Skill Conversion (2)
The instant Jin-soo swung Baekcheonsingeom, the Formless Sword Art converted into a skill, and the moment his feet began to move, the Formless Footwork followed. Each time he drew up his mana and shaped it in a familiar pattern, another internal art joined the growing list.
Once his swordsmanship had become a skill and received the System's support, it grew faster and stronger. The same was true of his footwork and the flow of his mana.
How is this possible?
Watching that change unfold in the middle of their spar, Ak Chanseo was stunned.
Don't tell me he wasn't even fighting at full strength.
Jin-soo was growing stronger by the moment. From where Ak Chanseo stood, there was no other conclusion to draw.
Clang! Crack! Thud!
Ak Chanseo's hands and feet tangled worse and worse as he was driven into a corner. Even so, he could still hold his ground to a point.
Is he going easy on me?
The two swords in Jin-soo's hands moved with ever greater grace, pressing him hard. Ak Chanseo was a first-rate master, yet he could not predict the path of Jin-soo's blades at all. Jin-soo, by contrast, moved as if he already knew exactly what the spear would do next.
By all rights the match should have ended long ago. And yet, even as Ak Chanseo was driven back without answer, the spar somehow stayed at a level where he could grit his teeth and endure.
He's teaching me.
Had Ak Chanseo been a wicked man, he might have taken it for mockery and nursed a grudge. But he had walked the righteous path all his life.
A heaven-sent fortune has found me today.
He tightened his grip on the spear and gave everything he had to the exchange. A bout against a master standing so far above him was something he had longed for all his life.
Jin-soo, watching that stubborn endurance, allowed himself a smile.
Good thing he's lasting.
The restrictions on skill conversion were gone, but that did not mean skills generated themselves. His swordsmanship, his footwork, and his control of mana all had to reach a standard the System would recognize.
Facing a martial artist converts them faster than swinging a sword alone under the moon like a lunatic, or hacking at monsters.
If he had wanted the spar over quickly, he could have settled it with ease on the first swing. No matter how thoroughly Ak Chanseo prepared, no matter how desperately he fought, the gap between them was simply too vast.
Set aside a lifetime of battle experience and instinct, and overwhelming stats alone would have let Jin-soo crush him with raw strength and speed. He refrained for one reason: to finish the conversion as quickly as possible.
Almost done.
Everything he had learned before the regression turned into skills, one after another. And that left him with no small doubt.
The level bonus looks awfully high.
When a technique became a skill, the proficiency and experience already behind it were converted into a level. Unless he raised levels through the blessings, though, every skill was fixed at 2. He had assumed this time would be no different.
And yet, for a level 2 skill, the bonus was far too large.
Maybe I should check the level.
He called up the Formless Sword Art.
What? Why is the level like that?
Startled, he checked the others.
Every one of them is level 2,222?
Confusion flooded his mind. He could not begin to understand why every skill sat at exactly 2,222.
I'll confirm it myself.
He activated the Tortoise Shell Sword Art, a technique he had learned before the regression and then all but abandoned because it did not suit him.
It was an extremely defensive sword style—so defensive that it was worthless to anyone but a tank who fought behind a shield. Naturally, it had never matched a dual-sword fighter like him.
That might be different now.
He already possessed tank-class skills, and just in case, he had gone so far as to buy a full set of tank equipment, shield included.
Tortoise Shell Sword Art
He kept performing the art until the conversion finished, then opened its information at once.
Huh? That's exactly the level I raised it to before I regressed.
In the instant he froze, the level plunged at a tremendous speed.
Tortoise Shell Sword Art
5,646 → 2,222
Only when it reached 2,222 did the fall stop.
The blessings?
He was all but certain they had forcibly locked the skill at 2,222. To be sure, he read the system log in detail.
The Yellow God's blessing frowns, displeased that the level of Tortoise Shell Sword Art has risen.
The Red God's blessing finds Tortoise Shell Sword Art thoroughly distasteful and twists its brow.
The Yellow God's blessing nullifies the risen level of Tortoise Shell Sword Art.
The Red God's blessing chews the skill's options to bits and swallows them.
The culprits were the blessings after all. Scrolling farther up the log, he found the same fate had already befallen the other skills: the blessings had devoured their levels and forced every one of them to 2,222.
What a waste.
Deep regret settled over his face.
If those levels had stayed, they would have been tremendous power.
Of course, with his stats unable to support them, skill level alone could not reproduce the performance he had shown before the regression. Even so, the same sword art, the same footwork, the same internal method changed from heaven to earth with level—precision, power, and even the mana they consumed.
A golden chance to turn the experience he had piled up before regressing into high skill levels had just slipped through his fingers.
Look on the bright side. At least they didn't stay at level 2.
He was clutching at his composure and talking himself into a victory when the log flared again.
The Yellow God's blessing has grown.
The Red God's blessing has grown.
……and on, without end……
Huh?
All at once the blessings began to grow in a furious, unbroken chain.
Is that even possible?
Early on, they had shot up quickly enough. But the higher they climbed, the harder further growth became, and raising either blessing even once had cost him backbreaking labor.
His summons had paid the same price. Once called, they were driven through twenty-four hours of forced labor without rest until he dismissed them. Even effort that immense bought a blessing exactly one increase, and no more.
And now a blessing that difficult to grow was exploding upward.
On top of that, they already grew once when I reached the Tower's 200th Floor a little while ago.
Explosive growth like this, with no accumulated experience behind it?
There could be only one reason.
Devouring those skill levels had an enormous effect.
The high levels dropping to 2,222 had not been the end of it. They had left a beautiful gift behind: the blessings' explosive growth.
Then again, a higher skill level wouldn't have helped much anyway.
A level of 2,222 was already more than enough on the Tower's 200th Floor. Even a skill he had pushed to 1,022 by spending level-lock stacks was overkill against the monsters there.
Level 9,999 or level 2,222—hunting the 200th Floor's monsters comes out the same.
Killing an earthworm with a knife meant for a drake, or with a knife meant for a dragon, ended in the same result.
Factor in better returns on the other class skills, and the chance a new blessing skill appears, and blessing growth beats skill level a hundred times over.
He finished rationalizing it to himself in an instant.
Meanwhile, around that same time—
I can't break through. There isn't a single opening. How can he be this solid? Wretched. Utterly wretched. To think my spearmanship was this poor.
Ak Chanseo had poured a furious assault onto Jin-soo, who had suddenly shifted to pure defense, and his spirit had shattered.
At first, when the offense turned to defense, it had seemed promising. He thought he was being given free rein to attack. But no matter how fiercely he struck, the defense would not break. It felt like thrusting a spear into a wind that had no form.
His expression never changes. His movements aren't even large. And I cannot land a single blow on a man like that.
Faced with that perfectly unruffled calm, Ak Chanseo began to doubt the spearmanship and the martial arts he had trained all his life. The moment his heart wavered, the spearpoint wavered with it.
Clang! Crack! Thud!
His spear lost its poise and turned wild.
A mistake.
This was no courtesy toward a man who had deigned to teach him. Flustered, he looked to Jin-soo—and found the same serene, unshaken face as at the very start.
Is that the realm of no-mind? Not a ripple, even when he has every reason to be offended. Today my eyes have been opened wide.
Ak Chanseo steadied his heart and unfolded proper spearmanship once more. Jin-soo went on doing nothing but defend.
He keeps giving me every chance to attack as I please. Good. Today I will show him every spear art I have honed across my life.
Believing a master vastly stronger than himself was bestowing a great teaching, he poured heart and soul into his spearmanship.
But that was nothing more than Ak Chanseo's misunderstanding.
Now then. How much have the blessings grown?
Jin-soo was so absorbed in the information on his newly converted skills, and in the blessings that had swelled with them, that he had completely forgotten Ak Chanseo existed. His sword work, too, was only inertia—the defense-heavy Tortoise Shell Sword Art he had been using at the end, repeated without thought.
It was not a courtesy extended on purpose.
All stats grew to 1,522.
Not only that. The skill lock and the item lock had both risen to 1,122. Stats and skills that should have taken ages to raise had climbed in a single moment. And that was not the end.
Constitution went up to level 622.
No new blessing skill had appeared, which left him faintly disappointed.
Well. This much is already an enormous jump.
It was practically the same as every stat and every skill level rising at once.
Skill levels first.
One by one he spent the level-lock stacks, now risen to 1,122, and lifted his main skills from 1,022 to 1,122.
By the time the work was finished—
"Huff! Hah! Hah! Hah!"
Ak Chanseo's ragged breathing reached his ears.
Ah. Right. We were sparring.
Only then did he realize the match was not yet over. The gap between them was so wide that he had kept moving on instinct while his mind was stolen away by the status window.
That was rude of me.
Ak Chanseo might be vastly weaker, but he was still, in name, an opponent in a spar. Ignoring him to this extent was no courtesy.
Still, thanks to him the conversion finished easily.
It was time to end it. Jin-soo moved to seal the defeat.
Clang!
Baekcheonsingeom knocked the spear aside and opened a gap.
Hwik!
The Blood-Sucking Sword slipped into that opening and came to rest against Ak Chanseo's throat.
"I have lost."
He conceded without resistance.
"Thank you for the teaching. Because of your instruction, my eyes have been greatly opened today."
He ducked his head as he said it, and Jin-soo felt a little sheepish.
What teaching did I even give him?
He had only faced the man halfheartedly while checking his new skills and his grown blessings. To be answered with such respect was, from where Jin-soo stood, thoroughly embarrassing.