The excitement was welling within me all the way to the cave. Actual roast meat! There was no way I could expect much from hobgoblin haute cuisine, but if all they were doing was grilling up some meat and plants and such, what could go wrong? They probably wouldn’t season it with much apart from salt, but oh well.
…But hold on. Do they bother adding any seasoning at all? I hadn’t thought about it, since I had no sense of taste. They’ve got to use salt, at least. Maybe I should find some rock salt and build a little supply for myself, just in case.
The Analysis skill provided by the Great Sage let me track down some rocks with salt content in them. Predation let me suck it in and extract the salt, and I just tossed the rest. Couldn’t be easier.
Though was it really all right to use my skills for stuff like this? Hmm. It has to be. What’s the harm in using the tools I have?
So with the salt in hand… Oh wait, I was testing out my skills, wasn’t I? I was so distracted by the upcoming feast that I lost track of my original mission. I shook the cobwebs out of my head as I headed for yesterday’s underground cavern.
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Today, I wanted to try my hand at some Control Flame maneuvers.
It was, as one would expect, an extra skill to control flame. You could build up your body’s temperature and the ambient heat in the palm of your hand, focus it on a single fingertip, or just whip up a campfire on the ground wherever you liked, no actual wood or kindling required.
That, however, was it. Hence, why it’s an extra skill. Nothing that powerful. I couldn’t, like, set my finger on fire or shoot flames from my palms. I thought I could maybe release the heat from my fingertip like a sci-fi laser rifle, but I was sorely disappointed. And forget about triggering explosions like Shizu did with ease. She was probably fusing this with some of her own magic to do that.
Hang on. Fusing with magic…?
Suddenly, the Flame Transform I had worked on the day before came to mind. Back there, I had changed my “form” into a grown adult and infused my own body with that skill—but as I’d thought about it overnight, I realized I could try working Flame Transform on my internal magic stores instead. For spirit beings, Flame Transform turned their “body” into energy waves, but I figured there was no rule that said I had to use it that way.
For example, what if I released some magic and worked Flame Transform on that? And if I could then take the results over with Control Flame…
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Received. It is possible to combine the Mimic aspect of your Predator unique skill, Flame Transform, the extra skill Control Flame, and the unique skill Deviant. Execute?
Yes
No
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Hee-hee-heeeee. Just like I thought. “Yes” it is, then.
Pretty surprising to find this unexpected quirk of Deviant, before I even had a chance to fully examine it. I felt like I’d been introduced to some new kink—a bit guiltily, but at the same time, I was just beginning to realize the extent of this new world.
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Report. Flame Transform and the extra skills Control Flame and Control Water will disappear following the combination. In its place, you will have earned Dark Flame and the extra skill Control Particles. Resist Temperature will also evolve into Cancel Temperature. This will eliminate the extra skill Cancel Flame Attack.
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I gave the order, and the Sage did the rest. The results let me earn a new skill far more easily than I would’ve guessed. Losing Control Water along the way was a regret, but I figured it was because I could do the same thing with Control Particles well enough. Time to try ’em out.
Dark Flame was a skill that let me release flames from my body whenever I focused my internal magic force. I created a field of magic, transformed it into flame, then launched it away—thus, creating fire from thin air. I could also adjust the temperature based on how much magic I used.
If I wanted to grab someone’s head and immediately encase it in flames, it’d be possible (albeit a tad toasty). If I wanted to focus the flames on my palm and shoot them off, no problem. Basically, I pictured it as gathering a bunch of magicules in a single place, setting them on fire, then releasing—somewhat like how my Water Blades worked.
I fired a shot of this at a nearby boulder. It immediately burst into flames—and judging by how the surface was literally melting, it had to be pushing 1,500 degrees again, about the same as with Flame Transform. What a weapon I’ve stumbled upon. I could probably get it even hotter, depending on how much magic I crammed into it, and if I worked it on a larger scale, maybe I could trigger an even larger explosion. Better practice that. Never know when I might need it.
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Now I could work these flames however I wanted without thinking too deeply about it, and I suppose I had Control Particles to thank for that. Working the magicules around me allowed me to control the paths of other molecules in the air, creating heat from the resulting friction. Since I was controlling magic to move these particles around, I could boost the temperature simply by using a little more force.
It had come all too easily, but Control Particles was a fearsome tool to add to my arsenal. The Great Sage attempted to explain the ability over the course of several minutes, using all kinds of unfamiliar jargon and logic, but I cut it off. It was indecipherable, a total waste of time. I figured it would handle the details for me anyway.
More interesting was that now I could apparently control the very air molecules around me. My understanding of Dark Flame was that it transformed magicules into flame to create searing temperatures, but if I could make any sort of molecules rub against one another for similar effects, could I use that to create electricity, perhaps? Like, say, what if I linked Dark Lightning up with Control Particles…?