[The One Who Cheated Death]
– Title given to those who faced and overcame death itself. Only by experiencing death can one truly understand it. Congratulations! Your understanding of life and death becomes much greater.
[Requirements to obtain:
- Die by running out of HP and survive without the help of any skill, item, title, or another individual.
[Effects:
- You now walk on a thin thread between life and death. You aren't a living creature, nor are you dead, but you aren't an undead either.
- By becoming a being of both life and death, you receive the properties of both sides while receiving no weaknesses of either side.
- As a being of death, your affinity with ice and darkness is much greater. Your need for any kind of sustenance is much lower, but your stamina consumption remains unchanged.
- As a being of life, your affinity with nature and light is much greater. Your resistance against most illnesses is much greater, and your HP regenerates much quicker.
- By obtaining this title, you also obtained a new skill Perfect Mind.
Upon seeing the title's description that was provided to her by the system, Aurora didn't react at all. Actually, no. Rather, she couldn't react. She was way too shocked to be able to react in any way.
It took her solid two minutes to finally come out of her stupor. But rather than having a strong reaction and screaming internally as she usually does, she instead just continued to stare blankly at the system screen.
'I-I... okay.' That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. This was the only reaction Aurora could muster up. It seems like she didn't come out of her shock yet after all.
Only after about another five minutes of nothing but staring with wide eyes did she finally seem to wake up.
'First of all, holy mother of god, that's the longest description I ever saw the system give about anything. Second of all, is this thing for real!?' Yep, now that seems more like the Aurora we all know and love.
What came next was a series of curses and bad words that there's no need to write about here, right? Hehe, sorry about that; I couldn't help myself. Ahem, anyway, back to the story.
'Alright, alright. Deep breaths, deep breaths.' Aurora chanted in her mind as she tried to calm down. Not only by taking deep breaths and closing her eyes, but also by trying to think about some soothing things instead of the absurdity that is her title.
'Okay, let's summarize this very calmly and collectedly. Basically, I'm half dead now, great! But make sure not to confuse me with an undead because, for some reason, I am not one. I am just a random fox that's both alive and dead, which sounds exactly like being an undead for god's sake!'
Taking a few more deep breaths, calming down once again, and shaking her head a few times, Aurora cleared her agitated mind and continued on.
'Well, at least I don't have any weaknesses of the undead. Right, now that I think about it, that in itself is pretty broken.' Now that she thought about it calmly, it made sense that she wasn't an undead creature. After all, she didn't have weaknesses of one, only its strengths.
'Wait, wait, wait, wait. This thing says that I don't have weaknesses of either side, so I don't have the weaknesses of a living creature? What even are those?' Unfortunately, it seemed that the more she thought about the effects of her title, the more confused she got.
'Okay, you know what? No. I refuse to think about this nonsensical title or whatever! Nothing about it makes sense, NOTHING!' In the end, she just closed the title's description and tried to force any thought about it out of her mind. Obviously, she failed miserably.
'Arrrrgh! This is pure @#$%$&#@ and absolute...' You get the gist of it. A lot of bad words and other things. What? Okay, I get it. I'll stop... maybe.
Realizing that there's no way she'll stop thinking about it, Aurora quickly decided that she needs to divert her attention to something else.
'It said something about a special skill or something. Come on, stupid system! Show me that damn skill!' As if understanding her current internal struggle, the system easily complied to her request and showed her the entry regarding her new skill.
[Perfect Mind]
- Level: 1
- Grade: Ultimate
- Skill type: Semi-active
- Attribute type: Psychic
– A skill that only those who achieved the perfect state of mind could ever hope to obtain.
[Effects:
- Completely nullifies any negative mind-type status effect under the ultimate grade.
- Lowers the power of ultimate-grade effects by half if its level is equal to the level of this skill.
- Lowers the power of ultimate-grade effects by 75% if its level is lower than that of this skill.
- Lowers the power of ultimate-grade effects by 25% if its level is higher than that of this skill.
- Furthermore, overall improves your thought proccess and increases your intelligence.
[Active ability: Immovable Mind
[On activation: The user's mind reaches its perfect state.
- In this state, the user cannot feel any emotions and cannot be affected by any negative mind-type status effects, regardless of their level or grade.
- Duration: 10 minutes.
- Cooldown: 24 hours.
'You know, maybe this wasn't such a good distraction.' After reading through the skill's description, Aurora just sighed helplessly. Though the skill was much simpler and easier to understand than the title, it still wasn't simple at all!
First and foremost, it was an ultimate-grade skill! Even she, who did not know the exact grades that the system used, was sure that something called the ultimate grade was most probably one of the highest possible grades. Heck, the highest grade skill she had until now was of the basic grade.
'Hold on, the active ability of this skill can nullify all negative mind-type status effects regardless of their level and grade. Doesn't that mean that an ultimate-grade skill is a skill of the highest grade possible?' Such a thought appeared in Aurora's mind, and to be fair, it was completely justified.
Think about it. Her skill Perfect Mind can completely nullify any negative mind-type status effect with its active ability. This means that the ultimate grade is the highest grade there is, unless this skill can completely ignore even higher grade effects.
'Alright, I don't know what grade that title of mine is, but I can without a doubt say that it's completely broken. Just giving me this skill would be enough, but the skill seems to actually be just a secondary thing.' Even now, Aurora was still underestimating how powerful her title actually was.
But to be fair, it's true that she had no way to know just how special her title was. Becoming a being that walked between life and death is something truly special. Yes, it may seem that she is basically just a much stronger undead that is also not weak to things like holy magic, but that's not true.
But in the end, that doesn't matter much. There's time for everything, and she will most probably learn more about her title sooner rather than later.
'Still, I need to be careful about how I use the active ability of the Perfect Mind. First and foremost, its duration to cooldown ratio is really bad. Five minutes of duration once per day? I guess it proves just how strong it can be.'
'Then again, it doesn't seem that strong for an ultimate-grade skill.' Even if her mind was in quite the chaos, Aurora still tried to think as calmly as possible, realizing some of the shortcomings of her new skill.
'Not that I have another skill of such a high grade to compare them, but to me it just seems like a stronger resistance skill, right?' She herself had many doubts about her new title and the skill she received with it.
'Forget it; there's no way an ultimate skill is that simple. There's probably something the system isn't telling me. Just like my title, these things are too complicated for me to understand just yet.' In the end, Aurora just shook her head and decided to stop thinking about it.
'For now, all I need to know is that both the title and the skill make me more powerful. The most useful thing for now is the increase in affinity with ice that the title provides me.' Thinking this way made her chuckle, as she thought that she had previously overreacted way too much.
'Speaking of ice affinity, what was that spell that I killed the Iron Wood Berserker with?' Suddenly, Aurora realized that she probably overlooked something that happened during the battle.
She quickly opened up all the messages that the system sent her, moved all the way to the time of the battle, and looked for a specific message. And it didn't even take long for her to find what she was looking for.
[Snow Magic level 5 evolved into Ice Magic level 1.]
'Evolved? How did that happen? Can skills really evolve just like that?' As if reacting to her confusion and barrage of questions, a new system screen opened up before Aurora's eyes.
[Skill Evolution]
– An occurance when a max-level skill changes into a new, more powerful version of itself.
- Once a skill reaches its max level, it will be able to evolve into a higher-grade skill.
- To evolve, the user has to complete certain requirements, or the skill can also evolve on its own in certain situations.
It was an entry from the system archive that contained some basic information about skill evolution. But this basic information was exactly the one that Aurora was looking for.
'Hmm? Thanks system, I knew I could count on you!' Though her thoughts sounded as praise, Aurora actually meant it completely sarcastically. To be honest, she didn't like the system much.
Yes, she liked how she could become more and more powerful thanks to it, but the feeling of her own life being basically owned by someone else wasn't exactly a pleasant one.
Be that as it may, in the end she just sighed and stopped being petty. She wasn't even sure if the system was a sentient being or something. After all, what's the point of cursing at someone if they can't even understand you?
Therefore, she just let go of the matter and thought more about the evolution of Snow Magic.
'Based on what the system says, there are two possibilities as to why Snow Magic evolved. Either I somehow completed the requirements to evolve it, or it evolved on its own for some reason.' And after coming up with two different possibilities, it didn't take too long before Aurora reached a conclusion.
'The later is more likely to be the answer in this case. I doubt that I somehow completed the evolution requirements without even knowing what they were. Most probably, the system reacted to my intense emotions at the moment and made my Snow Magic evolve in response.' Coming to a feastable conclusion that she liked, Aurora nodded her head a few times in satisfaction.
What she didn't realize, however, was that her thought process seemed to be better and more perfect than before. She easily found a very logical and highly possible answer.
She even considered how the scenario of her previous battle against the Iron Wood Berserker may have looked from the system's point of view. This was something she would never do before, meaning that the change must have been recent. Be that as it may, Aurora did not seem to notice this at all and just acted as if everything was normal.
'Well, whatever. I just want to see my new and improved Ice Magic!' A moment later, a system screen containing the skill's description appeared out of thin air as always.
[Ice Magic]
- Level: 1
- Grade: Basic
- Skill type: Passive
- Attribute type: Ice
– The basic form of ice magic. The true beginning of your journey to become the master of ice!
[Effects:
- Unlocks spell.
- You can unlock new spells by leveling this skill up.
- Also lets you use all the spells unlocked by its previous form.
[List of available spells:
- Level 1 spell: Ice Bolt
- ???
- ???
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As for the spell itself:
[Ice bolt]
- Mastery: 1
- Grade: Basic
- Spell type: Active
- Attribute type: Ice
– The first true ice-type spell a mage can learn. Its power is incomparable to any spells of the previous grade.
[On activation: Consumes 10 MP to shoot out a sharp bolt made of ice.
- Deals average magic damage.
- Has a very small chance to inflict the status effect: Minor Freeze.
'Basically, the Ice Bolt is just a stronger Snowball. There are no downsides to it; even the mana cost is the same. Other than that...' Suddenly, a smile appeared on Aurora's face as she jumped up in the air.
'I finally have a basic-grade magic skill!' Right, that's what made her so excited. It wasn't the fact that Ice Bolt was a very good spell that would certainly help her a lot. No, she was excited because she no longer had a simple-grade magic despite being 'talented' at it.
Aurora's excitement lasted for about a minute before she calmed down and stopped jumping all around the place.
'All that aside, I got a whole lot stronger with this victory. Just the increase in my ice affinity from the title and Snow Magic's evolution should make my magical attacks way more powerful. If we add the four level-ups and my new ring on top of that...' She didn't finish the thought. Instead, she just grinned and shot out into the forest.
Why, you ask? Simple. She wanted to try out her new magic. No, in all seriousness, though she may seem calm and collected when she fights, Aurora is quite childish in reality.
Just now, her newly evolved Ice Magic is basically a new toy she just got. And in order to see how 'fun' her new 'toy' is, she went into the forest to find a monster to test it out on. The result? A total and absolute success.
She knew that her new skill would be way more powerful than its previous version, but it was still even more powerful than Aurora expected it to be. But that's not something that will take her long to figure out.