Thoughtform Hypnagog

  Type: Cursed Trait

  Rank: Count

  Affinity: Sapphire

  Description: A natural dragon trait, which grants the user the ability to know the information through the dreamscape and partially manifest dreams into reality.

  Thought Chaser. The user can sense the flow of information within the dreamscape; they will instinctively gain contextual information that resides within the spiritual realm. This ability is compounding, allowing the user to chase the information threads.

  Hypnagogic Manifestation: When in the dreamscape, the user can overwrite reality with a dream, can only affect close targets, cannot affect targets above your SE. Excessive mental expenditure will cause brain death.

  Dream Rot. Your existence is as fleeting as a dream, the trait is incomplete, and your genome will decay with each day. SE growth is decreased by 77%

  I listened to her explanation. If I didn’t have perfect memory, I would have written everything down.

  “Rame and Varaxis are absolute morons.” I shook my head. “So what if the SE penalty can’t get better? The sheer potential of this ability is world-shaking! Fucking dipshits.” I nearly spit on the ground, but who would want to taint their ship?

  “This is… eh… buleesheet!” Steel stomped her foot. Thankfully, the floor didn’t crack.

  “It’s pronounced bullshit and fuck yeah it is!”

  “C-calm down, I-I understand their decision, it’s not…”

  “Not what? You’ve probably figured out that the genomic ritual is expensive as all hells and feel guilty. Well, Rame is beyond rich. He just isn’t capable of utilizing a good asset.” It was making me irrationally angry.

  Kory scrunched her nose. “Did you call me an asset?”

  “It’s called human resource management theory, and it's crucial for any important position.”

  She shook her head. “Stop talking, the information is giving me a headache.”

  “How much info do you get? Did you see the flashbacks of my past life when I told you about it?”

  “Yes… I saw so much. You can’t even imagine how much context I got when you mentioned Shakespeare or Leonardo da Vinci… Earthlings were frightening.”

  “You are too smart sometimes.” Steel crossed her arms. “We need to focus.”

  I nodded. With a quick form, I summoned a table and three chairs. “Here is my plan.”

  The discussion went on for some time. The first step was God’s Flesh.

  “God’s Flesh allows me to get any amount of traits, even conflicting ones. My plan is to stack traits that increase the growth speed, intelligence, critical skills, and everything that might make me learn faster. Speed is the name of the game, and that’s why acceleration is crucial.”

  “Why not just get stronger?” Steel tilted her head.

  “That will happen too, but I believe that power acceleration will eventually trump everything.”

  “That’s a good one, but will you have enough time for that?” Kory said.

  “I should be able to gather enough cores for a baron rank one in about a month, maybe more. And then it’ll leave 10 months until the exam, it’s very possible.”

  She sighed, but didn’t disagree.

  The Betrayer was the next topic. Solutions were proposed none of them were good enough.

  “Varaxis should have it handled, but just in case, I’ll research anti-mind-control techniques, ways to find the treacherlings, and to get rid of them. We should get something for Steel so she can resist it.”

  “I don’t want to-”

  “You will,” Kory said sternly. “I’ll help with the search.”

  Kory and I categorized the methods, brainstormed the solutions. It was mostly a distraction from the fact that we were powerless for now.

  “I’ll also make a power acceleration growth trait for Steel. That way, she can catch up to me.”

  “You don’t have the emerald affinity. It’s going to be hard.” Kory said.

  “I want a trait that’ll protect Kory.” Steel’s voice was adamant.

  “Yeah, that’s the power acceleration growth trait… fucking mouthful.”

  “There is time. We should focus on God’s flesh.”

  We spoke of other things, too. Kory told me about her time in the restoration and healing course, how, despite her low SE, she managed to heal with incredible proficiency, how she made a few friends. She even met up with Avennture to work on techniques.

  Steel bragged about being at the top of the soldier course, if she didn’t count Ivaldie. She became much better at martial arts and combat. Her new regeneration technique was immense. Steel only needed to reach Knight to unlock a transformation, and that’ll cover her lack of mobility.

  I told them about the books I’ve read. Though that theme was only interesting to Kory. It was hard to chew some concepts for Steel. Explaining the difference between the spiritual dimension and the dreamscape was especially so.

  “Finally, a productive talk. Steel, do your homework. We’ll meet tomorrow again after I find something to protect you from the betrayer, and you, too, Kory. Bye.”

  “Let’s do this.” Steel smiled.

  Kory just nodded with confidence.

  What can a man do in a month? Somehow, always not enough. The drill of learning, training, and planning continued. I laid the foundation for my combat style; all that was left was to perfect it… and shore up my defenses.

  It was calm. Calmer. No more did the first-year students gaze at me with aggression, now it was closer to suspicion and occasionally grim respect. Kory said it was fear and not respect, but I preferred my interpretation.

  Siege went easy on me. Hugging him must have shifted a gear, because he didn’t let me near the tribulation altar not until, “You must simmer in confidence, bask in existence, only then will your fears blossom and your tribulation will be worthy.” I decided he just cared about me.

  His training regimen was focused on self-understanding, growth, embracing change, and being true to oneself. I milked every SE point I could and then more by participating in near-death comas and occasional poison testing. After getting over my fears, it became a sort of roller-coaster…

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  The death tribulation messed me up real good.

  I visited the medical hall at least twice a day and never left without willpower tonics and proper diet supplements. Growth – it was rapid and surprising. Twenty centimeters in just one month. Steel grew faster still, and so did everyone else. Only Kory remained slightly shorter than me.

  Except on a nice day, I woke up… and a tooth fell out. The terrible truth behind growing up – how could I ever imagine myself intimidating when I was missing a tooth? I couldn’t pronounce some of the difficult words. It brought back the memories of my earlier years, of my unaware self constantly misspeaking and misusing words. How could I expect dignity when growing up was such a pain? Shameful.

  Not as shameful as my attempts to fight with Ivaldie. She refused my every invitation to a spar, and so did Louize. Our relationship has gotten closer, yet further. There was a weird sense of detachment, and if not for constant checkups of treacherlings, I would’ve been worried.

  My underlings… friends, delivered me rumors, terrible rumors about myself. I had no idea how they appeared or by whom they were spread. Even more than ever, I was an outcast, one not to be tampered with.

  “Everyone who talks with him doesn’t come back quite right.” That sent shivers of disgust down my spine.

  I learned to live with it. I was more worried about my teeth falling out and breaking my mind in the Archive. Oh, how I basked in knowledge, how glorious the act of reading became. I was fast. I learned fast. Friedrich could never have imagined that I would read at such mind mind-boggling speed, I was eating through books.

  Mind acceleration was the correct choice, and I learned as much as possible. Trait creation? I ventured deep into the secrets of the art, methods different from the standard, ways to crystallize the exact ability, how to merge traits, and how to enhance the effects.

  I let my greed run wild. Methods of extracting more cores from geists? Of course, I learned them. Subtle tricks and illusions? It was well within my capability, and everyone needed visual tricks, sounds, and smells. I learned how to mask them, even if on a basic level.

  Those were side things. The real deal was my obsession with compulsion techniques. Fun fact – fiendish lichter’s death gaze used forms very similar to other compulsion techniques. To kill someone with just a glance, that idea burrowed into my mind. I wanted to replicate it, or at least to create something that could resemble it.

  Freezing Gaze Technique

  Type: Symbolics, Phasics, Catalytics

  Affinity: Onyx-Sapphire

  Constituents: Freezing, Mind Freezing, Soul Freezing, Gaze, Compression.

  Mastery: Adept 79/100

  Casting Time: 1,2 seconds

  Description: Unique technique, which requires only eye movements to perform. Meeting gazes lowers the opponent's core body temperature to critical, freezes their thoughts, and slows their starpower flow.

  It was beyond complicated, but Azzura recommended several books that allowed a clean conversion of hand movements to eye movements. Even then, it required two weeks of constant workshopping to make it workable. I had to learn the advanced forms of freezing, and that was fun, but I didn’t train them outside of this specialized trick.

  This technique allowed me to defeat Steel without even fighting… if she wasn’t paying attention. But Steel, she became impervious. Without parasitic poison, my bullets couldn’t pierce her skin, and my attacks couldn’t shake her. It was causing me a lot of distress.

  She regenerated too fast, her scales were far too durable, and her physical strength and speed reached those of Ivaldie’s when we last sparred. She was still too straightforward and unable to learn mental protections.

  I even considered making a mind-protecting trait for her… It was a bad idea, as Kory pointed out.

  Most of my techniques reached knight. They became like second nature to me. I could dash whenever I wanted, could launch poisoned bullets and shoot ice bombs fast, the barrier became my second skin after a lot of refinement. There were a few things that could match the sheer control I could provide over the battlefield and the insane utility of my fast thinking.

  Dungeons were crushed. The first floor of the Sapphire Dungeon was filled with water. I was overlevelled for it. The water geists were annihilated with a touch, and the mind-reading monsters couldn’t handle the speed of my thoughts. Steel and I turned the extremely smart ambush predator boss into fish bones.

  I knew that everyone felt uneasy. Without any signs of the Betrayer, it felt like it could be everywhere. Did it possess a teacher? Did it do something even worse? Speculations and rumors. Gretchen refused to say a word about what she found. The guards still patrolled every corner, but it didn’t bring the sensation of safety. The Betrayer was hiding, and that threat made me and every other dragon train harder, push further.

  The study group became a place of comfort. We celebrated, we trained, we fought. Kory’s healing reached the next level, yet her SE didn’t increase. Her ability to turn the tiniest speck of information into a whole thesis was invaluable.

  The changes weren’t as drastic as my first three weeks, but they were noticeable. I even restructured my scouter’s interface.

  Your SE has increased by 10. From 54 to 64

  Your mastery of Ice Bomb, Self-Reinforcing Barrier, Trait Imbibing Ritual Parasitic Poison, Bullet Launcher techniques has reached Knight.

  Your mastery of Detection, Freezing, Absorption, Metaphysical Stabilization, Basic Trait Harvesting, Idea Fusion, Idea Infusion, Trait Imbuement, Necrotize, Starpower Imbibing, Circular Technique Recursion, Emotion Imbibing forms has reached Knight.

  Your mastery of Liquefaction, Aerosolization, Fear has reached Adept

  Geist Disassembly, Concept Target, Idea Merging, Idea Strengthening, Metasurgical Extraction, Mental Sound, Mental Image, Mind Freezing, Soul Freezing, Gaze, Dominate, Paralyze, Starpower Order forms learned at Adept rank

  Excitement, Disgust, Sadness, Rage, Boredom, Conceptual Isolation, Conceptual Inversion, Noosphere Anchoring, Recursion Pathing, Directed Idea, Idea Imprinting, Immutability, Mental Taste, Mental Smell forms learned at Initiate rank

  Force Dash technique created at Knight.

  I didn’t waste a second without learning. My status became glorious. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn as much as I wanted. All my focus was dedicated to becoming stronger and fleshing out my fighting style. Even creating traits was done for the same purpose. My birthday happened, and I didn’t even notice.

  There was no room for frivolities, even if I really wanted to learn that Tea Conjuration technique…

  Soul Introspector

  Magnus Glanzvoll

  Species: True Human (Genetically Altered)

  Age: 6 standard years

  Standing Emissions: 64

  Soul Resonance: 63%

  Affinities: Diamond – 4%; Sapphire – 32%; Onyx – 30%; Ruby – 19%; Emerald – 15%

  Spiritual Coordinates: 41,3 Ambition; 11,4 Pride; 31,2 Intelligence; 2,23 Focus

  Traits (1/3): VITA

  Technique List – 8 Known

  Baron – God’s Flesh Ritual (NULL)

  Knight –

  Mind Acceleration (Strengthening, Catalytic Acceleration)

  Ice Bomb (Plasmafication, Starpower Compression, Freezing, Force)

  Self-Reinforcing Barrier (Solidification, Absorption, Force, Anchor, Starpower Compression, Plasticity)

  Parasitic Poison (Necrotize, Starpower Imbibing, Absorption, Circular Technique Recursion)

  Bullet Launcher (Force, Solidification, Circular Technique Recursion)

  Force Dash (Force, Starpower Compression)

  Trait Imbibing Ritual (Idea Fusion, Idea Infusion, Trait Imbuement, Idea Merging, Idea Strengthening, Directed Idea, Idea Imprinting, Conceptual Isolation, Conceptual Inversion, Noosphere Anchoring, Recursion Pathing, Metasurgical Extraction, Metaphysical Stabilization, Basic Trait Harvesting)

  Form List – 41 Known

  Knight – Force, Strengthening, Solidification, Catalytic Acceleration, Plasmafication, Starpower Compression, Detection, Freezing, Absorption, Metaphysical Stabilization, Basic Trait Harvesting, Idea Fusion, Idea Infusion, Trait Imbuement, Necrotize, Starpower Imbibing, Circular Technique Recursion, Emotion Imbibing

  Adept – Liquefaction, Aerosolization, Fear, Geist Disassembly, Concept Target, Idea Merging, Idea Strengthening, Metasurgical Extraction, Mental Sound, Mental Image, Mental Smell, Mind Freezing, Soul Freezing, Gaze, Dominate, Paralyze, Plasticity, Dispelling

  Initiate – Lightning, Happiness, Dizziness, Comfort, Excitement, Disgust, Sadness, Rage, Boredom, Conceptual Isolation, Conceptual Inversion, Noosphere Anchoring, Recursion Pathing, Directed Idea, Idea Imprinting, Immutability

  It was a great day – the fifth weekly meeting with our cruel curator has ended. I was shaking from nervousness. Kory patiently counted the onyx cores; a light from a form illuminated them. It was a scanning technique.

  “Will this be enough for a baron-level merge?”

  “I think so; it’ll be pushing the upper limit. Mixing sapphire cores is a risky move. The ritual might not work-”

  “It will. My intention shapes the technique more than the implanted knowledge. Let’s just get the combined core and do this.” I smiled like a wild animal.

  “Magnus is smart, not as smart as you, but he knows trait crafting. Trust.” Steel pat my shoulder, I had to look up to meet her eyes.

  We exchanged glances and went to the requisition hall. Today was the day.