Vivi took off her boots and stepped into the water. She got ten feet from shore before her raincoat started to submerge. Vivi stopped there and held her javelin.

"Do I really have to do this?" Lucius asked. He floated above the water level, shining bright and outputting a tasty feeling of ether into the water below. Fish were already gathering under him. A lot of the fish were too small to aim for. The biggest was the size of Vivi's hand.

With her skill active and a slight amount of ether improving her senses, Vivi thrust her javelin at the fish. She connected, and the rest scattered. Vivi smiled, then tossed the fish to Eem. It had a hole clean in its stomach. Lucius collected half a wisp of ether from its corpse.

"We'll need to elevate this skill," Vivi asked. "How exactly can I use the variation?"

"I think you need to activate it negatively," Lucius said.

"What does that mean?"

"You're currently pushing the skill wisp outward, into your body," Lucius said. "Instead, you need to pull the wisp inside."

"And how do I do that?"

"I don't know. That's how my old wielder explained things. I'm a spirit—I've never used skills. It all has to do with the way you interact with the wisp in your core. Just try things and see what happens. The more we use the wisp, the more clear its different paths will become."

"Okay…" Vivi said. So far, she had activated the skill just by, well, activating it, as if tickling the wisp in her consciousness. The skill did the rest of the work on its own. That was what skills did. They contained powers within. By activating them, the powers came out.

Vivi had no idea how she could control the way the skill worked. But she had no choice but to try.

Lucius claimed that focusing so much on common skills was useless. But if the variation allowed Vivi to conceal the presence of her javelin, she had an idea on how she could defeat the skeleton.

For the next few hours, Vivi hunted in the waters with Lucius as bait. She stayed on shallow waters, focusing more on fiddling with the skill wisp rather than catching large fish. She really didn't know what she was doing. Each time she activated the skill, the misty aura enveloped her weapon. It was the complete opposite effect of what Vivi tried to imagine in her head.

The skill wisp did seem to grow more active as Vivi used it. Originally, the wisp had appeared like a small swirling line of smoke hiding within Vivi's core. It was still a small wisp that contained meager powers, but its color was turning darker, and its swirling was more active.

Every few minutes, Lucius had to fly back to her core to fill her body with ether. The skill wisp had slight reserves of its own, but to keep it active for longer, Lucius had to add more ether. Without ether, the skill was like a furnace without heat.

Outside the skill, Vivi was proud of her accuracy with the javelin. With the skill active, she couldn't see its tip, but she still didn't miss much. If Vivi saw a fish, she was positive she could hit it if she focused. Her accuracy and instincts had improved significantly.

Vivi was weak compared to true monsters, but she felt like a different person compared to what she was days ago. If she'd met the two guardsmen that captured her now, Vivi guessed she could have a realistic chance of defeating them or at least escaping.

But she was still weak. She needed practice, and a lot of it. She needed more ether, a stronger runesword, more skills… There was so much work she still had ahead of her.

"Vivi, I'm running out of ether," Lucius said. "We'll need to pause practice soon. If someone attacks us, we're dead. I have nothing to defend us. I'm starting to feel weak…"

Vivi looked into Lucius's core. He had less than fifty wisps active. Using Shadow Swipe was free in the sense that ether wasn't permanently spent, but the skill exhausted wisps faster than Vivi could hunt from the low-level fish. Keeping Shadow Swipe active for extended periods of time would eventually dim out her wisps.

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She activated it for one last time. Vivi closed her eyes and focused. Her consciousness was kind of like its own wisp that could traverse within her core. Vivi could interact with whatever she took her consciousness to. By moving her consciousness on top of the skill wisp and tickling it a little, Vivi could make the skill push its powers outward.

But that wasn't what she wanted to do. Vivi wanted to have the skill to pull its powers inward instead. She moved into the wisp, then imagined herself pulling the ethereal aura away from her sword.

Usually, the skill wisp simply activated as normal at this point. This time, however, nothing happened. The skill spun slightly, but otherwise didn't react to her call.

"I think I'm doing something?" Vivi said.

"You're doing nothing, Vivi."

She turned to him. "Let's head to Paradise to practice more. Your wisps are recharged there, right? We can practice while asleep."

"Yes," Lucius said. "I was about to suggest that as well. We can practice there. But there are no monsters. You can only practice internally."

"That's fine," Vivi said. "I think I can get this to work."

"Is it worth it to place so much effort on a low tier skill?" Lucius asked.

"Shadow Swipe will help us defeat the skeleton," Vivi said. "We have two more slots remaining anyway. And if we earn better skills, we can always replace this one, right?"

"Yes," Lucius said.

"Then, I don't see a reason why we shouldn't practice," Vivi said. "I'm also learning more about how the ethereal realm works. Or whatever you call the place where my core exists. I've never interacted with my core before. I need to learn things that were natural to others as toddlers. If I practice with the common skill, we can apply our knowledge to new skills we earn."

If they lived to earn new skills…

Vivi waddled out of the water, joining Eem on the shore. The fiend had eaten a few fishes, but she hadn't filled her stomach like last time. Vivi guessed Eem was stressed and nervous. There were no crawl spaces that she could traverse here. The lower levels must have been unfamiliar to her, too.

"I'm heading to sleep now," Vivi said. "Tomorrow morning, we'll defeat the skeleton and get out of here. How does that sound?"

Eem looked doubtful.

Vivi sighed. "You little rat. I can defeat it. Do you not believe in me?"

"Ivwi iinnn," Eem said.

"Vivi win, yes," Vivi said.

Lucius wore an awkward smile. "You understand her?"

Vivi smiled. Not fully. I think that's what she said.

Vivi picked up a fish and sat down. She asked Lucius for his claws and quickly cleaned the fish. She wasn't in the mood for eating, but it was probably good to eat at least one fish before falling asleep.

Then she lay on her back and let Lucius take her into Paradise.

* * *

Lucius summoned Vivi into a distant forest. The dreamland's clear sky was still visible overhead, the sun casting shadows above treetops. Vivi asked Lucius to take her as far away from the flying island and the hunters as he could.

She could still see the island as a speck in the distant sky. Paradise wasn't boundless. If Vivi walked far enough, the world would start to warp, and her consciousness would disconnect from the realm. This, according to Lucius, was as far as they could go without weird consequences.

Still, Vivi was more than far enough to avoid hunters. She could continue practicing in the silence of the forest. She summoned her iron javelin and continued studying her core. Her skill was the same dark wisp that behaved just as it did in the real world: exactly the opposite of how Vivi wanted it to.

She tested new things, nonchalantly spending Lucius's ether. In Paradise, she didn't need to worry about resources.

Nothing worked for the first few hours. All she managed was to grow frustrated. She cut a few trees in half with her runesword to clear her head. Ythar probably wouldn't mind.

Lucius sat in a loaf, watching her, trying to offer tips. His tips weren't all too useful. Vivi would have thought Lucius would be more knowledgeable about using skills, considering his memories were all intact. Lucius tended to ignore details that weren't directly related to himself. If something was Vivi's job, it was her job, and Lucius focused on whatever thoughts ran in his little spirit head.

Luckily, Vivi had a lot of time to try things out. Time moved at the same pace in Paradise as it did in the real world. If Vivi slept for eight hours, she could spend eight hours practicing. Lucius said she would wake up rested as well. Though, he recommended avoiding spending more than half of the time asleep in Paradise.

Vivi was prepared to ignore that advice. She wasn't about to spend the rest of her life locked away in a little corner of a shore in a dungeon. She needed to make this skill work. Additionally, she practiced her accuracy with throws. Even if she managed to activate the skill, it would all be useless if she missed.

And after five hours of trying different things, something different happened.

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