"G-Gemma! I did it!" Jax quickly shouted as soon as he got the notification.
"Did you unlock it?" she asked.
"Yes!" Jax shouted. "Not just that, I learned something else as well."
Gemma had no access to Jax’s notifications, so she was quite curious at that point. "What else did you learn?"
"A skill," Jax said excitedly. "I learned a new skill. My first skill."
The notification lingered in his mind, the sound from it still clear as a thunderclap on a cloudless day.
<Congratulations, You have learned a new Skill ’Navi Absorption’>
"It’s a Navi Absorption skill. Does that mean I don’t have to do anything on my own now and can just employ the skill?" Jax asked.
"Navi Absorption? Finally, it’s about time," Gemma said.
"I just employ this skill and absorb Navi without having to work for it, right?" Jax asked.
"Yes," Gemma said. "Although, I am curious about something."
Jax used the skill without waiting any further. The thought of activating the skill alone was enough for his body to start drawing on the Navi from the surroundings. That included the Navi remaining in the Poison Opal stone on his palm.
As it was absorbed, it filled his sea with Navi. At the same time, there was something else going on that made the experience feel rather odd. He tried to place his finger on it, but he wasn’t sure.
"Something is different," Jax said. "I feel odd, as if I’m missing something."
"You do?" Gemma asked. "I was considering it might be possible. Go and check the description of the skill. It will tell you exactly what is going on."
Jax nodded and opened his Ascendant Status. Opening it, he saw the Spells section. Before going to the skill, he wanted to check his spell, so he opened it.
Nothing had changed in the description of the spell other than what he had already been aware of. Going up on stage increased the distance at which he could use his spell, and that had gone up to 20 feet by now.
Other than that, the new change was in the ’Unlocked Elements’ section, which now had a (2) beside it.
Poison: Threads assigned with the Poison Element are capable of dealing minor poison damage to the target periodically, depending on the amount of thread in contact with the enemy. They also reduce the target’s healing.
’Oh...’ Jax looked at the description with a hint of surprise. ’Minor damage, huh? Is that not set?’
The damage portion was good, but the part about reducing the enemy’s healing was perhaps even better. ’Does that include healing from potions or spells?’ he wondered. If it did, it could be quite amazing.
"Well? What does it say?" Gemma asked.
"Oh! I forgot. I was checking the spell. Let me open Skills." Jax quickly backed out of the Spells category and went to the Skills category, where within, there was a new skill.
[Skills (!)]
NAVI ABSORPTION
Jax opened the description, checking further.
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[NAVI ABSORPTION]
This skill allows a Sorcerer to absorb Navi from their surroundings into their Sea of Navi. When using this skill, the Sorcerer will always only draw Navi from their Sea of Navi and never from anywhere else.
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Jax looked at the description for a few seconds and focused on the weird feeling he had at the moment.
"I see," he said. "I can use spells while I’m absorbing Navi now. And none of them will affect my spell, as they will first go to my sea. That’s... great!"
"That is great!" Gemma said excitedly. "I knew something like this would happen when you started doing this yesterday. You must have worked really hard today to make this happen."
"Yeah," Jax said, still smiling. "Oh, and do you want to hear about my new Poison Threads?"
"Sure."
Jax excitedly read out the descriptions once again. "Now I don’t even have to attack them to kill them. I can just wrap my threads around them, and it will slowly but surely kill them."
Gemma listened to his words and laughed a little. "You’ll still have to fight. If nothing else, you’ll have to run around and dodge. And things won’t be so easy either. You’ve been dealing with monsters that don’t have any spells or skills. Sooner or later, you will meet ones that do, and things will become so much harder."
Jax’s excitement waned a little. "That’s true. I will need to be stronger," he said. "That does make me wonder, though, is it in any way a good idea to stay behind for as long as I can so that I can kill many boss monsters and earn their Elemental stones? That way, I can unlock more types of threads."
"That... will be difficult to do," Gemma said.
"Why’s that?"
"Remember how I mentioned that a regular sorcerer needs to improve all of their spells and improve their spirit before moving on to the next Navi stage?" she asked.
"I do remember that. What about it? I shouldn’t have such an issue."
"You don’t. You have the opposite issue."
Jax frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Most people reach a bottleneck of some sort when absorbing Navi where they can’t go to the next stage because their spirit holds them back. In your case, since you have a single spell, and even that has no cooldown at all, you pretty much end up elevating your spirit to the required next level without any issue. Which means... you end up going to the next Navi stage much faster than anyone else."
Jax frowned. "I don’t understand the implications at all. What’s wrong with me improving my Navi stage?"
"If your Navi Stage improves, your spirit and spell improve along with it. And to compensate for that, each new element you try to learn will require more of it. You’ll have to kill a lot of bosses to get enough stones to unlock any of the other elements."
"Are you willing to spend months here just to unlock a few other elements at most that you could unlock in the other carriages in a couple of weeks?"
Jax sighed. "Of course, I’m not."