Alex opened his mouth to ask a question, but the eyeless man lifted a finger before it could form. "No more. I will give you a final gift of knowledge, one that the System does not distribute freely. Your Mind Palace is not merely a basin to hold power. It is you. Do not allow your Soul Manifestation to advance until you have grown your Mind Palace until you can push no farther. It is far more than what it appears. Now advance. My energy grows thin and I will speak no more."
Alex squinted at the eyeless man, then lowered his hand into the thin pool of energy rippling at the bottom of the basin. Cold blades pierced into his fingertips and he stiffened in surprise. A spike of ice drove through his heart and the liquid drained away, flowing into his palm and vanishing.
Gold letters traced through the darkness before Alex.
Your Stage has advanced to Novice 2.
Please select your second Auxiliary Skill from the following options.
[Mirrormancy] — Gain limited control over the medium in which you bind your monsters. This ability can influence any materials with the properties of glass or mirrors.
[Monster Medley] — Combine an existing monster with the energy gathered in your Spatial Mirrors. The results of this combination are variable and depend on the quality of the monster and energy as well as their synergy.
[Shimmering Shadows] — Gain limited understanding of illusion and the reflective properties of the Mirrorlands to the point where you can manifest images entirely from your will.
Goddamn. Those are some awesome skills. Controlling Mirrors? Combining my monsters with energy to make them stronger? The illusions — eh. Not sold on that, but the other two sound incredible.
Alex swallowed. From what Meiderly had told him, he only got a total of three Auxiliary skills, and his choice would be with him for the rest of his life. This wasn't just choosing a skill for now. It was picking something that would be shaping his future.
Think about which one has the best scaling in the long term as well as the short term. All of these are relatively weak right now. The point is what they can become, not what they currently are. I wonder if I'll get a chance to pick one of the two abilities I don't take this time around.
He looked over to Meiderly, but the eyeless man was gone. His soul was devoid of any presence aside from his own once more.
Figures. Fine. I'll just operate off the assumption that I'll never see these again. No point getting too invested in something that isn't already in my hands. I'll just focus on the current choice.
His options boiled down to being able to use glass and mirror magic, illusions, or upgrade his monsters. He drummed his fingers against his thigh as he pondered the skills. They were all pretty easy to grasp right now but extrapolating them far into the future was far from a simple task.
I don't know what my power limits are. If I can get as strong as the City-Eater Centipedes, much less the thing that was snacking on them, then what would Mirrormancy let me do? Control a sea of glass? Summon it, maybe? Probably both.
The image of bringing down a literal tsunami of mirror shards on top of something was as appealing as it was gruesome. It was basically controlling an element… just only glass and mirrors instead.
Thank God nobody was around to hear that particular comparison. Definitely far from my finest work.
He moved on to another option. Illusion was a little harder to conceptualize. Perhaps it would just let him make his illusions take physical form, or he could blanket massive areas with his power to the point where they were indistinguishable from reality.
Illusion felt like one of the abilities that was impossible to properly judge unless he knew where the line in the sand got drawn. A child with illusion magic could just claim their illusions were completely impenetrable and anything they made turned into reality.
That was no different from just pretending to be a god and hardly even classified as illusion anymore. There was no way the system would be letting him alter reality with illusions, but they had to get stronger somehow.
Not something I'm willing to risk. I've always been shit at sleight of hand anyway. I remember trying to do a magic show for my folks when I was eight or nine. Dropped all the stupid cards and broke my nose when I tripped over my shoelace trying to catch them.
It may have been sightly unfair to place that burden on the shoulders of a whole branch of magic, but Alex had already decided that he was going to live through the apocalypse in a way that befitted him.
I don't like it, so I'm not taking it. If it was better, then I'd like it. Simple as that, really.
That left Monster Medley. It was pretty easy to tell where that path was leading. It would focus on upgrading and combining monsters that he found, much like a twisted version of Pokémon.
The upper reaches of the skill weren't hard to see either. He'd already seen the City-Eater Centipedes. If they existed, then he could control them once he got strong enough. Not just that — he'd be able to improve them as well. Any monster that he ran into became a potential building block as long as he managed to harvest its energy.
This'll also let me power Glint up right now. I've got some Energy sitting around in his card that I don't know how to use. That's clearly a core part of my class. Something tells me I'd be able to use that energy for something else, probably a skill I'll get offered down the line if I don't take this one.
The more Alex thought about it, the more Monster Medley appealed to him. He'd chosen Evoker to be a summoner, and any upgrades he made to Glint would also indirectly make him stronger as well whenever the monster died.
It was the ability that best fit with his class, not just in the future, but right now. He needed enough strength to get out of the Mirrorlands — if he didn't, all the challenges in the world wouldn't save him when there was literally nothing to drink and he just died of dehydration.
He took a moment longer to turn his attention back to Mirrormancy, just to make absolutely sure he was making the right decision. It only took a few moments for him to determine that he had.
/Author's Note///
Read up to Chapter 85 on my Patre on!
Patre on.com/Actus
Please vote with power stones if you enjoy the story, it helps me a lot!