Vilastromoz was prepared to have Jake begin the next phase of the training, but the human just displayed a satisfied smile at his success as he slowly leaned forward until he fell flat on his face on the floor, already knocked out.
“Or we can wait, I guess,” the Viper said, shaking his head. This was far from the first time Jake had collapsed in exhaustion and fallen asleep, and it wouldn’t be the last. To overwork yourself perhaps seemed like a bad thing, but not to Vilastromoz. It could be, but you also needed the ability and drive to stay dedicated to a singular goal for extended periods of time. Sometimes ridiculously long amounts of time.
This in itself would often end up putting a natural limit on the strength many could achieve. While stats did help, and time did slowly make one adapt better, many just never became able to focus and dedicate their entire selves to tasks for sometimes months or years in D-grade. Taking a decade to do something in C-grade was not out of the question either. A century to a B-grade was nothing. A millennium to an A-grade was the same as spending a single month for a pre-system mortal on a task.
To gods? To gods, time began to matter less. Some gods had projects they worked on tirelessly for hundreds of billions of years. The isolation and lack of additional external stimuli were maddening to some, and you needed to be the right kind of person who could handle this.
The Viper had to admit this had been one of his fears regarding Jake. He walked a path of alchemy that would require long crafting sessions, with someone like his disciple often just sitting with a cauldron for a few thousand years to make something.
It wasn’t a necessity to have this skill. Valdemar would not be able to sit down and work on something for just a single year, yet he was a Primordial. But it was a valuable trait, also just to be able to deal with the concept of immortality down the line.
So to see Jake not lose focus for half a year besides when he passed out from pure exhaustion was promising. He had already done some long crafts, but all of those had been very involved and not as boring as something like this training was. Not that Jake seemed to care much… in fact, the more time passed, the more Jake insisted on succeeding.
The Viper had expected Jake to take around a year to first learn how to let Identify work on him. This was already with what many would call ridiculously unreasonable levels of expectations, but the Viper believed in his Chosen. Besides, while it seemed like a long time, with the time distortion going on, it barely mattered. Even if half a year had passed within the chamber, it had not even been a week back on Earth.
Anyway, now it was time to see if he could beat the Viper’s next expectations of Jake learning to control it within five years. A practice session that would also once more test Jake’s ability to persevere and focus on a monotonous task with limited short-term improvements.
Jake awoke, feeling pretty well-rested. He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling filled with telescopes – a sight he had met quite a few times already during the last many months.“How long was I out this time?” he asked.
“Just three days, so not that bad,” Villy answered, as Jake saw him just leaning back in a chair, relaxed.
“I’ve been thinking… do you really have nothing better to do than sit here with me for half a year? With the Order and everything?” Jake asked curiously. He had been thinking about it for a while, but that the god had time to just stay there was just odd.
“Well, I don’t really have better things to do; this is actually my immediate priority. But that doesn’t mean this is the only thing I am doing. Avatars, remember? While this is my true body, I have a few avatars scattered around the place, including in my realm, working on stuff,” the Viper answered nonchalantly. “I am not really doing anything Order-related, though. I guess one of the benefits of being a no-show for ninety percent of the time the Order has existed means they have become quite self-running, and what does take divine input I got the Witches of the Verdant Lagoon handling.
“Huh,” Jake recognized as he joked: “I guess outsourcing organizational work counts towards me being a dutiful Chosen then, as I am following my Patron’s example?”
“And taking a jab at me by stating such counts as heretical. Good to see you are working on balancing it out,” the god answered with a light chuckle. “Anyway, let’s move on. As I said, good job on getting the first part down. Now you have some semblance of control over the Shroud, but this is minuscule and only able to allow certain things through. We don’t want that, as just letting it through makes it worse. Now you need to learn how to manipulate the output information.”
The Viper began as he waved his hand and summoned two projections with nameplates over their head – it was all very MMO-like.
Both of them were humans, but one of them had a bubble of sorts around him, which was no doubt a visual representation of Shroud of the Primordial.
“So, to get this next part, let’s begin with what Identify is. As a skill, Identify is just a classification of many skills, and this classification is named after the most basic skill gained by nearly anyone called Identify. It doesn’t have to be called that, as there are many other versions with varying names, but the core of what they do never changes: they scry Records.
“Everything contains Records. Be it people or items, the Identify skill allows the user using it to view the innate Records embedded in something and get a description. The description is based on your own existing knowledge and Records – often through skills – meaning one person’s Identify response is often the same as another’s. At least for items.
“Living beings are innately shielded due to their souls. A veil always covers it, making the information of Identify only the basic, which often boils down to just race and level. Better variants of the Identify skill may also offer information on general classes or professions, the level of danger they pose, the affinities they possess and specialize in, and a slew of other things. But know that you won’t get a long description sheet even with the best of skills. This is due to the innate imperviousness of the Truesoul.
“Now, due to how “hard” it is to Identify a living thing, many skills also exist to make it even harder. These skills, and what yours does right now, do not block Identify but simply make the information gained into nothing. Sometimes only part of it, while yours does it for the whole thing. In other words, it identifies something one cannot quantify into information with one’s current abilities, hence getting a question mark. This is also why you can’t Identify things many levels above yourself. Also, this can be alleviated with better Identify variant skills. Either way, this is the basics of how Identify works…you get it?” the Viper finally finished his lengthy explanation as Jake sat and listened intently.
“How come I have been able to pierce some of these skills before?” Jake asked, remembering the first time he met Phillip and how Jake had been able to “peek around” whatever blocked his Identify.
“Because whatever skill used to block wasn’t perfect, and everything can be overcome with enough power. Your high Perception allows you to more accurately see things, even if you still require proper context for a correct Identification. Whatever means are used to obscure it will just be more easily pierced by you,” Villy explained.
“Doesn’t that mean other gods should be able to Identify me due to the sheer difference in power?”
“Usually, yes. But the skill you have is not the Shroud of Jake, but the Shroud of the Primordial. It is bound by the Blessing and bound by my own power rather than yours. As I said, it is based on my own Records. In some ways, it can be said the True Blessing is being used as the hardware for a scrambler while you do have limited control over the software. The skill is yours, not mine, so you can learn to fully control it with practice,” the god continued.
“Okay… so, on to learning control,” Jake said with a nod.
“Precisely,” the Viper said as he waved his hand again, bringing attention back to the two projections.
“As you can surely guess, one of these represents you with the Shroud and the other you without. One of them is just the usual level 150 human, while the other is that one big question mark. You have now learned to allow yourself to appear as one without the Shroud, at least to the Identify skills. The Shroud is, of course, still there with all other effects active and will continue to have these effects. You only need to manipulate that small part of the Shroud, to instead of making it disappear, just make it slightly different. Take this as an example,” the Viper said as the projections changed a bit.
The one with the Shroud over it suddenly shifted a bit as the figure inside the bubble changed color, and the level changed to 160. At the same time, the bubble expanded and became multi-layered as the Viper pointed out a specific part of it.
“When all of the information going through is scrambled and obscured, the goal for this to work is to not only to block but also selective let through some info. Let through small morsels and control it to deliver a response that says whatever you damn well want it to say. This will need to be done with not only level but also your Blessing. Turning off and on if it can detect the Blessing is something you can already do right now towards those weaker, but that part will also need some improvement, especially towards those with skills to detect heretics.
“To put it simply – because I know you like that – you need to forge a new identity through the Shroud by feeding it false information and give what will be considered a valid response. You need to program it.”
“That doesn’t sound simple at all,” Jake sighed, not even sure where to start.
“Oh, because it really isn’t. So let’s just get started,” the Malefic Viper said with a smile as the room around him began warping as the mirrors were all swapped out with a new variant, along with the many telescopes also being switched out.
“Some of these will try to Identify only your race. Some will try to identify your profession, others your class, a fourth type the level of your Blessing, a fifth type simply your general level of power. There are between a hundred and a thousand mirrors and between fifty and five hundred telescopes for each. Your first task is to discover what every single telescope and mirror does. Simply point to one and correctly mark it. Good luck,” the Malefic Viper said as he disappeared, leaving Jake alone in the chamber.
At the same time, Jake felt the many items activate as he suddenly found himself Identified, or at least the attempt to. His Shroud was active again, so Jake focused as he deactivated it, which just made him aware he was now being Identified.
Nothing told him what kind or what information they were scrying. He already had some ideas on how to figure it out, such as beginning to filter what information came through to “feel” which ones were successful and which ones failed to narrow down options.
With that, Jake entered the next stage of the training session, only a good sleeping session after the first one finished.
“I think boiling down age or history to merely the passage of time is a mistake most make. A man who is a thousand but has grown up within a greenhouse is as much a child as the beggar’s son, no more than twenty, who had to learn to survive by himself from the moment he could walk,” the god said.
“But age and experience do go hand in hand. A man who is twenty simply hasn’t been able to experience the same as a man at fifty. Perhaps the older man has experienced less monumental events, but every small moment, every realization, and every thought has led to growth,” Miyamoto argued.
“That only proves true if he is a man who seeks such growth and doesn’t become complacent. Growth and realization take effort. It takes will. Hardship helps bring effort out in everyone.”
“Not as much as passion does,” the Sword Saint argued again.
“Is it not passion to wish for survival? To see yourself grow beyond your station?” the god said, clearly partly playing devil’s advocate based on a prior conversation the two had.
“Passion comes from within; it is not forced upon you by the world,” Miyamoto said, shaking his head at the man… god, he had been talking to for the last many hours.
“But the pressures of the world can make you realize your passions. A situation where you wished you were stronger could put you on a new path. External factors can make you try and give that first push that will only lead you to discover it was truly your passion all along,” Aeon said.
Miyamoto could only nod. Others could make you reach new realizations and give you new inspiration for the path forward. Jake had been Miyamoto’s trigger to find a new path, and it seemed the young man had once more led to the situation he now found himself in.
The Sword Saint had been surprised as he one day sat in his chair and noticed something - something not meant to be on his status screen. The Blessing he gained during the tutorial was renounced back when he had yet to evolve to D-grade, meaning when he did evolve, he was invited by a few new gods. He had chosen to dispel all of them back then, yet now one more was there when he checked. One he was certain was new, yet said it had been pending for months.
He had shared this with the Iskar, the former Monarch of Blood, and the response of the vampire had been even surprising as he had urged Miyamoto to go no matter what. Apparently, Aeon Clok was not some normal low-level god – despite the silly name – but one of the most powerful and also mysterious in existence.
Miyamoto had been skeptical but had accepted. Which had resulted in him having now spent over seven hours in a cozy living room discussing with the man before him. A young-looking man wearing a well-tailored suit and glasses, with clear human features.
Which only made sense, as Aeon had been human. One of two human Primordials, along with one called Valdemar. It had been far better than Miyamoto had expected. He had not met a god who flaunted his power and displayed wealth and grandeur, but instead just a man offering him a drink and a talk. A discussion to get to know one another.
He did not have any illusions of them being truly equal, and in many ways, Miyamoto would not see it so. He respected his elders, and he respected the powerful. What he did do was believe he also had a chance to one day enjoy such a status.
Smiling, he continued the argument.
“However, reducing passion to merely-“
Another four hours later, he found himself leaving the realm of the god with a divine Blessing and a new skill.
[Weight of Time (Legendary)] – As you walk, the weight of time ripples in your wake. Your every action will lead to a higher impact upon history and the Records of everything you interact with. Your presence will stay forever memorable. The longer you interact with individuals and items, the more your Records will influence them. This effect is increased significantly for individuals and items you have a powerful connection to. Allows you to more easily comprehend the weight of time.