Frostbound
Chapter 316 - Nature of Skills

Chris

Frostheim

The pale blue tongues of my Spirit Flame flickered and danced as it roared from the mana. I was feeding it quite a bit to get it to such a state. The metal didn't necessitate such... ferocity, but I liked how cold it made the room and it was fun to watch the flame dance.

I liked to see something that represented cold being portrayed as a flame. The contradiction made it amusing.

Fed with my mana, the Flame could get to levels that even I would have to be careful around it, but not in any serious way. If I left my hand straight in the flame, sure frostbite would be an issue, but just standing next to it didn't necessitate such caution.

Especially with [Jotun's Resistance] in my back pocket. Channeling that skill caused my resistance to Cold to skyrocket and I'd probably be able to tap dance upon the flame naked and be fine, as long as I had the mana to fuel it.

A chattering of teeth drew me away from the part I was making. I knew she was there but I was surprised she hadn't said anything yet. It seemed that was about to be rectified.

"Whatcha doing?" Her high-pitched voice sounded through the shivering she was fighting through. The amount of fur layers was funny to see on one so small.

"Testing," I said. I knew it would result in follow-up questions, but it was sometimes fun to force her to ask. The frustration it caused her.

"Testing what?"

"My Skills."

"What Skills?"

"My new one."

"Which new one?"

"[Hammer Reverberation]."

"What does it do?" She asked.

It was at this point I couldn't keep giving short answers to annoy her. It would only make things harder on myself. Instead, I thought a demonstration was in order.

"Watch," I said.

I had been at this for a few days and acquired the skill months ago now, but it was still a bit finicky to get right. It was by far one of the more technical skills I had. [Hammer Reverberation] said that it took the force of my strike and spread it out but it never specified how.

My initial testing just to see what it did resulted in something... disappointing. I was in the middle of a field at the time using my recently remade [Frostbound Hammer], instead of the smithing hammer I wielded now, but the skill worked on all hammers. It didn't need my bound hammer to work like [Shattering Hammer] and [Frozen Rift].

That function was what I was testing now, but that could wait.

During my first test, I used pure force and swung at the ground while channeling the skill. I wasn't sure what to expect and it wasn't like the skill prompted me for anything, so I just went for it.

A similar strike would have exploded the ground and sent dirt careening everywhere as the force I used wasn't small.

The shower of dirt I expected never came and instead, a wide circle around me compacted a few inches. There was no explosion of force, no hole in the ground. The head of my hammer felt like it tapped the ground and everything around it compacted.

It had spread the force out over such a wide area indiscriminately.

Making the strike useless.

Which was a problem. I wasn't in the business of giving monsters forceful hugs, which was what the skill had done to the ground.

The skill needed wrangled and wrangle it I did. At times, it made [Sweeping Snow] seem like a cakewalk, but I pushed through to get a handle on it. I wasn't going to give up on a skill that had such potential.

I was about to show Anna the height of my practice and mastery, but she didn't know that. All she knew was she was about to get a magic show.

The girl followed me over to a workbench and I raised my smithing hammer to demonstrate.

My mana fueled the skill and my hammer came down. As it did, four other hammers shimmered into existence around the workbench. All four were made up of my mana and stamina, which caused them to glow a pale blue and leave a line of gentle frost in their wake.

Each appeared over its own spot and each descended in time with the others, mirroring the smithing hammer in my hand.

All at once, the smithing hammer, along with four pale blue phantom hammers impacted the workbench in four different places. One high-pitched ting resounded from my metal hammer matched with four equal thuds from the phantom ones. Four spots around the workbench frosted over.

The skill was formed from my mana, Arctic mana, which was inherently cold. I could keep it from imparting a chill to whatever I hit, but it was needlessly complicated. I usually didn't care enough to take that step. If I was going to hit something, I usually didn't care if I chilled it too.

Anna's eyes sparkled in excitement upon seeing the skill. "That's so cool. How many can you create at once?"

"That depends," I said, "How precise do I need the blows to be? The more precision required, the less I can create. There's also the power involved. That was just a normal swing without any skills added. The more I pump into it, the harder they are to control."

If I left the skill to its whims, it would just spread the force out unhelpfully thin. The hammers were my idea to limit how far the force was spread so that it never fell so low to be useless. A mental image to direct and control the spread of force.

Gabriel helped, as he was most knowledgeable on how to manage skills and push them to do what you wanted them to do, and it took a lot of effort in the Dungeons testing it.

I hoped to get to a point where the hammers weren't needed at all and I could direct the skill without the visual aid. A part of me liked them, but learning to spread the force without them was the obvious endpoint.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

"Do it again!" She said and giggled when the hammers came down for a second time. She liked to see the different skills we all had and I was happy to oblige her.

Her face turned thoughtful as she looked at the frosted-over table and I waited for her to think it through. "Wait, isn't that a Class skill?"

I was wondering when she would catch on. All of the children in Frostheim were taught about what we knew about the System. Classes, Professions, Levels, Essence/Experience. It was one of the few times we held nothing back. Knowledge was given freely of everything we knew.

The youth were the future. A good foundation now would lead to a pillar of strength for centuries, with longevity being what it was.

They knew Profession Skills and Class Skills did not mix. Which was the nature behind why I was testing [Hammer Reverberation] here.

"It is," I answered.

"But I thought–"

"Yes, I know. You were told Class and Profession don't mix. We were told a lot of things, but I couldn't help but test it." I said. "Don't always trust what you're told."

Admittedly, I was trying to brute force it more than anything. The limitation was... annoying, to say the least. It didn't make a whole lot of sense to me that the two were so separate. They were both my Skills, why did I only have access to one set at a time?

It was in the nature of the Spirit that the reason was found. That and how Skills worked on a base level.

Gabriel was a lot more knowledgeable about such things and could go on and on about the details, but I'd learned enough from him to understand it for myself.

When a Skill was learned, it imprinted a 'Skill Matrix' inside your Spirit. There were other names for it, but Matrix fit so that was what we went with. It was similar to a Rune or Formation, but different enough that they weren't the same.

Two different languages.

Way back when, during our initial introduction to this System, the guide told us that there was a limit. I remembered its words nearly exactly.

"The spirit can only hold so many skills per tier before it becomes strained," the guide said. "Outside of the six skills acquired through improving class level, on average only four or five more can be gained while in the lower tiers. Spirits grow with time and training, but can be slow."

It was through meditating and looking deeper that I found the 'Skill Matrixes' Gabriel talked about. It also highlighted how much 'space' there was. Or how many skills would fit before my spirit was strained.

It also clearly denoted which was which when it came to Class vs Profession. They were very clearly separated and grouped together. The total size for both areas was the exact same.

The portion dedicated to Class skills was more filled out than the Profession side, but it was curious that they were equal. I'd spent a lot more time on one rather than the other.

The rarities of the two weren't even the same, yet the size was.

The reason was obvious in hindsight. It was also why only one set could be used at a time. The areas dedicated to Class Skills vs Professions Skills were two sides of the same coin.

Only one could be 'active' at a time.

It was stupid, it was frustrating, and it was dumb.

Every time I tried to channel [Create Weapon] while also using [Hammer Reverberation], it ended in failure. To use one, I had to stop using the other. It didn't matter which I started with, the other wouldn't activate while the other was in use.

It was a shame, too, because I could see so many uses for [Hammer Reverberation] to be useful in smithing.

Trying to straddle both sides and channel both only resulted in pain. Neither skill would activate and it felt like I was tearing my Spirit apart. Pain was usually an indicator to stop, but my stubbornness knew no bounds.

Which only resulted in greater pain with nothing to show for it. I was slow to learn, but I eventually caved and stopped trying to force it.

My testing now, which Anna walked in on, was seeing if switching back and forth quickly was an option. Like I was playing with the light switch.

"Did it work?" Anna asked.

"No." I said, "Not well, at least."

Anna was quiet then. Well, as quiet as she could be with her teeth chattering away. I knew what she was here for, but I was glad she hadn't dragged me off immediately. Whether she was actually interested in what I was doing or not was a mystery, but it was nice to be asked.

"Come on youngin," I tapped her on the head, "Sorry for making you wait."

"You always make me wait." She said.

That... was true. I was getting caught up with my work more and more. It didn't help that I had a Skill choice looming over me I still hadn't decided on. But that was for later. Now it was her time, and I'd already taken enough of it up.

"I heard you got a fancy new style." I poked her in the side, "Are you gonna show me."

She nodded happily and skipped off ahead of me. I wasn't sure what these 'Styles' were, but she was certainly happy about them.

___

Annabeth

Even in the Cold, sweat dripped down her face as she did her best to dodge the wooden stick. It wasn't the first time they had done this drill, but every time she felt like she was getting a handle on it, Uncle Topher would speed up.

It was unfair, but her complaints were ignored.

Well, they weren't ignored but more like outright dismissed.

"Your enemy doesn't care about fairness."

"There is no fairness in battle."

Those responses were her usual answer to any time she complained. It was more annoying than if he had said nothing and stayed silent to her pleas.

Getting hit with the stick hurt. She knew he was controlling his strength, but the forming bruises from previous failures wished he would regulate it more. Her Mom would heal her later but that didn't stop it from hurting now.

Every time her foot touched the ground, pain lanced up it from the hit on the shin she took at the start of the drill. It made moving all that much harder and a hit to her ribs and forearm was the result of her expecting him to go easy on her.

He never went easy.

There were days when she wanted to quit, to never show back up, but every week she found herself dragging herself over to his forge to drag him away from some project.

He was busy with something and didn't like being interrupted, but Anna dragged him anyway. At this point, she kept a pile of furs outside his door just so she wouldn't have to run around gathering them up if she wanted to step inside.

His forge was better than Vinny's, but it was still too cold. Her Mom said she would get comfortable with it after getting her System, so at least she had that to look forward to.

Even though training with her Uncle was by far the most painful, it also was the most exciting. She felt like she got the best experience out of a day with him than all the others combined.

Mana training was boring. She'd gotten better at seeing the colored lights but not that much better at moving them. She could do it, which was more than she could say a few months ago, but not very quickly.

Whack.

"Oww!" She exclaimed, trying not to rub her arm where she had been hit.

"You were distracted," Topher said.

Her rebuttal was left unsaid as that would only make things worse.

"You're not even teaching it right!" Anna said, instead of disputing she was distracted.

The wooden stick finally halted. "Bah, when I learned we didn't have any fancy styles. What even is this Wolf Sword Style anyway."

It was a present from her Dad. When they first allowed her to 'train', Anna had assumed she would be picking up a sword right there and then.

That was far from what really happened.

Her Dad forced her to train her body before picking up a weapon and when he finally did, he made her start with the shield. Chris, though, at least let her hold a sword, but that wasn't weapons training.

That was stand there and get hit while liking it.

The times she complained, the answer she got was, "You need to learn instincts. That was how I learned and that is how you will learn. Pain will teach you like it taught me."

Pain wasn't a very fun teacher.

It took a while, but her Dad finally caved and brought her to the Alien Merchants. They were cool to look at, but that day she was focused on something else.

Sword Styles.

A few in the Order had bought them and her training with Hal was what showed her such a thing was even possible. Anna still wasn't sure what her weapon of choice would be yet, but the Sword Styles looked cool and after begging, she got her wish.

"If you would read it you would now." She complained. He was always too busy in the forge lately.

"It doesn't seem to be helping you." He commented dryly and twirled the stick in his hand.

She grit her teeth and refused to comment. That's because you use too much strength! She also hadn't been learning it that long and was still new to it.

Being put under pressure didn't help.

She knew he was doing it on purpose, but she couldn't help herself. She launched at him wildly and swung her stick as hard as she could right at his face. Chris stepped to the side, dodging the swing. The next thing she knew her back stung and she was toppling over.

Her back throbbed and her hands and knees didn't feel good scraping across the snowy ground, but she got up anyway.

"I think that's enough for today." He finally said to her relief, "Why don't you bring me this Wolf Style book so I can read it."

Oh, thank god.