Visualization was key. All skills had Records that represented them, and all Records could be imagined if one understood them well enough. At least, that had always been Jake’s understanding. He needed to fully understand a skill before he could properly visualize it within his Soulspace.
However, that assumption was far from complete. It wasn’t wrong per se; it was just one of many ways to make a visual representation of something appear in the Soulspace.
The easiest way was one Jake knew, seeing as there was already objects within his Soulspace with physical representations. Absorbing a physical item that turned into pure Records was incredibly easy to visualize and see within the Soulspace. In many instances, it was even unavoidable as the physical nature of the items was part of their Records in the first place, making them appear within the Soulspace without the owner of the soul even trying to make it so.
Villy’s drop of blood, Eternal Hunger, and the book from the First Sage were all such items. Right below them, in things easy to visualize, were one’s energies and general Path. The sky of arcane mana, the crystal forest below, and all of what Jake had summoned during his training with the First Sage as he improved his Anomalous Soul were all considered part of what was easy.
If Jake wanted to heal his own soul and repair Palate of the Malefic Viper, he would have to move up a level of difficulty. Visualizing specific skills was very difficult in comparison to his Path in general. All the skills were part of Jake’s Path, and he would effectively have to isolate a segment of Records and visualize them.
Such visualization wasn’t as rudimentary as merely imagining how a skill would look within the Soulspace. Imagination and interpretation were certainly part of it, but the most important aspect remained to comprehend the skill itself or the alternative option Jake was now looking into:
Understanding the very concept of skill visualization, and rather than fully comprehending a skill to visualize it, employ the assistance of the system in the matter. To do that, Jake had to be able to “see” the skill, and he could only do that if he could better understand his own Path and all the building blocks that it was made of.
Meditate was – in the words of the First Sage – a skill primarily made to understand oneself. Jake had spent a lot of time and effort understanding his own body and the pathways of energy going through it. He had even studied the soul with the purpose of creating poisons to destroy it.
This understanding had helped Jake create a very powerful boosting skill, likely the reason he’d obtained Arcane Supremacy to further strengthen his body, and perhaps most importantly, it was what let him move the way he wanted to, when he wanted to.
Compared to other fighters, Jake had far fewer times when he wanted to dodge something but simply wasn’t fast enough. He didn’t miscalculate minute distances but dodged with a hair’s breadth purposefully. His instincts allowed him to know and adapt, but to do that in the first place, he needed to understand the hardware he was working with, something that had also come very naturally to him.Understanding his own soul was to understand the software. While it wasn’t the exact words of the First Sage, Jake thought his comparison was rather apt. Using a skill was just knowing how a program worked, while understanding a skill fully was to understand the entire codebase. A daunting task, especially if the skill was something as complex as Palate of the Malefic Viper.
However, what if Jake didn’t have to understand the entire code but just how to use the directory system of the software that was his soul? What if all he needed to do was learn how to – and then successfully – locate and navigate to Palate of the Malefic Viper. What if that was all it took to then spark the system to help create a representation within the Soulspace, as Jake would have effectively isolated the Records enough?
Needless to say, this was all still a gross oversimplification, but the concept was there, and Jake remained positive as he progressed toward this goal, using the book left by the First Sage as his guide. By now, he’d already gotten a lot better at many things.
Standing within his Soulspace, Jake raised a hand as a swirling orb of dark green energy appeared. It began to change shape and morph, wings sprouting as it turned more physical, scales scattered throughout the storm of energy, mixing with several other concepts and powers.
Yet as the swirling mass of Records began to increase in size, it began to wobble. The spinning orb became erratic, the energies no longer balanced, and the Records' unity was broken. A moment later, the entire swirling mass of Records broke apart, resulting in a massive explosion of malefic light that Jake easily suppressed as a barrier of arcane energy encompassed it.
“Corrupted, huh,” Jake sighed as he once more leaned into the software analogy. What Jake had just done was summon all the Records related to his Malefic Viper legacy skills. As they represented such a big part of his Path, Jake could create that swirling, incomprehensible mess of the nine skills mixed together, but even when he did so, it wouldn’t last long.
Because some of the Records in the swirling mass were broken. Corrupted. Like a memory leak in a program or some bug that would inevitably lead to a crash. The Records from the broken Palate of the Malefic Viper affected the balance between all the Legacy Skills, and Jake came to better understand how disastrous it would be if he evolved with a broken skill. Assuming he could even evolve it in the first place.
As doing a full system reinstall wasn’t an option, Jake would have to repair that one broken program and fix the corruption. He would have to locate the files that had been corrupted when he failed to forcefully upgrade his Palate of the Malefic Viper back then and personally replace them with new ones that were uncorrupted. In other words, he would have to get new Records and get rid of some of the old ones.
I’m getting closer, Jake thought to himself as he turned back toward the book and kept reading as yet another chapter would soon be unlocked. By now, with all he had learned and could do, Jake was confident that if he decided to try and upgrade his Meditate skill at that moment, it would be a legendary rarity one, and not even a bad legendary rarity skill at that.
But he still hesitated as he wanted his upgrade to be “perfect.” He didn’t want it to be just good enough. Maybe it was possible that if he upgraded the Meditate skill now, he would be able to use it to repair Palate using it, but that wasn’t all Jake wanted the upgraded Legacy Skill of the First Sage to be capable of.
Jake was greedy. Of that, there was no doubt, and so far, he was happy with his progress. Even if he did feel as if he was frying his brain a bit the further he got into the tome left by the First Sage. Jake had no idea how many chapters it had in total, but so far, he’d gotten through seven, nearly unlocked the eighth, and he got the feeling that when he was done with chapter ten, it would be time to upgrade the Meditate skill.
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It had been about three weeks since Jake had reunited with Dina, and during all this time, Jake had just been cooped up and meditating in his own residence, working on understanding the tome. After having been back for four days, he got word that Artemis would also be back after roughly three weeks, so now, Jake was just waiting for her return.
Another fourteen hours ended up passing before the palace got a whole lot less lonely.
She didn’t even bother to knock, not that she had to. Jake had given her permission to come and go as she wanted and whitelisted her on all the barriers, after all. He vaguely felt her observe him before, and a few seconds later, a figure appeared within the chamber where he sat in meditation.
Jake smiled and, within his Soulspace, closed the tome of the First Sage before opening his eyes to see Artemis standing in front of him. She, in turn, observed him, her expression a bit weird as if she’d seen or felt something she definitely hadn’t expected to.
“What were you doing?” Artemis asked, looking at him with a mix of astonishment, respect, and just plain old confusion.
“Meditating,” Jake answered casually as he acclimated to the world outside of his Soulspace. He’d spent over a week in constant meditation, and he did feel a bit out of it and needed a moment to fully return to the real world.
“You were doing more than that... I felt something odd. A presence, almost. Ancient. Powerful,” Artemis wondered out loud.
“I was reading within my Soulspace,” Jake explained, not seeing any reason not to answer honestly as he knew he couldn’t actually explain what he was doing even if he wanted to.
“Reading you say... what exactly could you have been reading that would produce that kind of effect? I didn’t get the notion it was something related to the Legacy of the Malefic One, but something else,” Artemis muttered, clearly fishing for an explanation to soothe her curiosity.
“I sadly can’t tell you,” Jake shook his head.
Artemis sighed. “I understand. Everyone has their own secrets.”
“No, I literally can’t tell you,” Jake did something Villy had done several times to him before as he smirked. “It’s related to Forbidden Knowledge. The book I’m reading is Forbidden Knowledge made material.”
“You have a book full of Forbidden Knowledge within your Soulspace?” Artemis asked.
“Yep. With knowledge not even the Viper knows about,” Jake said with a cheeky smile.
“And you can’t even give me a hint who this book was made by? I must assume it’s a Primordial or at least an individual with power approaching one,” Artemis really wanted to know.
“The creator is already dead,” Jake shook his head, wanting to convince her it was hopeless to even guess the creator.
However, it seemed that explanation wouldn’t fly as Artemis just kept looking at him before frowning. “You just said something considered Forbidden Knowledge, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Jake confirmed, not having known that even the simple fact that the First Sage no longer lived could be considered Forbidden Knowledge in this context.
“I see...” Artemis let out a loud sigh as she looked at Jake closely. “You really are hiding a lot of secrets, aren’t you?”
“Come on, who doesn’t like someone with a flair of mystery?” Jake said in a teasing voice. “I wouldn’t even say this one is my top secret.”
“I reckon that one is related to your Bloodline somehow,” Artemis said.
“I can neither confirm nor deny that,” Jake said, genuinely not knowing if that would be considered his biggest secret anymore after what happened in Nevermore. There was probably more to be revealed, but even that remained a secret to Jake. At least for now.
“Keep your secrets,” Artemis smiled and shook her head. “I’ve cleared my schedule for a good while and will have avatars handling my daily matters. I also heard that your comrades have left the city to explore the territory of the Pantheon of Life on their own, and I can only guess you want to do the same.”
“That I can confirm,” Jake nodded. “I want to hone my archery a bit before I go hunting, though. In that way, my leveling can double as practice for what I want to improve. I’m confident I could do well already if I decided to just go now and try to improve on my own, but some good feedback would definitely go a long way.”
Artemis nodded, having already expected this as they’d discussed it earlier. “I would be glad to help. I’m not going to really be teaching you anything, though. I saw the recording of my image in Nevermore, and from that, I’m clear on the fact that you’re not the type of person to learn from pure theory. You need to experience something first-hand and reach an understanding on your own.”
“The Malefic Viper has said something very similar in the past,” Jake nodded in complete agreement.
“That being the case, I believe the best approach would be for you to experience archery at a higher level directly,” Artemis said as she smiled. “Plus, it should be at least a little nostalgic for you, while to me, it will be a chance to experience something I’ve only seen recordings of myself doing.”
“I see great minds think alike,” Jake said, as he already knew where Artemis was going with this.
Seeing as Artemis was so much stronger than Jake, it was hard for her to show him anything he could learn from. That’s why they needed a way to level the playing field and not make sheer power the limiter... and Jake had just the thing for it, something Artemis already knew all about.
Taking out the item he hadn’t used since he used it duel with Carmen, he and Artemis both used Identify on instinct.
[Emblem of the Grand Champion (Mythical)] – An emblem infused with the powers and concepts of the Colosseum of Mortals, given only to those deemed worthy. This Emblem can create a replica of the Colosseum of Mortals arena within a virtual space for individuals to duel one another. Allows the user to choose two targets who must consent to take part in a duel within the virtual space. Those entering will leave their true bodies defenseless during the duel period. All levels and stats of those entering will be normalized. Most skills and abilities will also be restricted. Dying within the virtual space will have no negative consequences. As the owner, you can always observe the inside of the Emblem of the Grand Champion. Cooldown period: 1 hour.
Requirements: Soulbound
This was likely the perfect item for this exact kind of situation, and Jake didn’t doubt the creator of the item knew that when giving it out in Nevermore. What’s more, because Jake’s actual archery skill wouldn’t exist within the Colosseum of Mortals, he wouldn’t get any of the system’s passive benefits but would have to consciously think about using it.
The same was true for Artemis, so it would truly be a difference in competence that separated them.
“We should enter right away,” Artemis said. “There is an hour cooldown between each use, after all. Might as well get that running.”
“You think I’ll go down that quickly?” Jake said with a cheeky smile.
“Yes,” Artemis said without a moment’s hesitation.
“I guess we’ll see,” Jake said as he used the Emblem. Artemis didn’t resist, and moments later, they found themselves standing across from one another within the familiar Colosseum of Mortals.
They each stood behind their respective gates that had yet to be lowered. All the equipment one could ever want was available, and the two of them decided on just going with a bow each, along with the basic starting armor, which offered no real protection.
“You promise you won’t be dejected no matter what happens next?” Artemis yelled.
“No worries,” Jake assured her. He remained confident and was ready for her to take the first shot.
“Alright... let’s start simple with a quickdraw,” Artemis said as she lifted her bow, knocked an arrow, and loosed the string in one fluid, quick motion.
Before the arrow was even released, Jake’s danger senses screamed at him as he dodged to the side, right as an arrow flew by him, the second Artemis had let go of the string.
Jake felt cold sweat run down his back as he felt as if he’d just dodged a sniper bullet. The speed at which the arrow had flown made no sense at all, and all he could do was stare as the goddess with stats equal to his own looked at him with a little surprise.
“Impressive speed... let’s try again, but this time, no breaks,” Artemis smiled as she took out another arrow. “Dodge well.”
Not needing a reminder, Jake barely dodged the next arrow as he stepped to the side... only for another one to come at him right away. Jake bent his body out of shape and barely dodged it, leaving him in a position unable to react as a third struck him in the thigh. It barely penetrated into his flesh, but it stopped all his movements and made him vulnerable as another, more powerful arrow struck him in the chest before a final one to the eye ended his very first training session.
The two of them were instantly thrown out of the Emblem with Jake’s death, as he found Artemis looking at him with a smile. “Let’s have the first lesson be about one of the simplest concepts of archery there is... speed.”