The information rushed into Jack's mind and he was pleasantly surprised.

  Mastery of skills has been demonstrated and acknowledged. An upgrade to a skill is available, due to the user's Prismatic Sensitivity trait the offered skill upgrade has been modified.

  [Mana Sense (Internal)] – Allows the user to perceive the flow of mana within their own body.

  →

  [Prismatic Mana Sense] – Allows the user to perceive the flow of mana, both internal to their body and in a small external radius as well. Due to the prismatic modification, the radius and sensitivity of this ability is dramatically increased.

  This ability upgrade does not need to be accepted. If it is, then all previous ability upgrades will be maintained but improved in line with the upgraded base skill.

  Do you wish to upgrade this skill?

  Jack panicked. He could think of no reason to not accept the upgrade, but he had never discussed this with Turrel. Upgrading a skill was fine in a game; you had the chance to reroll or respec most of the time. This was real life and, until a moment ago, he didn't even realise a skill upgrade was an option.

  He could feel he had time before he had to accept, so he raced forward towards the break in the wall before him. As he got to the edge of the protective dome, he slowed. It was hard to see, anything more than a few metres away was just a white-grey blur.

  “TURREL! TURRREL!” Jack shouted. It wasn't until Monty landed next to him with a crash that he remembered where he was. Maybe screaming into the unknown in a deadly frozen wasteland with monsters wasn't the best idea.

  “What are you doing, Jack?” Monty asked with a confused look on his face.

  “I think Turrel is over there. I was looking for him but then I did a thing and now I have a question about my skills I have to ask him. You might know, though: what's the deal with skill upgrades?”

  Monty shook his head as he blinked long and hard.

  “Umm, a skill upgrade? No, I have honestly never heard of that before. Strange. What skill is it for? Actually, just wait here. I'll grab Turrel so you don't have to repeat everything,” Monty said as he leapt out of the facility.

  Jack looked at the spot where Monty had been standing and how far he had jumped, then glanced between them a few times. There was no imprint in the ground. For the amount of force he would have had to use to jump that far, which to be honest was ridiculous, a jump with that much force should have left some sort of mark, but there was nothing.

  A moment later, Jack felt the tug on his sense disappear. Turrel must have stopped whatever it was he was doing. The two men appeared in the crack and walked back towards him. Even though the two men were walking at a quick pace, it seemed like they would never arrive. Time seemed to stretch as Jack twiddled his thumbs and hopped from foot to foot.

  “Jack! Sorry, I was experimenting with how the storm interacted with a new shield I had been thinking up and got sidetracked. You had a question for me?” Turrel explained as he approached.

  “All good, man. Umm yeah, I was messing around with trying to sense where you might be and I got a notification about a skill upgrade. Is that a good thing? Should I accept?” Jack asked.

  Turrel, in almost comical fashion, mimicked the face that Monty had made when he mentioned it before.

  “Explain it to me in a little more detail, please. The wording here is very important. Normally a skill doesn't ‘upgrade’ per se.” Turrel made air quotes as he spoke. “Instead you get offered a new, more specific skill. Like with Monty's body enhancement, that could be assumed to be an upgrade for the Imbue skill, except only under specific circumstances.”

  Jack could almost see the cogs starting to turn in Turrel's mind. Not wanting to have this lead to another hour-long lecture, he quickly gave the man the information he wanted. He gave him the exact wording after inspecting the message once more.

  “Ahh, I see. Strange. Most people who progress to a higher tier will eventually unlock an external mana sense ability. It still remains as a separate skill with separate upgrades, however. It seems as if yours, on the other hand, is being merged, but also being improved somehow by incorporating your prismatic trait.”

  Turrel stroked his beard for a moment as he thought. Jack could see that Monty was paying rapt attention as well and they both waited while the man thought.

  “The short response to what I am sure you want to know is that, well, I think you should accept it. There are pros and cons, but I don’t have enough information to make a decision otherwise. Normally I would argue that having two separate skills that could be upgraded differently and improved individually would be of more benefit. However, there is dramatically increased wording that I feel will outweigh that.” He pursed his lips as he continued.

  Jack would normally have accepted already; he had heard the part that he needed to. The part where someone other than himself agreed with what he wanted to do was enough, but this felt like a situation he needed to pay attention to.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “It will probably be much easier to level this specific skill as well. Normally achieving a higher tier is harder the more you use a skill because you have to show mastery of something new or different, or some level of achieved skill with it. In this case, you have two separate paths down which you could, and will likely, passively work on as you do other things. I can see the visual aspect helping our proposed plans as well. So yes: accept and let me know if any more information comes through,” Turrel said with a tone as if he had just convinced himself.

  Jack only nodded once quickly before accepting the skill. He felt a strange sensation flash over his body and his vision swam as a wave of blue overtook everything. He felt dizzy and lost his balance, but Monty caught him before he hit the ground.

  The tingle was gone from the back of his mind, but as he opened his eyes everything was blurry. He blinked a few times trying to clear his vision, but nothing changed. He stood back up and stepped away from Monty with closed eyes and thought; this had to be something to do with the upgrade.

  He took a deep breath and, with his eyes closed, he tried to look for the feeling he had from where Amira had been before. It immediately registered for him, as if he was much closer than he currently was. He looked for the other two expedition members and they felt just as close.

  As they pulled in mana, he started to notice more details. He couldn't explain it exactly, but it was like he had been wearing clothes before: he could feel the breeze as it passed, but only enough to know it was there. Now, it felt like he could feel it on his bare skin. He could sense how strong the pull was, even with only a small difference. He could tell how smooth each pull was and, while he already knew it, with his eyes closed he could tell that Amira was leaps and bounds more proficient than the other two.

  He also thought he could start to feel slightly different variations in the ambient mana. They were all “Ice”, but some felt different, more water-like. He shook his head. That was all well and good, but he needed to work out how he could see again. Wondering about all of this could wait.

  He opened his eyes. There was still a blue haze over the world, but as he turned to Monty he saw a few flashes of green in his coat and a number more in the pouched belt he wore around his waist. It must have been the gems he used to power himself and his equipment.

  “You OK there, Jack?” Monty asked as Jack stared at him.

  “I think so. The world seems blue. Just trying to work it out,” Jack said as his mind raced.

  He had filtered out the ambient mana earlier when he was searching for Turrel; maybe there was a way he could do that for his vision somehow? He caught sight of the bottom of his coat as it flapped in front of him in the wind. For a second, it flashed its normal burgundy colour, then the blue took over again.

  He held a part of the coat out and stared at it, trying to see the normal colour of it again. He blinked, he squinted, he winked and willed with all his mind, but nothing worked.

  “Could I give you some advice?” Monty's voice sounded from next to him, which for some reason frustrated him. Jack wanted to work this out on his own. It should be something he could do without help; it was his vision.

  He held a hand up and shook his head as he stubbornly sat down on the ground to think better. He felt Monty's hands slide under his arms and lift him into the air like he was a child.

  “OK, happy for you to work this out on your own, Jack, but we are in a bit of a rush here, so feel free to work it out while we are on the move,” Monty said, and Jack heard a chuckle from Turrel.

  He stretched his legs out and waited to be put down on the ground to stand up, but instead Monty lifted him higher so that his feet were just off the ground. Feeling completely helpless, Jack went limp in an act of stubbornness that elicited nothing more than a snort from Monty.

  Then Jack's stomach dropped as Monty launched the two of them into the air. He leapt twenty metres from a standing start and landed like a ballet dancer, holding Jack high in the air. He then let go and Jack sprawled out on the ground in shock.

  Picking himself back up, Jack dusted himself off and tried to act like he hadn't screamed a little bit during all that. Monty patted him on the shoulder and walked off to the rest of the group who were busy loading the Turtle. The world was still blue but, for a second as they flew through the air, colours were normal again.

  While he waited for Turrel to catch up, he wondered about that. Could it really be that simple? He had been moving his head when he saw the coat flap and flash burgundy. Taking a deep breath, he tried something he hadn't done since he was a child: he tensed his neck at the base of his skull and made his head vibrate. It was something he did to scare his mum when he was younger, but right now it made the world right again.

  Frequencies, vibrations, it made a simple sense to him. Not in any way that he understood how it worked, but enough that he could pretend. It half-solved a problem, but there was no way he was going to go through life vibrating his head every time he wanted to see normal colours.

  He could filter out the vibrations when he closed his eyes because he could feel them. Maybe he was actually using his mana sense to filter it out, vibrating it to cancel out or dim the mana he was focusing on. There had to be a way to do that with his vision; he just needed to work out how.

  “You OK there, Jack?” Turrel asked as he finally caught up.

  “Yeah, I think I am close to working this out. Gotta work out how to vibrate my eyes and I should be fine,” Jack said as he tried to tense them and make them shake. He heard Turrel laugh and turned towards him.

  “While that might work, Jack, I will have to stop you before you give yourself an aneurysm,” Turrel said as he leaned in slightly towards Jack.

  “You just need to give your brain a bit of time to adjust. Imagine you had never seen colour for your entire life, then all of a sudden everything is bright and vibrant. Your brain doesn't know how to process it, how to differentiate it or filter it yet. It needs time to adjust. Vibrations will temporarily clear your vision as the movement creates vibrations that likely scatter what your eyes are perceiving,” Turrel said as he stared into Jack's eyes.

  “You should look at your eyes later; they are a little different than before. Either way, we can talk on the move. Montarg is getting a little impatient to be moving, so let's get inside and we can talk there.”

  Jack felt the wind blow out of his sails. He thought he was onto a breakthrough, something he could work out on his own, something that was purely him. He was interested to see his eyes but felt a little sad that his eyes would probably fix themselves in time. Still, he felt there was something there, something to do with vibrations.

  He followed Turrel towards the Turtle, and his mind raced through what he already knew. He tensed different parts of his body to see if he could feel any difference. He was close; he knew it.