Skills

Skills are mystical abilities the The System provides (however, Skills existed before the System too {**Chapter 473**}), they can have various passive and active effects. Using an active skill generally consumes cosmic energy (or miasma, for the undead), but can have other costs, such as permanent level loss.

The skills available generally could be categorized into offensive, defensive, movement, and support, as far as he could tell. **Book 1, Chapter 30**

Skills are likely actually made from different combinations of the Dao and provided by the system to people who may not be able to manipulate the Dao at all, save for those skills **Chapter 407**

Two "identical" skills could have some unique aspects. Even skills provided by the System could have slightly different features, depending on the cultivator's class, Dao, and pathways. **Chapter 981**

## Acquisition

* Skills can be bought or learned, generally from a class. Non-class skills generally come from skill crystals, which have limited uses and are very difficult and time consuming to create, making anything of value very expensive.

### Skill Crystals

From **Book 7, Chapter 86**

* The most common skill crystals were the small ones that someone, or the System, had imprinted with a copy of the skill fractal. It usually worked 1 to 3 times, after which it broke apart. More than a few cultivators created these crystals as a side-income, though copied skills almost invariably lost some of their quality compared to when they were provided by the System itself or if they were self-created.
* Second most common were the crystals Zac had in his Dao Repository. These much larger skill crystals could be used continuously, as long as the crystals were allowed to slowly recuperate and slowly absorb energy after every use. Both these crystals had one thing in common though; with enough time and effort, you could create an endless number of these skill crystals.
* It was different for Inheritance Crystals though. To create an inheritance crystal you needed to physically take your Skill Fractal and infuse it into a crystal while splitting off a part of your soul, the part containing all your insights and comprehensions of the skill. In other words, you would lose the skill forever, and you would even ruin the skill slot in your body.
	+ These crystals provided various benefits compared to normal skill crystals. First of all, you were pretty much guaranteed originality. It was like you inherited the skill from a predecessor, and no one else would be able to buy it. These crystals weren’t transcribed as well, so there was no loss in quality like with the other two types of crystals.
	+ Furthermore, the skill came with a lot of insights from the get-go. If your comprehension was good, you might even be able to push it to Middle Proficiency instantly.
	+ The downside was obviously the huge cost of creating them. They would essentially cripple a cultivator, and apparently, it wasn’t possible to create them on your deathbed when your soul was weakened and your memories of the skill were blurry. It required you to do it yourself when you were at your peak.
* There was one more method to acquire them though, and this was the most common method of gathering them. There was an extremely small chance of an inheritance crystal forming inside the body of a corpse. So massive factions would continuously gain a few inheritance crystals as the previous generations departed, but the demand always far outstripped the supply.

### Skill Houses

* He had bought the skill from a skill house on his home planet, which essentially was like an open Dao Repository. **Book 4, Chapter 91**
* Zac had already learned of the true nature of the Eldritch Archivals after covertly probing Nala. It was actually one of the top five public Dao Repositories in Twilight Harbor, among the undead forces, that is. **Book 7, Chapter 776**

## Quality

* The skills in the public section of the repository were mostly Middle-stage, which meant the equivalent of a skill you’d get from an Uncommon class, though slightly weakened from the transcription. **Book 8, Page 28**
* A High-quality E-grade investigative skill [*Piercing Gaze*] was still pretty much equivalent to his old skill [*Cosmic Gaze*] at [*F-Grade*] Peak mastery. **Chapter 8, Page 367**
* It wasn’t too uncommon for high-quality skills to require more advanced control of Dao ... **Chapter 851**

## Skills slots

A skill is a essentially fractal pattern that gets added to the cultivation pathways, it's both about suitability and slot availability. There are a limited amount of "skill slots" a person can have, meaning that any bought skills will likely end up being replaced by class ones over enough time and advancement. **Chapter 422**

Engraving a Skill Fractal on your body was like getting a tattoo. You couldn't just engrave, remove, and reform them willy-nilly. **Chapter 1,137**

**Mind**

* Indomitable (**Chapter 245**)
* He even had two empty slots for skill fractals in his head, a result of both his sides being such one-track martial classes. **Chapter 1,004**

**Forehead**

* Mental Fortress (**Chapter 113**)
* Soul Guardian (E) (**Chapter 651**)
* Fields of Despair (**Chapter 239**)

**Back of the Head**

* Empyrean Aegis (**Chapter 823**)

**Eyes**

* Eye of Discernment (**Chapter 17**)
* Inquisitive Eye
* Cosmic Gaze (**Chapter 423**)

**Top of Right Hand**

* Chop (**Chapter 39**)
* Nature’s Edge (E) (**Chapter 677**)

**Right Forearm**

* Nature's Punishment (**Chapter 109**)
* Arcadia's Judgement (E) (**Chapter 672**)

**Right Bicep**

* Deforestation (**Chapter 314**)
* Innate Ward (E) (**Chapter 678**)

**Left Shoulder + Right Shoulder**

* Cyclic Strike (**Chapter 434**)

**Left Forearm**

* Rapturous Divide (**Chapter 515**)
* Blighted Cut (**Chapter 534**)

**Inner Chest**

Clarified to be the Sternum by The First Defier on *Discord* (31 Oct 2020)

* Foresters' Constitution (**Chapter 80**)

**Right side of Chest**

* Hatchetman's Rage (**Chapter 45**7)

**Heart**

* Axe Mastery (**Chapter 239**)
* Bulwark Mastery (C**hapter 241**)

**Throat**

* Thousand Faces (**Chapter 165**)
* Million Faces (E) (**Chapter 579**)

**Top of Lungs, right below the throat**

* Winds of Decay (**Chapter 340**)

**Soles of both feet**

* Loamwalker (**Chapter 80**)

**Above navel**

A pretty common position for class skills, close to where the cultivation core would be placed, or rather close to where Zac's Duality Core was nestled.

* True Strike (**Chapter 422**)
* Surging Vitality (E) (**Chapter579**)
* Unholy Strike (**Chapter 29**9)

**Right Wrist**

* Undying Legion (**Chapter 381**)

**Back**

* Hatchetman's Spirit (**Chapter 378**)
* Undying Mark (along spine)

**Right side of back**

* Link of Demeter (C**hapter 816**)

## Skill Fractals

* A fractal could only carry so much meaning, so any space used on restriction took away from its lethality. **Chapter 1,170**

## Improving Skills

### F-Grade

* According to Alea, the mastery stages of skills were Early-Mid-Late-Peak before they reached their limits and needed to be upgraded, **Book 1, Chapter 87**

### E-Grade

From **Chapter 898**

* But he could tell there was a clear difference in how the E-grade skills progressed. Back in the F-grade, his skills upgraded as he fought, often mid-battle when he pushed himself.
* That still happened on occasion, but it was clear that improving his skills required a more concerted effort in the E-grade. Now, they needed him to understand the underpinnings of the skill and how to improve their effectiveness and comprehend the Daos that made them possible. Thankfully, it didn't require affinities or profound knowledge of fractals.
* Zac had seen how quickly his mastery skills progressed when he put his mind to it back in the Orom World. As long as he dedicated a year or so to it, he should be able to push most of his skills to the peak.

### D-Grade

* That was an important distinction between Hegemony and the lower grades. Skills and equipment were linked to your core. You normally needed a Middle-stage Cosmic Core to power a Middle-proficiency skill, and the same was true for War Regalia. In return, these skills and tools would channel far more energy, which meant greater offensive and defensive power. **Chapter 1,059**

## Upgrading Skills

### E-Grade

(**Chapter 497**) Zac's musings on upgrading his F grade skills

* The simplest method was to adjust the skill fractal so that it would be useable in the E-grade as well.
* The second method was to upgrade through epiphany, and Zac guessed that this was his best shot at rapid progress.
* (Skill Arrays) were like assisted guidance systems that helped you upgrade certain skills. They resulted in slightly worse compatibility compared to doing it yourself, but they would undeniably save time that you could spend on gaining levels instead.
* Finally, there were the Skill Upgrade Quests that the System would reward, but the first one wasn’t until level 90 as far as he knew. It was usually a branched quest that would either allow him to upgrade a skill or transform it, and he guessed that this was the best chance to fuse two of his skills into one.

Fusing skills is a lot harder than simply upgrading one. It takes two different skill fractals and turns them into one, combining their effects to something new. It requires a high understanding of fractals, the Dao, and the skills themselves to work, along with some sort of inspiration. An upgrade isn’t easy by any means, but ultimately a lot more straightforward. (**Chapter 672**)

### D-Grade

* A straightforward upgrade sounded easy on the surface, but it was a step that stumped frontier Hegemons for decades, sometimes forever. Many of the Wandering Cultivators he'd encountered in the Void Star only had a few D-grade skills, some only one. **Chapter 1,071**
* It wasn't just a matter of widening and reinforcing the channels of the skill. You needed to elevate the truths that went into fractals, preferably adjusting them to suit your own Daos. Only that way would you be able to control and transform the vast amounts of energy the Cosmic Core released. Upgrading High-quality skills and above was impossible without a Dao Branch, and you needed the theoretical foundations to translate your comprehension into fractals. **Chapter 1,071**

## Downsides

* Every extra skill you added to your pathways would have to be accounted for when forming your core. Creating a skill perfectly suited to your path was one thing; it didn't require a lot of work to incorporate. But a semi-suitable skill not of his own creation? It would create an energy imbalance that could cause problems even for cultivators. **Chapter 1,048**
* Most cultivators couldn't even replace Skill Fractals once, which meant each skill represented a permanent choice. You either kept the skill or closed the slot. **Chapter 1,137**

## Inscribing Skill Crystals

Warriors short on cash could spend some time working in conjunction with the inscribers of the skill house to produce Skill Crystals, and the remuneration would depend on the quality of the skill and the number of uses the crystals contained in the end.

But it was through Galau he finally realized that creating Skill Crystals was extremely arduous. First, it needed the owner of the skill to have completely mastered it. Just reaching the peak of the skill wasn’t enough, one needed to know its ins and outs completely to the point that it almost came like breathing to them. Secondly, it required a skilled inscriber to translate the insights of the warrior into an inscription embedded in the crystal. The two had to work together for months, sometimes even years for high-grade skills, to create the crystal, creating a huge opportunity cost.

Of course, this process could be somewhat sped up if the inscriber and the warrior were one and the same.

Inheritance Crystals like the ones in his Dao Repository were far rarer, and they required extremely expensive materials to not deteriorate after a skill fractal was extracted. It also required a Peak D-grade inscriber at the least, and it wasn’t something some hobby inscriber could create.

**Book 4, Chapter 91**

## Mastery Skills

Mastery Skills appear to be a very widely distributed type of skill for both combat and non-combat classes to teach an Integrated person how to properly use a tool or weapon.

## Ancillary Skills

This brings us to the subject of ancillary skills. The two aforementioned skills, in addition to Thousand Faces are ancillary skills (neither defense/offence/class/craft). These are not as restrictive as most other skills, though a Scout class would obviously make better use of [Inquisitive Eye], and Zac has proven to have a bad match with [Thousand Faces]. That's why he can use [Thousand Faces], but not [Nature's Barrier] in his undead form. Discord

## Known skills

List of skills

1. ↑ The First Defier on Discord 03.10.2019 https://discord.com/channels/593783253320597515/593789035584159765/629387057155932160