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Chapter 8

  Six months and many golems later.

  “That was it, we are done with the golems!” Jen shouted as she and Charles ran from the rift building, skipping the bus stop and heading for the admin building and the talent scanners.

  “We should stop at the park and do the compressions, we need to actually tier up.” Charles responded.

  “I need to know! There is no way, we can do a single crunch now, and the rest later. Tier 3 is here!” Jen squealed as they made it to the park that was about half way between the rift building and admin.

  The two of them settled under a tree and with a bit of effort finished allocating their tier 2 essence and crunched down to reach tier 3.

  “Nothing feels different, I need to use the scanner!” Jen said, practically dragging Charles to his feet and pulling him towards the admin building.

  “I think I can feel mine. My skills feel different, like I can squish them together.”

  “Dude, spoilers! Let's get the readout first.”

  Charles was practically vibrating as he sat in the talent reader, and waited as the screen displayed the results.

  Tier 1 Talent

  Primary effect: Under stress, proto-skills naturally form in your Core / Inner spirit skill slots, according to your needs.

  Secondary effect: You can not absorb skill shards.

  Tier 3 Talent

  Primary effect: Proto-skills you create can be merged. Merging proto-skills has increased effectiveness. Less stress is required to form proto-skills. Grows with Tier.

  Secondary effect: Merging different proto-skills will produce a new proto-skill based on the parent proto-skills.

  Charles studied the screen carefully, taking in every detail.

  “Skill merging is one of the most difficult things a cultivator can do, and my talent just, what, does it for me?”

  Taking a moment, he looked into his spirit, and examined the two dodge skill copies he had, and with a shove, moved them together. The skills seemed to reach out for each other, twisting and contorting. Then with a *pop* they merged, wrapping around each other and settling into a form similar but distinctly more complex than the originals.

  In the next room Jenna was having a similar revelation, observing the screen on the talent reader.

  Tier 1 Talent

  Primary Effect: Skills cast gain in power with repeat casts, casting a different skill resets the boost. Boost will reset if skill is not cast within 5 minutes.

  Tier 3 Talent

  Primary Effect: Maximum power increase to skills raised, amount of power increase and increase cap grow with tier.

  “Not flashy, but this will make steamrolling rifts easier!”

  A few seconds later the duo rushed out of their respective rooms, nearly running into each other.

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  “You first!” Charles managed to say before Jen could catch her breath.

  Jen checked to see if anyone was around to overhear them before excitedly whispering, “ Better scaling, and a higher cap. Once I get going, I'll be an unstoppable cannon. What about you?”

  “They will be easier to make, and I can merge them, mix and match style.” Charles said, practically vibrating in place. “We should sign up for our tier 3 rift slot! Maybe we can swing it tomorrow?”

  Charles looked down at his pad and taped away, navigating to the playpen’s admin page, after trying to register for a tier 3 delve slot he got an error.

  “Looks like we need to take some classes before we can delve a tier three, ‘Directed physical cultivation’, and ‘Tier three and beyond planning for the path and after’. Charles said, still distracted.

  “Oh? When are the soonest classes?” Jen asked, peeking at the pad over his shoulder.

  “Looks like there's one tonight if we literally run.” He said, signing up for the classes as he started moving towards the door.

  “Excellent! Wait up you dick!” Jen called.

  Ki was just starting the class when the duo dashed in, snagging seats they literally skidded to a stop.

  Ki gave them an appraising squint, like a cat deciding if it wanted to squash a particularly crunchy leaf that blew past, after a moment she went back to her speech.

  “We'll start with directed physical cultivation. It's hidden before Tier 3 for a reason…” (If you REALLY wana hear the speech on directed physical cultivation, please go read book one of “The Path of Ascension” by C.Mantis.)

  —--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  “How did your parents give you an [AI] if you are on the path, and why don't you use it?” Charles asked as they walked back to their shared room from the classes.

  “It was implanted at birth. High tier cultivators tend to have a custom [AI] module made using their [AI] as a base, then have their kids implanted at birth. By using a well established [AI] with a broad data set as a base, the product has a higher starting point than your average ‘New’ [AI]. That does not mean it is better, in the long run, it is the same pseudo-skill as a fresh one. And as to why I don't use it, I couldn't, you can't even turn it on till tier three. When I do activate it I will be out of commission for a while, about 3 days.”

  “When you say ‘High tier’, how high?’

  “Only tier 25, it's not a big deal, and you know I don't want to talk about my parents.” Jen said.

  “Well at least we are going to be ahead of the curve on tier three start up costs, we don't need spatial bags, you don't need an [AI], that means we just need weapons and an [AI] for me.”

  “Can you even use one?”

  “Yeah, I think so, it's not a normal skill, so I should be able to, I had asked Ki about it after class, while she was very insistent that she could not give me any advice or suggestions, she did say that she thought I would be able to use it.”

  “Did you tell her your talent?”

  “Just the no skills part, I figured it was more important to figure that out than the risk of trusting someone vetted by the empire with some information that is not really useful.”

  “Fair. I was thinking, tomorrow we can get you an AI, then we can delve for a bit and see what kind of cash we can drumm up for weapons before we get the boot from the playpen.” Jen said.

  “Makes sense, we can do our recovery periods together to miss as little delving as possible.”

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