Antelligent Design

9. Check out my Skillz

I’m exhausted and my mandibles are aching something fierce after all that digging. And is it time to rest?

NOPE.

Those damn pupae are teasing me with their very existence. The twenty large casings are resting against the side of a chamber, taunting me with their stillness. Within them, the hope of ant-kind is taking the final steps of their gestation, turning from a grub into something more. Something incredible. The ant species to end all ant species.

At least that’s what I’m hoping for. If they suck, I’m going to be really disappointed…

It shouldn’t happen, though! I reinforce my own positive mindset. They are going to be great. I’ve put so much effort into creating them and making sure they’ll get a solid boost to start out their new lives, surely they’ll be great!

The closer this project is getting to fruition, the more stressed I’m getting.

Put it behind you, Anthony. Put all of it behind you!

Focus on yourself for a while, treat yourself. To what should I treat myself? To Skill training, of course!

Not only me, Tiny and Crinis have been roped in as well.

After discussing things with Beyn and drawing on his knowledge, our knowledge of the System has greatly expanded. The weightiest nugget of wisdom to come out of that was the importance of Skills.

Whereas I had been putting too much emphasis on evolution and the energy within my core, I was ignoring two aspects of the holy trinity of monster power. Evolution! Mutation! Skills!

All things must be in balance. So it is in nature, so it is within the monster. When one tree is over watered, it does not grow properly, drowning instead of thriving, and the other trees wither. Only when the life-giving succour is evenly distributed to all three trees shall the monster truly flourish in all aspects. Mentally, physically, spiritually!

I’ve gone some way to addressing the shortcomings of my mutations, but my Skills are still lacking. When Beyn found out that none of my combat Skills was of the fourth rank, he nearly slapped me out of sheer shock, and in the process, almost lost his only remaining hand. He really needs to be more careful.

At least now with Shattering Bite advancing, I have one fourth rank combat Skill. Advancing Skills, fusing them and taking them to their extreme ends is what the surface races spend most of their time doing in the pursuit of strength.

Therefore, the time has come to take part in that most sacred of all System-related activities: grinding.

Gonna grind like there’s no tomorrow!

The most important thing to grind? Of course, it’s magic!

This was the most frustrating thing Beyn had enlightened me of. I’d thought I’d made use of an awesome hack in using my free magic gland on Gravity Mana, and in a way I had.

If I’d used it on fire, water, earth or something basic, it would have been a massive waste since I’m now able to produce those Mana types without too much stress. The problem is that having the gland doesn’t give me access to what I really need to make use of it, which is the spell forms. I have the generic spell shapes I’ve been using, but according to Beyn, every Mana type has particular spells that make best of its attributes. The more advanced the Mana type, the more specialised the spells will be.

Even though he’d never seen Gravity Magic before, he was sure it was a particularly advanced form of Mana, which means the Skill I want, Gravity Mana Affinity, will be deep in the Skill tree somewhere.

In order to get access to it, I have to Level up my basic affinities, which will unlock the next rank of affinities, and so on until I finally get to Gravity.

Once I get the Water Magic affinity to the third rank, the next wave of affinity Skills will unlock. That is my most immediate goal. Apparently, the exact types of Mana that unlock are not necessarily set, and can vary from individual to individual. With a bit of luck, I might even see Gravity Mana in the next rank. Though Beyn thought it was extremely unlikely.

There’s apparently a powerful Skill fusion available by Levelling all of the basic affinities to the third rank, and then fusing them to form the Skill Elemental Mana Mastery, which gives powerful boosts to the basic elements. Despite most local mages aiming for this elemental path, it seems like a waste to me. The higher ranks of magic will surely also have more potent fusions available. I don’t want to waste my time on the lower-level stuff anymore.

Rush to the top!

Tiny, Crinis and I settle in to grind our Skills, repetitively, endlessly, mind numbingly. For me, that means forming and releasing the ice Mana construct over and over again, casting water and ice spells at everything. The walls, dipping into the Dungeon and launching them at monsters, at Tiny once by accident, and the odd rock.

Using Skills in combat situations against monsters gives a much faster boost than just hitting the walls, but being as mentally exhausted as we are, I don’t want us diving into frenetic combat. Keeping to the upper tunnels and picking on some plants is as much as I’m willing to commit to at this point.

Just like this, we grind, and grind, and grind.

Crinis is focusing on her tentacle Skills, grappling, shredding, dismembering. After much persuasion, I eventually get a mortified Crinis to attempt to use her Skills on me. My thinking is that she’d get more experience using her Skills on a highly evolved monster like me.

She was reluctant to say the least, which resulted in one of my stranger conversations as a monster.

[Dammit, Crinis! Cut me!]

[Nooooo…]

[Don’t you want experience? Don’t you want some of these juicy Levels!]

[I do… but!]

[Then hit me, dammit! Get those tentacles on this carapace. I order ** you to try and carve my bum off!]

[WHAT! I… Noooooo!]

Unable to deny my direct order, a screaming and weeping Crinis was forced to attack and attempt to dismember me. Her sawing limbs and intense crushing strength were powerful, to be sure, but they couldn’t crack my shiny carapace.

She did get a few Levels out of the experience, only… the trauma it caused her wasn’t worth the effort.