Ajax laid in bed as he remembered a very specific time from his training with Hatchet.

Ajax P.O.V Two years ago

I heaved for every breath following the obstacle course. Course was a new addition meant to prepare me to run away should I ever be vastly outmatched. Knowing that Hatchet was a retired adventurer who retired because of having most of his team wiped out, it was clear what the motivation for this training was. Despite the guilt and self-loathing he sometimes feels for being a survivor, deep down he knows that running away was the correct choice.

“Remember that when running away your skills can be used for more than just to speed you up or slow your pursuers down. Some of the best escape skills are those that lead your pursuers into chasing down the wrong path.” This statement was the reason why we were still running this exercise so much. Despite my plethora of skill and talent in sneaking hunting and tracking I was almost worthless when it came to deception involving fake evidence, maybe one day my [Deception] would be high enough to make up for me in this area

“Hatchet, I do have a question I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while.” I heaved out while remembering something I once heard from my parents about skills. “What is a skill threshold and how does it work?”

“Hmmhmmhmm” he failed at concealing a chuckle. “So the time has finally come, I have to say I lasted a lot longer than I expected.”

“What do you mean by that?” I was surprised at the change in topic.

“As you should be very well aware by now, every ten skill points become drastically harder to level with only one exception.” I gathered that it wasn’t something he was going to tell me so it will definitely be something that will be worth a discovery, and one he thinks I can make myself. “So far, despite the lack of abundant in depth knowledge on things there hasn’t been a time where my experience couldn’t at least start to prepare an answer for your training.”

“Are you saying we reached that point?” I was surprised that skill thresholds were something that would stump him.

“Yes and no.” he said. “I can give you the same information that you probably already got, common skills have no thresholds, uncommon have one at level seventy-five and rare and epic both share the fifty mark and one hundred mark. Legendary and Mythic skills have all sorts of rumors floating around about them, some say they both share the thresholds every twenty-five levels, others that they share them every ten levels and others that say legendary are at twenty-five and mythics at ten.” He explained a more complete version of the same explanation my mom gave me about them.

“Two things I know for sure about thresholds is that they always make the skill stronger, though I don’t know in what way. And the other is that the skill gets harder to level after every threshold.” he explained.

“As talented of a scout as I might have been back in the day, you also have to remember that even now I am only level fifty-two.” he looked out towards the village with a conflicted expression. “For this place, that means that I am the highest level and strongest person around until we head into Lessis where I still rank in the top of the food chain.”

“But you have to realize that this is also a backwater, mostly low-leveled corner of the kingdom. I never made it to the high echelons so I wasn’t privy to all the information that nobles and the powerful keep to themselves. To this day I have yet to have a skill reach the threshold so I could find out why they were so secretive about it” he said the last part more to himself than to me.

“This is also a good point for you to remember. This training will help you lay some good foundations and the information I give you about Dungeons and monsters is something you should always keep in mind but it is by no means complete.” he shook his head slightly before he continued. “One day you will surpass the level fifty barrier I hit and from there on you’ll have two choices : either you forge your own path or you look for someone else to lead you down a known one.”

END of P.O.V.

Ajax was stuck between the choice he now faced. In actuality he knew that what he faced wasn’t really a choice at all but despite that he kept putting off the decision. There was so much he didn’t know about skill thresholds and he had no way to ask someone about them since revealing he had hit a threshold would reveal that he either had a rare or epic skill and level fifty or the presence of his legendary skill. Neither outcome was something he wanted to risk.

His other option was of course not to trigger the advancement but he also didn’t know what keeping a skill had on said skill. He couldn’t risk his core skill to stop working in the middle of the fight because it had enough to level but a threshold hadn’t been passed.

This single decision was what made turning down the offer from Devin and Jaclyn so hard. He knew that should he have taken it the knowledge would be gifted to him with a bright red bow.

Despite all the postponing he finally decided to trigger the advancement.

Achievement : Threshold surpassed

Reward : one extra random upgrade choice for the advanced skill.

[MANA SYPHON] ADVANCEMENT OPTIONS :

Speed drain : enable the faster draining of mana and range.

Increased efficiency : The duration of physical enhancement gained from mana siphoned is extended

Mana steal : improve the ability to drain mana from internal sources (Object and other living beings)

Health funnel(Random reward) : when using mana syphon the body gains increased regeneration.

The first thing Ajax noticed after the screens flashed in front of his eyes was that he was now imobile. Either a strong paralytic effect would also accompany the effects of breaking through a threshold or the decision was more significant and some system-fuckery was going on.

Regardless of which case it was, it still had a simple way to resolve itself : all Ajax had to do was pick a path for advancement.

While seeming quite powerful, his bonus reward from his achievement was actually the first option he discarded. Healing would indeed be useful but he had already made some break-throughs in that domain with his light and holy mana so picking this over the other options would make no sense at all.

Mana steal was the next to go. Despite the interesting aspect he found when trying to drain a Dungeon arch of mana this upgrade wouldn’t be something he could comfortably use in combat. Even if the increase in the drain amount was big, he had played enough video games and read enough novels in his past life to know how quickly someone who drains people by touch inspires people to a ‘kill the witch’ reaction.

This left him with two very different choices that he absolutely needed. On the one hand you had speed drain and on the other you had increased efficiency. The irony was that despite how different they were from each other they also synergised perfectly.

Speed drain would allow him to consume his mana at an even faster rate than he already did, this in turn would lead to a higher power spike and a rapidly emptying mana pool. Not only this but it would also allow him to have a much stronger defense against enemy magic as with an increased drain speed and range he could perhaps weaken a spell enough to allow him to tank some stronger ones.

Increased efficiency went in the total opposite direction. Instead of increasing power for a shorter period of time and looking to quickly kill the opponent this choice would instead head towards prolonging the fight and giving him a much better chance in a battle of attrition. Not only that but it would also shore up his defenses against hit and run tactics that would force him keep his [Mana Syphon] running.

In the end what made the difference was that increased efficiency would actually increase his base level inside of a dungeon by allowing him to stack more power from just absorbing the ambient mana. With his decision finally made he selected the option.

With that he felt his body listening to himself once again as a warmth radiated out from himself for a short moment along with some light that quickly faded. The experience left him with a fresh layer of sweat and a quick glance at his status marked [Mana Syphon Lvl 25].