Devouring Void and Chronos’ Heart were special. All the rest of Jen’s skills had simple, straightforward names. Pain Resistance, Mana Manipulation, Echolocation; they all had names that roughly encompassed their effects. Those effects were powerful, but only Meditation seemed to push the expectations of effects provided.

Chronos’ Heart was simply strange, and most of its effects were passive enough that Jen hadn’t managed to really test the limits of the skill. The continuous count she could feel in the back of her mind was useful simply for helping Jen keep track of both the time and her sanity, but she knew there was something else to the skill. It wasn’t called Regular Counting after all.

Devouring Void was a far more active skill, one that Jen could flex and apply, both to actively improve its level, but also to increase her understanding. If Jen could figure out what exactly made Devouring Void different, she could hopefully apply those same principles to Chronos’ Heart. Jen had high hopes for the mysteries hidden within Devouring Void, but the obvious parts of the skill were quite attractive as well. Mana was the limiting factor on all of Jen’s progress at the moment. She needed it for food, she needed it for spells, she needed it to see, she needed it to experiment with, and she needed it to eventually escape. Devouring Void promised a method to increase the amount of mana she could use, even if it promised to be just as painful as her self guided efforts.

With her pool already empty from practicing her spells and building a house, Jen settled down onto her new bed. While Infrared Vision didn’t consume any mana, it still required a certain amount present to work, so Jen blindly made herself comfortable and activated her skill. Devouring Void required a verbal activation, and no sooner had the words left Jen’s lips than she could feel a hole opening in her chest. What had previously taken a dose of poison and a metric ton of willpower was now replicated with Skill alone. The willpower requirement hadn’t gone away, as Jen was instantly aware of just how unstable her position was. The pain was just as harsh as it had been, and Devouring Void required all of Jen’s concentration to keep active. She could feel the skill wobble with every pulse of pain that entered her brain, but she grimly held on, relying on Pain Resistance to dull the worst pulses.

As Mana started to be pulled in through her lungs, Jen could feel her job becoming easier. Instead of filling in the gap, this new mana was co-opted by the skill and turned into a temporary barrier, helping ease the pressure of keeping the metaphysical hole open. What surprised Jen was that she was able to follow what the skill was doing for once. There were no strange or microscopic structures involved; the mana was simply spun around the edges, forming a whirlpool that kept the center dry and absorbing more ambient mana. Instead of having to coordinate a thousand pushes to constantly empty the filling gap, most of the effort was now taken over by a single continuous push to drive the spinning barrier.

While the skill did become easier to maintain, eventually a tipping point was reached, where the wall of mana simply wasn’t tall enough to keep out the steadily rising mana pool. All of a sudden Jen felt the aching gap vanish, as the mana in her core suddenly leveled out. With the help of Chronos’ Heart, Jen estimated she had regained about an eighth of her mana pool over five minutes of using the skill. If she had spent the time meditating, it would have taken her an hour to recover the same amount. Her mana regeneration had just increased by an order of magnitude, and Devouring Void was still low level. Jen wasn’t sure what properties of the skill would increase as she practiced it, but she was eager to find out.

Until now, Jen had avoided thinking too hard about the actual logistics of tunneling to the surface. Even with her skills developing in that direction, it promised to be a slow process, carved out perhaps a foot or two each day given the constraints of mana costs. But now, Jen let herself get caught up in the idea of opening a tunnel to the surface; her mana being recovered as fast as she was spending it, allowing her to easily pull and shape the stone out of her way. The sheer hope involved in the idea helped relieve a stress that Jen hadn’t realized she was still carrying.

A quick check of her status screen revealed the actual amount of mana regained was fourteen points. Jen quickly cast Stone Shaping to empty out her mana pool once more and then spent the duration of the spell cleaning up her house; smoothing out the walls and floor before finishing by writing ‘Home Sweet Home’ on the stair leading down inter her house. Struck by sudden inspiration she grabbed a couple handfuls of water to fill the channel, making the words stand out under her infrared vision.

Devouring Void was activated once more. With a better idea of what was occurring, Jen attempted to push the limits of the skill to level it up. Her first idea was more harmful than helpful. With so much of the skill revolving around the barrier of mana that was created, Jen tried to assist in making it, only to find out that her Mana Manipulation wasn’t up to the task. While she had managed to push mana away from the hole during her earlier attempts, it soon became apparent that the scale of her manipulation was simply too large to be beneficial, with every attempt temporarily destabilizing the forming vortex until Jen gave up on trying to help. Jen was unable to force the vortex to form either sooner or higher, at least until she had more practice at using Mana Manipulation on a fine scale. With those avenues for growth temporarily unavailable, Jen turned to the gathering portion of the skill. At the moment it was content to simply absorb the mana that entered into her lungs, but Jen felt that she could expand that area. The skill had devouring in the name, and the point of devouring was to grow.

Jen could make out the skill was doing something to the space in her lungs to pull the mana into her core, and she attempted to replicate that something outside of its current reach, half in order to encourage the skill to expand, and half to actually manage the process by herself. She could feel her efforts pushing on the skill, making it slightly more unstable, but not so much that it would break.

It took three more cycles of emptying her mana and activating the skill before the breakthrough came. Instead of working on expanding it in an abstract sense, or defining a new area for the skill to affect, Jen had switched her focus to concentrating on the edge of the skill. It didn’t matter how much she changed that, only that she could. And when it finally moved, Jen was surprised. The skill seemed to double in size, now encompassing most of her upper body and some of the space in front of her as well. It gave her a bit of a headache, but Jen persisted, maintaining the skill as it absorbed mana at a faster rate.

With obvious results in front of her, Jen threw herself back into practicing. She managed to increase the volume of the skill twice, both times in discrete amounts that she figured were tied to level ups, but Jen was too busy working to actually check. Even though the volume the skill affected was increasing cubically, the actual increase to her regeneration was more linear. It was still impressive, as she could now absorb ten mana every minute with the Devouring Void; a full sixty times her passive regeneration. The pain the skill caused was still agonziing, and as such it currently wasn’t an ability Jen would be able to use every waking moment, especially true given that a certain level of the pain seemed to be transformed into a lasting full body ache.

Jen could feel she was reaching her limits for the moment, but she wanted to advance the skill one more time before checking her status screen and moving on to another task. Stone Shaping had been the main spell Jen had practiced as she did her best to add some useful features to her new home, and by now Jen had managed to smooth out all the surfaces, as well as create a few shelves to put any interesting possessions on. Her cloth rope had already been given a place of honor on the first shelf, alongside the crystals Jen had collected from the river. Looking around, Jen felt pretty happy with her new home, and even though she still had half a minute remaining on her latest cast of Stone Shaping, Jen settled down once more.

“Devouring Void.”

Just like every other time Jen had used the Skill, an aching hole was torn open in her layer of ambient mana. Just like every other time it was accompanied by a wave of pain that demanded her attention. But this time, it competed against a sharp feeling of pain coming from her hands. It felt like her hands had been dipped in boiling oil, a hot pain that ate away until nothing was left. Without the mana to create a light or use Infrared Vision, Jen was left to blindly figure out just what was hurting so much. She kicked herself for not taking the time to create a mushroom light source, even as she brushed her hands together, and against her body and face. Only able to confirm that there wasn’t anything physically wrong with them, it wasn’t until Jen’s hand made contact with the ground that she figured out part of what had happened.

Chronos’ heart was always active, and with it’s help Jen realized that she should have had some time left on Stone Shaping. But instead of the ground having the clay-like texture she had become accustomed to when the Skill was active, it was once again rock hard. Devouring void didn’t absorb ambient mana, it absorbed mana period. Casting Stone Shaping apparently changed her mana enough for it to be considered fair game, even if it was still inside her body. With that realization Jen opened her Status Screen and made a mana light in her hand, not having enough Mana to support Infrared Vision.

Jen Byrnes

Bringer of the Apocalypse

Physical Status: Debilitated

Mental Status: Normal

Endurance: 6

Constitution: 4

Strength: 3

Health: 32/65 (+5 / Hour)

Reaction: 8

Resilience: 15

Dexterity: 7

Stamina: 55/74 (+4 / Minute)

Willpower: 16

Composure: 19

Intelligence: 21

Mana: 5/162 (+10.5 / Hour)

Devouring Void has gained 4 levels and is now Lvl 5.

Pain Resistance has gained 2 levels and is now Lvl 13.

Mana Manipulation has gained 1 level and is now Lvl 17.

Stone Shaping has gained 2 levels and is now Lvl 6.

Earth Spike has gained 1 level and is now Lvl 3.

Self Improvement has gained 1 level and is now Lvl 2.

Congratulations! You have learned Disintegration Resistance Lvl 1.

The skill levels were nice, and Jen was gratified to see that Devouring Void had improved as she suspected, but most of her attention was drawn to her Health. More than half of her hitpoints were missing, victim not to poison or outside force but to Jen’s own skill. She wondered just how much of her newfound capabilities were reliant on mana to function, even if they didn’t draw directly on her Mana Pool. There clearly was some relation there that would explain why her own body was a valid target to pull mana from, at the cost of scattered damage.

The good news was that Jen had been given a way to mitigate the damage to her own body. Disintegration Resistance, while esoteric, would apparently help her body maintain its internal structures in the face of the Devouring Void that would otherwise tear them apart. Of course, the skill was Disintegration Resistance, not Disintegration Immunity, so Jen knew that it would still be harming her body if she continued to use Devouring Void.

She paused at that. If? Since when had her use of a skill become an if? Sure it cost her health, but so did the Antimagic Mushrooms, and she was eating those on a regular basis. Health was a cost she would have to pay, just like pain, in order to get the results that she wanted. Before Jen could really make up her mind, she shifted in place, and then looked down.

She had covered her bed in a thick layer of soft moss, making it a comfortable place to rest and relax. Now though, the moss had become dry and desiccated, crumbling into dust as she tried to pick up a handful. Devouring Void didn’t care about where it took mana from, it just devoured it. Jen left the remains of the moss where they were, while she went back to the original patch to regrow a new cover for her bed. Once in place, she grew it again, allowing it to convert its predecessor into new growth. Satisfied, Jen laid down on her new bed.

Jen had no issue with pushing herself to her limits. She was willing to pay the cost to see her goals through. She was not ready to have others pay the cost for her. Sure, at the moment Devouring void was only harming mushrooms and moss, hardly deserving targets for sympathy, but Jen wouldn’t be in these caves forever. One way or another she would find her way to the surface, and what would she do then, surrounded by people and animals capable of feeling pain? More than that, using the skill represented a direction to grow in, and Jen didn’t want to start down that path. It took her a minute, but Jen managed to open the Path screen and have the Thaumovore path hidden. She had had some concerns about the Path already, but since it was related to Devouring Void she was more than willing to hide it from further consideration. It wasn’t gone completely, and Jen knew she would pick up the path if situations forced her into it, but she still felt better for it being out of sight.

Unable to do anything similar for her Devouring Void skill, Jen simply put it out of her mind. The testing had at least proven that the uniquely named skills had some hidden power to them, and Jen had some ideas now as to how she could bring that power out of Chronos’ Heart.