Jaycee raced through a clearing as he skated on the ground quickly. It was the most recent iteration of the skill he was trying to create. He had to use the skill while actively experimenting with it to increase its efficiency.
It was way harder than just normally experimenting with mana. He had tried to create a skill that was similar to his old skill, but different. This was his first time encountering this effect. The fact that he had already created a shitty movement technique, made creating a better technique more difficult.
But after 2 weeks of semi practice, Jaycee had completed the alteration of his red rarity skill. Now he just had to use the upgrade token to truly create the skill and increase its power greatly. Jaycee had dove deep into the air mana nature and came out with some great ideas he was starting to implement.
The first thing he created was an incredibly smooth and effective way of moving. He had first started tried to use air mana to speed himself up. He quickly found that to be a dreadfully long process. For him to essentially use the air to push his whole body fast enough to compete with fast things, he would have to truly commit to learning more and more about air mana.
He barely tried it and realized it was simply out of his depth right now. So instead he thought, what if he only sped up certain parts of his body. What if part of this skill was using air magic to reduce his air resistance. Then he thought, well if he could reduce air resistance why not put small skates of air beneath his feet.
By putting a pocket of air under his feet that he could stand on and propel himself frictionlessly across the floor. He eliminated running while using the skill, but still needed the power to push himself through the air. So he tried applying fire magic to propel himself. But that quickly turned to disaster after his feet exploded when the fire touched the pads of air under his shoes.
There were some damages that unfortunately Olaf had to pay for. So he created a boot-like structure that had the perfect structure that funneled the air correctly. It had the perfect velocity of air to blow the fire straight through a vortex of wind that increased the fire's power. And so now, Jaycee created rocket boots that could skate across the ground smoothly on a thin pocket of air.
Jaycee spent two days just getting good at the skating function. The problem was that when he had no friction in his feet and seriously lower air friction you kinda just slid. It was incredibly difficult to get the balance down but once he did he was doing all kinds of tricks to push his limits.
He activated the fire and shot around this little clearing and singed the grass under him. His smile was wide while he increased the power until it looked like his heel was producing a wall of fire. A tree trunk was singed from the blast of flames shot from his heels. In order to balance the speed of his feet he had to put a large 'engine' on his back.
It was similar to the jet-like structures on his heels except much harder to see as it just looked like a mini tornado pancake on his back. But the flames it fired were no joke. It had been difficult to design but Jaycee persevered as his increasing level allowed him to manipulate mana better.
He was experimenting with making his feet be able to shoot out fire omnidirectionally. He could only move the opposite direction his heels were facing, and while balance and leaning was important in using the skill, he couldn't just move backward without canceling the skill or doing something else not within the skill.
Finally he thought he was ready for the upgrade token. It should be able to fill in any gaps he hadn't accounted for as well as powering the skill up. When he used the upgrade token a notification appeared.
'Skill Upgraded. Fire Propel—> Frictionless Fire Propulsion Yellow: Creates a thin pocket of air that supports the user and allows them to glide across the ground. Fire can be ejected through the feet or chest area as well as the hands for increased movement speed. The air parts for you.'
Jaycee smiled and immediately used the skill. Everything just felt better. It was like before he was playing on a shitty controller. Now things felt new and less clunky. Smoother even though he was very happy with its smoothness before. His biggest reward from the dungeon showed itself and gave him a whole yellow skill.
Still his defensive skill was green, but these were two great techniques that applied a bunch of magical skills to pull it off. It was also meticulously created and not just upgraded. If Jaycee had instead tried to make a speed technique later it would have resulted in a fundamentally higher quality skill. Jaycee saw that the shitty skill muddied his ability to make it to a higher level.
This was the result of Records. It showed up repeatedly and was clearly very important. So Jaycee had found out that just spam creating a ton of skills wasn't a good option. Instead he should develop and choose good skills. All of the skills he had that were worth mentioning were:
Mana Stealth Red
Passion Rage Orange
Flame construct Orange
Fire Wind Storm Yellow
Flame Remote Charge Orange
Frictionless Fire Propulsion Yellow
Hexagonal Repelling Force Field Green
Jaycee had gotten Profession skills every 5 levels he leveled up his profession. Under the guidance of Olaf he had selected what they thought was the best way forward as a Beast Harvester. The skills were:
Detect/Manipulate mana paths Red: Living beings all have paths where their Mana is its most concentrated. Allows the user to detect these paths and manipulate them to an extent.
Anatomy Analysis Orange:Gives the user more insight into anatomy's revealing potential weaknesses or when carving a piece from a beast.
Internal energy manipulation Orange: Internal energy in the beast's body is what empowers the materials harvested. Gives the ability to manipulate a dead beast's Internal energy.
Energy Conservation Red: Gives user knowledge on the nature of energy conservation in dead beasts and the beginnings on how to manipulate it.
One thing that Jaycee took away from all of this was that professional skills were not easily made. He had tried to experiment with some techniques but found himself blubbering with no direction. Professions were clearly more driven by the system than then the otherwise free roam classes. Earlier, at lower levels, the beasts were easier and simpler to break down. It was just cut this piece of hide here. But as the beasts become more powerful and imbued with all kinds of energy's and records of their own, their materials become harder to keep the same quality.
Mainly because mana paths were beginning to develop in the advancing creatures and their internal energies were rising in quality. Right now it wasn't too hard. He just had to make sure he didn't cut any mana path that wasn't too big and the product would be fine. Mana paths were similar to veins in a person and distributed mana throughout the person's body. But he knew things were changing quickly.
And so he practiced occasionally just trying to push the mana paths around to find them snap back to where they existed. Cutting a large mana path without damaging(for example a horn)the product was a surgical process that involved Jaycee inserting a little bit of his own mana to guide his blade along its path. Each operation was like a mini surgery.
As the beasts are getting stronger they occasionally have these cores in their bodies. They were like orbs of condensed energy and records that are the remnants of whatever the beast had done in its life. They've only started appearing in level 25 beasts and above. Only the stronger more impressive beasts dropped them even when they were level 25. Jaycee didn't know exactly what determined if a beast dropped one or not.
When they're inspected it said it was a physical manifestation of the beast's records. Whenever Jaycee removed one he had to be supremely careful. The average person would just stick their hand into the corpse and pull it out. Which while fast, damaged the intricate mana in the corpse.
So when they remove it poorly the rest of the body loses power and its value drops greatly. But when Jaycee does it well, he both increases the power of the beast core and preserves the quality of the rest of the beast. Beast harvesters are able to get more out of their kills than the average class.
But he was progressing steadily in his Profession endeavors. As he came out of thought he turned the jets on the back of his heels off. The upgrade token had actually improved on his skill. They had the ability to work almost iron man like but with just less power.
But now he could jump with increased power and move to the side. He settled to the ground as he let his magic weaken. The whole experiment had taken more than a quarter of his mana. Still the technique was expensive. But it was not meant to be used too often anyway.
He would use it as a ways to avoid blows he couldn't block in a fight. Speaking of fights he sensed someone approaching him