For his visualization for whatever this new skill would be, he decided to use the effects of the spells on his body, with one leading into another. Dix even cast each spell at the same time he visualized their effects. He started with Regen, forming the mana batteries and the enhanced blood flow to lead that power to every part of the body. Then Toughness, to make the cells more able to resist the possible negative effects of what comes next. The mana from the batteries flowed into the cells, strengthening the walls and their bonds before moving inside, particularly the bones and skin. Might was next. As the mana flowed into the muscular cells it duplicated certain structures, growing the muscle mass as well as its applicable strength. And finally, Speed, for the nerves. Mana flowed from neuron to neuron, smoothing the passing of messages each time, until the signals flowed like liquid lightning.

As he did this over and over, not canceling the spells before each attempt so that his body, and the new skill, could get used to having these effects on all the time, he slipped into another meditative trance. It wasn’t something he really tried to do, but it was part of how his mind worked. Sometimes he had to let other parts of his brain take over a task to get it done faster. He maintained his focus on his intent to have the mana make him physically better. Faster, stronger, tougher.

Eventually the skill came together, with a surging of power throughout his body. When it activated for the first time, it cleared out all of the spell effects in his body, leaving only the effect of the skill itself. Dix was elated at first, but he quickly noticed that he had made a mistake. There was no ongoing Regen effect in the skill. Instead, most likely due to his visualization, the skill’s activation had a very brief Regen effect, but it mostly used the power stored in the mana battery sections of the spell to affect the body, and smooth the transition to the empowered state. It certainly wasn’t a failure, as the original idea of having a semi permanent combined version of Might, Speed, and Toughness. He had only tried to add Regen at the end as an afterthought.

Determined to not get down over his not exactly a failure, Dix instead tried to look at it as a learning experience. He really wasn’t upset about how his skill had turned out, but he was much less excited than he had been. In the future, for any other skills he attempted to make that would be collections of other effects, he promised himself to fully plan out how it would all come together so he wouldn’t miss anything. He would also remember how well Regen’s base form worked for imparting skills, effects, and power to the entire body; it would likely be very useful in the future.

Once more he looked inside himself at his new skill. With the artificial boost to skills, he felt like a whole new man. It was hard to get any sort of accurate sense of how much he had improved because it distorted his perception of time, so he couldn’t test his speed. Strength and toughness were also hard, as stabbing himself to test how tough he was now was countered by his newly increased strength. He laughed at the conundrum it was causing him. It was no matter really; when he finally made it to Mantra he’d get the numerical values. Still, he tightened his hand into a fist, enjoying the increased power he could feel in his grip. Studying the mana drain on his body led him to believe that the skill would be a constant mana drain, but not a large one. He hoped that he could regulate the strength of the skill, and its commensurate mana costs. If he could make it cost as much to maintain as his mana regenerated, that would be perfect.

Looking around, Dix couldn’t see much left to do, but decided to double check. While he walked around looking for weapons or tools that he had missed, he also went over the skills and spells he thought he had. The spells at least were easy to cover, he knew exactly what he had there. Sadly, none of his remaining spells seemed to be things he could turn into skills. He would love to turn Conjure Weapon into a skill instead of a spell, but he had no idea how to realistically go about that. And trying to make a skill for launching Lightning Bolts from his fingertips only seemed like a good idea when compared to trying to shoot Fire Bolts from his eyes, or Flamethrower from his mouth.

As for the skills he had, well he didn’t know exactly what he had. In a way, he could almost feel them floating around in his mind, but those were just the actives. His passives seemed to be a bit of energy floating throughout his entire body. They would periodically spark things and reactions that were different from what he was used to from his life before, but there were never any real problems with them. His brain seemed to have adapted to the existence of his passives quite quickly, especially his movement skill. He wondered what else he could make passives for. Apparently he only had to get a little better at something to form one.

Just for fun, he tried out a bit of ballroom dancing, using the steps he had learned as a younger man to glide around the room. Five minutes of that and he felt the skill seep into his body, making him dance even better. It was then immediately snatched up by the dark shark swimming in his body, his movement skill. He never would have noticed if he hadn’t been so focused on feeling for a passive skill forming. It was startling, but the after effects of his movement skill absorbing another passive were immediately noticeable. His normal steps now had that same gliding feel to his body as dancing had.

Dix jumped right into testing the skill out for other changes. The first thing he tried was sneaking. He thought he may have already gotten the skill for Sneak during the first test, but there was no way to know for sure. Either way, having not tried to do so ever since, he didn’t think his movement skill could have actually had the opportunity to ingest it. Both facts were proven a short time later when he noticed his gluttonous movement skill tugging something out of his body, and growing slightly more powerful in the aftermath. He also could now sneak in a much smoother fashion, as all of the different skills that had gone into his movement skill made themselves known in helping him move better in all ways, even dancing. With a bit of a smirk he tried other forms of dancing than ballroom, but he soon frowned as it became obvious they had all been contained in that single skill.

The only other possible passives he could think of at the moment for his movement skill to eat would require some props. First he searched around for the longest staff he could find, until he remembered that Conjure Weapon could summon him up anything he thought of as a weapon. A quick burst of mana later, and he had a ten foot long pole held in his hands. It might not be the most useful of skills, but pole vaulting might actually be useful to someone who planned to spend a fair bit of time fighting with a spear. Hell, if it increased his odds of living he’d even try pole dancing. He paused, head cocked to the side, as he thought it through. After a bit, he was forced to admit that it might actually help at some point. Not the pole dancing itself, but perhaps he would have to plant his spear in the ground or a body and swing his body around it to kick back an opponent, or avoid an attack. Pole dancing might allow him to put that sort of movement into his movement skill, which meant it was useful. He groaned at the idiocy of having talked himself into becoming a stripper to help himself stay alive. Skill or no skill, he was keeping his clothes on.

Just to keep his sanity, he determined to get at least two other skills that might be useful to his movement skill that weren’t, well, pole dancing. He had already decided that one would be vaulting, and he even already had a grappling hook planned out in his mind to see if he could get a horizontal swing from it. Hefting the pole vault in his hand, he figured track and field events might actually be useful, so he added hurdles and triple jump. The rest he had already covered. But gymnastics probably had a few new things for him to try too. Ugh, I might as well just do all the Olympic events at this point. No idea how I’m going to make all of the things I need for these skills.

It took a few hours, and a lot of out of the box thinking, but he eventually added hurdling, sequential jumping (it took more than three jumps to get a skill from it), vaulting, and pole vaulting to the list of skills his movement skill had devoured. Or at least whatever those things would be named in a world that presumably is too involved with fighting to stay alive to actually invent those same events for entertainment. He also added whatever horizontal pole dancing is called. No, not sex, the gymnastics thing with bars that they twirl around on.

In the process of limbering up for all of his recent track and field experiments, and gymnastics, he also learned another skill. As much as he wanted to call it stretching, it was fairly specific stretching. Yoga. He had originally only taken yoga to meet sober girls, but eventually discovered that the routines helped him more than he wanted to admit, both in and out of the bedroom. The only benefit to learning a yoga skill, was that it was also snatched up by his movement skill. He was starting to think anything that involved moving the body, that wasn’t specifically a combat skill, would get devoured by that thing.

And finally, with a lot of whistles, catcalls, highly inappropriate suggestions, and unsolicited advice he also learned normal pole dancing. The repeated suggestion of learning lap dancing as well was not completely ignored, but he was trying to focus on staying alive long enough to enjoy a lap dance, not die before giving another one.

He countered by asking if he could ride her like a horse to earn the riding skill. That question was followed by five seconds of dead silence, and ten minutes of uproarious laughter as they both lost it completely.

Gasping for breath on the floor, Dix turned to look at Chance laying nearby. She had fallen off the shelf she had sat herself on to watch him learn pole dancing, an action that just made them both laugh harder. She was beautiful, with her fly away hair stuck to her slightly sweaty face, and her clothes clinging to every curve. He silently cursed to himself. He was horny again. It was time to get out of here, and down to Mantra. Screw getting more skills to stay alive, if he didn’t get laid soon he was going to kill himself.

Groaning he pushed himself to his feet, then walked over to help Chance up. When she looked at him quizzically, he explained, “I’m done with training. Time for the test, so I can get out of here.”

She looked a little sad, and asked, “Are you sure? I’m positive you can think up more things to learn. I can’t help you much, since I have to focus only on magic during these stupid tests, but there are a few casting based skills I could help you learn.”

Dix actually considered it for a while, before ultimately shaking his head. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could be in her presence without needing to do something about it. Thankfully, Chance was the only female here. If there were more, it would be worse. At this point even Beauty, with her charming innocence, would be too much for him to handle without losing his rationality. He certainly wouldn’t rape anyone, but he would be significantly more high pressure with his flirting.

Shaking his head he replied, “No, thank you. I’m sorry, but I’m going crazy locked up here, despite the lovely company. If nothing else I really need to go murder some monsters to let off a little steam.” He smiled sadly to show he really was sorry to have to refuse.

She pouted cutely. It wasn’t as good as Beauty, but close enough that he almost gave in. When she saw he remained stoic, she gave it up. “Well, alright, grab what you want to take with you for the final test and we can get going.”

Dix smacked himself in the head. He’d forgotten he would need to bring some weapons with him. As he wandered over to where he had left the ones he liked the most, he remembered something else of equal importance. Looking back he shot a couple questions at Chance, “Didn’t you say I could only take a few spells with me? What’re the limitations on that?”

“Oh, right!” she perked right up at that reminder. “So for each category you can only take two out of five spells. That means two healing spells, four for support, and six attacking spells. The other option is to take the randomizer. I allow you to take all of the spells from a category, but you will only have access to a random selection of two, four, or six at a time. Each time you cast one, they will all randomly change. You could get anything from six different spells of different elements, to six of the same spell. What do you think, neat huh?” She had that eagerly vicious smile that intrigued him so on her face again. It would have disturbed Dix more, but he had come to grips with the oddities of his sexual proclivities years ago. In his case it was basically any female who looked interested, no matter how or where her own sexual interests lay. Accepting you are a slut is the first step to happiness.

Tearing his mind away from the horribly filthy gutter it had leapt into, Dix struggled to focus on his choices. A quick question would clear up the important part first. “Can I take the randomizer for just one category, and choose my spells for the others?”

“Of course! Although it would be more fun if they were all random, don’t you think?”

“Sure, but what’s the point in taking the random support spells for me. Three of the ten I already have as a skill, one I don’t like, and there are four summoning spells. It just wouldn’t make sense. Give me a second to think it through, and I’ll have an answer for you.” She grumbled to herself, but eventually nodded, so he immediately got back to work.

He really did like the randomizing idea, particularly for the attack spells. When you don’t know what you are up against, having a random selection of spells would actually be a big boon. Sure, it could backfire at times, like fighting a flame elemental and having only a fire bolt. In that situation you just have to blow the spell into a wall, so you don’t heal the thing, and hope the next spell set is more useful. On the other hand, when it is going well, you could get both ice spells, both water spells, and both earth spells while facing that same fire elemental. The reality, however, is that it would be a truly random mix of spells, so he’d most likely have a fire bolt, icicle, wind blade, multi bolt and two force bolts.

Taking his own chosen spells would also work, but he already knew what he would take and it wouldn’t be the best all the time. It was also unbalanced for certain elements. Fire bolt, earth spikes, wind blade, water slicer, lightning bolt, and icicle. He was still debating switching icicle for ice spikes, but would likely stay with icicle for its ease of use. It was a good spread, and reasonable, but he thought the randomizer would challenge him a little as well as just be more fun. He wasn’t worried about the test being hard, he was worried about it being boring, so he would take the randomizer on the attack spells.

Support and healing were an entirely different story though. You don’t gamble your life on having the right healing spells at the right time during a randomization. For maximum survivability he took Summon Healer, and Rejuvenation. Regen was great for having a long term healing spell on you, but it wasn’t as strong or as fast as Rejuvenation. He only used it on himself so much earlier because he was too lazy to cast that many Rejuvs. During combat, laziness would get him killed though, so he went with the spell that was better for the situation. He knew he couldn't die, or even really get wounded during the tests, but it was better to get in the correct habits now, than die to bad habits later.

Supports were mostly a wash. Dix only really wanted Conjure Weapon, and Shield, but he’d still take his extra two spells. He still thought it was odd that he could use Conjure Weapon to get a shield that worked pretty much the same as the Shield spell, yet there was a whole spell dedicated to just shields. The reason he took the spell was precisely to try and figure out the difference, although he expected to run into the same problem he had so many times recently. His perceptions of things were no match for an actual system with numerical values and concise explanations. Provided the system worked as he expected anyways.

As for his last two spells in the support category, he didn’t have a lot of other options. He hated Mana Shield, it was too unreliable for his tastes. Was it useful? Sure, for people with no combat awareness, other methods of blocking, or capability to dodge. Since he possessed all of those things, the spell was pointless for him except in the case of ambush. Even then, he didn’t think the test would ambush him any better than the first one had tried to. That left the summons.

Dix decided to take Air and Fire for his summons. He still felt Air would be the most useful of the summons in a comparison based on utility, but, this being a combat situation, he figured he’d add Fire. He thought Earth would still be more useful, but wanted to give Fire a chance to prove it didn’t deserve to be the bottom of the list. If he hadn’t needed to fill his last empty spell slot he wouldn’t have bothered. In the same line of thinking, he really wanted Conjure Weapon and Shield, so the randomizer was out.