It wasn’t exactly the same, but after a few hours of screwing around with stuff, Velik managed to get the LPS to show him something that was at least somewhat familiar. A few categories had vanished—things like decarmas and unspent free points—but at least he understood the scale of his stats again.

He also formed a theory about why the original system limited skill slots. His idea was that the maintenance cost to keep someone’s system active grew harshly the more essence configurations it held. By preventing low level people who had no way to harvest the needed essence from monsters from having many skills, it kept the system from going into debt supporting them. Since most people were low level, this was probably somewhat necessary in the grand scheme of things.

Velik didn’t know if he was right, of course. He wasn’t good at math and he lacked the information to figure out the truth, regardless. But for being mere speculation, he was confident in his guess. More importantly, he was completely responsible for keeping his own limited personal system working, and reducing the number of essence configurations he had saved mitigated the burden of feeding it essence, so he decided it was best to copy how the gods had laid out the real system.

Combining skills was simultaneously easier and harder now. On the one hand, all he had to do was want it to happen and have the essence reserves to make that a reality. On the other hand, without the system overseeing the process, the end result wasn’t always viable. He wasted thousands of essence experimenting with skill mergers, but thankfully, it was easy to break them back apart, or to even keep the base skills and create a third skill that was a combination of them.

Just like it had been his whole life, some skills just meshed together better than others. [Mana Control] and [Mana Drinker] were surprisingly compatible, becoming something called [Magic Eater], that promised to rip apart any magic directed his way and convert the mana for his own personal use. That was a considerable upgrade from [Mana Drinker], which stole mana directly from a target and required him to get up close and personal to use it. Now he could simply dissolve a fireball and keep the mana that had gone into it.

[Shadow Striker] successfully combined with both [Judgment of Penance] and [Dread Lance], but Velik wasn’t happy with what the LPS came up with when he tried. He broke both those skills back into their individual pieces and tried shifting things in a different direction.

[Air Walk] was his primary mobility skill, especially in combat. It worked in conjunction with the parts of [Judgment of Penance] that helped him coordinate his body to keep up with moving faster than an unenhanced human eye could even perceive. Using that as the common ground to bridge the skills, he was able to fold them together into [Inevitable], a skill that no longer cared what he walked on, just that he had the strength to keep doing it.

[Awakened Blood] took [Shadow Striker] and became [Divine Wolf], changing the spears he manifested so that they reflected his own physical stat instead of being entirely dependent on mystic. If that cost him anything, he couldn’t tell. Everything about [Awakened Blood] was still in the essence configuration; it just became more

.

Then he took the tens of thousands of essence he’d harvested from monsters that were probably level 80 on the weak end and well past 100 for the more challenging ones and poured it all over his stats and skills. The end results were… impressive, to say the least.

[Physical: 314]

[Mental: 218]

[Mystic: 171]

[Unspent Essence: 3481]

[Estimated Daily Upkeep: 548]

[Essence Configurations:]

[Duskbound (10)]

[Divine Wolf (8)]

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[Inevitable (4)]

[Dread Lance (8)]

[The Wanderer’s Path (5)]

[Magic Eater (3)]

He no longer had a level, race, or class, but without access to the true system, that didn’t really seem to matter. A class was just a catalog of prebuilt essence configurations, and he was freehanding all of that now, anyway. His race just got lumped in with his skills, so that wasn’t lost so much as reorganized, and levels were just a means of tracking stat increases, which he also did directly.

This… This could work. Level 100 monsters are barely even a challenge. How strong is a divine beast? 150? 200?

He still wasn’t beating the divine beasts’ primary advantage: the fact that they could reshape their essence reserves into any skill they wanted, giving them an unlimited arsenal and impossible flexibility. But if he fed on enough essence from weaker monsters, maybe he could crush them through sheer force. And if not, it wasn’t like he was wasting his time growing stronger.

Monsters were plentiful, and he had time. Velik returned to the hunt.

* * *

She stood in the council room with all its polished marble and gleaming gold, teeth clenched so hard behind her lips that they started to crack, and reminded herself that none of this was her fault. Tesir should have been the one to bring the experiment back. He’d screwed up and dumped the responsibility in her lap.

It was a small comfort.

There were only four of them there this time—the lorekeeper, the watcher, the researcher, and the leader, Reisha. He looked displeased, and not only with the situation. “You understand how important this is to us, yes?” he asked.

“Of course,” she replied. “At the same time, he is a divine beast, one who seems particularly suited to subtlety. If you want me to match him in a contest of deep secrets and old stories, I will crush him. But in a battle of hide-and-seek, I’m afraid my skills are not up to the task.”

“Pathetic,” the short man said. Of course he’d say that. He was the watcher. “I suppose you want me to go fix your mistake.”

“Both of you will go,” Reisha ordered. “Find him. Bring him here. No mistakes this time.”

The researcher smirked, but remained silent. This is all your fault, you smug bastard. You should be the one digging your experiment out of whatever hole he’s gone to ground in.

“She’ll only slow me down,” the short man said.

“And that would cause you to fail?” Reisha asked, one eyebrow crooked.

The man bristled. “No, of course not.”

“Then it’s not a problem. We’ve been waiting for thousands of years for a new divine beast. A few extra days makes no difference.”

“It might if something eats the kid first.”

“I do not think that will happen,” she said. “The area around the sky bridge is relatively tame. There are no dragons, elder elementals, or planar walkers in that area. Unless the experiment is exceedingly careless, he should be fine. He was able to temporarily overcome a minor pillar, after all.”

“There, you see,” Reisha told the short man. She started to think his name, then caught herself and pushed back. The Other knew that name. Thinking it would summon the Other. Only Reisha was safe to name. The Other knew better than to challenge him.

And Tesir, she thought. What about him? You’re getting sloppy.

No, she answered, that challenge is over and done with. He insisted on it. He is safe, for now.

You only fool yourself if you believe that.

“What are you thinking?” the sharp-chinned researcher asked, but she could see that he knew full well.

“About killing you,” the Other replied.

“None of that now,” Reisha demanded, clamping down on her with his very presence. Slowly, she regained control, pushing the Other back into its cage.

The short man watched her warily, no doubt concerned for his own skin. Of all the divine beasts, he was the one least suited to survive a direct confrontation. He knew that, of course, which was the real reason he’d wanted to go by himself. He was afraid of her. They were all afraid in their own ways.

Not all, she amended as she glanced at Reisha again.

“You’re dismissed. Halifex, wait for Eslaka outside. She’ll be along shortly,” he said to the others. She waited in silence while the watcher and the researcher departed.

“You’re becoming unstable again,” Reisha told her. “Do you need my help?”

“No, I know my place.”

Do you, though? the Other whispered in her head.

Essence filled the room, so much that it eclipsed the unassuming frame of the man who’d unleashed it. It poured out of him, a waterfall tumbling from a vast cliff to crash down on her head. She gasped and dropped to her knees, her back arched in a futile attempt to keep her upright.

Her head touched the floor an instant later, and it was all she could do to keep from being smashed through the marble. The punishment lasted an eternity, or maybe mere moments. She never could tell when she was engulfed in a sea of his essence.

“I hope this helps you remember your place in our group,” he told her when it finally ended.

“Yes. Thank you. It will not happen again.”

“It will,” he said with a sigh. “It always does. But we are eternal, and I will always be here to remind you, as many times as you need me to. I will advise you again to let that life go. You are no longer that person, and our world has no need for the Queen of Carnage.”

“I will try,” she promised. And she would. They both knew that.

They both knew she would fail, too, just like she always did.