[STT] Chapter 67: Rewards! (Patreon)

AN: sorry for late posting, I somehow set the schedule to PM instead of AM, thankfully I checked randomly lol.

He shoved his mana directly into the rock. [Mana Construct] flared to life alongside his heavily strained [Focus]. He fully intended to rip the obfuscation to shreds.

But the moment his senses brushed the actual framework of the inscription, his brain essentially did a hard stop even with [Focus].

It was impossibly massive. It was built on a level of conceptual nonsense he couldn't even begin to comprehend. Trying to read it was like trying to drink the entire ocean through a single plastic straw.

This was way out of his league.

Refusing to just give up and walk away though, he narrowed his attention to the absolute smallest part of the matrix he could find near the outer edge. If he couldn't break the whole thing, he was definitely stealing a piece of it.

Snapping his mana around a very small and barely connected node, he yanked it outward.

Pain.

All he felt was pain for the longest second of his life.

Tearing through his skull, his body, his spirit, everything that made him, him. The stolen fragment of the inscription instantly tried to integrate with his memories, burning hot against the inside of his mind as the stone tried to carve that memory out of his skull.

Ben refused.

Ben ground his teeth and dumped everything he had into [Focus]. He frantically pushed the skill beyond its limits and pulled its focus away from everything else, honing in on that single memory.

He didn't know how he did it, but he tried to force [Focus] to build a trap, a prison, for the fragment, led by the inscription of [Focus] lighting up inside his mind's eye.

And surprisingly, it worked. The pressure of his rare skill slammed down on the rogue memory fragment and successfully boxed the inscription into a corner of his brain, completely cutting it off from the rest of his thoughts.

He no longer remembered it, but he knew he had it in there.

"You look like you're going to throw up," Ethan commented, looking at him worriedly as he squatted to breath.

"I'm… I'm fine. Just stole a piece of it."

"...Huh?"

"I grabbed a chunk of the inscription and shoved it in my head."

Staring at him in complete disbelief, Ethan's mouth opened and closed.

"I—you—how?—what—you know what, I don't even want to know."

Ethan threw his hands in the air and then summoned a few talismans and slapped them onto Ben's forehead.

Ben rubbed his temples to soothe the ache and found the talismans surprisingly effective, as his throbbing headache started to calm down. He could feel the boxed off inscription fragment rattling against his mental cage, calming down under what he could only guess was [Focus] doing something by itself.

And it made him seriously reconsider what else [Focus] was actually capable of doing.

If he could create a localized quarantine zone in his own head, what other weird mental tricks was he missing out on?

There was clearly a lot more to his rare skills than he originally thought. But he would have to experiment with all of that later, preferably when his head didn't feel like it was splitting open in two different directions.

He sighed, flooded his body with [Regeneration], and relaxed. Hopefully, whatever he just stole from the monolith was actually valuable. Because if he went through all this hassle for a useless piece of decorative magic, he was going to be incredibly annoyed.

It better be worth the headache.

Quite literally.

At least his skills had leveled up.

[Focus Lvl 8 > Lvl 11]

[Mana Manipulation Lvl 11 > 13]

[Mana Construct Lvl 6 > Lvl 7]

"Are you okay now?" Ethan asked. "I don't want to have to carry you out of here on my back."

Ben nodded as he climbed to his feet.

"Yeah. I think I'm fine. Shouldn't have done that. I am too impulsive for my own good sometimes."

"That you are."

"Are you laughing at me?"

"No."

"I can see you trying to hide a smile."

"You can't prove anything."

"I will have my revenge."

"Did you just say your inner thoughts out loud?"

"No, what are you talking about? I didn't say anything."

"I see."

"Don't 'I see' me. Tell me if this was worth it."

Ethan hummed in thought at his question, then blinked. "I mean, if you're going to go down the path of constructs more, then for sure. This could be beneficial. If you're asking me if this is beneficial right now, I can't really give you an answer. I'm flabbergasted you were able to do something like this in the first place, but I'm kind of getting used to surprises now when it comes to you." Ethan shrugged. "So maybe. You can head to my House after the rift since the expedition will move on toward the academy following the river, and you don't really need to follow. I can have someone from my House teleport you in."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"Oh, sarcasm? I should have expected that."

"You know me so well."

Ben snorted, shook his head, and moved away from the cursed rock "C'mon, let's get out of here."

It was then that it happened.

Generating reward options... Done!

A notification appeared in his vision.

Reward options are now available.

"Finally," Ben muttered, excitement bubbling up to the surface. Everyone on the summit exclaimed as well and looking at Ethan's reaction told him he'd gotten the notification as well.

Meeting Alice they found she'd gotten the same notification.

"So, what does yours actually say?" Ethan asked.

"Same as yours, probably," Alice replied. "Just that the reward options are finally generated."

"Should we just open them here?"

Rolling her eyes, Alice crossed her arms. "Well, unless you two boys want to stand around gossiping about a notification all day, we should probably actually look at the rewards."

"Fair point."

Ben finally opened his options.

The offered rewards are based on your performance up until now. Choose carefully!

Please select your reward:

- [Tier Advancement potion (Tier 1)]

- [+1 Skill Evolution shard]

- [+1 Skill Fusion shard]

- [+1 Skill Slot shard]

"I got a choice between a bunch of path advancement potions, which I can use on any of my paths, some rare armor, and a movement skill shard," Ethan muttered. "Not bad. Not bad at all."

"Mine's about the same," Alice said.

Frowning at his options, Ben looked between the two of them in complete confusion.

"Are you guys not seeing shards?"

"Shards?" Ethan asked.

"What shards? What options did you get?"

"A tier advancement potion, a skill evolution shard, a skill fusion shard, and a skill slot shard."

Alice's mouth opened and closed.

"That's really good for a Tier 1."

"So what should I get then?"

"Well, the potion is basically a massive injection of essence to push your core to Tier 2."

"But I can literally just farm monsters for that, right?"

"Exactly. So ignore that one entirely. It will also make it so your evolved foundation is brittle. So no, never choose an advancement potion. If you'd gotten offered a Trance, though, that would've been nice."

"Trance?"

"Trances are sacred moments of inspiration we believe happen when our connection to the world tree is the strongest. It's like when you fought that troll."

"Oh."

"Yes."

"Does it mean I can gain the skill I used back then?"

"Not necessarily. It depends on the person. Or more specifically, the Trance, I guess. You might have just triggered that Trance because of danger to your life."

Nodding along, Ben mentally crossed the potion off his list. He wasn't about to waste a rare reward on something he could achieve just by killing things.

"What about the fusion shard?"

"It permanently merges two skills into a brand new one. Usually a higher rarity too."

"Sounds great."

"Yeah," Ethan said, "but fusion through a shard is a total gamble unless you know exactly what the result will be beforehand. It's not exactly happening due to synergy. Though if you know what you're doing there are no downsides, and it's a great option."

Alice jumped into the conversation to explain the next one. "The evolution shard is way safer. It forces a skill to upgrade to the next tier without needing to meet the normal requirements."

"That sounds tempting."

"It indeed is. It's a very good reward option to get."

And that left only one real option on the board.

"So the skill slot shard it is."

"It gives you a permanent extra slot for a new skill. It's insanely valuable."

"Especially at Tier 1 where everyone is hard capped."

Ben already knew that piece of information perfectly well. He'd been explicitly told in the past that extra skill slots were incredibly rare, and you only started gaining more later down the path of ascension.

Or at least that's what Hannah had told him.

I can just earn the rest later, but this gives me an immediate advantage.

Because having an extra skill slot meant he could actually get one more skill without having to sacrifice his current setup. It was an absolute no brainer.

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