Chapter 19
Before seeing her, Kai could hear Dora humming in her laboratory.
As soon as he took a step inside, she presented him with another suspicious-looking potion. He drank it without giving it much thought. It had almost become a daily occurrence and he never had a worse reaction than an upset stomach.
While their taste and texture left a lot to be desired, he was sure he would not have survived this long without them. Bruises and cuts that would have needed a couple weeks to recover were gone in days and his body felt full of energy. He had long stopped doubting her skills. Even if he wondered how such a great cook could create such foul and bitter potions.
Biting on some mint leaves he kept in his pocket to clean the potion aftertaste; Kai was happy to see Dora smiling more brightly than usual. At least someone shared a bit of his excitement.
“I just heard the news. You should be proud dear, today you reached a very important milestone. I could not imagine having to deal with a restricted Guide, you’ll soon see how convenient it is. Now we better get started, we have so much to cover and today is a lovely day.”
Naturally, they were not going to sit down while she calmly explained the ins and outs of the Guide. Dora immediately dragged him to work outside.
The garden hosted all sorts of plants and there was always something that required their attention.
Repotting some young tree seedlings, Dora explained all the new things he could do. The basic principle to customize the Guide was to visualize the desired result with as many details as possible and will it into reality.
If you could imagine it, chances were you could do it. Changing the size, transparency and color of the Guide messages was only the beginning. He could also alter the font of the characters or add decorations to the windows. The only requirement was his imagination.
Dora made it sound easy, but Kai had a hard time trying to change the size of the messages. She promised it was a question of time before he would get the hang of it.
Passing on more useful applications, she taught him how to manipulate notifications, to make them appear only when and how he wanted. He had to visualize it and wish for it to be made into reality, but it was much harder to accomplish.
As for programming what-if scenarios, that was well out of his league. The key was clear intentions, but it was easier said than done.
“Don’t worry dear, it will come naturally with time,” Dora reassured him.
Time flew as Kai tried to make the Guide interface look more like a game UI. At lunchtime, he followed Dora to the kitchen. He sat at the table and continued to mess around while she cooked and talked about random topics.
After a little bit of chitchat—‘a little’ in Dora’s terms, that is, which was about half an hour—she turned to more interesting topics.
“Aside from the cosmetic changes, passing your First Seal has three practical advantages.”
That captured Kai’s attention enough to stop his efforts to give the Guide windows the right shade of blue and focus on the chatty alchemist.
“First, you can decide to receive your Life and Skill Experience whenever you want at the interval you prefer. Daily, monthly or even once a year, but I don’t recommend that. You could also receive it as soon as you get it, but having dozens of plus-one XP notifications can be quite annoying. Most people prefer to look over their progress once a week or two.” Dora explained, accentuating her words with her wooden spoon as she finished cooking today’s meal.
“The process is not much different from manipulating notifications. You can try it later. My advice is to—”
It was very interesting, but Kai already knew it. She said there were three important things. He could think of one more, but the last one eluded him.
“The second benefit is the ability to remove skills. Most people have a skill or two they want to discard as they grow up, to make space for those they will need for their profession.” Dora smiled at him. “You don’t have to worry about that quite yet, but I know you want to make space for other skills. Why don’t you go ahead, we can go through the last point after lunch.”
Kai contained his disappointment. He already knew this one too.
I might as well check out how it works.
He didn’t think he would get the chance quite so soon, but he had already decided to discard Teaching. It was a skill he had lots of fond memories attached to, but with only seven slots he couldn’t afford to keep it.
He also considered abandoning Acting, but with his big secret he wanted to keep hidden, he felt safer keeping it. He had learned how unforgiving Elydes could be, you never knew when you had to make something up to save your ass.
Awareness was the last skill he had considered ditching. Elijah would lose his excuse to throw pebbles at him, but those were thoughts he had at his lowest points. Thinking with a calm mind, it was a very useful skill to have. All his blood and sweat made it improve considerably, he didn’t want to have suffered for nothing.
Confident in his choice, Kai summoned his status—which he could also finally dismiss too—and focused on his Teaching skill.
*Ding*
Do you wish to discard Teaching (lv7) ? Be aware that this choice is irreversible.
Giving his mental approval, a wave of dizziness washed over him. His hands tightly gripped the table in front of him, lest he fell from his chair. He felt about to faint and vomit at the same time.
The awful sensation didn’t last long, but it left a sense of wrongness inside of him. It was unlike anything he had felt before. A piece of him had gone missing and he couldn’t find it anywhere.
Dora looked at him with a knowing look, putting a plate full of steaming food in front of him. “I would have warned you, but no words can accurately describe the real experience. The stronger the skill the worse it feels. Since your skill is low-level, it will pass in a couple minutes. I know you don’t feel like eating, but there is nothing better than a full stomach to get over it, trust me.”
The idea of food made him nauseous. After he forced the first few bites, the deliciousness of Dora’s grilled vegetables and medium-rare meat won him over. The unpleasant sensation wasn’t gone, but it was getting better.
Dora talked about random topics to distract him for the rest of the meal. After they tidied up the kitchen she went back to the promised topic.
“So, there is one final perk from passing the First Seal. Try to summon your status and focus on your skill list.”
They got to the third mysterious option. Curious to find out, Kai followed the instructions and stared wide-eyed at the result.
*Ding*
Opening Skill Archive…
Available skills:
Teaching (lv1) Writing (lv1) Dodge (lv1) Gardening (lv1) Herbology (lv1) This is a very nice surprise.
Dora smiled, “Whenever you fulfill the requisites to learn a new skill, it gets added to your personal skill archive. From your reaction, I guess you have more than one.”
Kai nodded; his eyes still focused on the list. This was very convenient. He had somehow thought he would need to relearn the skill every time. This made much more sense.
Teaching was there too, back at level 1. He grieved a few seconds for the levels lost, before dealing with the new problem. He only had one free slot, but he wanted to get all the other four options. They all sounded very useful.
Getting better and faster at writing would be convenient and he was sure his father had possessed this skill too. It would be nice to see where the skill upgrades led.
There was no question why he got Dodge. It would be great to have a better chance to beat Elijah’s training method. It would also be useful in general, he liked skills that made him safer.
Both Gardening and Herbology would help him with Dora. He enjoyed tending to the plants in the garden and these skills would make him even better at it.
I need more skill slots. It’s not fair that some people are born with double mine.
Alas, commiserating never helped anyone. He needed to get to Orange to solve the problem. He checked his progress to see how far it was.
Race: Human Grade: Red ★★★ Next advancement ➔ 23,475/40,000 XP He gained more than 3,000 XP in about a month, which was pretty damn good. Running and Swimming had slowed down as he got closer to level 50, no more easy levels unfortunately.
He had gotten a non-insignificant boost from Awareness, but that had started to slow down too.
He was at an impasse, he needed more skills to gain more XP, but he needed more XP to have more skills.
Damn, life is unfair.
His Life Experience grew higher since he came here, he got more than 100 XP a week, with a peak of almost 200. It was not that surprising, considering this had been the most grueling month of both his lives, but Life Experience still needed time to accumulate. A lot of time.
Kai sighed, he would eventually reach it, he had to stay consistent and patient.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
Kai and Dora walked back to the garden, discussing what choice he should make. He begrudgingly excluded Writing. He wanted to take the skill, but no matter how he looked at it, it was the inferior option.
His goal was to reach Orange as fast as possible. It made more sense to learn one of the other three. He would use them much more than for taking notes. They would help him in his daily lessons and level up the fastest.
He considered ditching one more skill, but he didn’t want to abandon any of them after he invested so much time and effort.
Dora—unsurprisingly—wanted him to take Gardening or Herbology, bringing forth a dozen arguments and explaining all the ways it would help him.
She didn't say it out loud, but she heavily hinted that, if he got good enough in the garden, she might start teaching him some alchemy. Her wink-wink was anything but subtle.
The temptation was too great to resist and Kai chose Herbology. It would make her lessons easier to understand and remember. He was very curious to see how a skill that influenced his knowledge and memory worked.
Gardening was also an option but thinking about an hypothetical future he preferred Herbology. Spending time potting, pruning and caring for all sorts of greenery was enjoyable, but he had different ambitions. Herbology sounded like it had more useful applications, even if he didn’t decide to become a farmer.
*Ding*
New skill learned! Herbology (lv1) – The first step in unearthing the secrets of the flora around you. Your knowledge deepens as you become more adept at digging out the truth.
Okay… Who knew the Guide liked puns? You really learn new things every day.
As always, the description was vague as shit. He still didn’t understand how the Guide worked. Virya and Dora had sometimes mentioned theories of what it was, but they didn’t delve deep. His mother had told him it was the blessing of the spirits, but that answer felt a bit biased.
He had started to believe the restrictions of the Guide were for the better. He was a bit of an oddity, but if he didn’t have his memories, he wouldn’t have trusted himself with the ability to get rid of skills. Let alone choose a profession.
The Guide didn’t seem to consider reincarnators, or maybe it did. After all, there were ways to unlock the First Seal ahead of time.
Dora had told him in mana-rich areas children tended to mature faster in some aspects. A higher Mind stat improved memory and speed of thought, but that didn’t necessarily make you smarter—depending on your definition of intelligence.
That may be why she had such high expectations. As if remembering everything she said should come naturally. He had been born with a different kind of advantage.
Whenever he asked if something existed, the answer was always yes 90% of the time and maybe the remaining 10%. It might be why they didn’t question his oddness. There were probably far weirder things out there.
Dora smiled cheerfully after he made his choice. “I’m happy you chose the best option, dear. We are going to have so much fun together.”
Then she winked with a conspiratorial air. “We are done for today. You can take the rest of the day off. I’ll call you when dinner is ready. I'll finish things up here.”
He didn’t know if it was a favorable treatment for choosing the skill she wanted or to give him time to mess around with the Guide. He wasn’t going to say no to free time.
Thanking her with a big smile, Kai ran to the beach.
I can’t remember the last time I had some time off…
It had been a busy month and it was only the beginning. He considered relaxing and taking a nap, but he preferred to tinker with the Guide.
Oh my god, who have I become? Where did this diligence come from? I’d like to think I took my second chance at life seriously. If I think about it, the problem is that I don’t have many ways to waste time. I miss having an internet connection with an unending rabbit hole of possibilities at my fingertips.
Kai laid down on the warm sand.
I need to find a way to waste time. Maybe it’s not that there are no distractions, but that I’m dirt poor. Mhmm…
Mulling idly and changing the Guide interface, Kai happily spent the next few hours.