What happened? Where am I?
I groggily lifted myself from the ground as I carefully looked around. I was still trying to make sense of my surroundings as memories streamed back into my mind.
Ugh, not that headache again. My memory of what happened was a bit choppy and vague, but not entirely gone. I had planned to try out my skill [Broken Sky], but something it did caused me to end up here, wherever I was now. Directly after casting it, I felt like I could see an infinite amount of things at once, and yet everything was kind of obscured in a weird way.
There also were those weird strings everywhere that seemed to defy the laws of physics in the way they crossed the space. Just what do they represent here? Was that the 'fabric of reality' the skill description speaks of, or did my mind just conjure up something in a desperate attempt to make me understand the sensations the skill gave made me receive?
No matter what kind of theories I could come up with, one thing was clear to me. Whatever this skill actually did, it had some sort of connection to space. Not an unfounded conclusion if it is truly related to the fabric of reality and space like they make it seem it is. The description of [Broken Sky] doesn't directly mention the word 'space', but the description for [Regalia: Starfire Corona] does draw a direct connection between the mentioned fabric of reality and space.
On top of that came the unforgettable fact that I was no longer inside of the leviathan where I underwent my tier-up. Since I was no longer there, the skill must have somehow caused me to be transported somewhere else. There were a couple of problems with that, though. For one, I didn't know where I was. I could be just a few kilometers away from my previous position, but I could just as well suddenly be on the other side of this planet or somewhere even more obscure than that.
In the end it didn't matter, I mused. Unfortunately for me, I was still underground somewhere. It would have been nice for an uncontrolled teleportation to take me to the surface somewhere, but no, I still had to be stuck underground in some godforsaken cave. I wasn't claustrophobic or anything, but I was really longing for some fresh air and the beauty of the surface world by now.
I could be lying in a rolling meadow of vibrant green grass, listening to birds and the rustling of the trees in the languid breeze that drifted over the land. The comfortable warmth of the sun would then provide the perfect counter to balance the mild climate out, helping me gently drift off into an energizing midday nap in the caring embrace of mother nature.
All that was only fantasy, though. Instead, here I was, sitting on the floor of some unknown cave somewhere in the depths of a planet potentially filled with dangerous creatures. Damn it, I wanted to leave this damned place for good already. This world was seriously out to get me somehow, wasn't it? Why does everything I try turn out so unpredictably against me somehow?
Questions upon questions I didn't have any answers for. With nothing else to do, I might as well finish the inspection of my abilities. While I was finished with my active skills for now, I still had two passives to look at, namely [Thermal Conversion] and [Broken Celestial Physiology].
What [Thermal Conversion] was already pretty clear for me. With a name like that, it should be the evolved version of [Photo-Thermic Synthesis], though without the 'Photo-' aspect. My [Firefly] class did have a
Regardless of how much I thought I knew about my probably most important skill, I still identified the newly evolved [Thermal Conversion]. Who knows, maybe it had a surprise for me? I got the hope for that every time I identified something new, but I just couldn't help myself in this regard. There was something addicting to getting more stronger skills and all.
[Thermal Conversion:
Born from flames and tempered by immense heat, a star rises from the depths. Even if your wounded body starts to bleed, the rising warmth will protect you from the embrace of death.
Converts ambient heat into Vitality and Mana.]
Even my newly passive skills aren't immune to attempts at poetry, it seems. On the first glimpse, it seems to do exactly as expected. A few aspects regarding this skill are a bit off, though. I checked my status screen again to confirm, and I was right. Whatever that meant exactly, the skill didn't have a level anymore. Had it already reached the peak of its potential? If the conversion was perfectly efficient, I'd understand, but a physics-breaking effect like that seemed pretty excessive for a tier two skill like this.
Also the wording of the effect part of the skill is slightly different. While the old skill said 'regenerate vitality and mana', this one mentions 'converting into vitality and mana'. I tried coming up with any major implications for something minor like this, but maybe I was interpreting a bit too much into it. After all, it might be nothing more than just a random decision about word choice for the system.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Mentally pulling myself away from this unnecessary monological discussion, I turned towards the last remaining skill I hadn't identified yet. In fact, this skill was just as new as [Broken Sky] was to me. Unlike the other skills, these two most likely didn't evolve from any of the skills I previously had. After all, there were two affinity skills blocking my passive slots previously. Not knowing what to expect here, I threw [Identify] at the skill. Drawing conclusions could come after I read the cryptic description the system provided me.
[Broken Celestial Physiology:
Again and again, your body was broken and destroyed, only to be rebuilt from ashes every single time. Purified like tempered iron during refinement, you were freed from all the grime. Inside your veins blood no longer flows as it did before. Instead, the essence of stars is what fills your very core. In preparation for what is to come, the metamorphosis has thus begun.
Increases muscle strength and speed. Increases resilience of ligaments and joints. Increases epidermal and visceral resistance to physical and magical influences. Increases action potential propagation speed in nerves. Increases structural stability and toughness of bones. Increases homogeneity of the body. Reduces requirements for water, oxygen, and nutrients. Increases average temperature of body. Increases efficiency of vitality consumption.
(Hint: Includes other not listed major and minor biological and physiological improvements. Extended description provided because skill caused permanent physiological changes. View full list of details here.)]
Sorry, what? Am I suddenly in some sort of grimdark comedy show here? This was by far the most detailed description I got for any skill ever. No idea what to do with all of these particular pieces of information, but thanks, I guess. Truly astounding what the system comes up with every time in an attempt to utterly confuse me. Instead of maybe a single sentence like 'increases resistance of body', or something along those lines, I get this mess.
Not sure how I'm supposed to feel about the supposed 'permanent physiological changes', but they all seem to be improvements to what was previously. Looking my body up and down, I was unable to notice any visible differences from before, which was good enough for me. Even if I was now on a path that was decidedly not standard human anymore, I still looked human, and the system didn't say anything different in the race field either.
I only took a peek at the 'extended list' before quickly closing it again. I certainly did not need to know how my neurons were enhanced by increasing the effectiveness of myelin surrounding the longer nerve axons and optimizing the distances between the Ranvier Nodes to use the faster spread of the surging action potentials as best as possible. I understood what some of that meant, but what the hell is myelin, and what are Ranvier Nodes?
The latter also sounded like some term coined after some random researcher back on our world, which makes it an even more curious term for the system to use.
While that was already more than enough biology for me, the extended detail list I got was so extensive that Ranvier Nodes could only be described as the tip of the iceberg. One also had to keep in mind that the skill went beyond merely biological improvements that could have happened through evolution back on earth. I highly doubted that the distances between Ranvier Nodes, whatever that meant, wasn't already carefully optimized through nature itself. Some of the improvements could only be explained through some advanced kind of bioengineering with mana.
That said, I wasn't against that. Mana was good, and me getting better was as well. Not like I could do anything against that if I wanted. The system was nice enough to provide me a list pertaining to the changes in my physical body, but it was not nice enough to warn of that when selecting the classes that could provide skills like these. Even if such a warning wouldn't ever have changed my mind in class choice, I was still a bit miffed about that.
Putting that aside, though, I had other things to concern myself with. First, again, my physical surroundings. As I mentioned already, I was still somewhere underground. At least I concluded as much from the generic stone surrounding me on all sides. It wasn't the black basalt kind of stone I got used to down there in the volcanic hellscape, though. Instead, this rock appeared exceedingly normal, almost like the rock further towards the entrance of the Great Labyrinth.
It wasn't identical either, though. While the rock up there was a soft light gray with a matte finish that betrayed its rough surface through the non-directed scattering of light, this rock was unnaturally smooth and looked almost metallic if the light from my sky blue fire hit it at just the right angle.
I thought about maybe melting my way upwards to get out of here for good, but I was forced to halt that idea quickly after trying it out. The material wasn't the main cause, though. While the rock was extremely heat resistant, it couldn't compete with the flesh of the leviathan, let alone my newly enhanced tier two fire that could burn hotter than ever before.
No, actually melting the stone was not the problem here. It would probably take a whole lot of time like that, but it shouldn't take me more than maybe somewhere between a week and a couple of months, depending on exactly how deep I was. Theoretically not a cost I wouldn't pay if it weren't for another problem barring my way upwards. What I noticed was that the temperature I needed to melt my way upwards was so expensive mana-wise that I couldn't possibly support it for more than ten minutes before running dry.
Without extreme environmental heat surrounding me and bolstering my regeneration, I was a lot more limited than back in the hellscape. While I could recycle some of the generated heat by converting it back into mana through [Thermal Conversion], anyone who ever got into contact with the laws of thermodynamics knew that creating an infinite cycle of energy like that was a fool's dream at best.
While all of that wasn't problematic in the enormous reserves of magma and energy I was used to, absorbing the heat from the self-melted magma surrounding me encased me back in stone quicker than I thought possible. While that meant that I could be very efficient with energy use, it did not at all increase the amount of energy I generally had available to me.
Resigning myself to my fate, I guess I'll have to do this the old-fashioned way. What great luck! Exploring endless cave systems manually in a desperate attempt to chance upon a path that takes me upwards really sounded like a great time to have. All the while some random strong-ass monster could just suddenly barrel into me and eat me for breakfast. If it wasn't coincidentally fire or heat or related, like the leviathan fortunately was, I doubted that I could burn myself out again so quickly if I couldn't even really deal with the stone surrounding me right now.