[Path Of The Wet]

[You walk along the path of wetness. You are wetness itself; you control all that is wet, and you bring endless wetness to the world.]

‘Well, that doesn’t really help…’ Theo said exasperatedly after reading the description that suddenly popped up.

‘I guess you’re going to have to keep relying on me.’ Said Eileen with a smug face that luckily for her, Theo couldn’t see.

‘The blood is drying up; can you quickly tell me what the skill is all about?’

‘hkhm, hkhm.’ Eileen cleared her throat and continued. ‘The skill allows you to control liquids, or more accurately, wet liquids, so I don’t know how lava and molten metals come into the equation. It also increases your talent and affinity for all elements that fit that category proportional to the skills level, as well as allowing you to liquify your body to a certain extent, but you probably need to get it to a lot higher level to achieve that.’ Theo was about to ask her another question, but she seemed to just remember something and quickly started talking again.

‘Oh, right! You also have two constitutions that can complement this skill nicely, the Constitution Of The First Orbiting Moon and the Myriad Branches Of Spirit’s Grace Constitution. Well, the letter is a given as it complements anything to do with elements, while the former, as you can gather from its name, gives you properties of a moon. As the moon is known to control tides, it thus gives you a great affinity for the water element. There are a bunch of other effects, but we can discuss that another time.’

‘How do I use the skill?’

‘It would probably be best to focus on it in the system panel while trying to control liquids, just so you get the hang of it first, but as I said, its effect will be very weak at lvl0, so you should probably upgrade it.’

Theo wondered how the upgrade process worked, but as soon as he showed some intent in wanting to upgrade the skill, a notification showed up.

[Do you wish to upgrade the skill Path Of The Wet lvl0?]

[Cost: 10 SP]

‘Where do I check how much SP I have?’ Theo asked Eileen as he didn’t have time to properly read the notifications right after the kill.

‘It’s on your home page.’

He opened the home page of the panel, which showed up whenever he opened the system before he selected one of the two other pages.

[1007 SP]

Noticing that he was apparently rich, he proceeded with the upgrade.

[Your Path Of The Wet skill is now lvl1!]

He triggered another upgrade notification just to check the price of the next level.

[Do you wish to upgrade the skill Path Of The Wet lvl1?]

[Cost: 20 SP]

But seeing it was still quite cheap, he decided to upgrade it again.

[Your Path Of The Wet skill is now lvl2!]

[Do you wish to upgrade the skill Path Of The Wet lvl2?]

[Cost: 50 SP]

And again.

[Your Path Of The Wet skill is now lvl3!]

[Do you wish to upgrade the skill Path Of The Wet lvl3?]

[Cost: 100 SP]

He stopped himself from upgrading it the fourth time, as he realized he hadn’t even used the skill yet.

He followed Eileen's advice and concentrated on the skill in his mind while trying to move the blood on his body that hadn’t dried yet.

With just a thought the blood moved and flew into the air, condensing itself into a crimson ball.

‘Oh! That’s not hard at all.’

Theo could manipulate liquid at will, he realized that he didn’t even have to focus on the skill in his mind now that he knew how it worked.

He got lost in his own world, controlling blood into various shapes, and drinking a portion of it here and there.

‘Theo, I think you should stop playing with blood and clean yourself first.’ Eileen reprimanded him.

‘You’re right.’ Said Theo as he threw the rest of the blood into his mouth, convincing himself it was only so that the blood didn’t attract unnecessary attention.

Now he had another problem. He couldn’t manipulate the dried-up blood and he also had to somehow wash his pants. This ability reminded him of water bending, which gave him an idea. He tried to concentrate on the leaves surrounding him to extract the water they contained within, but he realized that extracting liquid was a lot harder than simply controlling it.

He decided to just concentrate on a single leaf and not bite off more than he could chew. Droplets of water almost immediately appeared on the surface and started to follow Theo’s command, while the leaf just became a dried husk of its former self.

Although the development pleased Theo, he didn’t have the time to slowly extract enough water to wash himself and the bloody pants.

[Do you wish to upgrade the skill Path Of The Wet lvl3?]

[Cost: 100 SP]

[Your Path Of The Wet skill is now lvl4!]

The amount of control he had over the droplets of water immediately multiplied. Now that he experienced the capabilities of the skill and felt the tremendous change, he almost got drunk on the feeling of improvement.

[Do you wish to upgrade the skill Path Of The Wet lvl4?]

[Cost: 200 SP]

[Your Path Of The Wet skill is now lvl5!]

[Do you wish to upgrade the skill Path Of The Wet lvl5?]

[Cost: 500 SP]

[Your Path Of The Wet skill is now lvl6!]

The difference he felt in the control he gained when he stepped into lvl6 was beyond what he felt when he entered lvl4 and lvl5, instead of just a boost in pure power, it seemed more of a qualitative change.

With just a thought, the section of leaves surrounding Theo dried up and turned into a stream of water, even the branch wasn’t spared, leaking liquid through the cracks of its bark. At that point the water almost felt like a part of his body, perfectly obeying his will.

[Do you wish to upgrade the skill Path Of The Wet lvl6?]

[Cost: 1000 SP]

[You do not possess enough SP]

‘Oh… right.’ Theo completely forgot to save any SP, as he immersed himself in the feeling of improvement.

‘El, how hard is it to get SP?’ Asked Theo in a deadpan voice.

‘I see someone has a spending habit.’ Eileen didn’t let the chance to tease him get away this time. ‘As I said before, you can absorb resources containing energy and convert them into SP, you also get some when you kill something, but the amount is quite small. Something of the first order will possess between 1 and 100 SP, that is if it doesn’t have any more potential for growth or other abilities or traits above its own order, and even then, you have to absorb its body to gain the full amount. You also gained that coin from the puma, which is a feature of the Value of Slaughter feature and can be exchanged for SP if purified.’

That eased Theo’s mind as he had many ways to get more SP, so he didn’t regret upgrading that skill, he loved the feeling of control it gave him.

Using the extracted water, he cleaned himself up. Even the pants weren’t a problem as he could control water better than any washing machine ever could, the lack of detergent did require him to put in some extra work, however. He could even instantly dry himself by collecting all the water attached to his body.