( Leo's POV )
Once Leo became proficient in the use of [Shadowbind] his next big focus was on improving the mastery of his existing skills.
The goal was to reach [Advanced] mastery in all three of his core assassination skills, and for the sake of starting somewhere, Leo decided to start with mastering the skill [Vanish] as his first goal.
His current mastery of the skill was at [Basic] level, and although he had been using the skill quite often during his adventures, just simple repetition of the skill did not seem to be enough to improve the grade.
There were a lot of articles on the forums about how to improve the mastery of skills and most of them suggested the dumb skill repetition method to achieve the next grade, however, Leo did not agree with them.
He was sure that dumb repetition without reflection was the slowest way to master a skill, and hence, he practiced with a focused approach.
He focused on reducing the skill activation time as much as possible for a start, and since the skill only activated by him circulating mana through his body in a certain path, Leo focused on memorizing that path and reducing the time it took him to circulate mana within.
Thanks to his routine training with the mind meditation scroll, where he accelerated the flow of mana within his body regularly and took sharp turns at will, he was soon able to reduce the activation time for [Vanish] significantly, achieving [Intermediate] mastery within the skill in less than a day.
Just by making this improvement, Leo observed massive advantages in his skill execution, as he could now blend in with the shadows three times faster than before and the camouflage was also much more convincing than before.
However, the real challenge was in pushing the mastery of the skill from [Intermediate] to [Advanced] grade.
Had he been a normal player who had no reference point to know what the next stage of his skills mastery looked like, then perhaps he would have struggled to push the mastery of the skill from [Intermediate] to [Advanced] grade, however, since he was a student of Ben Faulkner, Leo already understood what [Advanced] mastery of the Vanish skill was supposed to look like, as he had already witnessed a demonstration of it from his master.
He remembered it clear as day, when his master demonstrated 'Vanish' to him for the first time ever, and how, with no shadows to hide around him, and no objects to obscure his view, Ben still managed to hide his presence from him, vanishing into thin air, in pure broad daylight.
That was undoubtedly the [Advanced] stage of 'Vanish', where one did not need to blend into the shadows anymore and could vanish at will from anywhere.
When Leo saw Ben perform 'Vanish' for the first time, he was simply awestruck by how far beyond him his master was in terms of skill and execution and wondered if he would ever be able to reach that level of greatness.
But as he grew older, the gap no longer seemed quite so vast to him.
As he pursued his journey to become a Master Assassin, he began to feel that Ben's abilities were now within his reach and had already come to understand the principle behind vanishing from anywhere, as it no longer felt unattainable to him.
Vanishing from anywhere was essentially the same concept as blending with the shadows.
It used the same concept of manipulating the mana to create an illusion, however, while creating an illusion of complete darkness was easy, creating an illusion that mirrored one's surroundings from all angles was difficult.
'Vanishing' did not mean ceasing to exist and when vanishing in an open ground, one's physical body did not simply stop existing.
Instead, it mirrored its surroundings perfectly, creating a thin mirror of illusion around the body, which gave any onlooker the perception of the body having vanished, or in other words, it was simply vanishing in darkness taken to the next level.
For four days, Leo struggled to grasp the basics of this level, as he could not create a convincing enough veil of illusion that covered his entire body, however, he made rapid progress in understanding where he lacked, and improved from every failure that he faced.
Having clarity of what exactly he was supposed to achieve, Leo had a clear goal to work towards and this helped him greatly in avoiding some of the wrong approaches he would have otherwise taken to trying to master the technique.
Finally, after 10 odd days of practicing it, Leo finally heard the system notification acknowledge his perfect camouflage, as he mastered the skill of vanishing into thin air.
[ System Notification :- Congratulations to player 'The Boss' for having improved the mastery of your skill [Vanish] from [Intermediate] to [Advanced] mastery.
You have received:-
+10,000 Gold
+5 levels
+1500 MP ]
To Leo's absolute joy, not only did mastering the vanish skill to the advanced rank bring him MP and gold, but also a bump in levels, as having been stuck inside the mansion, he had really been lacking in the leveling department for a long time.
Thankfully, the gap between him and the number two player was so massive that despite him not having leveled up in nearly two months, the number two player was still 20 levels behind him, which had now once again been expanded to 25.
However, while Leo focused on the level improvement and other non-important stuff, he did not seem to realize the fact that he had gone from [Basic] to [Advanced] mastery of a skill in just under 12 days.
Such speed of skill mastery was beyond genius, and unbeknownst to him it sent shockwaves throughout the operator room.
The operator's had imprisoned him to try and stagnate his growth so that he no longer destroyed the balance of the game, and had even created an emergency event for the character Ben Faulkner in the North, which saw Leo's master not returning to Crest-Hill Barony for the remainder of his house arrest, however, despite those restrictions, Leo was thriving unlike ever before and this caused panic at the top.