novelraw Chapter 39 39: I wonder where it’ll take you this time
Chapter 39 39: I wonder where it’ll take you this time
Leon tilted his head, a faint furrow forming between his brows as if he needed to confirm he'd heard her correctly, and at the same time something he rarely let slip surfaced in his eyes: genuine curiosity.
"Other methods?" he asked slowly, cautiously, like every word might rewrite the rules of a game he'd only just learned how to move in.
Valeria nodded without hurry, the motion so natural it was as if she were stating something obvious, something Leon simply hadn't had the right to know yet.
"Scrolls and killing enemies are just the crudest, most direct path," she said calmly. "Essence Record doesn't only react to death and essence. It reacts to who you are, what you do, and what experiences actually shape your existence. Skills, passive and active, can form naturally, as a consequence of living, not just fighting."
Leon looked at her, visibly thrown, like what she'd said didn't quite fit the brutal simplicity of everything he'd seen so far.
Seeing that, Valeria sighed quietly and leaned into a more concrete explanation, as if deciding the idea needed something he could actually hold in his hands.
"Imagine someone who trained martial arts from childhood," she said. "Not because they wanted to kill, but because they trained their body, technique, reflexes, understanding an opponent's movement. That person, even without a single scroll, could eventually develop a passive hand-to-hand skill. Its level wouldn't depend on the system. It would depend on the real quality of their technique, years of training, and their ability to adapt."
Leon nodded slowly, feeling how perfectly that lined up with what he'd been missing most.
"So if I train long enough," he said, "I can gain extra combat skills without using scrolls."
"Yes… and no," Valeria replied almost instantly, lifting a finger. "Training is key, but don't trap your thinking inside 'combat' only."
A slightly malicious, almost playful, smile tugged at her mouth.
"Let's use a more… down-to-earth example," she added. "If someone spends their whole life being what you'd call a 'womanizer', desperately trying to sleep with every woman they meet, Essence Record might recognize that as their dominant existential trait."
Leon narrowed his eyes.
"That doesn't sound like something I want on my skill tree."
"And yet," Valeria continued, clearly amused, "that person could develop a passive skill that boosts sexual stamina, recovery… even mental resistance to desire-related stimuli. I even know an organization that specializes in those kinds of… activities. They've got a pretty impressive set of sexuality-linked skills."
Her grin widened, like she was enjoying his reaction far too much.
Leon stared at her long and very strangely, trying to decide whether she was being completely serious or simply stress-testing the limits of his patience.
Catching his look, Valeria sighed again, this time without a joke in it.
"If you live for a thousand… or five thousand years, you'll understand," she said evenly. "At some point, people will do literally anything to kill boredom. Anything to find something that can still interest them."
Leon shook his head slowly, resting his hands on his knees.
"It's hard to imagine," he admitted honestly. "I already feel like the world flipped upside down, and you're talking about a life longer than my entire civilization's history. To me that's still… abstract."
Valeria nodded, as if deciding that was enough philosophy for tonight. Then, almost casually, she switched topics, but the shift in her tone made it immediately clear what she was about to say mattered far more than her earlier tangents.
"There's one more thing you need to know about skills," she said calmly. "When a skill reaches Mastery, it can move to a higher stage of existence."
Leon raised his gaze.
"A higher stage?"
"Yes," she confirmed. "Unclassified skills aren't a final form. They're seeds. Once they meet the right conditions, they can evolve into what are called Phase One Skills. That's the first real stage of their evolution."
She paused, then looked at him pointedly.
"Take your Cold Mind. Before I met you, it was Novice. Now…" A faint smile touched her lips. "…it's already at Mastery."
Leon's eyes narrowed, and almost reflexively he pulled up his status.
A familiar window appeared before him:
[Cold Mind (Unclassified Skill) – Tier: Mastery]
He froze for a heartbeat.
"What…?" he muttered. "When did that happen?"
As if answering him, another notification unfolded beneath it:
[System Notification]
[Skill Cold Mind has met the mastery threshold.]
[Phase One evolution available.]
[Additional requirements must be fulfilled.]
Leon held his breath.
"Phase One…" he repeated quietly.
"Don't act surprised," Valeria cut in. "For the last twenty-four hours that skill has been running almost nonstop. Every time you were under pressure, every time you fought, every time you balanced on the edge of panic and death, Cold Mind cooled your brain, stabilized your emotions, kept you functioning. That wasn't controlled practice. That was extreme exposure. The perfect environment for Mastery."
Leon looked at the status again, then back at her.
"So… the system decided I've 'mastered' it."
"Exactly." Valeria leaned back more comfortably, interest bright in her eyes. "Go on. Check what you still need to do to unlock Phase One. I'm genuinely curious what the system considers an appropriate trial for a skill tied to a cold mind."
Leon swallowed and scrolled.
A new section unfolded slowly, line by line:
[Phase One Skill Evolution – Cold Mind]
[Requirements:]
[Maintain emotional stability during extreme threat]
[Remain mentally stable for a continuous period of 30 minutes while facing life-threatening danger.]
[Status: COMPLETED]
[Make a rational decision that contradicts instinctive fear]
[Choose a calculated action over survival instinct in a critical situation.]
[Status: INCOMPLETE]
[Suppress emotional interference during the death of allies or innocents]
[Witness death caused by hostile entities without loss of cognitive clarity or emotional collapse.]
[Status: COMPLETED]
Leon read slowly, and with each line his expression tightened.
"Two already cleared…" he murmured. "I don't even know when."
"Campus," Valeria answered without hesitation. "Chaos, beasts, people screaming, or dying a few meters from you. The whole time you kept going without breaking, without panicking, without emotional paralysis. The system logged it, even if you didn't realize it."
She studied him for a moment, then added more lightly:
"And that second requirement, Make a rational decision that contradicts instinctive fear, for you, that won't be a big problem either."
Leon nodded, accepting it without comment, and then his gaze drifted down the list of skills.
It stopped on one entry.
[Darkness Manipulation (Phase One Skill) – Tier: Initiate]
He squinted, like he'd only just properly noticed it.
"Darkness Manipulation says Tier: Initiate…" he said after a moment, lifting his eyes to Valeria. "How many mastery levels are there, exactly?"
Valeria smiled, clearly pleased by the question.
"The classification is simple," she said, counting on her fingers. "Novice. Initiate. Adept. Expert. Mastery. Every skill, no matter the phase, moves through those tiers."
She swung one leg off the counter and stood straight.
"The higher the phase of a skill," she added, "the slower its mastery grows."
Leon listened closely.
"So the more I use a skill, the faster it levels up," he summarized.
"Yes," Valeria said with a nod. "But only up to a point. That part doesn't concern you yet."
Leon looked again at Darkness Manipulation, and something new settled into his eyes, no excitement, no greed. Just cold determination.
If he wanted to survive in this world, being fast and strong wouldn't be enough. He had to push his skills as high as they could go.
With that thought, he leaned his back against the café wall, slid down a little, and closed his eyes, trying to force his body into rest.
Even without opening them, he knew it would be harder than any fight he'd had today.
Because even if he stayed cool outside, logical, mechanical, somewhere beneath that layer of control one stubborn desire still burned, impossible to outrun: finding his family. Making sure they were alive. Making sure they weren't just another anonymous shape collapsing on campus.
The longer he let himself think about it, the more unreal the dream became.
His parents and his little sister were in another city, hundreds of kilometers away. Even before the apocalypse, a drive like that took long hours, planning, fuel, and a bit of luck on the roads. Now, with the world in chaos and streets choked by abandoned cars, bus wrecks, smashed trucks, and bodies nobody would ever clear, the idea of covering that distance felt absurd.
He had no idea how many roads were completely blocked, how many bridges had collapsed or been cut off by hordes of zombies and mutated beasts that treated asphalt like their hunting ground. In this reality, even a month of brutal travel might not be enough, and every day spent outside anything resembling shelter meant constant risk of death.
He hadn't had time for thoughts like this over the last day.
Adrenaline. Fighting. Decisions made in split seconds. Responsibility for other lives. It all drowned everything else out, shoving fear and longing somewhere deep, out of reach. Only now, when his body finally stopped moving and the café's quiet wrapped around him like a heavy blanket, did the emotions come rushing back twice as hard.
The corners of his mouth twitched, and a few tears slipped out from beneath his closed eyelids, tracking down his cheek and soaking into his coat before he could wipe them away. There was no hysteria, no sobbing, only the quiet, muffled despair of someone who'd finally understood how fragile every bond had become in this new world.
Cold Mind ran at full power, repeatedly striking his thoughts with icy pulses, dampening the swell of emotion, stabilizing his mind, refusing to let fear fully take the wheel. The sensation was strange, like one part of him was crying while another calmly analyzed how long this could last before it became dangerous.
In the end, exhaustion did what no technique and no skill could.
His body, drained by hours of combat, constant tension, and too much information, gave in first. Leon curled slightly, drawing his knees to his chest, hands instinctively gripping the fabric of his coat as if the gesture could summon what little safety remained. His breathing slowly evened out.
His thoughts dissolved into broken, chaotic images, and sleep, heavy, dreamless, finally swallowed him, granting him a few short hours of something that could almost be called rest.
Almost.
Because even then, the world beyond the café walls never stopped being dangerous.
Valeria stood in silence for a long while, leaning against the counter, watching Leon curled on the cold floor, his face seemed anxious, as if even sleep was just another kind of battle for him.
Her red eyes narrowed, not with mockery or condescension, but with something older, memory without a clear shape, carrying only the weight of centuries of scenes just like this.
"Darkness Manipulation…" she murmured, more to herself than to him.
A barely-there smile touched her lips, nostalgia mixed with something sharper, almost dangerous.
"Interesting. I wonder where it'll take you this time."