Veloxis hadn't lectured Ronan about killing foxes the second time around. Nonetheless, the nine-tailed fox had still slaughtered him in seconds. A few more seconds than the first time, but not many. Progress was progress.

Having the world shift suddenly from the top of the hundred-floor tower overgrown with plants to Tharaxes' throne room was jarring. Ronan hoped he would get used to it after a few branch paths.

Having confirmed that not much changed post-tutorial, besides his discovery of the rat-infested underworld, his plan was set in stone. Steal skills from his designated targets and then return to the main branch, where he would then take on the next difficulty step of the tutorial. Simple.

Howard was his second target. The man's ability to conjure weapons from mana would go a long way to shoring up one of Ronan's major weaknesses—having to rely on monster drops to determine what weapon he used.

While he'd only seen Howard using small thrown weapons, he was sure the skill would manage a few others. His real hope was that he could master the skill through sorcery and work his way up to summoning absolutely any weapon he desired. That would take time, but so did anything worth doing.

Distracting the man proved harder than it had been with Jenna. He was jumpy around Ronan after his show of strength, but eventually he was able to successfully use the skill stealing mirror.

Skill Stealing Mirror (Epic) has been successfully consumed!

You have obtained the skill [Conjure Weapon (Uncommon)]

Conjure Weapon (Uncommon): Using your mana, construct a small weapon that can be used in place of a physical weapon. The more mana used, the sturdier the weapon will be, and the closer to its 'real' counterpart. (Cost: 40 Mana + 2.5% Max Mana).

Being size-limited was a frustrating boundary to work around, but the conjure weapon skill was, by and large, exactly what he'd expected Howard to possess. With some practice, Ronan felt he'd be able to make the most of it. If he was lucky, he might even obtain enough uncommon skill upgrade shards to bring the skill to rare, where the size limit might increase or be removed entirely.

When the tutorial ended and he was sent back to be with the rats, Ronan decided to test out his newly acquired skill. He discovered it was far harder to create well-balanced throwing knives than Howard made it seem.

After a dozen failed attempts, he decided to simply try and make a dagger instead. The weight didn't have to be evenly distributed throughout a dagger, given that it was going to stay gripped in his hand as he sliced and diced the terrorwhiskers.

Ultimately, the skill was useful, but not incredible. Although it did allow him to gain a few new weapon masteries as he experimented. Namely, dagger, throwing knife, sickle, knuckleduster, and, in a moment of pubg-inspired hilarity, pan mastery. None of them earned more than a few points, but it was interesting to discover them.

This time, when he emerged into the surface world, Ronan settled down for a few days. There was something he'd forgotten to do in the first branch path, that he wasn't going to lose out on for the rest of them—cultivate with his new mystic energy art.

He had the two boss shards, along with a few others that he'd collected along the way. While plenty of them were soul-aspected, his main goal would be to compare the efficiency of cultivating with the new art compared to without it, and hopefully push his mystic energy cultivation up to the fourth, or possibly even fifth, realm.

Sitting inside a secluded hidey-hole in a destroyed building, Ronan took out the Nine Mouths Delta Mystic Energy Art. He was expecting something grand and imposing, radiating power; an ancient scroll or a dusty tome.

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What fell into his hand when he withdrew it from his inventory was the furthest thing one could possibly imagine from his misconceived notion. A single, yellowed page, with dark crimson splatters across its surface—blood, most likely—with five sentences scrawled in messy handwriting, and a poorly sketched diagram of what seemed to be a river delta.

It took him another twenty minutes of squinting at the awful chicken scratches, while rotating the paper for better angles, to finally figure out what it said. By the end, Ronan wanted to strangle the author.

Energy flows through the spirit like a rushing river,

At the ocean's edge, the river banks swell;

The delta calms the raging surge

One flow becomes nine, the delta is formed,

Nine into one, the ocean is born

In fairness to the author, it was a beautiful poem. Ronan could imagine himself standing at the ocean's edge, watching a river rushing through the land on its journey to its salt-kissed destination. What he didn't quite understand was how the hell the poem was supposed to improve his cultivation.

As for the diagram, it was reminiscent of a river delta, in the way a child's drawing could vaguely appear to be the thing it was intended to, but again, Ronan had no clue how to use it to cultivate. I suppose this is the quality of an uncommon cultivation art, he thought with a sigh.

Despite the setbacks, he placed the paper beside him and took out the shards he had. Starting with a partially drained elite shard, he began to draw out the remainder of the energy and begin cultivating. With his eyes closed, he didn't notice the paper beside him burst into a thousand tiny droplets of emerald water.

Ronan definitely felt it when the water droplets raced into his body. Suddenly feeling as though he was taking a shower, he lost his focus and the stream of energy from the shard cut off. He heard a shattering sound.

Opening his eyes, Ronan cursed as he saw that the shard had broken into dust, the energy within wasted by the strange sensation. Thankfully he didn't need to wonder what had happened, as the paper beside him was gone, and there was a system message floating in his vision.

You have consumed the 'Nine Mouths Delta Mystic Energy Art'!

Nine Mouths Delta Mystic Energy Art Proficiency: 0%

Apparently the system had done the heavy lifting and translated the messy scrawls and diagram into a working cultivation method. As the art entered his body, vague images and feelings had flown into his mind. He felt that when he next cultivated, he would be doing so while having a rudimentary grasp of his new art.

Taking out his next shard, which was unused, he hoped this one wouldn't suffer the same fate as the last. He closed his eyes and settled into a meditative position once more, then began to draw out the shard energy.

Instead of entering his energy channels and cycling randomly, before settling into his soul—Ronan's method was more based on trial and error than knowledge—he felt the new instructions urging him to take hold and guide the shard energy. At first it felt about the same.

Typically the shard energy would cycle through his body the same number of times as the realm he was in—that meant currently it was attempting to do four cycles. They were undirected, rough, and often inefficient with his current method, but they got the job done.

This time, however, as Ronan was halfway through the first cycle, he felt the art trying to force his hand. Not actually making him perform a specific action per se, but rather giving him aggressive instructions. It was the difference between an instructor grabbing your body and guiding the motion, versus screaming at you what to do.

Ronan didn't enjoy either method, but he wanted to test the art to see just how much better it was. After all, if it sucked… Hopefully his heritage would be able to wipe it given that he consumed it on a branch path. Or he could just not use it. The method was being loud, but again, not forcing his hand.

On the first cycle he tried to do what it showed him, but he was unable to. The cycle still finished as normal, with the subtle feeling returning partway through the second. This time, he followed the art's guidance, and the stream of shard energy split in two.

Half a second later, one of the streams suddenly exploded and all the energy it contained was lost. Thankfully the majority remained and continued to cycle, but it showed Ronan the true difficulty of cultivation. He hoped that he wouldn't start seeing more failures like this the further he progressed.

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