Chapter 88: Make the Choice (Patreon)

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Cayden winced as he waddled out of the frontline combat class, Jeremy by his side.

"How do you people do it? How do you live like this?" he asked, not for the first time.

"Some of us aren't able to become freakishly durable from just their race, and have to use their class for something useful," Jeremy snarked right back. He was bitter after learning Cayden's previous class was [Athlete] and that none of his durability skills came from his class.

"Hey, flexibility is useful," Cayden responded. "...I just didn't know how useful," he added under his breath.

It was the morning after he accepted his class change, and Cayden was still getting used to the changes. He had known [Athlete] to be a useful class, but most of his perception of its usefulness focused on [Physical Training] and [The Moment], seeing [Recovery] and [Enhanced Flexibility] as helpful, but ultimately supplementary skills. Until it was gone, he hadn't realized how much of an effect [Enhanced Flexibility] had on his everyday life.

He was still flexible -- much more flexible, in fact, than most of his peers, given the amount of daily stretching he had done in order to level [Enhanced Flexibility]. But he no longer had the supernatural flexibility that would normally be impossible for someone of his build to achieve, and after the last year of becoming accustomed to moving with the skill, being without it felt...wrong.

"Everything is just so stiff!" Cayden complained again, and Jeremy smirked without responding. Cayden shook his head in silent reproach of his friend, but he couldn't completely contain his own smile.

For all that it was painful losing the advantages he'd become accustomed to from [Athlete], he couldn't truly complain. Because, for all that he had lost, he had gained something better in return.

As he'd done multiple times over the last twelve hours, Cayden pulled up his status to look at the new words filling in his class slot: [Test Subject].

It had been a difficult choice, in the end. [Martial Artist], [Big Game Hunter], and even [Bruiser] seemed like powerful classes that would've seen him successfully through the rest of his year at the academy. But ultimately, the description of [Test Subject] resonated with him in a way that none of the others did. It brought him back to when he was barely old enough to talk, when he still had a family and he and Elise would run off into the forest for hours to experiment and learn the laws of the system.

There had been a risk that it would backfire, that [Test Subject] would turn out to be a class completely unsuited to him. But, worst case scenario, he would be able to immediately switch to [Bruiser] or [Guardian]. The loss of his upgraded classes as options would have been sad, but as far as worst case scenarios went, it wasn't that bad.

And luckily, that worst case scenario didn't seem as if it would be necessary.

It was still early into his testing of [Test Subject], but so far he was impressed with what he had to work with. He was by no means an expert, but [Test Subject's] skills seemed to synergize so much better than [Athlete's] ever had.

The previous evening, he'd rushed over to Elise's dorm -- without Delphia there, this time -- to test out the skills, staying up half the night figuring them out. By themselves, each of the skills would have been less than impressive. But as a cohesive whole, they combined into something Cayden believed he could turn into something truly impressive.

The first and simplest to understand of his skills was [Save Progress].

Save Progress (active): User can store the progress of 1 other skill before losing it, allowing that skill to be re-acquired at its previous level. Minimal mana cost.

Even if the rest of the class were trash, Cayden might have been willing to take [Test Subject] for [Save Progress] alone. In his quest for tier-three skills, he'd had to discard and restart his progress on so many general skills so many times – and the fact that would no longer be a necessity was a breath of fresh air. Finally, the days of seeing [Claw Mastery] once again level up to two were almost at an end.

While it was useful by itself, where [Save Progress] truly shined was in conjunction with one of his other skills: [Borrowed Power].

Borrowed Power (active): User can 'borrow' any skill used on them to fill this skill slot. Borrowed skill starts at level 1, levels like any other skill, and remains until it is replaced. Minimal mana cost.

Cayden had initially seen this as simply another general skill slot. That wasn't a bad thing, as he knew exactly how valuable extra general skill slots could be, and it had the added benefit of making initially learning the skill much easier. But overall, it seemed fairly straightforward.

Elise very quickly disabused him of that notion.

First of all, it had no restrictions on what type of skill he'd be able to borrow. That meant that, in addition to 'borrowing' skills of higher tiers, he could acquire other people's class or even racial skills, skills that were typically impossible to otherwise attain. And though they weren't able to test it the previous night, Elise strongly suspected that levels gained on borrowed skills could be saved with [Save Progress]. If the number of skills [Save Progress] could save increased as it leveled, that would give Cayden an incredible amount of versatility, letting him slot in whatever pre-leveled skill he needed for any given situation.

Unfortunately, it took a few minutes of concentration for Cayden to activate either of the two skills, so it was unlikely he'd ever be able to swap skills mid-combat. But still, simply being able to customize his skills to counter whatever dungeon he was delving was amazing.

[Borrowed Power] did have one major drawback, however. It was only able to copy any skills that were 'used' on Cayden, meaning he wouldn't be able to copy passive skills or skills that didn't activate on a target – which was where his third skill, [Conduit], came in.

Conduit (active): Link with up to 1 other person. They can activate skills through the link with the user. Number and power of skills cast through the conduit are limited by the user's stats. Minimal mana cost.

[Conduit] was easy enough to set up, linking himself with Elise similar to the way Jeremy's perspective-sharing skill worked. But its actual use was surreal.

After linking with Elise, they'd done testing with one of Elise's few active skills: her soul notebook. With Cayden as the focus of her activation, her soul notebook had been conjured in his hands rather than hers, even when she stood on the far side of the room. And after she'd activated it, Cayden had the option to use [Borrowed Power] on Elise's soul notebook skill, enabling him to conjure a soul notebook of his own even when they were no longer linked through [Conduit]. Elise was also able to 'cast' her passive skills, like [Focused Mind], on Cayden through [Conduit], which let him copy the passive skill with [Borrowed Power] as well.

And that was just looking at the synergy between [Conduit] and [Borrowed Power] – by itself, [Conduit] was already amazing. None of Elise's skills were particularly mana intensive or destructive, so they weren't able to test the described limits of Cayden's stats on what could be cast through [Conduit], but Cayden could imagine how ridiculously powerful it would be for a backline mage to cast point-blank fireballs through Cayden – and that was only scratching the surface of the possibilities. With some creativity and careful planning of team composition, he knew [Conduit] would be an extremely powerful skill.

Finally, there was his final skill: [Power from Experience].

Power from Experience (passive): For each level in other skills, the user gains 1% in opposition to that skill.

This skill...was a bit confusing, at least from the description. Thankfully, the system gave him an intuitive sense of its current effects, and using those, Elise had been able to piece together how it worked.

Out of all of the skills, [Power from Experience] was the skill that most closely matched [Test Subject's] description. In some ways, it functioned similarly to how [Resistance] grew more powerful the more he was exposed to whatever element he resisted. But instead of gaining power from resisting external skills, [Power from Experience] gained power from learning the skills.

When Cayden [Saved Progress] of [Blade Sense] and learned [Claw Mastery] in its place, he gained a one percent resistance to slashing and piercing attacks -- the two types of damage claws were able to impart. Elise hypothesized that it would work like this for any offensive skills: learn [Fireball] and level it up to ten? He'd gain ten percent heat resistance. Do the same for [Compulsion]? He'd gain mental resistance.

And the same concept applied to Cayden's defensive skills, except instead of gaining a resistance to his skills' effects, he gained a slight offensive boost that countered his skills' effects. His intuitive understanding of [Power from Experience] was informing him that his attacks would currently bypass twelve percent of an opponent's resistances – from [Resistance] – as well as become ten percent harder to heal – from [Resilience]. Not all skills seemed to trigger an effect, however. None of the increases from [Power from Experience] matched up with [Blade Sense], and some of the effects from his other skills were strange.

What did it even mean to have a four percent boost to knockdown?

It did make Cayden wonder about how some of the skills he'd lost would interact with [Power from Experience]. Would [Enhanced Flexibility] make his opponents more likely to pull a muscle?

Overall, [Power from Experience] seemed to be a useful skill with a multitude of varied, weak effects, and he resolved to test how it interacted with other [Borrowed Power] skills.

"You wanna spar this afternoon?" Jeremy asked from next to him, pulling Cayden from his introspection. "See how your new class stacks up?"

Cayden shook his head. "Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. Not today, at least. I need some more time to figure out how my new skills work before trying to fight with them."

Jeremy gave him a strange look. "What kind of class did you get that needs 'figuring out'?" he asked, but he was already shaking his head and waving away Cayden's response. "Don't answer that, it's your secret to keep – as long as you promise to eventually give me a demonstration of what it can do."

Cayden gave his friend a wide smile. "Don't worry – I think you'll be impressed."

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