Choosing Skills

Benjamin had to admit it: he was a skills addict.

Just like when he played games in his old world, he didn't care about the graphics or the story. What mattered most to him were the skills. As long as a game had all kinds of strange, bizarre, outlandish skills, it was right up his alley. He wasn't very interested in leveling up, either. The only reason to level up was to earn skill points. Every time he unlocked a new skill, his sense of accomplishment went through the roof.

And yet...

At that very moment, after finally making it to a world of magic, he was being told he could only have three skill points?

And one of them had already been wasted on Water Ball Spell?

"This character's ruined. I'm deleting it." He gazed up at the sky, saying it to no one in particular.

"You should know that nobody's going to respond when you say things like that. You'll just sound like a chuuni," the system muttered.

Benjamin was silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed at himself. "Who says nobody's going to respond? You did."

The system replied tactlessly, "I'm not a person."

Benjamin sighed. He stretched, rallied himself, and picked up Introduction to Divine Arts again.

Three skills it was, then. It wasn't as if he could really delete the character and start over!

No matter how dissatisfied he was, he still had to keep reading and find out how to get the remaining two skill points. The world couldn't always go his way. He couldn't waste such a rare, exclusive chance to join the beta.

The fourth Pope had built the Church's dominion with just three moves, hadn't he?

He believed that, if used properly, water could become very powerful.

And so, Benjamin accepted that he could learn only three spells. He put his optimistic nature to work, settled back into a focused state of study, and continued reading Introduction to Divine Arts.

The final part of this section of the book explained how to strengthen the Seal of Holy Light and condense new ones. The method of strengthening them was similar to the "meditation" Benjamin had worked out earlier, so he skimmed past it. The instructions for condensing new Seals of Holy Light, on the other hand, became the focus of his attention.

The book said that condensing a new Seal of Holy Light required continuously gathering and compressing the Holy Light stored in the Prayer Space until it became tangible. Then, all he had to do was recite the incantation for the chosen divine art while facing the tangible mass of Holy Light, and a second Seal of Holy Light would form.

Translated into magic, that meant gathering and compressing water elements, right?

Hmm. It didn't sound too difficult.

After reading that section, Benjamin set the book down and got to work.

He entered the Consciousness Space, concentrated, and directed the scattered water elements to gather. The process was quite similar to meditation. Under his direction, the water elements in the space began to move, little by little.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly. He didn't run into any difficulties.

However, he soon discovered a new problem:

It was too slow!

Because of his poor affinity for water elements, the process was extraordinarily difficult and slow. He estimated that reaching the level described in the book would take a full year of nonstop effort.

Damn it, a year!

Although a year in the Consciousness Space would be much shorter in reality—about half a month or so—still...

Benjamin tried stopping his efforts to direct the water elements. The moment he did, the ones he had gathered dispersed.

This wasn't like Thunder, where it didn't matter if the download speed was only a few kilobytes per second. You could leave it running, and it would finish after ten days or half a month. This required constant attention, with no interruptions. If he slipped up and stopped, he'd have to start all over again.

What the hell was he supposed to do with that?

If he stayed in the Consciousness Space that long, he'd be a dried-out corpse in the real world.

No, there had to be another way!

As he thought it over, an idea suddenly struck him. First, he cast Water Ball Spell in the Consciousness Space. Once the ball of water had taken shape, he didn't dispel it as he had before. Instead, using it as a center, he began guiding the water elements toward it.

His idea was simple: if he couldn't keep the gathered water elements together, why not give them a core or something to hold them in place?

The instant the first water element touched the ball of water—

A soft ding rang out from somewhere.

Benjamin suddenly found himself back in that blue world, surrounded by countless mysterious runes, like a universe that would never cease to unfold. This time, he stayed there a little longer than before, but unfortunately, he still couldn't make out anything before he was sent back to the pitch-black Consciousness Space.

After a brief moment of bewilderment, he quickly came to his senses.

"Did it work?"

He looked at the floating ball of water again.

His face immediately lit up with delight.

The ball of water was like a magnet, steadily drawing in the scattered water elements around it. During the moment he'd been stunned, he hadn't consciously guided the water elements at all. Yet they still swarmed toward the ball like ants returning to their nest, gathering on their own without taking the slightest bit of Benjamin's attention.

The problem that had just been troubling him was suddenly solved.

How was this just a ball of water? It was a freaking Thunder Floating Window!

Benjamin treated it like a treasure.

Now, all he had to do was wait for the notification sound that meant the download was complete. It was funny, really. The magic runes' notification sounded a lot like Thunder's: a single ding.

The process of condensing magic runes went even more smoothly than he'd expected. Somehow, he felt that God of Fate had decided it was unfair to give him only three skills and compensated him in another way.

To be honest, he didn't really want that kind of compensation. He'd rather get a few more skills.

Speaking of skills...

He should give it some serious thought. Which two spells should he choose for his remaining slots?

According to the book, divine arts fixed in place by a Seal of Holy Light could be strengthened indefinitely, both in power and controllability. In a sense, then, there wasn't much difference between learning a beginner-level spell and one at the pinnacle. The only difference was that the former didn't sound as cool.

On top of that, Benjamin was in urgent need of improving his strength, so he needed to learn new spells as soon as possible. That meant he could only choose from the relatively basic spells he already had on hand.

At first, he'd wanted to learn Water Barrier, so he'd have some defensive ability, and rely on a slightly strengthened Water Ball Spell for offense. He planned to save his last skill point for a more suitable spell he might discover later.

But when he saw the ball of water in the Consciousness Space steadily drawing in water elements, he suddenly changed his mind.

This wasn't an ordinary ball of water.

Benjamin realized that the book's claim that its potential was "unlimited" might mean far more than he'd thought. It didn't just mean that, if strengthened to the utmost, it could drown an entire city with a single water ball. It meant that the water ball could be made to do anything.

Water Ball Spell could do everything Water Barrier could. It was just a matter of hollowing out the ball until it became a bubble, wasn't it? As long as enough water elements were compressed inside, its defensive power wouldn't be lacking.

The same went for Water of Life. All he had to do was condense the water ball in a particular structure, and it could gain the ability to heal people.

In other words, by strengthening the magic rune and raising the level of Water Ball Spell, he wouldn't just increase its damage and reduce its cooldown. He could also give it a whole range of tactical uses, including defense, healing, and control.

In that case, choosing three spells based on their separate tactical roles seemed a bit redundant. Whether he was at home, traveling, killing, or setting fires, a single Water Ball Spell could handle it all. Water Ball Spell was the best; Water Ball Spell kept you safe. So what the hell was the point of learning Water Barrier?

At that thought, he suddenly felt that having three spell slots was almost like a hint.

He decided to run another experiment.

He recited the incantation and summoned another ball of water.

This time, unlike before, he tried controlling it, constantly changing its shape—compressing it, expanding it, turning it into a bubble like Water Barrier, then into a bird or a fish... He had a grand time playing with the tiny ball of water in his hands.

Only then did he realize how miraculous Water Ball Spell was.

But he wasn't just playing around.

He was testing its limits, trying to find what the water ball couldn't do so he could make up for it with his other two spells.

After half an hour of putting the water ball through its paces, Benjamin finally stopped. He dispersed it and let it meet its end.

The half-hour experiment confirmed his suspicions: the water ball could do anything. He could change its shape, strength, volume, even its density and physical properties... As long as his magic rune was powerful enough, he could make the water ball do anything.

Except stop being a ball of water.

The water ball couldn't freeze, and it couldn't turn into gas.

That discovery instantly took Benjamin back to his middle-school physics class. The teacher had handed out a quiz with a fill-in-the-blank question: What are the three states of water? While some kids scratched their heads, Benjamin confidently filled in the three blanks: "liquid, gas, solid."

Somehow, fate had brought that question back to him after all these years, in this unexpected way.

Which three spells should he choose?

He'd seen this question before.

It was a freebie.

Soon, he picked out two suitable incantations from the more than fifty listed in the Bible: Ice Shatter Spell and Steam Pillar. According to their descriptions, Ice Shatter Spell gathered shards of ice to attack, while Steam Pillar summoned scalding water vapor to injure people.

According to the Bible's definition, they were both attack spells, just like Water Ball Spell. But in Benjamin's eyes, they had been given unlimited potential.

In particular, Benjamin had a premonition: once all three magic runes had been successfully condensed, their interaction would produce new changes.

"Water" unified in three states. That sounded pretty powerful.

Now that he'd decided which spells to choose, Benjamin felt much more confident. He believed he'd made the right choice. After making it, he felt that something had quietly changed.

If there really was such a thing as a Wheel of Fate, then just now, it must have turned to a whole new notch.

The world would change because of him.

Suddenly, Benjamin shook his head, pulling himself out of that grand sense of destiny he'd imagined. He gave a self-deprecating smile.

He really could let his imagination run wild.

He'd better take care of what was right in front of him first.

His gaze returned to the Thunder Floating Window. The download speed was still too slow. So he joined the water elements in gathering around it, using his probably not-so-great affinity for water elements to speed up the formation of the magic rune.