A few days had passed.
The same forest region still held them, the sunlight barely reached the ground here.
The wreckage of the tree Alex had destroyed on the first day of mantle practice still lay at the edge of the space.
Alex stood in the center of the clearing with his eyes closed.
Adaptation ran at full sensitivity.
He was cycling Shadow Vision again.
The cold filament rose from the Mana Heart.
It climbed the familiar internal path and settled behind his eyes for the countless time.
Darkness that would have left any ordinary pair of eyes completely blind resolved into clear, usable sight.
He held the activation for several breaths.
Adaptation recorded the ongoing cost and the exact sensation of the element resting in place.
Then he retracted the filament all the way back to the core and stabilized it, then he sent it upward again without pause.
1. Gather.
2. Climb.
3. Settle.
4. Hold.
5. Retract.
6. Repeat everything again!
The sequence had become mechanical through sheer volume of repetition.
His mana was draining at a brutal rate.
'This is starting to hurt real bad...'
Every full cycle of Shadow Vision and every attempt at the Shadow Mantle pulled hard on the reserve in the Mana Heart.
He had already refilled whatever amount he could in the Mana Heart multiple times that morning through painful, focused absorption.
He forced ambient mana into the pathways until the reserve climbed back to a usable level.
The refill process itself left a lingering ache behind the sternum, it came from pushing the absorption skill past comfortable limits again and again.
'I have been ignoring the pain for so long, I just need to go on a little more...'
He locked Adaptation again on the next climb.
He started another cycle.
The element answered and his vision activated, and soon the cost registered, so he had to retracted and begin again.
He had yet to gain that formal skills notification.
The system had remained silent on that front for days while Adaptation continued to refine his control with every repetition.
'But the lag between my intention and its response had shortened noticeably.'
The densification of the mantle required fewer mid-climb corrections.
His Shadow Vision now activated faster and cost slightly less mana than it had on the first day.
The practical mastery was real and measurable.
But the clean system notification that would turn these applications into proper expandable skills had not appeared.
The gap between what his body could already do and what the system was willing to acknowledge was starting to grind on him in a way that simple physical fatigue never had.
"This is getting ridiculous," Alex muttered, his eyes were still closed as he guided the filament upward once more.
"I have been cycling both applications non-stop for days,"
"Adaptation has been active the entire time, recording every correction and every small improvement,"
"My control is clearly better and the cost is dropping, and now even the activation is cleaner,"
"And the system still refuses to acknowledge either of them as real skills!"
"What exactly is it waiting for?"
"A written formal request?"
"Or a blood sacrifice?!"
"I am doing the work and the results are here,"
"So where's the recognition?!"
Zara was leisurely leaning against a tree trunk a few steps away.
She watched him with clear amusement with her arms folded under the oversized fur coat and one ankle crossed over the other.
The bond carried his rising frustration in steady waves.
She made no effort to hide the fact that she found the entire display entertaining.
A soft giggle escaped her when his muttering grew particularly sharp.
The emotional spill across the link spiked in response.
"You have become noisy and bratty," she said, the smile audible in her voice.
"I can feel the complaining through the bond before the words even leave your mouth,"
"Your irritation arrives first, then you mutter, then you argue with a system that cannot hear you,"
"Alex, do you remember the time when you used to be completely serious when we trained, you used almost no wasted words, it was just focus and results and the occasional dry comment."
"Now look at you, you sound like a child who was promised a treat and has decided the wait is personally offensive to his dignity."
Alex opened his eyes and started to retort.
The filament still half-climbed behind his vision.
"I am not being bratty,"
"I am just pointing out that the system's standards for skill recognition appear to be completely arbitrary,"
"Because I have the practical mastery, Adaptation has the data and the applications work,"
"But there is no logical reason for the formal skills to still be locked behind some invisible threshold I cannot see or measure,"
"If the system is going to demand this much repetition before it acknowledges basic elemental control, then it should at least provide a progress indicator instead of complete silence!"
Zara cut him off with a raised hand and a small shake of her head, her fur coat shifted with the motion and her expression remained amused but the instructional edge returned underneath the laughter.
"Keep going Alex," she said.
"I can feel it through the bond more clearly than you can feel it yourself right now because you are too busy being annoyed,"
"Actually you are extremely close to locking Shadow Vision in as a proper skill,"
"Your pathways are almost fully established and the cost is stabilizing into a consistent range,"
"The activation is clean enough that the system should recognize it any cycle now,"
"So stop arguing with a window that has not appeared yet and finish the work, Alex."
"The recognition will come when the conditions are met, not when you decide you have waited long enough."
Alex closed his mouth.
'...Tch.'
He sharpened his focus immediately because she was right.
He could feel it too once he stopped letting the frustration occupy the front of his attention.
The climb from Mana Heart to eyes no longer required the careful, deliberate guidance it had demanded on the first day.
The filament moved with smoother, faster, and more precise control.
The element settled behind his eyes.
The ongoing mana drain had dropped to a level that felt sustainable.
Adaptation had been refining the process in the background the entire time.
The cumulative effect had finally crossed a threshold he had been too irritated to notice while he was busy complaining about the lack of formal recognition.
'Okay...focus!'
He reached for the Shadow Element in his Mana Heart.
The cold answered at once, the emptiness followed a heartbeat later and the silence locked into place without resistance.
He guided the filament upward along the internal path with the improved control.
The element reached the upper chest, then it crossed into the neck and pushed cleanly into position behind his eyes in a single continuous movement.
His Shadow Vision activated and the darkness of the deep forest resolved into clear sight in a single smooth transition.
At the same moment Adaptation and the element itself shifted.
Something fundamental clicked into place inside the system interface.
It was like a familiar pressure of a formal recognition settled across his awareness.
It was clean and final.
Then a translucent window bloomed into existence in front of him.
[ You have gained—
🌿 ─ ❦ ─ 🌿
End of Chapter 127: [ You have gained—
🌿 ── ❦ ── 🌿