The gray and the purple

All that reading made him awfully tired.

"Are you finished?" Sybil asked.

Lorn pulled his eyes off the mirror and looked around. Everyone was looking at him with anticipation.

"Yeah."

"How many skills did you get?"

"Ten in total. Five from the branch and five from all the bonuses."

Sybil, Danton and Adrian all sighed in unison. Their eyes looked into the distance in a melancholy way before refocusing on Lorn.

"And? What do they all do?"

Lorn spent some time explaining some things to the team. He didn't mention two skills, Imperceptible Spirit and Visions and Whispers.

They were most surprised by the bonus skills. His subbranch skills, though, were a bit underwhelming. Currently, he could only make someone angry and make them stumble once every three minutes. The System knew of that, so it gave him the Spirit Burst skill. He would have at least something to hurt his enemies.

But his Fog related skill was pretty powerful. Everyone wanted to learn how strong it was, so Lorn unlocked the skill with Sybil's help, and used it.

Using about a quarter of his spirit, Lorn managed to create a fog that enveloped a 10-meter radius. Conveniently, Lorn could clearly see everything inside the fog. But the fog was pretty thick. Even Yara and Adrian, who were so close, were having trouble seeing each other. Oddly, Sybil was unaffected by the fog.

Lorn activated Spirit Absorbing Fog and he could feel his spirit being restored slowly. When he looked around, though, he saw that the others weren't having such a great time. The worst was Yara, who was becoming unsteady on her feet.

Lorn tried to stop his fog from absorbing spirit from his allies, but he didn't know how. He canceled the skill and also the fog.

One by one, Lorn tested his skills out. He tried Mental Inducement, but it didn't have much effect on someone who was aware of what he was doing. Everyone said that they felt briefly angry, but the next moment, they would realize it's just a skill and go back to their original state. It didn't even work on Sybil.

Lorn hoped the effects would last longer with upgrades.

Motor-skill Manipulation, though, was a good skill. Although Lorn could only choose a small area of muscles or nerves to cease functioning for a couple of seconds, the effects were tremendous. Even when using on someone's legs while they are standing still, they would still wobble and lose balance. It wasn't hard to imagine their effects on someone who was running in the middle of a fight.

Yara told Lorn discreetly that he didn't need to drug girls to fuck them limp. She winked at him suggestively at the end, before walking away, whistling some tune.

Lorn then tried Spirit Burst. Due to his high Willpower, his firepower was huge. If he simply let the skill cast as is, it shot out pebble-sized orbs that traveled at the speed of an arrow, perhaps a bit faster. Each shot only took about two or three percent of his spirit. Lorn could mess around with the skill, making the shots bigger, faster, more penetrative, etc. It took more spirit to use it that way, but Lorn was sure he would be primarily using it with various attachments added.

Draconic Vitality was everything it said on the label. Lorn briefly became much stronger and tankier, but due to his low base Strength and Stamina, the effects weren't anything out of the world. But Lorn decided to diligently practice this skill in his spare time, so his stats would become at least a little bit more balanced.

Finally, Lorn tried out the Halo of the Leader skill. Since the member limit was four, all the weaker members teamed up. The system deemed it a mid-tier E-rank Party. Perhaps it could've been a D-rank party if they added Adrian, but they decided that it was best for the rest of the team to catch up to the top.

Lorn wanted to use the Phylactery of Nature skill, but there wasn't anything that he could make a phylactery out of around. He decided to go to the city and buy some sturdy tree bark or something.

Finished with the demonstrations, the group decided to camp nearby for the night. They made their way to a cliff and pitched their tents.

As night fell, Adrian, Danton and Yara went to sleep, leaving Lorn and Sybil for guard duty. For half an hour, they simply sat together near the fire in silence. It wasn't anything odd for the two of them.

Like Sybil, Lorn used this time to practice, but he never let his spirit go below fifty percent. It was a struggle before, but now that his Spirit was much larger, he had to put in some effort to halve it.

'Ding!'

He heard a notification.

[The Ring of Rhy'kan has finished acclimatizing to you. The subbranch you fell into due to your rank-up has affected the path the Ring considers best for you. If your spirit is in contact with another, your Mental Manipulation skills will have triple the chances to be effective.]

[The Ring of Rhy'kan's effects for E-rank Hunters unlocked. Spirit Capacity increased by 20% once more. Moreover, each time you level up a skill, your lowest stat receives a 0.2 flat bonus.]

'Huh…' Lorn thought. 'My Faith stat's gonna rise…'

Something told him that some people would literally kill for this kind of effect, but it didn't feel that good to him. Lorn had too many stats. So even if he received a free 0.2 bonus with each Level up, it wouldn't really matter that much.

'Well, it's better than nothing. But what I'm more interested in is the Ring's effect on my Manipulation skills.'

Lorn spread his spirit to encompass Sybil. She looked at him, her expression asking, 'What the fuck?'. He activated his Mental Inducement skill.

Sybil's expression turned to one of annoyance. Soon enough, it became normal again.

"What was that?"

"The new effects of my Ring," Lorn explained. "If my spirit touches you while I'm using the skill, you'll be affected much easily."

"Oh," Sybil hummed. "But it's still kind of useless, no? It's not like Hunters wouldn't be able to tell if a skill is being used on them, especially if you have your whole spirit wrapping around them."

"About that…" he whispered. "I also received a skill to make my Spirit imperceptible. There's also one that makes me see others' emotions as colors and shapes. Can you unlock them with me?"

Sybil was surprised, but she nodded quietly. Together, they thought of a specific imagination for their skills and settled on the movement of their spirit.

Quietly, Lorn used Imperceptible Spirit. Sybil's eyes went a bit wide at that.

"You feel no different from a soulless," she said. "Can you make it partially imperceptible? Keep one part visible, but make another part imperceptible. I think that way, it'll be more useful."

Lorn tried, and it worked. It was an odd feeling. It was like making only his hand invisible, but keeping the rest unchanged. He then used Motor-skill Manipulation on Sybil's neck using the imperceptible part of his spirit.

Her head suddenly fell forward, and she frantically pushed at the ground, almost shrieking. She abruptly looked up, fear and excitement in her eyes. Lorn laughed at her and received a shove on the shoulder. He continued laughing on the ground.

"But that was so fucking scary! It's like… It was like suddenly becoming paralyzed in the neck. That fucking skill should be illegal!"

Probably, it was illegal somewhere in the world.

"Did you feel my spirit working on the skill at all?"

"No! Not even a bit. Which is why it feels so invasive." She looked at Lorn with some distrust. "Why did you even get skills like these?"

"Blame the All-seeing. I did nothing."

"Your nothing and the average person's nothing feels an insanity apart."

"Yeah, yeah. Anyhow, let me try the other skill," he whispered.

Lorn activated Visions and Whispers. Sybil's face turned blurry before becoming completely gray. On it, four diagonal lines of different colors appeared, none of them parallel, but none interjecting with each other either. The lines were yellow, orange, pink and blue, but they looked like bland, watered-down versions of themselves.

"What do you see?"

It was horrifying to see a face like that speak. With some difficulty, Lorn explained what he was seeing.

"What does that mean?" Sybil asked.

"I'm not sure. The skill only said I can see others' emotions. Didn't really give me a guidebook on how to interpret them… Actually, can you make yourself angry? I'll see if that makes a difference."

Lorn waited a minute, but saw nothing different.

"Still the same."

"Maybe something will happen if you level it up."

"Maybe."

Lorn thought of something. He picked up his mirror and looked at his face. Slowly, his features morphed into purple. A red circle materialized on it, followed by three vertical blue lines inside it. Like Sybil's, the colors were bland.

He looked at it for some time before changing his mood. He got himself angry, sad, excited… but none of them affected how he looked in the mirror.

Eventually, he decided to worry about it later. Perhaps he could find some articles about colors, shapes and how they tie to emotions. He wasn't sure how useful they would be, but it was a start.

He also realized something. He could use his skills on himself. Curious, he made himself angry.

As the others described, a brief rage flared in his head. Things felt more annoying, and he felt close to lashing out. Carefully, he looked at himself in the mirror. A wave of blood red washed over his face. It covered his purple base and the lines and the circle.

And as abruptly as it appeared, the red disappeared, and he calmed down.

'What the fuck does it all mean?'