Chapter 20

Keith sat before several rows of skill gems in his room.

After familiarizing himself with their descriptions, he thought it’d be fun to check their prices on the auction house. Due to how easy it was to acquire them, Keith thought they wouldn’t be worth much, but it turns out he vastly underestimated their value.

Surprisingly, the combined cost of the few hundred skill gems was worth more than the collection in his Grimoire. Upon learning that, Keith felt ashamed, but only a little. He’d long gotten used to getting whatever he wanted, so he didn’t think much of it, only feeling more grateful than before.

By this point, it was already past Keith’s usual bedtime, so he quickly piled the skill gems back into the crate, except for three. Unlike the rest, he needed to learn these himself.

[Mythic] Mind Enhancement

Description: Speeds up your thinking speed. Intelligence Scaling: A. Conserves 10% mana while active. Each level increases effectiveness.

[Mythic] Mind Division

Description: Gain the ability to divide your mind. Each level reduces the drop in cognitive ability.

Remark 1: Cognitive ability decreases with every division.

[Legendary] Sensory Link

Description: Link your senses with another being or object. Mana consumption increases depending on the amount linked and the distance between links. Each level reduces mana consumed.

For Keith to control the orbs efficiently, he needed to think and process many things at once. Something like that was beyond a human’s natural ability, so he could only turn to monster skills for answers.

The skills Keith needed only dropped from a Grand Lich, and it was no pushover. As a level 450 Rift Boss that controlled an army of undead, it was one of the strongest monsters in the world, and only the military could take on such a beast. If any of its skills dropped, they reserved it for humanity’s top scientists, with only a few stored in the military’s armory at any given time.

According to the skill encyclopedia, they were a military secret. Curious, Keith tried looking up their price and discovered they’d never appeared on the auction house. Furthermore, there was little to no information about them on the magic network.

Knowing all that, Keith couldn’t help but feel it was a pity to use them. As a hoarder, he felt a distinct sense of satisfaction whenever he added an item to his collection, and the rarer and more exotic, the stronger the feeling. Better yet, just perusing his collection gave that same high. It was addicting.

Sadly, Keith knew his Aunt would kill him if he didn’t learn these skills. They were for the explicit purpose of controlling the orbs. Without them, it was impossible. However, if he acquired the skill gems through his own means, he’d store them in his Grimoire without hesitation.

Sighing heavily and feeling deeply uncomfortable, Keith interacted with the System and finally learned the skills. As the gems disappeared in his hands, he strangely felt better. Many people would do anything to acquire what now belonged to him, and awareness of that fact gave rise to a different sense of satisfaction.

Keith took some time to try and understand what he was experiencing. While it was ultimately due to his connections that he acquired such skills and was by no means through his own effort, it didn’t stop him from feeling prideful. Before, he felt happy whenever he looked at his collection, but now Keith felt happy knowing he possessed what others did not. One was external, and the other internal. He didn’t know if one was better than the other, but it sure did feel good.

Focusing back on his new skills, Keith first brought up Mind Enhancement's information. The first thing that stood out was the skill’s A grade stat scaling, as only the best skills in the world had scaling that high. From lowest to highest, it went from F, E, D, C, B, and A.

In this case, the higher Keith’s Intelligence, the better Mind Enhancement would perform. The skill’s scaling grade determined how efficient his Intelligence stat would be— and no matter what, F grade scaling was miles behind A grade in terms of performance.

Moving onto the next skill, Mind Division allowed Keith to clone his mind at the cost of reducing his cognitive ability. A skill like Mind Enhancement was crucial to not become mentally impaired after dividing his mind a few times. What if he became so stupid he lost the ability to turn the skill off?

While the first two skills were essential to making Keith’s fighting style a reality, Sensory Link was just as important. With it, Keith would be able to turn the orbs into his eyes and ears. Otherwise, if he fought in an area with lots of obstacles, like a forest, he’d only be able to control the orbs within his sight, significantly limiting his attack range. It would also help with depth perception, angles, movement, and other factors.

Of all three skills, Keith first learned Mind Enhancement. As he did, the skill gem crumbled into dust as a new skill appeared in his skill list. Like all passive skills, Mind Enhancement didn’t show its effects just by possessing it. Keith needed to toggle it on. And like all passive skills, it conserved mana from the user. In this case, Mind Enhancement prevented Keith from using 10% of his mana pool while it was active.

When Keith still attended school, he heard a teacher say that the System most likely made passive skills conserve mana to bring balance. Keith thought it made sense, or else someone could just learn all the passive skills in the world and ascend to the top.

Growing expectant, Keith activated Mind Enhancement and wondered how to test it. While he could look up some math problems, why not count backward from 1,000 by 7?

Keith was by no means great with numbers, but as soon as he began counting backward, he immediately noticed a difference. 993, 986, 979. The answer came to the forefront of his mind as soon as he thought about it. In no time at all, Keith already counted down to 853. Quickly turning off the skill, Keith found himself thinking at a snail’s pace compared to before.

“What a difference,” Keith muttered as he felt his normal thinking speed was now much too slow. As of this moment, he decided to keep Mind Enhancement on as much as possible.

Next, Keith learned Mind Divison, growing cautious as he did so. He didn’t want to go all out and see how much he could divide his mind, only to become stupid for the rest of his life. To be safe, he only willed his mind to divide once.

As it did, he could tell there was something different, but he couldn’t place a finger on it. Thinking to his previous experiment, Keith began counting backward from 1,000 by 7 and 6 simultaneously.

To his surprise, Keith discovered there were now two voices in his head, two trains of thought occurring alongside each other, both connected but not interfering with each other in any way. It was a strange feeling that Keith couldn’t immediately get used to.

Like before, his speed at counting down was exceptionally fast, much more than his normal thinking speed, yet he could tell it was slower by some degree. Curious, Keith deactivated Mind Enhancement to more accurately gauge the difference.

Thinking it wouldn’t affect him too much, Keith was alarmed to find his thoughts growing sluggish to the point it was hard to form a single thought. Terrified, a flood of adrenaline rushed through his brain, giving him enough of a kick to reactivate Mind Enhancement immediately.

Soaked in sweat, Keith berated himself for underestimating his new skills. From now on, he vowed to never divide his mind without Mind Enhancement active. At the same time, he couldn’t help but lament that a human’s thinking speed was much too slow. Without anything improving his cognitive ability like Mind Enhancement, dividing his mind once almost crippled him. Sadly, the Intelligence stat only increased maximum mana and had nothing to do with increasing cognitive ability.

After scaring himself, Keith no longer harbored the thought to see how much he could divide his mind. Instead, he moved on to the last skill gem he needed to learn, one without any hidden dangers. Like before, the skill gem turned to dust upon granting him the skill.

Standing up, Keith approached his desk and grabbed a pencil. Focusing, he activated Sensory Link and cloned his senses onto the pencil. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell. Under the System's power, the pencil now had all five senses even though it lacked the required biology.

As for Keith, he was experiencing something incredibly bizarre. Even as he looked down at the pencil in his hand, he was also looking up at himself. He could smell his hand and hear how his skin rubbed against the pencil.

At first, Keith thought he’d need to go through some training to get used to Sensory Link, but to his surprise, he found his cloned senses came naturally. Wondering what his limit would be, Keith linked himself to a variety of items in his room until he experienced sensory overload. Nodding to himself, Keith learned that he could link his senses to about 30 objects with Mind Enhancement active. Any more than that and his brain couldn’t process the information.

After all this, Keith now understood his theorized battle style relied heavily on his cognitive ability. Not only did he need to calculate all sorts of things during a fight and process sensory information, dividing his mind lowered his cognitive ability as well. It was unfortunate Mind Enhancement was likely the only monster skill in the world that improved cognitive functions.

Thinking to himself, Keith wondered how many orbs he could control with his current Intelligence. Hopefully, at least five. If it was less than that, this battle style’s requirements were too high to be viable. And that was without even considering the mana costs.

For now, Keith just needed to wait until Zeidrick finished the weapons. Until then, he would continue experimenting with his new skills.