Chapter 32: Seeing Double

I examined the large Aydomr pearl, the only thing in my sight, my entire focus on it.

What do you do? I mused.

I watch as ice mana flows along complex and beautiful crystalline patterns. If magic items gain skills by what you do then is it possible this has a skill too? In that case which is it?

I examine my Eye Wraps of Mana Sensing and compared it to My Kyhosa and this pearl, looking for the tiniest of similarities. I carefully scrutinized every bit of them. Both my magic items certainly have a marker of sorts, several for my Kyhosa. Ability markers but I cannot tell what they do. Returning my focus to the monster part I look for markers.

I am reminded of the Guardian and how she examined me to look for cursed skills. This is how she knew, skills leaves a marker of sorts on you. It's in your mana signature. Maybe, it is possible to figure out if the skill has breakthroughs or not by looking at the mana signature.

The pearl has an ability of sorts though I do not know if it's a skill. My Kyhosa for example has a marker for its battery ability.

"This is impossible!" I complain and flop onto my back. I look around my room by expanding my sphere. I have a chest in a corner with all my Kyholo gifts. Rings, candle holder, clothes, lots of seemingly random stuff. A painting of Mom and Dad with intricate designs on the frame is on my wall. Embroidered cloth blanket with designs of flowers, more accurately the flowering fruits of the bamboo trees. My bed frame also has designs burned into the bamboo. Anything that can be decorated is, that's just how the Runalymo are.

Plain and simple aren't what Runalymo aims for. Sure they can appreciate the concept of "less is more" and many things follow that, we have [Perfectionist's Eye] after all; but it's generally thought of that the more decoration there is then the more care put into the craft. This makes things take way longer to make and pretty much the only things that aren't by default decorated are construction materials, and sometimes that is also decorated.

I had the opportunity to examine the new house as it's being built and eighty percent of the reason it's taking so long is that each board is being decorated with simple designs. Most are just repeated onto each board but in some cases, there are some spots with a large design that cover many boards.

Being at a standstill with the pearl I got up and went to Chyzu's dojo. I had a question for her I hadn't asked yet.

"Where are you going?" Mom asks as I pass by her. She was taking a break from her work and was currently nursing Yafel and Yafe

"I've been trying to figure out another breakthrough but I'm just not at the level I need yet," I complain.

"Take your time, Aly, There's more to life than skills'' Mom says. We've had this discussion before but I can't help myself. I may not be trying to get an evolution anymore but it still eats away at me for wasting time.

"You need to spend more time with the other kids. Get to know people" Mom continus.

"I spend a day playing with the others every week already" I argue back.

Mom sighs. "Please take a seat, Aly" I sat down at the table.

"Aly, this is important so please listen. To live a full life there are three things you must put above all else. The first and most important is dedication to Myrou and the arts and crafts. You find fulfillment in accomplishment, and the Myrou dedication projects are only one such accomplishment."

"But I am working on that. My music, even tailoring" I retort, crossing my arms.

"Yes, but you are ignoring the other two things. The second is family, Aly. You are so focused on your skills that you haven't even played with your sisters!" Mom gave me a worried look.

"Bu-" Before I could even get a word in, Mom raises a finger and continues talking.

"Worse is the third thing to living a full life. Community! Yes, you are doing something for your sisters but how are you developing a good relationship with the community? You play with the other children but are you, friends, with them? What do you know about them? Who are their parents? Their siblings? I'm worried about you"

I pout. "They all think I'm someone great! How can I make friends with people who can't even see the real me?" I complain.

"Aly, I know you don't like that but you aren't even seeing the real you. It's alright to admit that you are good at something"

I groan, putting a hand on my chin. We've had this talk before.

"I can admit I'm a little better with my bond, but that's all there is to it!"

"You're way too stubborn, Aly." Mom sighes. "Go play with the other kids today, okay?"

I nod and left, heading toward Chyzu's dojo.

The students are doing their thing and Chyzu is watching carefully and taking mental notes to lecture them about later.

"Your Bond skill evolved, huh?" Chyzu says after I asked her my question. She took this opportunity to call all her students to gather around her.

"You can only have ten Bond skills, and you may have noticed that they don't level up." Chyzu starts off with. "Neither do they have breakthroughs. So how does one improve low-tier bond skills? Do you just remove your old skill and try to gain a better one? Well, you can do that or you can try to evolve the skill" Chyzu pauses to let her words sink in.

"Evolving your skill isn't easy but will always result in a better skill more adapted to how you used it. In Aly's case because she [Shape Beauty] her skill's form so much it adapted to that, also the influence of her [Impart Instructions] improved it to follow its target. This is the most important thing to know. Your skills can adapt and incorporate new things, maybe even making other skills obsolete." Chyzu clears her throat and continues.

"But sometimes there may be trade-offs, you may lose an aspect of a skill if you don't or can't use it enough. Or if all you do is one thing when it can do another it may adapt to do that one thing better but lose its versatility. For example, if Aly continues to use her [Shape Beauty] to only make fairies she may lose the ability to make other shapes." Chyzu looks at everyone in the eyes.

"One of the most common forms of evolution is a straight upgrade. It'll do more damage and maybe look a little different but remains functionally the same."

This gave me some ideas. One of the things I wanted to do was make an illusory clone of myself to fool people. Sort of like my fairy familiar and not just cast by beauty magic.

Chyzu has finished her lesson. telling everyone to continue what they were doing.

I wasn't quite done. It seems like this whole bond skill evolution is very similar to how you gain Bond skills in the first place. Try something and you'll maybe get a skill. It's possible that your Bond adapts to your action and with nothing to work off of it just makes up a new skill.

First I need an illusion skill, so I use [Aura of Elegance] but use [Shape Beauty] to disperse my mana in specific locations. Then, I try my best to impose an image onto the beauty mana with [Impart Instructions]. If I can use thoughts to make instructions why not mental images. A Cherry blossom with pink leaves falling. To my expectations, I got a new skill.

Ting! You have developed a new Bond skill! Dreams of Reality!

Dreams of Reality: You can conjure illusions, anything from small details to entire areas depending on mana used.

Ting! Your Bond has obtained level 125!Ting! Your Bond has obtained level 126!

That illusion had cost me three-fourths of my mana but to be fair it was fairly large.

Everyone stopped at the sight of a real tree, something so alien to them.

"What is that?" Wimula said, the ice mage stood entranced by the strange plant.

"J-Just something I imagined" I lie. Or was it a lie? I have a feeling it's from my past life but I honestly don't know why I conjured this strange plant.

"Your ninth skill?" Chyzu asks. I nod.

"You are so talented!" Chyzu comes in for a hug but I dodge out of the way. Falling on the ground Chyzu blinkes twice. "Huh? Why'd you dodged? Come'ere, you little genius you!" What followes is a sort of game of tag as Chyzu chases me around the dojo and me running from an inevitable bone-crushing hug, my familiar fairy following me around. Sadly her stamina won out and I was held to her expansive bosom as she purrs and pets me with a huge grin on her face.

"Illusion is one of the best ways to disorient your opponent. A big part of fighting is your surroundings and if you can fool your opponent into thinking they are in an advantaged position when they really aren't then you can more easily control the flow of battle!" Chyzu explains. "Illusion is mostly a light element, but I guess beauty essence can do it too!"

"That's because beauty essence is related to light element" I supply, grumpily held in Chyzu's bosom. "Every essence is related to a parent element. Nature for earth, creativity for water, anger, and joy for fire."

Chyzu hugs me tighter, crushing the air out of me, and rubs her cheek on mine. "That's my little genius!" I try my best to wiggle out of her grasp but her strength stat is way above mine. Once I was set free I escaped the dojo so as to not be caught by Chyzu again. One day, one day I'll be able to resist her!

There was one more Bond skill I had in mind, my tenth Bond skill. I want something very similar to my familiar but fundamentally different. I use [Dreams of Reality], [Shape Beauty], and [Summon Familiar] Making an exact clone of myself, but I went further than that, I used my race's natural beauty magic to cast a clone illusion of myself, blending and weaving the bond and cast magic together.

Ting! You have developed a new Bond skill! Summon Clone!

Summon Clone: You can summon a realistic clone of yourself that you can mentally control or order around.

Ting! Your Bond has obtained level 127!Ting! Your Bond has obtained level 128!

I summoned my clone, finding my wisdom too low to have both my familiar and clone out at the same time. The next few hours are filled with me testing the limits of my clone. I also summoned a normal clone from my race spell to compare it to.

The difference was that I can control the clone eerily similar to how I control my body. The only weakness was that I can't control my body at the same time, it's too hard for one mind. There was also something odd about the essence the clone used. It has just a tiny fraction of my unique mana. Probably because I used a racial skill to augment it. It had just been a whim, to see if and what it'll do. I can, after all, drop bond skills so I wasn't really losing much by trying.

I move my sphere to follow the clone as I walk it to the other side of the village then a sudden idea springs up in my mind. When I move my sight I can't see myself, it leaves me vulnerable, but if I split my sphere then I can solve that issue.

I focus on snapping only half my sight back to me feeling my vision go blurry as I did. Then I start seeing double, my sphere no longer in its regular shape it's now oblong. I pull on it more, feeling my vision stretch, and then, with a visual pop, I could see myself and my clone on the other end of the village at the same time.

Ting! Sense Mana has met the requirements for a breakthrough. Sense Mana will now continue leveling past level 160!

Ting! Sense Mana has obtained level 131!Ting! Sense Mana has obtained level 132!

16th Breakthrough: You've learned how to sense mana in two different locations, this will help you see more.

11th Breakthrough: 6/10 (Action: 3/5 Knowledge 3/5)12th Breakthrough: 5/10 (Action: 1/5 Knowledge 4/5)13th Breakthrough: 5/10 (Action: 1/5 Knowledge 4/5)14th Breakthrough: 4/10 (Action: 1/5 Knowledge 3/5)15th Breakthrough: 4/10 (Action: 1/5 Knowledge 3/5)16th Breakthrough: 2/10 (Action: 1/5 Knowledge 1/5)

That wasn't too hard. I thought. It was probably a low expert tier breakthrough. It was kind of strange, thinking of expert-tier breakthroughs as not too hard. I'd gotten most of the beginner and intermediate tier and now at my level expert is doable.

I try to walk with both my clone and my body but the most I could do was have us walk in sync with each other's movement, right leg for both then left leg. It was weird having a remote control body, even if that body isn't even physical, more like a gas if I had to describe it. It couldn't pass through solid objects, if it did it would move around it if the object was small enough.

I could see the link between me and the clone, just like the fairy. My guess is that the body control is just a higher form of giving orders. A remote control rather than actually piloting the clone.

Still, my goal is to have both me and my clone arrive at my house at the same time. For training purposes, of course with remote control and not automated orders.

It was frustrating! I had to constantly stop and readjust myself or the clone. Eventually, I managed to have my clone walk faster as it needed to travel a further distance, some good progress. Another annoyance was the constant interruptions from people. However, despite all the minor hurdles, I am now staring at my clone in the face in front of my door.

Ting! You have gained the Twin Minds general skill!

Ting! Twin Minds has met the requirements for a breakthrough. Twin Minds will now continue leveling past level 10!

Ting! Twin Minds has obtained level 2!

Twin Minds: You managed to split your mind, This will help you grow the second mind.1st Breakthrough: Through magic or not, real or not, you have managed to pilot two bodies at the same time. This will help you manipulate both bodies as if they were your own.

... Well, this is surprising, Not even a cursed skill. Though it is [Twin Minds] not [Multiple Minds], that suggests a limit. I can already think of more breakthroughs for this, like casting two spells at once and using my bond twice at once.

Using my racial spells I summon some illusory blue fox fires and turn myself invisible at the same time, or that was the goal anyway. My timing was off.

This'll take some practice, still, can't be as hard as piloting two bodies right?

I dismiss my clone and summon my familiar and walk into the house to my bedroom to practice in privacy. The problem was that I have to cast two different spells at the same time. Spells that require me to impress my intentions onto the mana. One can see how that might not be able to work right. It was hard to not get the spells mixed and have the spell fizzle out.

In the end, I could not get the breakthrough, I settled on just practicing with my clone. Moving at the same time in unsynced movements this time, although, I often found myself moving in sync and had to correct myself many times. The after-work leisure time had me weaving beauty and creativity essence threads. Since the damage was done to my evolutions I don't really see a reason not to use [Mana Manipulation], especially in things that won't result in level-ups. Well, there's still the danger of manipulating people's unique mana but I'll be very careful to stay clear of that.

I still had the dragon silk from the Guardian but before I work on it I want to get my [Tailoring] as high as I can. I still have some time before my sisters Kyholo and I talked to Mom and Dad about going ahead with my plan. As always they were against it but I argued and they eventually relented.

As I practiced my Tailoring I suddenly had a thought.

If I can imbue my music with mana and have that produce some effects maybe I can imbue my tailoring work?

It was worth a try. My bond and prior experience should help a lot.

I use my [Imbue beauty] skill on my current stitchings. But it wasn't that easy. With music the imbuing was with air, this is a more solid thing. I watch as my mana bonded to the threads I am currently working on. It would last for a while but that's not what I want, I want something more permanent, I want the mana to bind, to stick.

I recall how enchanting basically does the same thing, but I need to use this with my [Tailoring] skill, not [Mana Manipulation]. Can I even do it? It is mana manipulation, after all, I shouldn't be able to do it. However, this isn't gaining a new skill, this should be a breakthrough. It should at least be a coin toss as to whether this will work. And it may even result in both my skills being able to get the breakthrough.

I focus on my hands, needle, and the thread attached to the needle. I pushed beauty mana into the needle and then the thread. I imbue it with mana, then I imbue it again and again. Watching the mana bind more and more. This isn't enchanting, I can't impress any identities on the mana. And this isn't manipulation so I can't will it to do as I want. This was pure [Tailoring].

The needle is just an extension of myself, the threads are the clay I mold. I tell myself this over and over again.

I enter a meditation, focusing on just the needle and the threads, picturing them as a part of me. Desiring the mana to bind as I stitch the cloth in my hands. Slowly, methodically, I push the needle through the cloths, stitching them together.

Several 'tings' woke me out of my meditation.