sought the sky, two strikes destroyed the clouds, three strikes grazed the skies and four strikes ruptured the heavens. A finger ruptures heaven.
These words made absolutely zero sense to any normal human being who would hear them. How did anything...... relate to anything?! Those were Kim's thought when he first heard the words. They were too simply too meaningless, he couldn't make head or tails out of it. Yet all it took was four days of constant meditation while being guided by the heavenly tempest sword saint as well as Lucas before he managed to finally grasp the epiphany. It couldn't quite be explained, but Kim felt a sort of intimacy with it and when he finally understood, he said:
"Of course. How could I not get something as simple as this".
That was just the way it was with epiphanies, they originally make no sense. But after intense meditation, one receives enlightenment and becomes aware their true meaning intimately. It becomes such a simple concept to them, but it was not possible to teach or even explain to another person, one could never understand the words without some sort of divine enlightenment.
Getting an unenlightened person to understand the epiphany was akin to trying to draw blood from a stone. Simply put, it was impossible.
Kim somehow managed to achieve said enlightenment in four days and became able to use the technique, it was the first main technique Kim learnt and as such it had a special place in his heart. Unbeknownst to Kim, he had developed a personal bias towards the technique.
Kim recalled the epiphany and activated the skill, but instead of the usual system message, he got,
*Ding*
[
Error! Skill activation has failed
]
'what?!'
Activating a skill required a total of four processes.
First, posture. Some skill have certain stances or forms that are attacked to them, said forms are required for the activation and are the crux of the first process of skill activation. The heavenly tempest sword arts didn't require any such posture, but some other do.
Second, proclamation. It is the process whereby one calls out the name of the skill, although pros can skip this process since they have developed a sort of familiarity with the skill.
Third, retention To activate say a, martial arts skill for example, one needs to recall how certain technique came to be. In Kim's case, it would be when he recalls the epiphanies of the sword saint. Most skills skip this process, but all martial art skills don't.
And lastly, power system. Before activating a skill, one has to posses the right power system. The power system being used must also be compatible with the user, a step which the great system would confirm before the skill activation message pops up. No one can skip this process.
There are a lot laws to some of them, especially the last one, but that was the general overview of the skill activation process. A skill may skip one or two depending on it's nature, but that's it. All skills require at least two of the afore mentioned process before activating. The only exceptions to the skill activation process would be the monsters as they didn't posses enough intelligence to navigate such a complex thing and as such, the great system granted them the privilege to activate skills by merely using their thoughts.
Kim didn't realize it, but he had flaunted the rules of the fourth process hence his skill failed to activate.
'how?! Why?!'. Kim thought, his mind was now in a frenzy as he tried to come up with possible explanations for the error message he had just received.
'hahahahahahaha!!'.
Kim heard the foreign speaker burst into laughter, he immediately became confused by this and decided to ask.
'hey! What's so funny?!
'hahahaha!' the speaker ignored Kim's question and just continued laughing.
'hey!! What's going on?! Answer me!'. Kim screamed inwardly, he had started to panic. His skill wasn't activating, the mysterious speaker was laughing maniacally at him for what ever reason, the Qi around him felt.....different to him and the horned demonic bear was almost done charging up it's attack. The entire situation was a total mess, Kim had every right to panic.
"shit, what the hell is going on". He said out loud as he attempted to activate the skill again, but was again greeted by the system error message.
[
Error! Skill activation has failed.
]
He tried two more times, but failed and kept on receiving the same message. The mysterious speaker was now laughing even harder, somehow finding joy in Kim's despair. The pain which the passive skill was suppressing was starting to creep up again, it was expected, the skill was only at level two and could only do so much.
'calm down Kim, calm down'. Kim tried to soothe his nerves by reassuring himself, when he finally managed to regain even a little bit of calm he immediately went to work. He needed figure out why his skill activation had failed, so he decided to call his current most trusted companion.
'rem!'
'the problem lies with the Qi energy that is being used'.
As rem replied the earlier question, it somehow started to make sense to Kim.
Originally, all Kim had to do to power an attack was gather the Qi energy from his surroundings before activating the skill so he had assumed Qi to be a general power source which could be used by anyone with the right attribute.
But for some reason, the Qi he was using right now felt so foreign to him. It was so unfamiliar to him, he didn't understand why but he couldn't help but feel that it didn't belong to him. He couldn't feel more different from the energy he was trying to harness which in turn birthed an uncomfortable feeling within Kim, it was akin to the sensation one would get when using another person's toothbrush. It was far too unsettling.
'hahahaha. A mere fledgling who doesn't even posses a Qi center dares to steal someone else's Qi, my Qi! Didn't your master teach you to never bite more than you can chew?! Hahaha'.
Again, Kim was thrown for the loop as he struggled to make sense of the intruders words.
'what the hell is a Qi center?'. Kim wondered, but that was the least of his worries as the horned demonic bear was now initiating the attack, again.
Now that Kim had a better look at it, the skill was terrifying. The creature seemed to increase in size as dark red energy covered the beast's entire body, but was especially thick around it's claws. Red sparks flew everywhere and it's already red eyes shone an even brighter red, the entire figure sent chills down Kim's spine.
"RAWWWWWRHH!!!"
The creature let out a loud roar as it charged forward. Even with it's large body, the beast managed to close the distance between itself and Kim in mere seconds and was now about to slash at him with it's claws.
He managed to jump out of the way again, but it didn't come without a price as wounds appeared all over his body and his health dropped to a quarter of what it had originally been.
'shit! This is bad'. He thought as he landed a few meters from the attack radius where dust and debris filled the air.
The creature emerged from the dust and shot Kim a glare. The look was so sinister that it would have been enough reduce a normal grown man to a crying, pissing, maybe even pooping mess.
It was clear that the beast was sick and tired of Kim constantly dodging it's attacks, but it lacked intelligence and just started preparing yet another demon bear bloody claw strike.
"Damn it! Just how many times can it keep this up? Rem". Kim yelled as he posed a question to his assistant.
'my database does not contain knowledge of the creatures energy pool'.
"Crap. That means there is a possibility that it can pull off more of the same skill, right?"
'Affirmative'.
'Damn, I can't rely on this strange energy anymore'. Kim thought as he tried to disperse the strange Qi but then, something unexpected happened.
The Qi refused to disperse, instead it seemed to affirm it grip around Kim's body holding him tight.
'ha, did you think I would let you off that easily!'. The unknown speaker said as the Qi tightened it's grip around Kim's body.
"A-aah". The pain was excruciating, his body was being squeezed and he could feel some bones breaking. The pain would have overloaded his brain and caused him to pass out, if it weren't for the adapt skill that was fortunately still active.
[
Adapt lv.3 is strongly active!
]
It turned out that the skill had leveled up at some point. He needed to find a way out of this situation, and fast.
'rem!' He called out, but before rem could answer Kim felt a horrible pain at the back of his head. It was as if someone had pierced his brain from behind. The resulting pain was excruciating and Kim's eyes almost turned white but he fought back, he could feel that someone was trying to take over his body and passing out was as good as handing free reign over his body to the intruder. His endeavour's were greatly assisted by his passive and he could only imagine what the situation would have been like if he didn't have the skill.
'rargh. Quit fighting and just give up already, this is a lost battle'. The voice in his head persuaded him, the words were filled with greed. For whatever reason, this unknown person wanted his body but he was not going to let that happen.
'the only way to repel the skill is....' rem's voice trailed off. The intruder was obviously responsible for blocking the passage of information.
'the only way to repel the skill is what? How do I get rid of this damn skill!'
'##@#%#$....' rem's words kept came out as meaningless mutterings before trailing off, and the Qi was gripping Kim tighter than ever trying to cause him to pass out.
"Aaaargh".
'your body is mine!'
"No fucking way, get lost you damn bastard!" Kim roared.
*Ding*
[
Possibility of obtaining a new skill is high!
]
The system message filled Kim with hope, there was still a way to get out of this predicament. The intruder could obviously not see the system message, but they could feel Kim's sudden rise in hope and as such continued trying to make Kim pass out by attacking him both physically and mentally, but he held on. He clenched his teeth and opened his eyes wide, he started thinking about irrelevant things to keep his brain busy and he shook his head wildly like a mad man while occasionally shouting out meaningless words so as to avoid thinking about the system message and alerting his intruder, it also helped him in staying conscious.
"Peanuts!!"
"Coffee!!"
"President!"
"Vote for me!!"
Sparks continued to fly as the beast was almost done preparing it's third attack now. Kim kept on shouting nonsense, and his intruder was getting fed up.
'What is the point, you'll soon either pass out or die anyway so just give. I promise to deal with the demonic bear for you, but of course there will be a price'.
"SHUT! UP!" Kim yelled out.
*Tsuccccht*
Blue sparks started appearing around him, and Kim immediately understood why.
'finally. What took you so long'. Kim said as a smile crept on to his face.
'huh. What do you mean?!' his intruder asked, hearing Kim's inward question.
Kim ignored the intruder and another system message popped up.
[
Congratulations! You have obtained the skill 'Mind fortress lv.1'!
]
Kim's smile widened as he read the words in his head making sure the intruder heard them. The action was soon followed by a:
'what?!' from the unsuspecting intruder.
.
.
.