With this, he had finally reached the stage where he could become considerably stronger much faster.
That level-up notification wasn't the only one in front of him, obviously.
[The [Summoner] Class has reached Level 10. Your path can now be chosen]
[Notice: Until a path has been chosen, it is not possible for your class to collect further experience]
[Skill | Summoning - Level 9 -> Summoning - Level 10]
[The [Summoning] Skill has reached Level 10 and can now be refined]
[You have completed the [Sub Quest - Path of Power]!]
[Congratulations! You are within the first 100 individuals in your World to complete the [Sub Quest - Path of Power]! Your reward will be greatly adjusted]
Ashton took a deep breath. Given the choice, refining a skill should always happened first. There were cases where the path you chose for your class could alter your skills, and you may lose out on the refinement in the process.
[Skill Refinement - Summoning]
[Construct Specialty]
[Demon Specialty]
[Elemental Specialty]
[Fairy Specialty]
[Spirit Specialty]
[Generalist]
The choice in this case was simple. From what he knew, that was always the first choice for summoners. Specialise, or stay a generalist.
In later choices, unless you suddenly decided to fully focus on just one sort of summon, you wouldn't be given the choice to specialise again. He knew what each specialty would do, too; it would increase the efficiency of summoning beings of that kind and boost their power greatly once actually summoned, maybe even giving the contract a slight growth boost. But in return, all other sorts of contracts would be weakened in the exact same ways.
That was why Ashton saw no reason to choose the specialty. Considering that he wanted and needed to take advantage of everything and anything he could, specialising would be the worst choice. As such, he opted for the generalist route.
[You have selected to refine the overall nature of your Summoning]
[Skill - Summoning] [Level - 10]
[Description - Using the power of the established contract, call your Summons to your side. All your Summons receive a 10% boost.]
The skill's name didn't change, as Ashton expected, but a small note was added to the description. What the summoning skill did was relatively unclear in the first place. In his experience, it decreased the required offering and extended the summoning period, and also increased the speed at which summons moved from one's vessel to the physical world.
And now, every summon was given a small boost that would, presumably, scale with the level of the skill.
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It was time to go for the heavy-hitter, now. He had to choose the first path for his class. Three options were given to him, each one fine-tuned to a particular aspect of his behaviour with the class up until now.
[Choose your path as a Summoner]
[Path of the Commander]
[Path of the Fighter]
[Path of the Magician]
Three choices that, while vague, managed to give Ashton a pretty good idea of what each choice would take him down.
As a commander, he would get a skill that would help his summons act independently from his direct channelling. As a fighter, Ashton would get a skill that would help boost his own combat capacity. And as a magician, he figured that a skill that worked similarly to channelling would make sense, allowing him to magically manipulate the essences of his summons.
That was a... tough choice. It was a tough choice.
Each had its benefits. The commander path's skill would probably scale the best in the future as Ashton formed more and more contracts. The fighter path was probably the most imminently useful, considering that with the current set of summons he had access to, Ashton himself was the central combat force. But the magician path could change that, potentially helping him to strengthen the summons themselves to make up for his own lacking strength.
He had to think about this well.
Since Ashton didn't have, and wasn't going to get, a second class anytime soon, his individual combat power would fall behind those.
But he could make up for that with regular techniques. Sure, maybe he wouldn't reach his level of power toward the end of his time in Lumia, but with the system, he was on the fast track on reaching the point he was at before the system ever invaded that world. Making the choice of the fighter path would just help get him there faster.
However, Ashton's talents clearly were within magic, not fighting. The magician path could open up ways for him to grow beyond anything that he could have ever imagined.
But... at the end of the day, Ashton had to make a choice.
Walk down the path he was forced upon, but spent lifetimes refining, or the path that he was originally meant to walk on in the first place.
Ashton sighed. Just thinking about it like that, the choice became a little easier. Every magic that he learned, and every extra technique to apply to mana manipulation would help him in every way in the first place.
[You have chosen to walk down the Path of the Magician]
[You have learned the [Veil Mastery] Skill]
[Skill - Veil Mastery] [Level - 1]
[Description - You have stepped closer to the Veil and are now able to more masterfully bend the world to your will]
The moment the skill came to Ashton, it was like the world around him just changed. Like a moment of realization had just naturally come to him, a type that no matter how much he learned of mana, he had never gotten to.
This was essentially the step beyond simply being able to sense mana. Ashton saw something flow through the world, like a thin piece of fabric flowing through everything and anything. This was the 'veil', wasn't it? Now Ashton understood why that was the name it was given.
It was separate to mana, a difference force. Rather than the energy itself, it was like the space that the energy flowed through. Ashton was able to see a part of the world that had been so foreign to him the entire time.
He slowly moved his fingers through the air, watching as the veil contorted to his movements and his form, slipping away from his skin like weightless silk.
The system was truly terrifying.
It was able to give him this new view of the world in an instant. But it wasn't really 'sight', either. If the ability to sense mana was the sixth sense, this might be the seventh. It was simply intertwined with his sight because his mind wasn't able to process it any other way. But it was everywhere. It had a colour, and scent, and sound unlike anything that Ashton knew.
However, despite being so amazing, this new sense itself didn't change much for him. It didn't change the way he saw mana, and it didn't give him new insights on the world. It did however fundamentally change Ashton's understanding of mana and how to truly manipulate it.
He felt his channelling range. What this 'range' represented wasn't directly something created by that skill. It was the ability to exert his power over the world and allow his summons to exist within it. There was a reason why his summons fell apart once they left that range.
The 'Channelling' skill strengthened that ability whenever it levelled up, but it was really just accessing it rather than forming it.
Ashton grasped that domain and pulled it closer, tighter. But rather than compressing the thin mist of mana that flowed throughout it, he simply changed the 'rules'.
His range became smaller and grew back to its normal size. There still seemed to be an upper limit that he could somewhat push past if he strained himself, but it was like trying to blow up your cheeks. You could go beyond what it normally was, but at some point there was just no more give.
But there was also something else about his channelling that Ashton realised in this moment. He was no longer restrained to the ends of his limbs for his channelling, and could change the rules of the channelling in a way that he couldn't before.
The salamander was still in the lantern hanging on Ashton's belt. With his hand, he plucked a small flame from it and made it float in the air in front of him, and then pulled his hand away.
His eyes darted around, and the flame stayed in the middle of his vision, gliding along the edge of his range. It just felt so natural that Ashton couldn't believe he didn't know how to do this before now.
There was no way this was the only way to apply this new skill. But whichever new techniques he would figure out in the future, for the time being, Ashton had to focus on what was truly ahead of him.
With an intentional blink, the flame disappeared.
This was amazing, and something new that he would love to explore further, but Ashton couldn't ignore the situation he was currently in. He had to focus on wiping out the zombies in this school, and get these three kids to safety.
Only then could he really try and figure out the limits of this new skill.