Darius shook his head and returned to Gunner's matters. While a magical defense skill was now on the table, he needed to be certain that there was no better choice.

For example, what about giving his Branded Servant a support spell? Something that helped increase his mana or stamina regeneration?

Maybe something like a meditation skill of sorts, although Darius guessed most of them would be racial skills.

Between a mage defense spell and a support spell, Darius favored the first choice more. After all, Gunner could guzzle potions to fill up his lacking resources, but nothing he had minus the polymer suit could help him block spell damage apart from dodging.

However, what if he was hit with a lock-on spell that was faster than him and therefore unavoidable? Was Darius supposed to sit there and watch his first Branded Servant die because of negligence?

That was naturally impossible. As such, Darius took out an empty book and concentrated.

[Would you like to change the empty book into an anti-magic skill manual? This will cost 8.5 Conversion Points.]

Darius raised an eyebrow. He had planned to make a similar skill for himself, but it seemed he would need to wait until tomorrow before he could do so. The skill being this expensive was nothing surprising, as Darius was certain that it had to be rare.

Why? Because anti-magic spells were common for Journeyman mages and above, as that was when they would begin to display truly meaningful combat power.

In fact, the common breakthrough method was to develop an anti-magic shield that ran passively based on your affiliated elements.

So the Amateur in question could have an affinity with Space and Earth. As such, they would choose either of these elements as the base and create an anti-magic shield that they would wear like a second skin, blocking magic damage only.

As for physical defense shields, they would have to create their own spells for that or find a compatible one they could learn. Of course, the underlying criteria was to have more than 20 points in Intellect before trying for the Journeyman level.

For people like Gunner, things worked differently. As people sparked with different abilities, they had to progress the power of their abilities specifically with their stats being a smaller factor.

In the case of someone who could - for instance - manipulate plants to fight. At the Amateur stage they would be limited to only control smaller plants and thin vines, but upon reaching the Journeyman stage controlling shrubs and some roots would become possible.

In this case, even if they had 50 points in Strength, Agility, or Endurance, they still would not be full Journeymen or Adept until they leveled up their ability to the Journeyman or Adept level, though such situations were rare.

After all, for stats to rise that high, it was a consequence of the ability improving. It was hardly the case where a stat increase would improve an ability, at least not in the later stages.

Of course, Gunner followed different rules.

Darius inspected the Anti-magic skillbook.

[Mageward Barrier - Manual

Durability: 10/10

Description: Contained within is the required knowledge to obtain the powerful mageward barrier skill. Due to the high quality of the material and the penmanship, the success chance of learning the skill is increased by 100% while its effectiveness is increased by 500%.]

Darius raised an eyebrow. He then tossed the skillbook over to Gunner and nodded. The large lad already understood what he needed to do, so he quickly learned the skill.

The manual turned into blue-white slush that crawled up his arms and entered through his ears to head to his brain.

After spending a second or two digesting the skill, Gunner opened his eyes and roared as a blue-white aura formed around his body much in the same way his natural greenish aura did.

Both auras, unfortunately, did not mix. His greenish aura was a level above his skin while the blue-white aura was a level above the greenish aura, giving Gunner an amazing aesthetic combined with his already good looks.

Darius checked the stats of the actual skill to see whether it was worth investing Gunner's 15 skill points into or should be kept as a level 1 background skill.

[Mageward Barrier - Level 1 Skill

Cost: None

Description: This is a long-lost skill belonging to a legendary faction of mage-killing knights who took on contractual jobs to hunt down mages. This was their core skill, allowing them to greatly mitigate the damage from all offensive and debuffing spells based on their mastery over the spell at no cost to their mana or stamina. Currently, this skill disperses 1% of all incoming magic damage and negative effects.]

Darius sucked in a deep breath. This skill… was truly unbelievable. Putting aside its rich history due to the Transmutation ability's penchant for digging up the best quality of a certain thing, the fact that it had no cost was outrageous.

So far, only class-based skills had proven to have zero cost, like Analyze and Engage. Sparks was not a spell unique to the Magus class, so it had come with a cost.

'Hang on, does that mean that the Mageward skill is tied to a certain class?'

Darius froze. He quickly checked Gunner's character sheet and slapped his forehead. In the subclass segment that had previously read 'open', there was now a new designation called Anti-Mage.

Darius scratched his chin with frustration, but let it go. While he had plans for Gunner's subclass for after they became Journeymen, the current skill and subclass were actually not bad.

At least, if he were to progress with this skill to the end, he should theoretically become fully immune to all spells. Even if it had been impossible for those ancient mage-killers, it was certainly possible with Skill Points.

Sighing, Darius placed all 14 skill points into the Mageward Barrier, bringing its dispersion from 1% to 15%. As for the last free skill point, Darius decided to place it in the almighty Earthen Punch, so that Gunner may - as they say - knock the block off his enemies.

At level 4, Earthen Punch now did a mighty 40% damage!