Jack stood in front of Turrel's door and contemplated which bow he should use to greet him. As the mechanical sound of the door sliding open hit his ear he committed. He held his left hand down over his stomach and placed his right hand behind his back and bent at the waist.

  “I humbly request an audience with you, Master Turrel. Your expertise is greatly appreciated,” Jack said, bent at a right angle.

  Jack only heard a sigh and then lost his balance as Turrel pulled him into his room.

  “Get up, Jack. If you want my expertise you will stop that immediately,” Turrel said with a little more passion than Jack expected.

  “It’s chill, man, sorry, just a joke,” Jack said as he straightened and walked into the room.

  “It’s fine. You are leaking again, Jack. You need to work on that,” Monty said.

  Jack did a full purge and got all of the active mana out of his system.

  “Whoops. Working on it. I was helping Monty out and left in a bit of a rush,” Jack replied gingerly.

  Turrel nodded as he walked over and pulled a chair out from his desk along with a tablet and moved it over next to the couch.

  “Sit, sit. I have been thinking about what you said yesterday. I have come up with a few options and revisions for how we can try to meet your goals. The decisions are yours at the end of the day, Jack; I want to help you achieve your goals so you need to tell me honestly what you think about these options,” Turrel said, holding the tablet out and swiping a few times.

  Jack saw symbols flying across the screen and then symbols that looked like writing but not in any language he understood.

  “Wow, slow down a little, Turtie. No, hello, how are you doing?” Jack asked, a little taken aback by Turrel's directness. As the man turned to make eye contact with Jack, it was the first time he noticed the bags under his eyes, if it wasn't for the swirling pearlescent colour in his eyes they would probably be lined red as well.

  “Sorry, Jack... I haven’t slept much... Using my trait for longer periods of time can leave me a little drained. I have been trying to work out what to do with you and how to best help you. I have gone over every option I can think of and tried to narrow it down and put together some plans forward,” Turrel said after taking a deep breath.

  “I know you are a fan of keeping things simple so, for simplicity's sake, I have two options to start with: the first is very similar to what we were originally planning. You focus mainly on capacity modifications, and we try to lean towards a defensive skill set. That should allow you with your passive to eventually build up a massive charge and simply outlast and overpower most risky situations. Your Prismatic Mana Skin is a great fit for this and is already a step down this path.” He swiped on the tablet, obviously trying to show Jack some notes or diagrams but Jack had no idea. Rather than interrupt his flow Jack just nodded.

  “Now the downside here is that Life mana doesn't have too many defensive properties as a base. We would be hoping for similar upgrades and traits related to your vortex or purge more than your other options. Imbue might work and I have some ideas we could work on for a potential custom skill, but that is unlikely to be a short-term achievement.”

  Jack pursed his lips and nodded. They had briefly discussed this before. He was open to the idea in theory, he always loved the tank role in games. After being in a rift and experiencing it firsthand, however. Well, the thought of basing his whole build on that was less exciting.

  “We could obviously offset a lot of this initially with gear, your vortex will help offset some potential downsides. We do need to do a test on an active drain piece of gear, however; they are generally powerful but not used often. If your Vortex reacts the same as it does to one of Monty’s weaves… well that opens a lot of other options…” Turrel trailed off for a moment.

  Jack reached out and placed a hand on Turrel’s shoulder and gave him a little shake.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Hey, you okay there, mate? It’s fine; you can slow down a little if you need to,” Jack said, actually a little worried. He had never seen Turrel like this before and it was very out of character.

  “Sorry. As I said, it is a downside to my trait. Traits that affect the mind are tricky and come with some potential downsides if overused; I just need a little rest soon. Thank you,” Turrel said as he leaned back in his chair.

  “That is the build we had talked about; I was rushing because I wanted to see what you thought about a new one I came up with after your talk about wanting some solitude.” He held up a finger and nodded as he tapped the tablet a few more times and spun it around. Jack still had no idea what was on the screen but he smiled.

  “This option is unique; it will mean that in most situations you will be a little more limited. Potentially, anyway. But if you are given enough time to establish yourself in an environment you would grow exponentially more powerful the longer you were there. This would give you the power you wanted, to be able to simply make people leave you alone.” Turrel had a strange almost worried smile on his face.

  “Look I made some assumptions and some educated guesses but... Jack, this is... whole armies might not be able to enter your domain if you were established enough. Enough I am losing my train of thought. It basically pivots away from capacity; we instead put almost everything into flow. We lean heavily into purge and with some gentle prodding and training we hope for some synergies. If we could get some upgrades for imbue or something similar that allow you to offload your mana into the environment.” He waved his hands a little bit, seeming frustrated with himself.

  “I am finding it hard to explain this properly; I wanted to find a way that you could create a safe haven for yourself. Most people think that skill upgrades are random, or that they can be slightly influenced by how you use the skill.” Turrel shook his head.

  “I disagree; I think that is a self-perpetuating thought process. I believe that the Origin offers you the choices you expect to be offered in a sense. Not in some magical wish for a specific upgrade and it will be there. More in a desire, motivation and execution way.” He sighed loudly.

  “This isn’t coming out right, Jack. What I am trying to get at is that the Origin is connected to you always. It knows what you think. It knows what you want and it knows why you want it.” He nodded.

  “I believe that if you have a clear image in your mind of what you want to work towards and you are truly putting in the effort to achieve the results, the Origin will help you reach your goals. It knows better than us how to achieve what we want, but more than that: it knows if we should achieve them or not,” Turrel said.

  Jack thought about it, and it kind of made sense to him. This was some almost omnipotent life form that was connected to and could communicate with everyone in the universe. Monty had already mentioned about not rushing and levelling skills, so in his mind he had made the connection to effort.

  His interactions matched what he had been told about achievements and interesting the Origin as well. There was a small part of him that hoped it was true, because if it was, then there was still a chance for a legitimate fireball.

  “Okay, I get it, I think. Why flow over capacity? For the skills I will trust you know what you are talking about. To be honest, the idea of trusting some sort of defensive ability as the basis of my power… No, I am happy to have it as a last resort but I would rather it never needs to be tested,” Jack said, trying to guide Turrel back to his earlier train of thought.

  “Ahh, yes, sorry: Flow. Flow will allow you to move more mana quicker. If we focus on capacity at some point you would need to increase your flow to be able to utilise the increased amount of mana. If we instead assume that you have been able to infuse mana into the environment around you.” Turrel swept his arms out in a large circle around him.

  “You have unlimited capacity at that point; your limit becomes how much mana you can move and how quickly you can do it.” He smiled.

  “Flow over capacity for that reason. Now I do not need a decision from you right now, but I do need to rest a little bit. Now I have told you the burden is off me and I can rest. From you, however, I need you to work on Grow and Imbue. Those will be the base for everything going forward regardless of what you choose.” Turrel stood up and motioned for Jack to as well.

  “Now off to the training facility, I want you to have purge running all the time you are in the room; that needs to be our base and we want to level that. Then you need to take this.” He handed Jack a small pot plant with a tiny little bonsai tree in it.

  “And you need to work on figuring out how to make it grow. Likely you won't have much progress but I will be there in a few hours once I have rested to work out where you are going wrong. Now, go,” he said as he shooed Jack away.

  Jack nodded and left the room as he saw Turrel head to the little door that separated the common area from the bedroom. As Jack walked off to the training facility he tried to absorb all of the info that he had just been given. It was a lot and maybe the pictures or diagrams on the tablet would have helped. He did like the idea of a safe base, and unlimited mana. That sounded pretty cool.

  He stared down at the tiny tree in his hands, another few hours of failure were in his future but hopefully it would click at some point soon.

  This is the regular chapter for Friday, closing in on 100 followers so I will add the count below for bonuses. Thanks and Enjoy.