In his room, Sol was finally able to get some respite after an exhausting week of dungeon diving. Sol lay on his bed as he tried to go to sleep but struggled to do so after 15 minutes.
'My stats are too high…'
Sol's internal clock and habits told him he should rest, but because his intelligence and vitality were simply too high, his body had already recovered to its peak. With nothing to do, he decided to keep working on his talent skill [Reinterpret].
[Reinterpret] Lv EX: Analyze the true meaning of a skill and reinterpret its origin. Can greatly accelerate the leveling of skills or change them at their origin. +1 Permission level.
Activating the skill, Sol was brought to a white room, not physically but in his mind. Here he was able to review in depth any skill he wanted to learn more about how it worked, how he could improve it, and even change it.
Sol had already used it a few times whenever they were resting in between the dungeon floors, but he had yet to get any significant value out of it besides a skill level or two increasing. Today he planned to go a bit further and try to change a skill into something new.
"How about… we try with [Earth Hammer]?"
A skill Sol never used as it required the use of a hammer to create an earth shattering blow. It was a skill he was willing to tamper with and change just to try it out.
In the white space, he could do virtually anything to analyze the skills. He could repeatedly use them with no cooldown or cost as it was all in his head. Sol could also create a clone of himself using the move so he could analyze it from different angles. Whether to slow down or pause the movements of the clone, anything was possible.
Sol began by creating a clone with a regular hammer and commanded it to use the skill. Mana flowed from fake Sol's body and into the hammer as it then slammed into the ground creating a ripple effect on the ground that caused waves of earth to spike up and around the center of the impact.
Taking note of how the mana moved through the body to create the ripple effect, he began to test out ways to change it. Trying to use the skill with different weapons brought mixed results with sharp weapons doing almost nothing and other blunt weapons having better effects.
Having many things he wanted to test, Sol thought to himself, 'This will take a while.'
…
Sol was right, hours passed as he attempted different ways to use the skill and even tried to make it into a spell which had poor results. He simply didn't have enough knowledge on spell theory and mana manipulation to make it work but he managed to turn the skill into a much more flexible ability.
With a single stomp, mana flowed from the real Sol's legs and a wave of earth spikes sprung out from around him. He then stomped again but this time the spikes only extended forward.
'This is much more useful and faster than swinging a big hammer to produce the same effect.'
The real benefit of using the original [Earth Hammer] was the spikes that erupted around the user. Sol managed to remove the weapon from the equation as he found it a useless requirement to activate the skill and could now use it with anything that made contact with the ground.
It could be with a single stomp, punch, and even slash with his sword. Once it made contact with the ground, he would send the mana into the ground in a way that created spikes however he wanted. They could spike up in a straight line, a cone, a circle, and much more. The only difference in each attack would be the mana cost varying as the further away it goes from his body the more mana it would cost to create.
Satisfied with his results, he decided to exit out of [Reinterpret].
…
Sol opened his eyes and was immediately met with a system notification.
[Earth Hammer] transformed into [Terra Spikes]!
[Terra Spikes] leveled up! (5 -> 8)
[Terra Spikes] Lv 8: Upon impact, create earth spikes that launch from the ground in whichever way the user desires. Mana cost varies.
'It reached level 8 in one go?'
Sol didn't believe that to be the case. When he thought back to his time in the white room, he felt moments where the newly transformed skills took a small leap in quality. It had to be then when it leveled up but he didn't get a notification for it.
'Do I not have system messages in the white room?'
Sol used [Reinterpret] again to go back into his mind and tried to open the status page, but nothing happened. It felt a bit surreal not having access to the system while he was in there but it made sense in a way. Not only was this in his mind, it also felt like a completely isolated space where only he existed. The system was not a part of Sol, so it was excluded from the white room.
'I never noticed till now…'
While feeling silly for not noticing until now, Sol looked outside the window and noticed the sun was beginning to rise.
'I spent all night in [Reinterpret].'
Even though Sol didn't catch a lick of sleep, he felt better than ever. His body and mind were in great condition even though Sol spent the entire night changing and improving his skills. It was an efficient way to train while also resting. Sol decided to do this every night to improve all his skills one at a time. He wanted to be as strong as possible for the knight selection and more importantly the tournament. Sol didn't know how strong his competition would be but it was better to be safe than sorry. After all, he only had a little less than two weeks remaining to prepare.