21 - The Skill Slot

An hour later, I was in a room with the captain of the guard, but what he said was not what I wanted to hear.

"I'm sorry, Merca, but we can't do that. You're talented, too, which makes it even more impossible. If we give you something like this, you're bound to reach the level of a true magic swordsman. Asking to give away a treasure of the kingdom for free like this when you're just gonna become strong and run off with it is too much."

"Is there nothing I could give for it?"

"Merca, I know you're rich, heavens knows where you came from, but do you really have something worth this much?"

Staying silent for a moment, I sighed.

"Could the other guards go outside?"

Looking somewhat shocked, the captain told the guards to do as I said.

"Alright, they're gone, now what is it?"

I reached into my clothes and pulled out one singular dragon scale.

I could take out individual items from containers on the 1nd floor that held multiple, like the container that held dragon scales, by willing it forth.

Setting it down on the table, the captain looked confused.

"This certainly seems to be of a high grade, Merca, but what is it? Surely you don't think a mere scale is enough? Unless it's a dragon scale, you have to be joking with me right now."

Staying silent, I stared at the scale and then looked up, straight into his eyes.

"What? It's not a dragon scale is it?"

I kept looking at him silently.

That's when he widened his eyes.

"...Is it?!"

Seeing me slowly nod my head, he stood up from his chair dramatically.

"Wh-where could you have gotten something like this?! No, more importantly, even with this, it is rare, but just one doesn't leave much room to work with. How many do you have?"

"Sorry, I just have the one. Take it or leave it."

I lied as naturally as I breathed.

Others may or may not like acting like suckers, but I certainly don't.

This was a damn dragon scale. Bullshit if it wasn't worth a mere technique manual, even if it was a powerful one for magic swordsmen.

Hearing this, the captain calmed down and drew a pensive look.

After a long time, he finally spoke.

"Alright. But you only get to read it here, all right? No bringing it outside or transcribing it to practice elsewhere. You come here to the palace, you practice the technique here, and you leave when you're done, every day. If we find out you copied the technique, it won't be a minor matter."

"Of course, no problem, captain. Not a problem at all."

It was just a formality. Of course I could spread the technique as I pleased. He wouldn't make me sign a magic contract either. Those things were scary, the Mage Guild guildmaster in the Nyla kingdom only did it to preserve the top most secret of the mage guild. This technique manual would be precious, but not to the degree of the royal family's most precious technique.

After all, the most precious technique was the basis of their hegemony. In comparison, I would probably only get to read a fairly normal one.

Still, a technique of this level was bound to be powerful, even if it was normal among its level.

Confirming the deal, the captain lead me to a secret place, not the normal royal library, and in that room was a number of books. Not many, just a few dozen. They were all books for class blood cultivation.

Taking some, the captain let me choose among the options he picked.

"These should be the best for you."

I had told him my skills and preferences. There was, probably, no need to hide it from him.

Looking over the options, I picked the book titled [Sphinx Cutter].

Class blood level techniques worked differently from what I had been practicing up until now.

Knight breathing required diligent practice and steady cultivation. Magecraft required mana breathing and the learning of spells.

However, since class blood required skills to be ingrained into the blood and body, techniques of this level were only considered complete when they had both a method to ingrain skills into the blood, and if they had a list of skills to obtain, and how to obtain them, that came with the technique, and were fit for the specific class the technique was for.

Actually, you could also just combine a ragtag bunch of skills together from different classes, but each skill put a burden on the body to ingrain, and skills that didn't complement each other would only leave one weaker than their peers.

Taking the book, I practiced in the courtyard meant for the knight captain to train personally. After all, I was strong enough to deserve to train there.

Reading through the book, it wasn't very long. It was around a hundred pages, with 9 skills included.

I finished reading in an hour, and started practicing as per the technique.

It was called [Sphinx Cutter] because the end goal of the technique was to hecome a magic swordsman capable of cutting down a sphinx, a gigantic creature that was rumored to exist in deserts. It wasn't quite as strong or rare as a dragon, but it was close.

Strong enough that a knight with peak plasmic mana couldn't take them down. Only by accumulating appropriate synergizing skills in the blood and adding that to a basic strength at the plasmic mana level could one kill it.

Before explaining more about the future, let me explain about the past, and in particular, more about breathing techniques and the advancement in strength as a mage and a knight until now.

Breathing techniques didn't refer to physical breathing, but the action of intaking mana and energy from the world, absorbing it into the blood, and "exhaling" any that didn't manage to get absorbed.

As your blood got more used to holding larger and larger quantities of mana, you could "inhale" larger amounts of mana at once. Intaking and storing larger and larger amounts of mana, this formed the basis for the progression in breathing techniques.

This progression continued until plasmic mana, which was an indicator of a peak level of mana in the blood, and there was a peak within that peak as well, although many didn't bother to get to it since it was more efficient to just layer skills for strength instead.

Knights only needed plasmic mana to become class blood ready.

Mages, however, weren't classified as ready to become mages at the class blood stage with just plasmic mana, since they didn't have the physical prowess of knights with aura, which required a knight breathing technique to summon. They had mana but it was useless to them on its own.

There was a spell to generate an aura, but it was inefficient, so mages had to learn other spells to make up for the lack of strength, both raw physical strength and also combat prowess. Only after both reaching plasmic mana and managing to cast a 7th circle spell could a mage be considered at the class blood stage, and ready to practice a class blood level technique.

This was because class blood techniques were around as complicated as a 7th circle spell.

It took around 40 pages to explain this one I was practicing now.

Speaking of, I managed to do a full cycle of it after a few hours, but it only made a dent in my ability to inscribe a skill in my blood.

I had to modify my blood using a specific method with the mana in my blood so that it could take in the skill without bursting, and the actual skill infusion would happen in an instant once the blood was "open" enough.

The common name for this "openness" in the blood, a kind of "slot" for a skill, was a "skill slot".

It sounded kinda weird to me, but who was I to question the naming sense of the people who first came up with these things?

I went home and didn't come back, since I had already had Ixtra copy everything. He could transfer from my shadow to the treasury without anyone else noticing.

And in the treasury were writing materials. I wondered why he couldn't just store things in the same space he hid himself in in my shadow, but he said it was a problem with the "essence" of things. Well, whatever.

Not like I would ever have any storage problems with the treasury around.

I had managed to hunt enough strong beasts for Ixtra to get to the peak of solid crystal mana in all these years, but he couldn't seem to breakthrough to plasmic mana. Well, after all, he was never using mana in the first place, I just referred to it that way since the stages were familiar to me.

His demonic energy, which he used instead, wasn't stored in the blood but his entire being, and when it increased, nothing really happened. It just got stored in some other dimension it seemed like. Ixtra said he didn't know much about it either, just that it was a small space where all his demonic energy was stored.

The cause of plasmic mana as a phenomenon was too much density, so the demonic energy being stored in a different way that wasn't affected by density made it impossible for a similar phenomenon to manifest.

Instead, he had just kept on increasing his raw amount of energy, without any extra phenomenon.

I tried to get him to practice the class blood technique too, but he couldn't. He hadn't been able to cultivate or use any technique I had previously used either, since they were all based on the circulation of mana.

Demonic energy circulated very differently than mana.

Jackal also hadn't had any demonic energy techniques available of any kind.

Ixtra also couldn't seem to learn skills lile humans could, since demonic energy couldn't be circulated in the right way to cause that phenomenon either.

It was quite frustrating just for me as a bystander, not to mention for Ixtra, upon seeing my progression and that of other humans.

Of course, he wasn't all that jealous, just slightly irritated. Demons made up for any demerits with a heck of a lot of benefits to their physique.

I practiced the technique every day for months, and 4 months later I had my first "skill slot" "open".

Again, I didn't know what was up with the weird terminology, but it was popular for some reason.

I decided to infuse [Mana Proclivity] first.

A few months later, I had infused [Aura Blade Beam] in as well. I had also spent the time I recuperated, since the technique required recovery time every afternoon, trying to learn a skill mentioned in the technique manual, [Aura Boost].

It was what it sounded like, it boosted aura, and, from the description, by a lot.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get the skill after those months.

I practiced gaining [Aura Boost] according to the methods recorded in the book vigorously over the next few months, and finally got it by the time a year had passed from the time I obtained [Sphinx Cutter].

To call it a huge boost would have been an understatement. It must've made my aura ~5x stronger.

Because of this, something weird happened.

My aura started going out of control. Not by a lot, just slightly, like few small ripples in a calm lake.

Calming it down, I found the reason.

[Aura Boost] applied after I had created the aura, of course, but it was no longer the aura that would normally come out at the level of mana it was using. It was 5x stronger. So, I had to take some time to get used to this larger level of aura, which inadvertantly caused my [Mana Proclivity] to become more proficient.

That proficiency wasn't tangible, but it would make a difference later down the line when it added up.

I deactivated [Aura Boost], and began to infuse the skill into my blood. I had another skill slot by the time I had obtained the skill.

Finishing, nothing else happened, and I sighed.

8 more skills in the manual. This would take a while.