Wings sprout from my back, making my family gasp in surprise.

"So beautiful!" Mom exclaims.

It is the morning after I gained [Adorn Wings] and I am showing it off to my family.

"I want wings too!" Yafel says with starry eyes.

"Me too! Me too!" Yafe is almost bouncing up and down with excitement.

"Can't hold you down any longer now," Dad says with a proud smile.

My wings flap as if they are my own limbs: no more conscious effort, no more commanding it through [Impart Instructions], I have perfect control over them.

I fly up and back-flip, then twist in the air, testing my movements. Next, I test my speed; I fly faster and faster until, soon, the wind is howling in my ears. I clock out at what appears to be a hundred kilometers an hour; fast, but not super fast. Still, it means that I can fly to the edge of the Nexus in about an hour, which is a lot faster than using boats.

I feel an electric shock of excitement fill me as I realize that I can now go anywhere I want! No more being reliant on boats, no more needing airships to fly!

I fly around the Nexus, passing over several islands, all of them abandoned and in ruins. Clearly the villages of many of these islands have selectively cultivated their bamboo to produce unique fruits or oils. Some islands mostly grow a type of cotton plant, while another seems to have a large mine. They will need to be restored and repopulated for their products to be introduced back into trade… it will take years to return things to ‘normal’.

One thing that will help fix the islands is making a dungeon town, to make use of the trees in there, not just the monsters. But for that to be possible we must first slay the Treant, and to slay the Treant we need to get stronger.

After a few hours of flying around, I return home and summon my first clone; I'll have to wait for my mana to recharge before summoning another one. I had to cancel my previous clones because I flew too far from them, and now I am paying the price of needing to summon them again.

Now I need to work on upgrading [Fairy Strike]. To start with, what do I need [Fairy Strike] to do? It needs to deal damage, obviously, but how can I improve that? I can make it be really powerful but cost a lot of mana, which is good as long as I retain the ability to use less mana if I want. What I really need it to do is use only part of the mana to attack rather than always using it all at once. If I can summon a fairy with a lot of mana and have it only use what I need it to, it should help me not waste any mana against weaker monsters.

Now that I have my plan, I need to think of how to implement it. It's kind of a catch twenty-two in some ways; you have to do the thing you need first before getting it as a skill. Of course, the skill is better, so it's more like training the Bond; you need to show it what you want, if only partially, before it learns how to do it.

I channel [Fairy Strike], dumping five thousand mana into it before finishing the spell. A large fairy takes form and hovers in front of me, its wings flapping quickly. I pinch off about a hundred points of mana with [Mana Manipulation] and shoot it at a mana ring I made. Next, I pinch off only five mana points and shoot it, then fifteen points, and so on until the fairy is gone, shrinking to nothing.

I channel five fairies and, with the help of my five minds, simultaneously do the same with all of my summoned fairies. I continue to do this for several hours, hoping that the skill will evolve into what I want.

Unfortunately, it isn't that easy, and it's something that I will have to work on for a while. The next day I have my clones work on other things, with only one working on upgrading [Fairy Strike], trying to hit moving targets.

All of this upgrading leads me to a question, can't I keep trying to evolve my skills to grind my Bond levels? Can't I just keep dropping a skill, gain a new one, evolve it, drop it and repeat? I should probably ask Kayafe or the Guardian first about it before I screw something up.

I fly over to the Temple, glad I no longer have to walk up the long flight of stairs. I land next to the Mana Arc and establish communications with Kayafe.

"Hello," Kayafe says.

"Hello. I have a quick question."

"Ask away," Kayafe says, although she sounds a little bit hurt that I only came to ask something.

I tell her about the Bond skill upgrading being used to farm levels.

"It is certainly something that is commonly exploited by warrior guilds and military all over the world," Kayafe informs me. "But it can only go so far. It technically counts as exploring your Bond and trying new things to better understand your Bond; however, eventually, you'll get diminishing returns as you'll be trying out ever more similar things that you have done before. However, it is encouraged that when starting out, you try all sorts of new skills before settling on the ten you want the most."

I see. So it is a known thing and openly done to get a leg up, something we Runalymo aren't doing, yet another thing that we have fallen so far behind in.

"Can you easily regain a previous skill?" I ask, following the logic to its conclusion.

"Yes, even its evolved form provided you obtained that evolved from before. It's a lot easier to regain it too." Kayafe replies.

"Wait, so you can regain an early version of a skill?" It certainly sounds like you can.

"Yes, it's often referred to as an upgrade tree; you just need to keep track of what you did to get the skill. Have an open slot and work on regaining the skill for a few hours, and you'll get it back. But do note that I said it takes a few hours; this means you can't just swap out skills whenever you want; it's something you have to prepare for." Kayafe says.

Interesting, so not only can you swap out for previous skills, you are kind of encouraged to do so. I can also work on other evolution paths to gain more levels and then swap back when I need to. It's not like my everyday life really needs [Fairy Strike]. However, there is the issue of how it all works with my class.

"How does switching Bond skills work with a Class that specifically requires that skill?" I ask.

"It becomes an unusable skill, which is the primary reason why people don't take Bond Classes. Of course, you can simply switch back, but if you need the skill and don't have it, you're going to be in deep trouble," Kayafe responds.

It makes sense, and I never know when I might need [Fairy Strike]; however, I can probably see danger coming long before and can regain the skill with my current perceptive abilities.

"What about upgrading the skill? Won't it mess up the Class skill too?"

"Sometimes. Generally Bond Class skills are broad enough to apply for future evolutions, though, so it's not as bad as it could be, but more than one person has been screwed over before... yet another reason why caster Classes are superior," Kayafe says, obviously biased in her opinions.

Thinking about it, my upgrade to [Imbue Beauty] was so drastic it's almost a different skill. There are still roots in the same concept, however, which is why it is considered an evolution, not an entirely new skill. Still, If I had Class skills boosting [Imbue Beauty], they wouldn't work with my wings, or only partially work, and would likely require me dropping a skill and getting a more fitting one.

Seeing as how my fairy Class skills work with all fairy things, as long as my [Fairy Strike] becomes [Fairy Something], it will still apply. I wonder if my fairy skills will work on my wings? They are fairy wings, after all, but the name doesn't specifically say it's a fairy skill.

Feeling vaguely guilty for waking Kayafe up just to get answers out of her, I decide to stay with her for as long as I can today, and tell her about my observations of magic frameworks and cursed skills.

"Miasma inside the skill? Are you sure about that? If only Dhwol knew this, it's a huge breakthrough in the study of cursed skills! Ugh! If only I worked on my [Sense Mana] more!" Kayafe complains. "Your study into magic frameworks is still in its infancy, yet you've already learned so much. I had no idea a magic item framework compounds more on itself, simply adding more layers. At least that's what you think is going on. And Bonds not having a magic framework spit in every scholar's theory, no one would have guessed that!"

"How is it that people even know about magic frameworks in the first place? Did someone have [Sense Magic] before?" I ask.

"Hmm, I don't know. Probably, but what we do know comes from a few texts from ruins, so it's second-hand knowledge at best and poorly translated in most cases. Chances are someone studied magic through some certain way like your [Sense Magic], but their methods are long gone, and only a few records survived. Keep in mind that having an enhanced skill is rare, and having more than a few is something only seen in very old being like Safyr."

"Right, most people tend to stall out at around ten breakthroughs, give or take, and it often requires advanced knowledge and application of that knowledge for more breakthroughs," I clarify, mostly to myself.

Thinking about it, how far would I have gone in [Mana Manipulation] if not for [Sense Mana]? Skills, perceptive ones in particular I think, can give you the necessary knowledge to get further in other skills. This only highlights the importance of perceptive skills. If I had a skill that could see sound, how far could I go in [Musician]? Also, people tend to take a lot longer than I have. Some of these things might take decades of research to fully understand, which is probably why only ancient beings have enhanced skills.

I make small talk with Kayafe for the rest of the time I have and then return home to train some more. I make use of my Diadem's clones as they are much cheaper to make; unfortunately, it can only make three, which means one of my clones is an expensive one.

It takes me another whole day of practice and training to upgrade [Fairy Strike]. It may have been faster if I was fighting monsters, but that is something I'll have to test out later.

Ting! Your Bond skill, Fairy Strike, has evolved into Fairy Soldier!

Fairy Soldier:

For up to 500 mana, you can summon fairy soldiers that can shoot beams at your foes. Each beam costs up to 50 mana and uses the mana the fairy has been summoned with.

(Beauty) (Summon)

Ting! Your Bond has obtained levels 411-415!

This seems like it will require a little more micromanaging or more advanced instructions.

I summon a fairy with five hundred mana. It is larger than before, but otherwise, it looks the same. Next, I make a beauty ring for it to shoot.

{Attack the ring with thirty mana} I order the fairy. The fairy attacks the ring until it runs out of mana and disappears.

I suppose I didn't say to attack once, so I suppose I need to be careful with my wording.

I summon another fairy and give it a slightly different order experimenting with a slightly vaguer instruction.

{Fire at will at the ring}

The fairy rapidly attacks with the most powerful attacks it can muster, quickly disappearing.

It seems to want to kill something as fast as it can.

At least I won't have to tell it how many times to attack or to use its full force, which is probably going to be what I want against most monsters anyway. But against a lot of weak monsters, I'll need to specify it to use only what can kill the monster and not any more than necessary to make efficient use of my mana.

Now, onto my Class skills and how those change based on this new evolution of my fairies.

I summon another and augment it with [Fairy Explosion], seeing all of its mana becomes unstable. I order the fairy to move far away from the village and then attack the water below it. The fairy shoots out a beam of unstable mana, which explodes upon contact with the water.

That is... very inefficient. It would be better to shoot out a ball rather than a beam since the first part of the beam will explode and cascade back through the beam, which would not be in contact with a target when it explodes. I order the fairy to dive-bomb the water, using its body like a bomb. It does so with favorable results.

Looks like they will still be kamikaze fairies for now. With that thought, I end my experiments, having a much better understanding of how my fairies work with the Class skills. The Class skills will augment all of the fairy’s mana, but the fairy can still function normally; overall, a big improvement, but I will need to think ahead with the next evolution. Although I suppose I could swap out back to [Fairy Strike] and redo the evolution, but with a better attack method?

Hmm. Always more experiments.