Hours later, Jinx finally stopped.
There was no dramatic reason for it. His body simply reached a point where the next step never came. One moment his bare foot was sliding through the shallows with the current curling around his ankle, and the next he was standing there with his weight unevenly distributed, chest rising through a slow breath that felt oddly deep. His eyes stayed shut for another few seconds before he opened them, and the pond came back to him all at once—the moon above the trees, water dark around his legs, the damp cold settled into his skin, the soft ache running through muscles he hadn't realized he'd been using for hours.
Then Etheria nearly blinded him.
Windows opened one after another across his vision. Some overlapped. Others shoved older notifications aside before he had time to read them, and several progress messages collapsed automatically into summaries because apparently the System had been trying to get his attention for so long that it had started organizing the backlog itself. Jinx flinched and leaned backward on instinct, nearly putting his heel onto a loose stone.
"Jesus—"
He caught himself before he fell, stood there dripping in ankle-deep water, and started closing the least important windows just to see what was underneath. There were stamina notices, proficiency gains, several messages about environmental synchronization, and something involving Elemental Recognition that had apparently triggered more than once. Most of it could wait. One notification sitting near the center had a different border from the rest.
RACIAL ABILITY ACHIEVED
Water Magic / Manipulation
Your compatibility with the primordial Water authority of the Ice Barrier lineage has reached the threshold required for practical manifestation.
Water Magic — Acquired
Water Manipulation has developed into a recognized movement discipline.
Water Bending — Acquired
Jinx stared at the last name.
"Water Bending?"
His eyes narrowed slightly, then he gave the window another look as though Etheria might realize what it had done and change the wording out of embarrassment. It didn't. Water Bending remained right there beneath his racial unlock, complete with a tiny proficiency bar and several level-up records stacked underneath it.
Water Bending — Lv. 1 → Lv. 2
Water Bending — Lv. 2 → Lv. 3
Water Bending — Lv. 3 → Lv. 4
Continuous practical use detected.
Environmental understanding increased.
Movement synchronization increased.
Avatar immediately came to mind.
Jinx looked away from the window for a second, lips pressing together as the association landed. There were too many obvious questions attached to that name—whether the System had generated it from his own subconscious vocabulary, whether Mira had hidden the term somewhere in Etheria years ago, whether somebody on the development team had simply been a massive nerd—and he had enough other things in front of him that the thought could wait.
"Later."
He swiped the notification aside.
The next one was much larger.
At first he assumed it was another class unlock because of the gold border, but then he actually read the header and stopped moving his hand.
WORLD SYSTEM ACHIEVEMENT
You have created a previously unknown Power System.
BREATHING TECHNIQUES
Creator: Lucifer Morningstar
Through controlled respiration, physiological synchronization, combat movement, weapon discipline, and individual understanding, you have established a new path of supernatural martial development.
This Power System has been integrated into Etheria.
Compatible Techniques, Styles, teachers, manuscripts, discoveries, and derivative traditions may now emerge throughout the world under appropriate conditions.
Jinx read it once.
Then again.
His eyebrows climbed a little higher the second time, mostly because he had been expecting the words to become less ridiculous if he gave them another chance.
"A whole power system?"
That was rare.
Not theoretically rare. Actually rare.
Etheria had been running long enough that people had discovered hidden classes, stumbled into racial evolutions nobody had documented, created spells, accidentally started religions, broken regional economies, and once convinced an NPC kingdom that taxation was a form of necromancy. Players were very good at finding ways to do things developers hadn't expected.
Creating a Power System was different.
Jinx only knew of one confirmed example.
The Grimoire system had appeared during the first major wave of players, when somebody discovered that magic taken from a defeated enemy could be transferred into a specially prepared book rather than learned directly. What had begun as one player doing something strange with a dead enemy's magic hadn't remained one player's trick for long. Etheria had recognized the structure behind it, formalized it, and from then on Grimoires had begun appearing throughout the world under the right conditions. Some were blank until bonded. Some already contained abilities. Entire NPC traditions had eventually formed around them as though those traditions had always belonged there.
Jinx remembered reading the old forum archive about it when he was supposed to be studying for an engineering exam.
People still argued about whether that first player had actually understood what he'd done.
Now his name was sitting beneath the same kind of notification.
He should probably have been more excited.
Jinx waited for the feeling anyway, watching the words Creator: Lucifer Morningstar hover in front of him. There was some satisfaction there, but nothing close to the rush he would have expected from reading about someone else doing it. Mostly he wanted to know what he'd actually done, because from his perspective he had closed his eyes in a pond, tried to understand how water moved, and then opened them several hours later with his calves aching.
"Huh."
That was about all he had for it.
He wasn't being deliberately unimpressed. His brain simply refused to treat something as an accomplishment when he couldn't remember accomplishing it. The world might have accepted Breathing Techniques as some major historical event, but as far as Jinx was concerned Etheria had just handed him a certificate for an exam he didn't remember taking.
He scrolled downward.
There was another entry attached to the new system.
STYLE CREATED
Suijin Kagura — Dance of the Water God
Type: Sword-Based Breathing Style
Current Level: 1
A Breathing Style built around the condensation of millions of microscopic droplets into streams of extreme density and cohesion. Water generated through the Style follows the user's sword movements rather than behaving as unrestricted elemental manipulation.
Recognized Form:
First Form — Spiral of Grace
Jinx stopped at Suijin Kagura.
That name hit somewhere much more familiar than the rest of the notifications had.
"Kagura…"
He could almost see Gotouge hunched over a desk again, hair a mess, surrounded by pages that were supposed to become Kimetsu no Yaiba if the two of them ever stopped changing things. Hinokami Kagura had gone through more revisions than either of them liked admitting. Dance of the Fire God. Breathing hidden inside ritual movement. Swordsmanship disguised as tradition until the distinction between dance and combat became useless.
And apparently, while Jinx had been standing half-conscious in a video game pond, his own brain had wandered straight back into that territory.
"Suijin Kagura," he repeated quietly.
Dance of the Water God.
That at least sounded like him.
The thought barely had time to settle before another window opened over the skill description.
This one wasn't from the System.
A little black envelope icon unfolded near the corner of his vision, carrying a sender name he recognized immediately.
PRIVATE MESSAGE — MIRA KUROSAWA
Attachment: Video
You should probably see this before you start pretending you knew what you were doing.
Jinx stared at the message.
Then he laughed once under his breath.
"Asshole."
There was no heat in it.
He pressed Play.
The world in front of him dimmed slightly as the video expanded, and for the first few seconds he couldn't understand what he was looking at. The angle was high, somewhere in the branches above the pond, and the image showed a figure standing in the water beneath the moon.
Then the figure moved.
Jinx's expression changed.
He recognized himself, obviously. The hair alone would have made that difficult to miss. But recognition didn't help, because he had absolutely no memory of doing what the recording showed.
The version of him on-screen turned slowly through the water with his eyes closed, one foot slipping behind the other while the pond curled around the motion. Another turn followed. Water rose beside him in a long arc, folded inward, missed his body by inches, and dropped back into the pond without breaking the rhythm of the next movement.
Jinx leaned closer without realizing it.
"What the fuck?"
The recording continued.
There he was moving faster now, not wildly but continuously, body twisting through the shallows while water changed around him. It rose when he rose, sank when his stance dropped, and occasionally wrapped through the empty spaces created by his arms or legs before peeling away again. There were no circles. No spell sigils. No visible interface.
He remembered none of it.
Jinx dragged the playback bar backward.
Watched the same section again.
Then forward.
The clip changed to a closer angle, probably Mira controlling whatever surveillance creature she'd been using, and he got his first clear look at his own face. Eyes shut. Breathing steady. No expression of concentration. If anything, he looked calmer than he usually did asleep.
That bothered him more than the magic.
He knew what deliberate focus felt like. There should have been something in his memory—strain, decisions, frustration, at least the awareness that he was choosing one movement instead of another.
There was nothing.
He skipped farther ahead.
The video showed him turn through a complete circle.
Nine streams of water exploded upward around him.
Jinx froze the recording.
He backed it up three seconds and played it again.
The torrents came out evenly spaced, each spiraling around the others while leaving him untouched at the center. Slowed down, the water looked almost solid. The playback had apparently been enhanced with combat analysis because Mira had left an overlay enabled, and when Jinx expanded it he saw what she had seen: absurd droplet density, rotation speed, projected cutting force.
He stared at the numbers.
"That's Spiral of Grace?"
Another replay.
This time his attention stayed on himself rather than the water.
His breathing changed immediately before the technique.
His posture changed with it.
Then his right arm moved.
Jinx frowned.
There was a sword in his hand.
Metsugan.
He hadn't noticed that before.
The video continued while he glanced down at his actual right hand—and only then did his brain register the weight he'd apparently been carrying since he stopped moving.
Metsugan was still there.
The normal katana form rested naturally in his grip, its organic blade extending from the flesh-built structure where his hand met the weapon. Nothing about it moved on its own. The eyes along the blade simply existed as part of the biological weapon, feeding visual information through senses Jinx had been ignoring beneath everything else.
He lifted his hand slowly.
The blade came with it.
For several seconds he just looked at the weapon, then at the paused recording where the same sword followed his body through a turn.
"I don't remember pulling you out."
That wasn't quite right either.
He couldn't remember deciding to manifest it.
Jinx rewound the footage farther, searching through minutes of Mira's recording until he found an earlier stretch where his hands were still empty. He increased playback speed and watched himself move through the pond.
There.
The skin along his right hand opened and reshaped during a turn.
Metsugan formed without interrupting the movement.
Jinx slowed the video.
His fingers had already positioned themselves around the forming grip before the sword fully emerged. No hesitation. No look downward. No interruption in breathing. His body had apparently decided it wanted a sword and grown one in the middle of a dance without bothering to consult the conscious part of him.
"That is…"
He paused.
He wasn't sure what that was yet.
The next notification was still waiting behind Mira's video, along with enough unopened skill messages to cover half his vision. Water Bending had apparently gained several levels, Water Magic was sitting at Level 1, Suijin Kagura now occupied a section of his Skill menu that hadn't existed when he entered the pond, and somewhere beneath all of that Etheria had recorded exactly how many hours he'd spent moving without once noticing the time.
Jinx minimized the video but didn't close it.
Then he pulled the new Skill list toward himself and started reading from the top.
I left Mira's video minimized in the corner of my vision. I meant to close it, actually, but every time my finger got near the little X I remembered another part of the recording I wanted to check later, and after doing that three times I gave up and left it there.
Getting out of the pond was harder than it should have been. The moment I stopped moving, all the little complaints my body had apparently been saving for later arrived together; my calves were tight, the bottoms of my feet felt tender from hours on gravel, and when I tried to straighten one knee too quickly a cramp threatened badly enough that I stopped halfway and stood there making a face at absolutely nobody.
"How long was I in there?"
I looked toward the System clock, then hesitated before actually opening it. I knew it had been hours because Mira's recording proved that much, but there was a difference between knowing something vaguely and seeing a number attached to it, and for some reason I wasn't sure I wanted the second one yet.
That was stupid.
I opened it anyway.
My eyebrows went up.
"Okay. That's... a while."
I wasn't sure what else to say about losing several hours while technically conscious. Maybe that should have worried me more than it did, but I still remembered standing in the water. I remembered the cold against my ankles, the current, closing my eyes, trying to follow the pressure around my legs. There wasn't a blank space in my memory exactly. It was more like I'd gone from remembering individual seconds to remembering the whole stretch as one long sensation, and everything Mira's video showed after that existed somewhere I couldn't consciously reach.
I sat on a broad rock near the bank and pulled one foot into my lap. Bits of grit were stuck between my toes, so I picked them out before reaching for my boot, then stopped when another notification drifted across my vision and covered half my knee.
There were still too many of them.
I swiped it away.
Another appeared behind it.
"Oh my fucking God."
I started closing things without reading them. Skill proficiency. Breathing synchronization. Water affinity growth. Something about continuous movement. Another thing about discovering an environmental application. I saw World System Achievement again and shoved that one to the side because I'd already dealt with the existential implications of accidentally changing Etheria for at least five minutes and felt entitled to postpone the rest.
Then I found the Skill menu.
I opened it mostly because I wanted to see Water Bending again.
That was the plan, anyway.
The menu unfolded far enough down that I forgot what I was looking for.
COMMON SKILLS
Enhanced Swordsmanship — Lv. 1
Grants highly developed proficiency with swords of nearly any shape or size, allowing the user to handle a blade as naturally as an extension of their own body. It improves cutting precision, thrusting, parrying, deflection, weapon transitions, power control, footwork, and the ability to apply speed and force without losing accuracy. Skilled users can cut through highly durable materials, intercept fast projectiles, and deliberately control whether a strike incapacitates or kills.
I read the first few lines, then skimmed the rest.
"Level one?"
That actually made me stop.
Not because I thought Etheria should have automatically declared me the greatest swordsman alive, but Enhanced Swordsmanship sounded like one of those Skills that was supposed to reflect existing competence. If the System had copied enough of my physical habits to recognize how I moved with a sword, why was it starting at one?
Maybe Skills didn't measure prior experience directly.
Or maybe Level 1 didn't mean beginner.
I touched the level.
Nothing helpful came up.
"Right. Would've been too easy."
I almost opened the proficiency rules, then remembered I'd originally come here for something else and backed out before I disappeared down another rabbit hole.
Extra Skills.
There.
EXTRA SKILLS
Water Magic — Lv. 1
Water Bending — Lv. 13
Cursed Energy Perception — Lv. 1
Cursed Energy Manipulation — Lv. 1
Eye Blade Construction — Lv. 1
Organic Blade Construction Manipulation — Lv. 1
Suijin Kagura — Dance of the Water God — Lv. 7
Elemental Manipulation — Lv. 1
Magic Manipulation — Lv. 1
Cold Manipulation — Lv. 1
Cold Magic — Lv. 1
Cold Air Manipulation — Lv. 1
Frost Witch Magic — Lv. 1
Underworld Magic — Lv. 1
Frozen Lightning Manipulation — Lv. 1
Lunarian Fire Affinity — Lv. 1
I stared at Water Bending — Lv. 13.
Then at Suijin Kagura — Lv. 7.
Then back at Water Bending.
"Why are you thirteen?"
That question bothered me more now than it had when the notification first appeared. I'd only been in Etheria for one night. Hell, depending on how leveling worked, I wasn't sure I'd done enough actual gameplay to justify getting anything to thirteen.
I opened the progression history.
Lines filled the window.
A lot of lines.
The earliest Water Bending gains were tiny, spaced far apart around the same time I'd first closed my eyes in the pond. The timestamps got closer together later. There was a Level 2 several hours ago, then three, then another long stretch before four. Around Level 6 the frequency changed sharply, and the later levels clustered around the same period Mira's recording showed the water beginning to rise before I reached it.
I dragged the log farther up.
Wait.
I went back down.
Suijin Kagura didn't exist yet during most of those early gains.
"Oh."
I sat with that.
Water Bending came first.
The dance had started before the sword style.
That made sense, didn't it?
Maybe.
I rubbed the side of my face and looked toward the pond again. I had gone in there specifically because I wanted to understand water. At some point I'd started moving with it. That gave me Water Bending. Then later my breathing changed, Metsugan manifested, and whatever I was doing became Suijin Kagura.
Probably.
I looked back at the timeline because I didn't trust the conclusion enough to keep it without checking.
The timestamps lined up.
"Okay. Yeah."
I caught myself smiling a little.
That was actually interesting.
I opened Water Bending properly.
Water Bending — Lv. 13
A direct manipulation Skill centered on controlling existing physical water through bodily movement, posture, breathing, and fluid motion. Rather than functioning like conventional spellcasting, Water Bending allows the user to guide water as though its movement were connected to their own, redirecting currents, lifting and rotating water, changing its momentum, separating or combining bodies of water, and shaping continuous flowing forms.
The Skill becomes more effective when the user's movements naturally follow the water instead of attempting to overpower it. Greater mastery allows increasingly large volumes to be manipulated simultaneously, finer control over individual currents and droplets, greater pressure and speed, and the ability to transition seamlessly between offense, defense, mobility, redirection, and environmental manipulation.
I didn't even make it through the first sentence before the name bothered me again.
"Seriously, Water Bending?"
Avatar was impossible not to think about. I could practically hear Imu arguing with me over whether water or earth had the better applications, except the memory came with her sprawled sideways across a couch stealing food off my plate, and that took some of the humor out of it.
I hadn't talked to her in a year.
My thumb stopped against the edge of the window.
For a few seconds I didn't read anything.
Then I swiped down harder than necessary.
Water Magic.
Water Magic — Lv. 1
A magical discipline that converts Mana into supernatural water and water-based phenomena. It allows the user to create, summon, shape, and control magically generated water through spells and Techniques rather than relying entirely on naturally existing sources. Water Magic can be developed into water blasts, pressurized streams, waves, water barriers, mist, rain, liquid constructs, defensive currents, and other supernatural applications.
I got halfway through the second paragraph before something clicked.
"Wait."
I moved Water Magic beside Water Bending.
One created water through Mana.
The other controlled existing physical water.
I looked between them.
"Can I make water with this and then bend that water with this?"
Nothing answered.
I leaned slightly toward the menus anyway, as though Etheria might be embarrassed into explaining itself.
"Does generated water count as physical once it's created? Or is it still magic? If I stop feeding Mana into it, does it disappear?"
Still nothing.
That was better.
Actual questions.
I almost tested it right there, then looked at the pond and reconsidered. If Water Magic produced water and I messed it up, the worst possible result was probably getting wet. Compared to everything else on my sheet, that was practically responsible.
My hand started to rise.
Then I noticed 13,000 / 13,000 CE sitting in the corner of the resource window I'd forgotten to close earlier.
I lowered my hand.
Right.
That.
I opened Cursed Energy Manipulation instead.
Then stopped.
"No, why am I doing this?"
I'd gone from testing Water Magic to Cursed Energy because one number distracted me.
I laughed quietly and closed both.
It lasted about two seconds before I reopened Cursed Energy Perception.
I couldn't help it.
Cursed Energy Perception — Lv. 1
Allows the user to sense and perceive cursed energy, curses, cursed techniques, and other jujutsu phenomena. Greater mastery improves detection range, clarity, energy-reading, and the ability to distinguish individual cursed-energy signatures or hidden supernatural presences.
I knew what Cursed Energy was supposed to feel like in fiction.
That was the problem.
Knowing gave me expectations, and expectations could make me convince myself I was sensing something I wasn't.
So I closed my eyes.
Not for hours this time.
Just a second.
I tried to find that strange pressure I'd noticed earlier.
Nothing.
I tried again.
There.
Maybe.
I frowned.
It wasn't hot. Wasn't cold either. It didn't feel like electricity, which annoyed me because electricity would have been easy. There was just this dense... presence somewhere inside me, except every time I tried to locate where inside me, it seemed to stop being a place.
I opened my eyes.
"Is that it?"
No notification.
I tried moving it.
That was apparently too ambitious.
Something lurched through my chest hard enough that I jerked forward and immediately lost whatever sensation I'd been holding onto.
"Oh, fuck."
I sat there for a second with one hand pressed against my sternum.
Nothing hurt.
My heart hadn't stopped.
Probably.
I checked my HP anyway.
Full.
"Okay. Maybe don't throw thirteen thousand CE around when I don't know what the hell I'm doing."
That seemed like useful information.
I scrolled past the two Cursed Energy Skills before curiosity got another chance.
Eye Blade Construction caught me next.
I read the name.
Then read it again.
My right hand came up toward my eye before I realized what I was doing, and I stopped with my finger an inch from my eyelid.
The description said I could grow blades directly from ocular tissue.
I pictured it.
My entire face tightened.
"Do I feel that?"
That was an important question.
I had already established Etheria's pain system worked very, very well.
I hovered over the Skill for another few seconds.
Part of me wanted to know.
A larger part of me didn't want to discover the answer by accidentally pushing a knife out through my pupil while sitting barefoot beside a pond.
I moved on.
I would absolutely come back to it.
That realization wasn't comforting.
Organic Blade Construction was easier to accept because I'd already seen what my body could do with Metsugan. I skimmed its description, noticed phrases like enormous swords and masses of overlapping blades, and stopped for a moment trying to imagine how much actual biomass that would require.
Was Etheria conserving mass?
Did it care?
Metsugan was already larger than the amount of tissue I felt like I was losing when it formed.
I opened my hand and looked at my palm.
"Where is that material coming from?"
Another question for later.
My menu was becoming mostly questions for later.
Then Suijin Kagura came back into view.
I didn't open it immediately.
I watched Mira's minimized video in the corner instead.
The thumbnail was frozen on me standing inside the nine torrents.
I tapped it.
The recording filled half my vision again.
I watched myself turn.
One step.
Then another.
My breathing changed.
Metsugan followed the motion of my arm, and nine torrents rose around me so evenly that I still couldn't quite believe I'd done it without looking.
I paused the video before the technique finished.
Then I opened Suijin Kagura beside it.
Suijin Kagura — Dance of the Water God — Lv. 7
Suijin Kagura is a sword-based Breathing Style built around the condensation of millions of microscopic droplets into streams so densely packed that they appear almost solid. The user does not freely manipulate water. Every current is born from, shaped by, and follows a sword movement—a slash, thrust, rotation, draw, parry, or sequence of footwork.
At mastery, the water trailing the blade resembles translucent flowing glass. Its droplets remain liquid, but their density, speed, and cohesion allow every sword stroke to carry an immense cutting current behind it. The sword is always the center of the technique.
Currently Recognized Form:
First Form — Spiral of Grace
I read it more slowly this time.
Then I looked at the recording.
Then back at the description.
"Millions?"
I zoomed into Mira's combat overlay.
She'd recorded the density.
I hadn't really processed the number before.
Now I did.
My stomach gave a small uncomfortable twist.
If one of those torrents touched me—
I stopped the thought.
Actually, no.
I reopened Spiral of Grace.
There had to be some safety mechanism if the technique could wrap nine cutting currents around the user.
The description didn't mention one.
"That's... concerning."
I went back to the video and watched my bare foot turn between two torrents with maybe a foot of clearance.
That was worse.
I had been doing that with my eyes closed.
I leaned backward and stared up through the trees for a while.
"Why would I do that?"
There wasn't anyone there to answer me.
I wasn't even sure I could answer me.
Maybe I hadn't known the water was dangerous yet. Maybe the technique formed gradually enough that my body adjusted before the cutting pressure reached that level. Maybe whatever state I'd fallen into had understood the spacing even if conscious me didn't.
I didn't love any of those answers.
I did love the technique.
That was also probably a problem.
I closed the video again and kept scrolling, though not carefully anymore. Elemental Manipulation, Magic Manipulation, Cold Manipulation, Cold Magic, Cold Air Manipulation—the names started blurring together until Frost Witch Magic made me stop because I was suddenly looking at four different ways to make things cold.
I counted them.
Then counted again because Underworld Magic also apparently involved cold.
"Why?"
I opened Cold Manipulation and Cold Magic side by side.
One manipulated cold directly.
One used Mana to create supernatural cold.
Okay.
Then Cold Air Manipulation specialized in frigid air.
And Frost Witch Magic took ice, snow, frost, cold, cold air, raw magic, and apparently bundled everything together under one specialized system.
I scratched my cheek.
"So if I freeze water with Cold Manipulation, that's not Cold Magic. If I use Mana to freeze it, that is. But if I use Frost Witch Magic..."
I stopped.
"I'm going to need notes."
That wasn't a joke.
I actually opened the personal notes function.
Then stared at the blank page.
Then closed it because writing a taxonomy of my own powers at what had to be some horrible hour of the night sounded miserable.
Underworld Magic was immediately more interesting.
Frozen Lightning.
I opened it.
Read the first paragraph.
Scrolled.
Read it again.
"How the hell do you freeze lightning?"
The Skill description did not explain that part.
It just confidently informed me that Frozen Lightning could shock nerves, paralyze muscles, cause frost buildup, and move through conductive materials, water, metal, and ice.
Water.
My eyes shifted toward the pond.
I noticed myself doing it.
"No."
I looked back at the menu.
Then toward the pond again.
I could put Frozen Lightning through water.
Probably.
Maybe.
Would that electrocute me too?
I had electrical resistance—
Did I?
I checked.
No obvious electrical immunity.
"Definitely not."
I was still thinking about it.
That was the irritating part.
I dragged the Skill window farther down before I convinced myself that testing supernatural cryoelectric conduction barefoot in a pond was scientifically necessary.
Lunarian Fire Affinity sat beneath all of it.
That made me remember the back flame.
I still hadn't figured out how to manifest it.
I looked over my shoulder again, even though I already knew I couldn't see my own back properly.
Nothing.
I reached behind myself and felt cloth.
No flame.
No unusual heat.
"Am I supposed to think fire?"
I did.
Nothing happened.
I tried imagining heat between my shoulder blades.
Still nothing.
Then I felt stupid and stopped.
Unique Skills had only one entry.
Godslayer Magic.
I opened it.
I got past anti-divine magical system created specifically to injure, curse, weaken, and kill beings and slowed down.
Black Flame.
Soul damage.
Healing suppression.
Regeneration interference.
Immortality disruption.
Anti-resurrection.
I went back to regeneration interference.
Then anti-resurrection.
Then Destined Death farther down.
My first thought wasn't that's powerful.
It was, Why did I get this at Level 1?
I checked the class list again.
Godskin Celebrant.
Right.
Probably that.
Maybe.
But Mira's roulette had given me Godskin Celebrant, while Godslayer Magic itself was being treated as a Unique Skill.
Was that guaranteed?
Did every Godskin Celebrant get it?
Or had the class only provided compatibility?
I opened Godskin Celebrant.
Most of the useful information was still locked.
"Of course."
I went back.
Ultimate Skills: None currently possessed.
I barely looked at it.
Good.
I had enough problems.
Intrinsic Skills opened next, and the list was shorter than Extra Skills but still enough to make me stop scrolling halfway down.
INTRINSIC SKILLS
Lunarian Physiology
Lunarian Flame
Flame State
Lunarian Wings
Bio-Fire Manipulation
Enhanced Beauty
Claw Retraction
Dark/Light Side Aspect Manifestation
Supernatural Condition
Supernatural Beauty
Supernatural Longevity
Supernatural Survivability
That looked more like my race.
Mostly.
I opened Lunarian Physiology first and read through the physical enhancements. Strength, Vigor, Endurance, agility, durability, recovery, environmental tolerance.
Recovery.
I stopped.
There.
I reread that sentence.
Then I remembered the wound in my palm disappearing earlier.
"Is that it?"
I opened the full description.
Enhanced recovery.
Not necessarily regeneration.
I searched the Skill for HP restoration.
Nothing.
Regeneration.
Nothing.
I leaned forward a little.
"Come on."
I opened Supernatural Survivability next.
The final line killed that idea almost immediately.
This does not inherently regenerate lost health.
I stared at it.
"Then what healed me?"
That question had been sitting around for hours now and apparently wasn't interested in leaving.
I checked my statuses again.
Nothing.
No regeneration buff.
No healing effect.
No obvious passive.
I considered cutting myself again just to watch the HP recovery more carefully, then remembered I'd already done exactly that and learned almost nothing.
Maybe later.
I moved back up to Lunarian Wings.
Functional pair of large black wings capable of sustained natural flight.
I read that once.
Then looked behind myself.
I twisted farther.
Still couldn't see anything.
I put one hand between my shoulder blades and moved it around until I felt ridiculous.
"Where are they?"
Were they folded somehow?
Hidden?
Did I need to manifest them the way Metsugan manifested?
I tried flexing muscles in my back.
My shoulders moved.
Nothing else did.
I tried again harder and almost cramped something.
"Great."
I stopped before I injured myself trying to grow wings.
Enhanced Beauty was next.
I almost skipped it.
Then I noticed Supernatural Beauty farther down.
I went back.
Opened Enhanced Beauty.
Opened Supernatural Beauty.
Put them beside each other.
One made me unusually attractive.
The other apparently made that attractiveness explicitly supernatural.
I stared at both descriptions longer than either deserved.
"Why do I need both?"
I thought about Mira.
Actually, no.
I thought about character creation.
I had intentionally made Lucifer beautiful.
Maybe the System had translated that into Enhanced Beauty, while something racial or supernatural had added the other one.
Or maybe Mira had been screwing with me.
That possibility was getting used too often.
I closed them.
Claw Retraction made me look at my fingers.
I concentrated.
Nothing.
Then one nail sharpened slightly.
I stopped.
The nail remained pointed.
"Oh."
I tried retracting it.
It returned to normal.
That got my attention more than it probably should have.
I extended all five.
The nails lengthened into dark claws with barely any discomfort.
I turned my hand over, flexed them, tapped one carefully against the rock beside me, and heard a hard little click.
"How strong are you?"
I scratched the rock.
A faint line appeared.
I scratched harder.
Deeper line.
I was still looking at it when I realized I'd completely stopped reading the menu again.
Right.
Skills.
Dark/Light Side Aspect Manifestation was there, but the description was broad enough that I didn't know what to do with it yet. Protection, restoration, purification on one side; predation, corruption, curses and destructive effects on the other.
"Is that the Fallen part?"
Maybe.
That at least fit better than most alternatives.
I opened my race page and tried to find anything linking the Skill directly to Corrupted Lunarian — Fallen/Lunarian Hybrid.
Restricted.
Naturally.
I left it alone.
The last few Intrinsics were easier to understand. Supernatural Condition explained why this Level 1 body already felt so much stronger and more coordinated than an ordinary one. Supernatural Longevity meant I could apparently live an absurdly long time in-world, though whether that mattered to a player avatar raised questions I didn't feel like dealing with.
Supernatural Survivability still annoyed me.
I opened it again just in case the description had somehow changed.
It hadn't.
"Still not regeneration."
I closed it harder than necessary.
Resistance Skills were at the bottom.
RESISTANCE SKILLS
Cold Immunity
High Fire Resistance
Extreme Environmental Resistance
Environmental Adaptation
I looked down at my bare feet.
They were wet.
The night was cold.
I'd been sitting there long enough that an ordinary person probably would have started shivering.
I wasn't.
I hadn't even noticed.
That made me open Cold Immunity.
Natural freezing temperatures were harmless.
I thought back to stepping into the pond and jerking my hand away because the water felt cold.
"So I can feel it. It just can't hurt me."
That was useful.
Probably.
I wondered how cold something had to become before magical cold overcame the immunity.
Then I noticed I was already thinking about testing that too.
I put both boots on.
That seemed safer.
When I finally collapsed the Skill menu, I realized I'd learned maybe a third of what was on it and created twice as many questions as I'd started with. Water Bending being thirteen made sense now, sort of. Suijin Kagura being seven made more sense than it had before. I still didn't know what healed me, couldn't produce my Lunarian flame, had wings somewhere I apparently couldn't find, had nearly thrown Cursed Energy through my chest by accident, and was already thinking about whether Frozen Lightning could be bent through water created by Water Magic.
I sat there with one boot only half tied and stared at the pond.
Then I reopened Water Magic.
I hesitated with my hand raised over the water, glanced at my Mana bar, and lowered it again.
"How much does this even cost?"
That seemed like something I should probably figure out before making more water in a place already full of it.