In the bright light of the midday sun, Henry sat on his many arms and watched the remaining qualifier fights. He was already done for the day, but he opted to remain and watch while he continued working on his new technique.

  The stone in front of him stopped orbiting for a moment, came to a stop, and began moving in the other direction. The exercise seemed simple, but it was taking Henry all of his focus to keep the movement smooth. Unlike his usual ways of controlling Telekinesis, Henry’s body wasn’t the nexus of the skill. No, the nexus—the small construct that was hosting the instance of the skill–was also orbiting around his body. While the stone was moving clockwise in front of him, the nexus was going around his waist.

  The challenge was taking all of his cognitive faculties, and true, it was getting easier, but for this task, he couldn’t use his Octominds. He had to be the one in the driver seat. He had to be capable of casting his skills outside of the limitations of his body. But that didn’t mean the Octominds were idle.

  From the corner of his mind’s eye, he could sense them. He could see the glasses-wearing Octomind putting down to words the images transmitted to it by its sibling. Taking notes of the interesting skills two other Octominds were observing, while two others were doing mana-manipulation exercises; one worked on concentrating a bead until it gained physical form, while the second was moving mana up and down an arm and endeavoring not to lose any of it along the way.

  Henry suspected Arisia wouldn’t approve of him using Octominds to train, but the sub-minds were an integral part of him, and in any case, he was spending his nights doing the mana exercises himself. Having the Octominds do them as well was helping him in consolidating some of his gains, and it allowed him to observe the techniques from a new perspective, inspiring him to come up with new tweaks and methods to reach his goals faster. Mana-channeling exercises were simple enough and only needed practice, and either way, he had his plate full with projected casting. That was the priority at the moment.

  Yup. That’s what I’ll tell her if she says anything about it, the kraken thought as he watched his instructor walk toward him.

  Arisia came to a stop next to him. She stared at him for a few moments, then turned her attention to the two humans being escorted out of the ring. One severely burnt, and one with too many broken bones.

  Might be interesting to pick up a fire skill, Henry thought, mentally peering over the note-taking Octomind to glean some details about the fire-user who’d just qualified to semi-finals of tomorrow.

  “Have you tried creating another skill nexus?”

  Henry gave her a sidelong glance, and noticed her eyes tracking the movement of the nexus. Something even he couldn’t see.

  “I tried… but I found it too difficult to maintain both without one of them fizzling out. I thought it’d be better to get better at controlling just one before taking on that challenge. Don’t want to stretch myself too thin and all that.”

  Arisia gave him a nod, and Henry noticed the edges of her lip curl up. Still, he asked. “Can you see it? The nexus?”

  Henry had tried to perceive the nexus, but he couldn’t see it. Not really. He thought he saw something disturbing the mana around him, and he could see some of his own mana fluctuate toward the spiritual construct, but he couldn’t really see the construct itself.

  Arisia nodded. “I can.”

  “Is it a special skill? Is that how you could guess the nature of my abilities?”

  The stone orbiting a few inches ahead changed direction once more, while the telekinetic nexus came to a stop in front of him. He peered at it, but he couldn’t see much aside from the few wisps of mana here and there that disappeared into thin air. Arisia took a step and poked at the empty air with a blue glowing finger. Instantly, Henry felt the nexus sway in his mental grip, almost destabilizing, but he’d gotten proficient enough that such a disturbance wasn’t enough to force the skill out of his grasp.

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  Of course, it hadn’t been Arisia’s intent. If she’d really tried, she could have snuffed it. Henry was very much aware of that, and finding the solution to that issue was one of the tasks he’d set for himself. A way to protect himself and his abilities from being snuffed out. Already, he had a few theories and exercises he thought of, involving Trickster’s Domain and Dispelling Pulse, but he opted to wait.

  There was enough to learn right here and now.

  Arisia held her arms behind her back and turned back toward the ring. Maurice was now stepping back in, and he was facing a young girl with cropped red hair. She had two bone-white swords in hand that she flourished outward as she saluted her opponent.

  “I spent a lot of time working on my magical vision, while I doubt you had the chance or need to. Much less the time. And aside from that, I’m also using these,” she said, tapping her glasses. “Mana vision is useful and can be improved, but there’s only so much you can see with it.” She pulled her notebook and pen out of thin air and started writing. “I can impart you a few lessons, but this one takes practice and insight. You’ll have to get more in tune with your senses. Your instincts. You need to recognize skill-patterns, and I’m sure our next set of lessons should help there. You’ll get better with time, so I wouldn’t stress that much about it. Keep working on the current exercises, and it will come with time. Now,” she said, cracking the notebook closed. “How’s the mana-channel training? Did you manage to carve a few in the bodies you create?”

  Henry wiggled an arm. “It’s coming along. I can push some mana out of my arms without blowing out anything, as long as I take it slow.”

  Arisia nodded. “Did you try to project a skill out of the shell?”

  “Yeah… but it still damages the body.”

  The announcer called the start of the fight, and instantly, Maurice pelted the girl with a stream of bubbles that shone with a myriad of colors as the light of the day hit them. The projectiles reached the girl deceptively fast, but the swordswoman already moved. One moment she’d been there, and the next she was flying along the stream of bubbles, rushing toward the crab in a straight line. The warrior was upon him in less than a second, forcing Maurice to abort his attack and teleport away.

  Movement skill, I bet, Henry thought as he paused his exercise. Next to him, Arisia was watching as well, but just like him, she could multi-task easily enough.

  “You know why your fake body was affected?”

  Maurice popped out of existence once more as the girl hounded him. She kept coming after him, and Henry quickly realized she could tell where he was about to re-appear. Either that or she was a really good guesser. It didn’t mean that Maurice was slacking, though. He was bombarding her with attacks, and he even activated his Domain once or twice, but he kept missing.

  She’s good, Henry thought, then answered Arisia.

  “Waste. Mana waste. When I’m feeding a skill outside of my body, mana isn’t all coming from the same exit, and it’s not all reaching the skill construct. That’s my theory, at least.”

  He caught a nod, but was more focused on the fight ahead. Maurice seemed to be frustrated, but all of sudden, he started rushing the girl himself, which she relished.

  “Good. It’ll get better as you perfect your control over mana. Waste always happens, even at higher levels and even when you’re not projecting skills. It doesn’t matter much with weak and low-rank skills, but you’ll want to reduce the waste as much as possible on higher levels. It can mean life and death when you’re battling B and A-ranks and you need to outlast your opponent.”

  Maurice dodge a sword and landed atop the girl’s back as she dove into a stabbing-lunge, and then—

  Henry frowned.

  “What’s this! Maurice the crab has attached himself to the back of Irrelia! What an unorthodox strategy!”

  The sword-wielder cursed and tried to dislodge the crab while two giant claws materialized atop of her head, but there was nothing she could do. Bissal Anchoring was active, and now the crab’s attacks would all land. Maurice just had to tank the hits and deal as much damage as he could before he was forced away. A strategy that was very familiar to Henry.

  That little shit, Henry thought, grinning inwardly.

  Over the next few seconds, the crab whaled on the girl until her bone-swords dropped out of her hands, and the win was called. When the smug crab scuttled out of the ring and came to meet them, he threw both arms up.

  “[The Hug of Death wins again!]”

  With this win, both Henry and Maurice qualified for the semi-finals, and the kraken wondered; would they face off in the finals?

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