From Player To Npc

"'Child…? What do you mean child?'" [Shingi]

Usually, Sinhunter answered him right away, sometimes even before finishing his question, but this time there was a pause.

"'There is a Spirit Child in the seashell.'" [Sinhunter]

"'Spirit Child? I have never heard of something like that. How do you know what it is?'" [Shingi]

Unlike with his Spirit Hammer that had the spirits of past users of it, Sinhunter was a new entity with no prior knowledge, so there was no way of him knowing something that Shingi didn't teach him or could come up with what he taught him.

"'It told me. I saw its entire form for a second before it ran away. Our conversation lasted for a split second, but I learned more about it than what I would if talking with someone for hours.'" [Sinhunter]

So Sinhunter started explaining what he learned.

The seashell got infused with Spirit Mana for the Merefolk Leader when it became the floor's Boss. The seashell had some Water Mana on it, as the underwater City of the Merefolk was rich with it. When the Spirit Mana interacted with the Air, it didn't just live in a balanced way with the Water Mana, but it consumed it and changed its structure.

It turned into something different, into something 'living, 'almost like the Water Elementals the Boss summoned but a lot smaller and weaker. But even if it was more fragile, what was equal to its soul was closer to the real thing.

It didn't create life but gave the body to the one already gone, or in fact, on the combination of several. The Spirit Mana was the power of the deceased, but Shingi didn't know what exactly is referred to as their power, and the only thing he could think of was their Soul.

If the seashell gathered all that mana made of different souls, then interacting with the Water Mana gave it a way to create a body, but since it could make only one body, the souls became one, creating a brand new one.

But still, by itself, the Seashell couldn't make the body as it needed the help of someone to help it manipulate its unique energy and make the body what it could control.

The Boss back then seemed to have used part of the Spirit Child to create the Water Elementals, which would be weaker, but he could make more than one. He wanted to try messing with it later but first wanted to communicate with that 'Spirit Child' even if it was through Sinhunter only.

This reminded Shingi to check on the trident of the Merefolk Leader, which he had forgotten after all this time.

He knew it had some special runes but didn't find time to see what they could do. He wanted to look to it with Little Phoenix, as she still was better than him at reading Runes, but he took a chance by himself since she wouldn't be here for some time.

It wasn't like he couldn't understand any Runes, but he couldn't learn any information about them through the system since he didn't have the right skill. Still, while helping Zhen and monitoring Annoue's training through SCRY MODE, he had learned a few things to be an apprentice RUNEMASTER theoretically. Still, since he already had a profession, he couldn't be one.

A Blessed One had the option to forget his profession and earn a new one, but would also forget any profession-related skills and wouldn't be able to relearn them even if they belonged to his new profession too. The only time that this didn't happen was when one was getting an evolved version of his profession. That was why one had to be careful with choosing a profession, either if he or she was a Blessed One or an NPC.

He started looking at the Runes to find anyone that was similar to what he knew.

This didn't work, so he took a fresh approach. He used VISUALIZATION to make a copy of just the runes of the trident and have them hovering in front of him like a painting. Then he used VISUALIZATION to make every Rune he knew, at some distance from the visualized trident's runes.

He had learned close to 100 different Runes, although most of them were very simple and weak; nonetheless, he visualized them all.

He had made the Trident's runes to be white, while every other Rune was red.

So he started moving each of the non-weapon runes, at one of them choosing one each time to examine like that. He had to use his Blessing to boost his INT, as focusing on so many things to keep the visualized at the same time wasn't easy.

Only Shingi could see those runes since he only used VISUALIZATION and none of his Illusion spells, so to others, it was just him standing still, staring at the air in front of him. But in reality, he moved the runes at an incredible speed one over the other, and when he noticed them not be the same or close to each other, he moved to the next combination to check.

This lasted for only a couple of minutes, but it could take him hours if someone else tried it this way.

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SKILL EVOLUTION

The skill ENCHANTMENT APPRAISAL (Master Rank) has been evolved into RUNE APPRAISAL (Base Rank).

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SKILL RANKED UP

The skill VISUALIZATION (Master Rank) has been evolved into VISUALIZATION (Grandmaster Rank).

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QUEST UPDATED: ROAD TO LIFE

Task Completed: Rank a Skill to Grandmaster

Reward: Spirit Madness Cure x1

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He didn't expect this 'experiment' to lead not only on one of his Skills to evolve into a new Skill. Even if it was a Rank lower than before, that didn't mean it was less potent. RUNE APPRAISAL at Base Rank was at least five times more precious than ENCHANTMENT APPRAISAL at Master Rank, as not only now he could learn info about Runes through the System and his when used on Enchantments, he could read them faster and take even more information.

He also had his first ever Skill he learned as an NPC, be his first Grandmaster Skill. He never expected to bring one of his Skills to Grandmaster Rank, but it was a welcome surprise.

He wasn't sure what changes came with it, but he had time to test things around.

Then as he read the final notification of the unexpected completion of a task of his Quest, he was curious about the reward.

The first time he completed some random tasks, the System told him that a reward was being calculated, but this didn't happen when he completed the task for learning a Grandmaster Spell and ranking up a Skill to Grandmaster. This meant that those tasks had those rewards predetermined.

He got a Full MP Recovery from learning a Grandmaster Spell, which made sense as Spells needed MP.

But if the System predetermined the reward like that, why did he take the cure for Spirit Madness this way? The only connection he could think of is that VISUALIZATION seemed to be connected with Spirit Mana. He noticed he could empower the Skill by using his Spirit Mana, which was strange, as no other Element had a similar effect.

Still, he couldn't be sure about anything, as it could just be him overthinking it.

So he focused back on the task at hand as he looked over the two runes that had found matching with two of the Trident's Runes. He summoned a piece of paper and a pencil as he drew the two runes and then went back to the other room.

He told An to let him borrow Little Phoenix's notes for a second to check, and she let him with no delay. Some notes were of his or Karemon's or even Zhen's teachings and explanations of every Rune they had learned. Since he still had his boosted INT, his reading speed was inhuman.

He found those two runes in no time and studied their description, as he also took another look at any rune that he maybe had forgotten and didn't visualize and check for. He had forgotten a few, but they weren't in the trident, only the two he had already found.

Just those two runes weren't enough to make sense of all of it, as the combination of the two effects was too many.

But now, he could just use his new Skill to appraise the unknown Runes, and possibly make some sense of it all, and record them for future reference, and to help. When one appraised a strange rune depending on the Rune's Grade and the user's Appraisal Skill's Rank, there were chances of success and failure. The more significant the difference between the Rune's Grade and the Skill Rank, the stronger the possibility of failure.

If any of them were Master Grade Runes, even if they were one Grade/Rank difference, the chance of success wasn't big, especially if it was a top Master Grade, since his Skill was Base Rank but still low in power on Base Rank.

So firstly, he used his new Skill to appraise the drawings of the runes there were in the notes, to raise the power of his skill, but since he already knew them, each helped little and could do this only once for each since he couldn't use his appraisal skill at them before, and this was the first time.

Still, since they had gathered a variety of runes, most from the books of Mikhail's place, it helped him improve his Skill quite a lot but not enough to reach Master Rank.

So he moved on, trying to use his RUNE APPRAISAL Skill at the Trident's unknown rune.

He took it slowly to make no mistake, but with his boosted INT, he finished examining them all before it was over.

The Trident had a few functions that would be useful on a few of the floors. They enchanted it to be lighter and sharper than usual, which Shingi already assumed and could tell. It also could control nearby Sea Water without spending the user's mana.

There was some more function that had to do with the sea and Water Mana, but Shingi didn't need them for now.

He stored it at his Spatial Ring for now as he went back to the training room.

He had to train his Spirit Blade, now that he knew a bit more about its energy after his conversation with Sinhunter about the 'Spirit Child.' He also wanted to see if he could combine Spirit Mana with any of his Elements and see the result.

He needed to train the function of his new Title to change one Element into another also.

He could feel Sinhunter's excitement for those thoughts.