B.F.HUUPS
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Chapter 22
🕑 Added 2025-07-11 19:43:02 +0000 UTC“So, c’mon bossman. Lemme hear them Skills you got!”
Mind Master [ Rare ] You are the master of your temple, and your temple is your mind. Passively, constructs mental defenses to block out all forms of mental attacks. This Skill is affected by Willpower and is considerably more effective against mental attacks coming from an attacker of equal grade to the user or below.
Mental Riposte [ Rare ] You stand on guard against mental attackers, ready to return with your own. When activated, Mental Riposte returns an enemy’s mental attacks back against them. Mental Riposte requires expert timing and must be activated the moment a mental attack attempts to break through the user’s mental defenses. The success of Mental Riposte is determined by both the user’s and their attacker’s Willpower.
Gorgon’s Time Dilation [ Elite ] Time is relative, and you choose to see it pass as you please. When activated, Gorgon’s Time Dilation slows the world around the user. Whilst activated, the user can see and think at full speed, whilst the world is slowed, but they cannot move any faster than they can without it.
Zero Presence [ Elite ] Your step is not just soundless, but carries no weight or signature. Passively silences the user's steps and removes all weight from them—traps and other Skills that rely on detection through weight activation no longer work on the user.
Larian’s Ten Steps Ahead [ Elite ] While your opponent studies your moves and reacts accordingly, you are already planning moves many steps ahead. When activated, Larian’s Ten Steps Ahead allows the user to combine Skills; the user can then instantaneously use the Skills stored within this Skill as needed, allowing for dangerous combinations.
Aaron read out the options to Sooty as he went over the list. There were a bunch of interesting options, and his thoughts drifted off.
“Wow, ye doing good, bossman. Three Elite Skill offers? Now, that’s something. Especially for your level. Be mindful about what ye pick, though. Ye’ve got still room to grow, but the sooner ye consider your path, the better of ye are.”
“Yeah, makes sense…” said Aaron.
“Now, Mind Master is a bit of a subtle skill, but…”
Aaron only half-listened to the little soot goblin as he went over his own thoughts about his skill options. He wasn’t intentionally doing it, but he’d gotten used to making his own choices, and it was hard to just stop.
As good as the two mental Skills were, they were both essentially defensive in nature, and neither particularly interested him. He certainly wasn’t intending to head down the mental route, and doubted there would be many trials that they would help with, anyway.
The three Elite Skills, on the other hand, were not easy to pick between. Larian’s Ten Steps Ahead was the first to cross off the list. Aaron didn’t really have the Skills to combine, and even if he did, he wondered how useful it would be. Sure, if someone had a bunch of Skills that took a little while to activate, it would probably be OP, but he didn’t, and he didn’t know when, or if he would. So he crossed it out.
Zero Presence was pretty good. Not only did it work with his style, but being essentially immune to traps and Skills that worked like traps could be a huge boon. He remembered the assistant in the Viewing Room mentioning dungeons, and if dungeons were anything like his imagination portrayed them to be, they would be full of traps.
Still, despite all that, Gorgon’s Time Dilation was hard to pass, despite Sooty’s warning. Sure, it wouldn’t actually make him any faster, and perhaps he wouldn’t have picked it only a trial ago. But with his ability to see the threads of fate, thanks to his Trait, battles had turned into a fight against all the surrounding noise as much as they were against his opponents themselves. Maybe increasing mental Stats would make following and concentrating on everything easier…
“Hmm, Gorgon’s Time Dilation,” Aaron muttered to himself as he considered his options.”
“Be careful with time-affecting Skills. Anything that messes with time has a habit of being costly. There’s this one god…”
Aaron noted the goblin’s comment about the cost, then turned back to his own thoughts. As he saw it, as he got stronger, he’d also get faster. His brain barely kept up with all the threads as it was. No, scrap that. It didn’t. If his brain and his eyes could actually keep up with everything, the last trial would have been much easier. It was just so damn hard to track every thread of fate, make sense of them and the moves they were preparing to do, and then make his own adjustments. And all of that was before the chore of focusing on Fate Bender, and using it to cull the threads of fate. The thought of everything getting even faster, which it was bound to do, was simply overwhelming. Sure, he imagined that as he increased his grades, this would naturally get easier, but would it bridge the gap that was already uncomfortably large?
Dammit, I can’t keep up with it as it is.
This was a big problem, since Aaron was fairly certain that his fate-manipulating Trait was his best asset. If he couldn’t mentally keep up with it, he was effectively wasting his best asset.
He eyed Zero Presence again. It wasn’t that good, really. He already had great control over his body, and if he kept training with the shadow, it’d only get better.
Ultimately, even if there were huge mana costs that came with slowing time, it didn’t matter. It was still clearly the best option available.
“Gorgon’s Time Dilation it is,” he said and confirmed his selection.
“Wait, what? I thought we were doing this as a team, bossman? What happened to going over the selection together?”
“Oh, sorry Sooty. I just confirmed it.”
“What? Without me? I thought we were doing this as a team!”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t intentional. I just got caught up in the moment, that’s all. Next time you can help, I swear.”
“Ye really do need a lesson in manners, humy. But fine, next time it’ll be.”
“Next time,” Aaron agreed with an awkward smile.
“Eh, whatever, ye the bossman. Let’s move on.”
Ooops, I didn’t realize that would upset the little fella so much. I really need to work on this team stuff.
“Good. And again, I didn’t mean to be rude, seriously. It’s just that I've got a lot on my mind. Now, let’s see what's waiting for us in the dining room, shall we?”
The dining room itself hadn’t changed, but the food available certainly had. Not only were there more Earth options, but everything provided buffs of one kind or another. However, none of them were particularly strong, and all of them were weaker than the bird meat he had made.
Still, Aaron could appreciate the reward, even if he didn’t really need it. Unfortunately, from a taste perspective, it was a little wasted on him now. He took a large cheese pizza and used the slices to make wraps with sushi and crispy chicken tenders, but everything tasted so good now. It wasn’t like it was bad, but it wasn’t any better than the burnt meat he cooked up himself, which was a little disappointing.
“This is a blessing and a curse,” he sighed as he munched on tenders covered in sauce. No matter what he did, nothing really pushed the amazing spread before him higher than his own dodgy creations.
However, he did learn one thing. If he ate one buff-providing meal and then another, the original buff would disappear. But certain buffs also stacked. For example, a pure Stat buff could stack with something that provided different, non-Stat-related buffs. He also realized that while several dishes he ate came with aftereffects, he never felt anything.
“I believe you mentioned something about your blessing affecting aftereffects, didn’t you?” Douglas said from across the table as he eyed the pair through narrow slits.
“Oh, right, I did, didn’t I?”
“Ye got a blessing, bossman? Maybe I didn’t get totally shafted being paired with you after all.”
Ignoring the snarky sootball, Aaron focused on the blessing and brought up the description.
Minor Blessing of Oozagh the Rotund.
Provides: Ogre Gut. The ogre’s gut is formidable and capable of consuming just about anything. Most notable for the ogre’s ability to consume power-enhancing herbs, tonics, and even body-harming drugs without aftereffects.
Douglas was right. It did mention that Oozagh’s blessing removed aftereffects from consumables. Since he had never experienced aftereffects and they didn’t exactly explain what they did or how bad they were, it was hard for Aaron to gauge the value of this perk. However, he had a feeling it was relatively valuable.
“As I said before, blessings are valuable in and of themselves,” Douglas reminded. “That’s no small benefit you’ve gained from that oversized sack of lard. Aftereffects of moderate or above will make most carefully consider whether or not to consume a buff-providing item.”
“I’ll take the win,” Aaron said, rising from his chair and dusting himself off.
“Finished already, bossman?”
“I’ve got a Skill to test out. You can… umm… stay here, I guess.”
“Ye don’t have any jobs for me?”
“No, I’m good. Unless you can fight? In which case, I suppose I could use a training partner.”
“Nope. Absolutely no combat ability. Strictly a helping hand.”
“I guessed as much. It’s fine, make yourself at home. Actually, I suppose you could gather any food and ingredients that provide buffs and fill my pouch with them.”
“At ye service!” Sooty exclaimed and bounced up from his chair.
Putting his Gi back on, Aaron got to testing out Gorgon’s Time Dilation. It was essentially bullet time, and was pretty damn fun to play around with. But the main reason he purchased it in the first place was to help track the threads of fate, which he couldn’t really train by himself. He actually did have his own threads, which he could see, but they were essentially useless, as they were showing him his own possible paths. He needed an opponent to test it against.
Aaron almost started the Trial of Dominance's second stage but stopped short. An idea had struck him, and instead, he selected the Trial of Wit.
For someone with higher Intelligence than Aaron, the Trial of Wit may have seemed like the easiest of all the Trials. But he would’ve struggled to pass a memory test that required him to match half a dozen pairs of flipping and shifting tiles, let alone the one hundred and fifty he was expected to match.
The trial started by giving him three seconds to memorize literally thousands of beautifully illustrated tiles before they flipped over and then moved positions.
The trial itself was a strange setup. He hovered over this arena-like board game, with some kind of magic keeping him up. And unlike the other trials he had attempted, the shadows didn’t really do anything. They just stood there, watching. Perhaps they would help in higher levels of the Trial of Wit, but they certainly didn’t help on the first stage.
Just like the System controls themselves, Aaron could easily move himself around with simple thoughts, gliding through the air and selecting tiles to flip over with a simple thought.
His first attempt was a bust, but he had an idea, and the moment the trial started a second time, he activated Gorgon’s Time Dilation, slowing everything down. But it wasn’t just about giving himself more time to memorize the tiles. Aaron focused on the tiles, and through his Trait, forced their fates to thin, allowing him to see where they might move to.
Still, despite this, for someone as untalented at memory games as Aaron, it was no easy feat to pass. He failed time and time again, even if his results were gradually improving.
However, he quickly recognized the value in this training. Having to track and follow literally hundreds of tiles was far better at honing his mastery of his fate-bending Trait and his newly acquired Skill than one-on-one battle would be. For one, he was relatively adept at combat by now, thanks to his many deaths honing his skills in the bowels of battle. But also because he sucked at this. It forced him to push his mental capabilities and to develop an almost natural ability to keep track of all the threads of fate moving around him.
Minutes dragged into hours, and hours dragged into days as Aaron stubbornly pressed on, gradually honing his ability and improving his skill at following the threads.
But it was hard. Keeping track of everything was just so difficult. The reality was that keeping track of so many different things going on simultaneously, even with time slowed, was just beyond what he was capable of. It required superhuman abilities that he just didn’t have.
“Why does it bother me that you actually look defeated?” Douglas said, eyeing Aaron as he sat in the hallway between attempts.
“It’s this damn Trial of Wit. How on earth is anybody meant to remember and then follow all of these moving tiles? It’s impossible.”
“Impossible? Maybe without the right Stats. Those with decent Intelligence and Perception usually find it comically easy. Occasionally, we have guests who dump those Stats entirely and are unable to pass the trial. But it’s certainly not impossible.”
Right, those are both dump stats for me, aren’t they? No wonder it’s so hard.
Aaron groaned internally, but he also had a thought. He had 10 free points he hadn’t yet decided where to spend, and whilst he wasn’t sure how Intelligence would assist him long-term, considering his current build, Perception was different.
Reading his enemies and following the threads of fate were two fundamental aspects of his gradually developing path, at least they were so far. Both of these were essentially perception-based skills. Keeping track of the threads of fate for one or two combatants might not require superpowers, especially not with his bullet time Skill. But if he were in a larger battle, with dozens of enemies, then he doubted any degree of natural ability would be enough to keep his eyes trained on so many moving targets.
Yeah, I think this is the way to go. He reassured himself.
With that thought in mind, Aaron confirmed his selection, placing all free points into Perception, and brought up his status screen.
[ Name: Aaron Dober ]
[ Age: 23 ]
[ Race: Human ]
[ Grade: F ]
[ HP: 4400 ]
[ MP: 3000 ]
[ SP: 3300 ]
[ Class: Brawler, lvl 15 ]
[ Profession: Ogre Taste Tester, lvl 9 ]
[ Stats ]
[ Strength: 38 (+8) ]
[ Vitality: 44 (+8) ]
[ Fortitude: 38 (+8) ]
[ Dexterity: 44 (+8) ]
[ Agility: 66 (+15) ]
[ Intelligence: 5 (+5) ]
[ Willpower: 30 (+7) ]
[ Charisma: 5 (+5) ]
[ Perception: 16 (+6) ]
[ Titles: Shadow Trials Trailblazer ]
[ Traits: Fate Bender (Alpha), Minor Blessing of Oozagh the Rotund ]
[ Racial Skills: Inspect ]
[ Profession Passive Skills (1/3): Questionable Recipes ]
[ Profession Active Skills (1/6): Concoct Toxic Gloop ]
[ Class Passive Skills (1/3): Faux Core ]
[ Class Active Skills (3/6): Thick Skinned, Relentless Scourge, Gorgon's Time Dilation ]
Yeah, that should help, he thought as he activated the trial once more.
