Chapter 1: Vison of Improvement – A Minkalla diary

Tier 1:

You can record the current state of your spirit and cultivation at will and save this recording in your spirit. Saving a recording overrides the previous one.

Secondary Effect: You can restore your spirit or your cultivation to a recorded state for a cost in mana or essence scaling with the difference between recording and current state.

Tier 3:

You can store multiple recordings and have finer control over which parts of your spirit or cultivation you want to restore. Grows with tier.

 

Before

I didn’t like my talent. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great talent. Very useful and all that. But with great power comes great responsibility. So maybe it would be more fitting to say I hate the responsibility and expectations my talent causes.

Take for example my current situation. I am standing at the entrance of Minkalla. At only tier 12! Way too early! But no. The “Talented” should go early. Bah!

I am not ready at all. Haven’t even build my own concept. Thank the emperor for those bottles. I found my phrase at tier seven, but how can I ever hope to find an image that fits “I remember”? While the question practically screams sarcasm, I want the answer. And my guild leader wants me to find the answer too, so here we are.

My “teammates” are at the same tier. True elites from my guild. They always make sure I know that. And they also make sure, that I don’t get funny ideas of actually belonging to their group.

My father may be friends with the local guild leader, but that only got me a faster interview and no real benefits. I got to where I am now, by having the most annoying talent of all time: Resetting.

I can record my current state of spirit and cultivation and restore that state later for a cost depending on the differences. This mostly translated to getting rare skill shards and creating a recording with the skill, then putting the skill back into an empty shard and restore it into my spirit. Rinse and repeat. This talent is a big reason of the guilds recent rise to fame. All their elites get a set of rare skills including an already modified [Endurance], which is normally reserved for pathers, [Ranged Heal] and an assortment of useful cracked skills that guildmembers found. And they don’t want their golden goose dying of old age. So, I get an elite escort to floor four.

Now back to Minkalla. Finally, it’s time for the new cycle, that I really want no part of. There even was a nice man telling us, the empire will refund all travel costs if we choose to retreat. No way I could take the offer though. The guild leader was very clear with his expectations.

Start

Do I want to be transported with the people near me? Seriously treasure planet? Are you mocking me? I can’t stand them and they can’t stand me, but I am also not suicidal.

After a short examination we know the floor theme.

“Folded Reflections! It seems like we can get rid of our baggage earlier.” Ah! Right… the floor reward lets me replace the bottled concept I have now with a real one, that an alternate version of me created. Less work than getting through the next floors. And less risk to die.

Now we only have to survive imitations of other people, who are probably more talented or at a higher tier, a good chunk of them even both. Fun!

You are reading story Vison of Improvement – A Minkalla Diary at novel35.com

Subfloor 2

This seems better than expected. The reflections were said to have some flaws, but those flaws really make the difference. I was able to defeat the reflection of a teammate. This is especially jarring, as I never won a spar against him. Also being on transport and healing duty is actually nice. Low risk and Minkalla still rewards me a good share of Genesis Energy.

Subfloor 2 After an Ambush

I retract my earlier optimism. We lost Matt in an ambush. Mathias Crow was the nicest member of the team. He gave me actual pointers after sparing and always had something funny to say.

Humans truly are the real danger of this place.

Subfloor 3

No more losses, but a lot of healing cooldown. We have to rest, but as soon as people outside learn of the first-floor theme, it is guaranteed to become flooded in short order.

On the bright side we got a fantastic skill-drop. A cracked mana barrier, which transforms incoming kinetic energy into mana for the caster.

Subfloor 3 Boss preparations

We have enough Genesis Energy, the position of the boss and are mostly healed up. It’s now or never!

Subfloor 3 Before the trial

We did it! Without casualties too.

I had to burn some essence to win, but I had a backup from before the fight and could fix the damage with only a slither of Genesis Energy. It is just so much more efficient than even essence as fuel for my talent.

After the trial

What? Why? I want to go back! I just saw myself living a better live and then I realized that it was too good to be true. That got me thrown out for “passing the trial”! But I Remember what it was like and now I have a goal.

Changing my appearance is doable even before tier fifteen, even if the changes will not be as thorough as I want. And changing my name to hers will be a bureaucratic nightmare, but completely doable.

The team wants to go farther. Without me of course. Also, without Rose. She lost a leg and we have no way to regrow it here.

Floor 2-1

Stayed a while for trading. But after both Rose and the Team had left, I realized that I wanted to go on. I Remember, what it was like. To be her. To be Me. Strong, resolute, cute, respected. I want that. And going deeper gives me a better chance of achieving it in a timely manner.

It is funny that I feel like I can see the way forward even in the Eternal Darkness of Minkalla.

Floor 2-2

I am not used to working alone. Well. No time to learn like the present.

Floor 2-2 again

The present sucks! Back to learning.

After the second trial