Chapter 9: 9. Time To Spare

As it turned out, ⦓Otherworldly Resolve⦔ made it so that Desmond didn’t need to sleep. Or, at the very least, it lessened the impact that not sleeping had on him, or something like that. Regardless, it let him stay awake that night, which he appreciated.

For obvious reasons, he didn’t trust sleeping with Euric and his companion watching his back, so he simply sat up in his tree and kept an eye on them for the night. 

Euric tried, and failed, to stay up and keep an eye on him as well, but the meathead fell asleep after about an hour of trying to match Desmond's vigilance. After that, he was certain that he probably could’ve gone to sleep and safely woken up before they could get up and try to do anything.

When he laid his head back to try, however, he realized he wasn’t tired and that he was much too cautious to try and sleep anyways.

So he stayed awake, silently watching the clearing from his vantage point in the tree like he was an owl. For a long time, it was quiet. Of course, considering it was the middle of the night, this didn’t come as a surprise to Desmond. But, eventually, he came to the conclusion that it was extremely boring.

So he started trying to level up his skills, instead.

Before he’d left Calcheth, he’d come to the realization that it was impossible to level ⦓Small Blades Proficiency⦔ without a target to use it on. So simply slashing at the air constantly and trying to improve his technique would do nothing. Technically, the gluttony demon continued to count as a target, even as a corpse, which gave him the chance to train even while just living day-to-day.

But he had no target now. Realistically, he could simply attack a tree if he was that desperate to level, but that was dumb for several reasons. For one, it would be too loud. The last thing he wanted was to wake up the meathead and have to deal with his posturing again. Two, it would dull the blade of his knife. It wasn’t a real weapon in the first place, so he had to be careful to keep it in good shape.

‘There’s no telling when I’ll be able to replace it, after all.’ He thought, slipping the knife back into his jacket. He glanced down into the clearing, taking note of the shortswords that the thieves carried. ‘It’d be nice if I could get one of those. It might be a little too long to qualify as a “small blade”, though.’

Leveling up ⦓Survival⦔ was much the same. He could only level it by utilizing the skill for its intended purposes; that being ‘surviving’ in general. It seemed that it revolved around him taking care of himself in nature; things like foraging, cooking, and hunting for food fell under the overall umbrella of the skill, so doing more of those things would probably level the skill further. 

⦓Otherworldly Resolve⦔ worked the same way, yet it was even more complicated. It defended him from foreign effects passively but because of that, he couldn’t level it intentionally. The only way it would ever level is if he was put under the effects of something that would require Otherworldly Resolve to defend him. It was a difficult skill to deal with, most likely because of how powerful it had the potential to be. 

‘But there’s no reason to try and level ⦓Survival⦔ or ⦓Otherworldly Resolve⦔ right now,’ Desmond hummed. ‘I’ll be in Sayavila soon, so I won’t need to focus on them. I’ll just let them level naturally and hope for the best.’

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All in all, that really only left one option for a skill to level at all. It just so happened to be his main skill, anyways.

‘⦓Eye For Detail⦔. What an amazing skill.’ Really, in terms of all his skills, it was easily the most powerful. It let him study things, people, creatures and objects down to the most minute detail. When stressed, he could even use it to find weaknesses or weak points in things as well. It even worked on people, much like the meathead before. 

‘But using it on others like that gives me a killer headache...’ He pondered, absentmindedly rubbing the side of his head. Even pushing the skill for such a short time as he had earlier had sent a shock through his brain and down his spine. He could still feel the ripples of it, even now. 

‘Maybe if I level it further, straining it will hurt less?’ He thought, cupping his chin in thought. ‘Hm. Well, I’ll have to see if it changes after leveling it up one more time. It takes so long to level, though, especially now...is it because it’s a Personal Skill?’

Desmond hummed quietly, looking down toward the clearing. After experimenting a tad, he came to the realization that ⦓Eye For Detail⦔ currently had a maximum range of about eight meters. He remembered, back when the skill was still at level one, that its maximum range was about two meters.

‘So it doubles with every level, then? It would have been four meters, max, at level two, if that were the case, and it will become sixteen meters at level four.’ He smirked, almost laughing to himself before he remembered how late it was and put a hand over his mouth. ‘I wonder what its maximum level is? And its maximum range? This is so cool!’

His legs swung off the side of the branch, kicking in the air slowly as he squinted down at the sleeping thieves. Squinting, he looked at the meathead first and activated ⦓Eye For Detail⦔. 

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